The chief conflict in American history was and remains the conflict between the center and the periphery. Geographically, this conflict plays out as a powerful antagonism between the large, urbanized,…
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“Where you gonna be when half of California riots? Where you gonna run to when the lights go out? I won’t be hangin’ out in California, I won’t try it….
It is disturbing when you see a man like Tucker Carlson, who seems a reasonably objective fellow, painted with the brush of authority by the likes of Virginian Rich Lowry….
The beginning of the American political order goes much further back than the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Political scientists and political theorists are understandably fixated on the Constitution and the…
One could argue that there are two basic visions for America: the Hamiltonian and the Jeffersonian. The former is nationalist, calling for centralized power and an industrial, mercantilist society characterized…
In 1966, Senator Jim Eastland of Mississippi walked into the Senate Judiciary Committee and asked, “Feel hot in heah?” A staffer replied: “Well Senator, the thermostat is set at 72…
“I plainly perceive that the time will come when a shirt shall not be washed without an excise.”— Representative James Jackson of Georgia, speech against the Whiskey Tax delivered on…
“The revenue of the state is the state.” Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution Washington D. C. finds itself in the midst of an entertaining, nay consuming, Kabuki theatre. …
Many of us in the South have maintained our faith in the Constitutional right of nullification and secession despite the efforts of massed, bloody, Yankee bayonets. But is the talk…
A review of How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America by Brion McClanahan, Regnery History, 2017. A thinking American must choose between Hamilton and Jefferson, whose contrary visions of the future…
The endurance of the system of Jeffersonian finance based upon the Independent Treasury system was remarkable given the post war transformation of the United States from an agrarian country to…
“The revenue of the state is the state.” Edmund Burke The rise of the modern nation state in the 1600s was founded upon monarchies securing independent sources of revenue to…
Although the nation recently recognized the 150th anniversary of the end of the War of Northern Aggression, we are still plagued with questions about the legality of secession, issues and…
Every student of history knows at least a brief sketch of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, but most people don’t realize that Alexander Hamilton’s excise tax on distilled spirits hit George Washington…
General Lee was a soldier and leader of men, not a politician. Although several of his decisions as soldier had an important political impact in American history, he seldom discussed…
Old Hickory has been chopped off the front of the twenty-dollar bill. Andrew Jackson will still appear on the back of the bill, but Harriet Tubman (freed slave, conductor on…
I am writing in response to the recently posted piece at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, entitled “History proves Thomas Jefferson was wrong (whew).” The author of this article drastically overstates…
There was a popular ragtime song in the 1940s and ‘50s, derived from an old minstrel tune, that went like this: Is it true what they say about Dixie? Does…
“. . . and bank-notes will become as plentiful as oak leaves.” —Thomas Jefferson “They [the people], and not the rich are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve…
Your other lecturers have pleasant and upbeat subjects to consider. I am stuck with economics, which is a notoriously dreary subject. It is even more of a downer when we…
This speech was delivered before the annual meeting of the Georgia Bar Association at Tybee Island on June 2, 3, and 4, 1927. Mr. PRESIDENT and gentlemen of the Georgia Bar…
A Sympathy for Disunion “This, Mr. President, is not a government founded upon compact; it is founded upon the power of the people. They express in their name and their…
Delivered at the Blount County Courthouse, January 19, 2015. Robert E. Lee said “Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope…
Protecting Our People in the Era of Islamic Terror & Ebola Within a few days after the Federal Empire’s current glorious leader, Barack Obama, calmly assured Americans that there was…
Part II of a Five Part Series. Part I 1. Liberalism Taylor stood on liberal ground in holding that men were a mixture of good and evil. Self-interest was the…
This essay appears in Clyde Wilson and Brion McClanahan, Forgotten Conservatives in American History and is reprinted here in honor of Jackson’s birthday, Sept 21. James Jackson did not sign…
This is Part I of four letters that originally appeared in the Richmond Enquirer in 1819 under the nom de plume Hampden. They could have been written yesterday. To the…
“The confederation has been formed by the free will of the states. […] If today one of these very states wanted to withdraw its name from the contract, it would…
“I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption…
“…the borrower is servant to him that lendeth” (Proverbs 22:7) “There is an elegant memorial in Washington to Jefferson, but none to Hamilton. However, if you seek Hamilton’s monument, look…
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