I didn’t plan on writing anything today, but sometimes one just finds something worth sharing – especially when one reads Daniel Hannan’s blog. In all the commotion following the death of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), the gravity of which incidentally was a welcome relief after the Michael Jackson hype shortly before, most of [...]

Various traditions in subsequent American political history have rejected Tocqueville’s distinction. The Confederate states rejected it, arguing for an ideological form of localism that outranked universal principles and national stability (among other things). The Progressives later rejected it from the other side of the fence, rejecting localism for a totalitarian set of national principles and [...]

Recent conversations here have dealt frequently with “big government,” and with a chic alternative to big government in both its FDR and Bush varieties, namely Front Porch Republic localism.

Americans find it difficult to distinguish between a liberty and a right, and we find it impossible to tie a right to an obligation. One reason may be our failure to see that politics has always advanced from two sources of authority, not just one. In the Top-Down form, the person ruling has a right [...]

The god-term of the modern age is liberty. We all want it, we all deserve it, and it is at least the prerequisite to any real solutions in the world. Any significant history of the world is ultimately dealing with its genealogy. But is it so abstract – the steady surfer riding up and down the [...]