When you notice the smallpox vaccine scar on your arm, do you ever think about the miracle of modern medicine that saves hundreds of thousands of lives from infectious diseases every year? Europe had experienced virulent smallpox epidemics for centuries before European explorers and colonists brought the disease to North
As creation myths go, the one in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion is just as believable and superior to the Judeo-Christian account in Genesis. Tolkien’s Iluvatar co-creates the universe from music sung by a choir of the Ainur, analogs of angels in the Christian tradition. This
THE “COCKPIT” WAS THE NAME of a meeting room of the King’s Privy Council in 18th-century London. It had previously served as a cockfighting arena for monarchs less concerned with public decorum, including Henry VIII. Of course, the king’s favored cock was always victorious—in a salaciously
Have you ever had one of those days when writing, and your ideas inexplicably take you somewhere you didn’t expect? Today was such a day for me while editing and tweaking a book section titled The Promise of 1808. Students of early American history may recall that 1808 was
INASMUCH AS THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE expressed 18th-century republican sentiment “to resist and overthrow tyranny,” the Constitution was our founders’ attempt to prevent tyranny from arising in any new form of government they proposed. The Constitution of the United States created structures and systems designed to establish a government
IF YOU LISTEN TO OR READ THE DAILY NEWS, you might conclude there is an epistemological divide in our country similar to the one that led to the Civil War. ‘Liberal’ and ‘conservative,’ ‘democrat’ and ‘republican,’ ‘left’ and ‘right’ are linguistic indicators of this divide. More recently, the talking heads
OUR FOUNDING FATHERS REJECTED DEMOCRACY because they believed it would lead to the election of populist leaders and, by extension, mob rule. They implied that democracy was a less virulent form of anarchy, yet something to be avoided like the plague. In 1755, during a dispute between Benjamin Franklin, who
ALL MODERN GOVERNANCE PRINCIPLES that are not authoritarian originated in the 17th– to 19th–century Enlightenment-era philosophy of liberalism. Within the classical tradition, a liberal is anyone who values liberty, and liberalism, collectively, advocates people’s freedom from authoritarian control, such as that of a monarch. It aligns with
IF HALF OR MORE OF THE ELECTORATE thinks their majority-elected leader is a tyrant, it follows that a majority of the people elected a tyrant. Whether the leader demonstrated tyrannical tendencies before being elected or became a tyrant is irrelevant. But if he showed signs of tyrannical behavior as
ARE WE A GROUP OF INDEPENDENT STATES established under and united by an agreement of co-terminous sovereignty existing at the intersection of federal and state authority? Are we a democracy or a republic? Can either exist under such an ordering of competing state and federal authority? Are we some
MANY OF US BEMOAN THE unprecedented political depredations we are experiencing today, from perceived abuses of power to the public, violent suppression of dissent. Parallels in history may not indicate repetition, but they are certainly instructional when examining their similarities. The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander
Most people who knew me growing up would agree that I wore my feelings on my sleeve. My first experience with romantic vulnerability proved it. She was a freshman, and I was a senior in high school. Her older sister was one of my classmates; both were farmer’s daughters.