The Ideas That Formed the Constitution, Part 12: Plutarch
by Rob Natelson Commentary The historian Livy, whose influence with the founding generation was the topic of the previous installment, died in 17 C.E. In the two centuries following, the ...
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The Ideas That Formed the Constitution, Part 11: Livy
by Rob Natelson Commentary The two previous essays (here and here) observed that the final years of the Roman Republic and the first years of the Roman Empire produced some outstanding poets. ...
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What Ayn Rand Meant by “Americanism”
by Dan Sanchez In 1946, a Russian immigrant to America tried to remind her fellow citizens what America was all about. A publication called The Vigil printed an article that was meant ...
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The Upside-Down Constitution and Its Critics
by Michael S. Greve In revisiting The Upside-Down Constitution ten years after I put that baby to bed, I am violating time-honored principles of sensible authorial conduct. One, as a great Dane ...
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Cicero on the State, Property, and Invasion
Sounding like John Locke and Frederic Bastiat by Marcus Tullius Cicero Cicero, De Officiis (published 44 BC): The man in an administrative office… must make it his first care that every one ...
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The Ideas That Formed the Constitution, Part 10: Virgil Alone
by Rob Natelson The previous (ninth) essay in this series identified three Roman poets quoted by participants in the constitutional debates of 1787–1790—Ovid, Horace, and Virgil. The essay explained why ...
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The Ideas That Formed the Constitution, Part 9: Virgil and Other Poets
by Rob Natelson Ovid, Horace, and Virgil As noted in the second installment, the reverse side of the dollar bill reproduces the Great Seal of the United States. On the ...
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Cato’s Letters Explained “the Glorious Principles of Liberty” to the American Founders
by Dan Sanchez In the twilight of his life, John Adams reflected on the American Revolution in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, writing: “What do We mean by the Revolution? ...
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Ideas That Formed the Constitution, Part 8: Cicero
By: Rob Natelson The previous installment in this series outlined the life and career of the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero. It described how John Adams relied on Cicero’s work in the ...
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The Ideas That Formed the Constitution, Part 7: Cicero
By: Rob Natelson The first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth essays in this series addressed the influence on the Constitution of four leading Greek thinkers. There is one more Greek on our list, the biographer Plutarch. He ...
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