Six Must Read Sources from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
By: Michael Boldin Most people today have little to no familiarity with any of the principles that influenced the founders. Below, you’ll find 6 important resources hand-picked by Thomas Jefferson and ...
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Thomas Jefferson and James Madison’s “Must Read” Sources to Understand Liberty and American Government
By: Mike Maharrey How can we learn about the founding principles and the meaning of the Constitution? Minutes from an 1825 meeting of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors shed some ...
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The ideas that formed the Constitution: 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 Virgil ...
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The Whig (Libertarian) Heritage of America
By: Dan Sanchez Should America embrace libertarianism? Many would regard such a prospect as recklessly experimental. This is partly because they regard libertarianism as some crackpot scheme cooked up in the ...
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The ideas that formed the Constitution: 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 lived ...
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Truth and the Foundations of a Free Republic
By Paul E. Scates The philosophy of relativism claims that all truth is relative, and that there is no such thing as absolute truth. (Of course, if relativism is true, then based on ...
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The ideas that formed the Constitution, the pioneers: Socrates, Xenophon, Plato
By: Rob Natelson This is the fourth in a series of essays on the ideas behind the Constitution. You can find the first two essays here, here, and here As explained in the second ...
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What Are Rights? This Is What the Founders Believed
By: Dan Sanchez In 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that everyone is endowed with “unalienable Rights.” Years later, the Bill of Rights elaborated on those rights. Subsequently, the rights of ...
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No Place Like Rome: How Classic Republicanism Influenced the Founding Fathers
By: Bob Fiedler It has become commonplace for people to explain the current condition of the United States with allusions to the decline of the Roman Empire. But few talk about ...
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Constitutional Genealogy: The New England Confederation of 1643
By: Mike Maharrey The foundational ideas underlying the Constitution took root long before the founders drafted the document. In fact, they began to take root in the earliest days of American ...
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