1½ Reasons Why Jimmy Carter Wasn't So Bad

At Patheos, David Swarz tries to help reliably liberal scholar and Carter biographer ["Redeemer"] Randall Balmer's attempt to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear that was the Carter Era. Balmer should be given a medal for service to his party, ideology, and biographical subject. 

Swarz: [Balmer] points out that Carter’s presidency was sabotaged by events quite beyond his control—and that his significant accomplishments have been unfairly obscured.

Jimmy Carter's presidency was sabotaged not by events, but by Jimmy Carter the person. His failure was as a leader, a president's Job One, in his third-class temperament. Even an ideologically friendly press and a Congress controlled by his own party despised him.

On the 5 'significant accomplishments' Balmer lists:

1. Carter's commitment to human rights was nice, although in confronting only the free world's allies [allies of convenience if not necessity] for their sins but not the other bad actors of the world, Jimmy Carter only encouraged the enemies of human rights to invade Afghanistan and use proxies like the Sandinistas to replace one tyranny with another. And of course there's the brutal Ayatollah regime that replaced the arguably less wicked and certainly less dangerous Shah of Iran..

2. The Camp David Accords. Truly historic. The only question is how much credit Jimmy Carter gets for facilitating them: When a country wants peace with Israel, it gets peace. Anwar el-Sadat—the great man, may he rest in peace— did just that.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/sadat.html:

Convinced that peace with Israel would reap an enormous "peace dividend," Sadat initiated his most important diplomatic ploy. In a speech to the Egyptian parliament in 1977, Sadat affirmed his desire to go anywhere to negotiate a peace with the Israelis. 

3. Giving back [giving away] the Panama Canal. Symbolically important to the Western anti-imperialist chattering class, but with no salutary effect in the real world except to necessitate Geo. HW Bush's surgical removal of the criminal Noriega regime.

4. Nuclear non-proliferation. Balmer takes a rather ¿huh? route in crediting Carter's halting nuclear initiative with Soviet Premier Brezhnev for Ronald Reagan's bold initiative with Gorbachev as "[Carter's] efforts would pay off in the 1980s."

Uh huh.

5. "A theology of limits." Can't even get near this one, sorry.* No debate could even be held on these terms--because these terms cannot even be agreeably defined.

In fairness, I'd have nominated President Carter for starting the Reagan Defense Buildup, which along with the refudiation of the Nixon/Kissinger policy of détente [the acceptance of the status quo of Soviet geopolitcal gains], brought about the close of the Cold War.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/06/us/reagan-acknowledges-carter-s-military-buildup.html

You missed that one, Mr. Balmer. Although, as a qualified historian, I reckon you didn't miss it atall. Why, I'd bet it would make #1 on your The Worst Things about Jimmy Carter. Heh heh. 

_____________________________________

*Balmer: "While Carter’s invocation of Niebuhr sometimes led to race-baiting, his seriousness about Christian faith (which motivated many of the just-discussed policies) led to some remarkable sermonizing at the White House. Perhaps the most important (and politically reviled) was the so-called “malaise speech” of July 15, 1979. Near the end of his presidency (marred by economic stagnation and an energy crisis), Carter secluded himself at Camp David where he tried to make sense of it all. He read Scripture and Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful. He met with Christopher Lasch, author of The Culture of Narcissism. He emerged from the compound speaking about “a crisis of the American spirit” in the tone of an evangelical jeremiad: “In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now worship self-indulgence and consumption.” 

“Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns,” Carter sermonized, but “owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.” Critics may have panned Carter’s idealistic approach to the energy crisis as politically naïve, but it was nonetheless a penetrating cultural critique. He was probably the most theologically profound president since Lincoln."

Oh, my. Lincoln, slavery and the preservation of the Republic, Jimmy Carter and the Energy Crisis [since obviated by good ol' American pluck and ingenuity, fracking technology!].

Sigh. Randall Balmer's invocation of the sublime Mr. Lincoln renders Jimmy Carter all the more ridiculous. Sorry, sir. Your subject is unworthy of your rhetorical skill.

Best Wishes, David Letterman, But You Left Us Worse Than You Found Us

I enjoyed David Letterman for many years, became a fan way back at his morning show [1980]. Loved the irreverence, and the silliness of "Stupid Human Tricks" and the like.



"Irreverence" means nothing anymore, of course ['transgressiveness' is the rule rather than the exception], because you can't have a comedy of manners when manners no longer exist.

Silliness [Sid Caesar, Laugh-In, Monty Python, Hee-Haw, Will Ferrell] will never go out of style, though. But at some point Dave abandoned silliness, which is fun, for dadaism, which is nihilistic. By the '90s, I remember mocking Dave's comedy laziness, that he could yell, "Pork Chops!" and the sycophantic audience would howl in delight.

Sure enough, only a few months later, on the back of an LA bus I saw Dave in an ad for Late Night that read


HONK IF YOU LOVE PORK CHOPS!


True story. Don't remember if I honked or not, but I wished I'd have tried to get a gig writing for Dave. I was clearly a comedy genius, just like him. Letterman clearly gave some people some joy--or its equivalent--but unlike Carson, I think he left us more cynical, less informed rather than more, harder rather than softer. 

His interviews were indifferent, and when they weren't indifferent, they became undisguisedly partisan. Johnny Carson brought America together the next morning around the water cooler. If anyone asked "Did you see Letterman last night," the answer became increasingly, Sorry, I gotta get back to my desk. 

Strangely enough, Dave, I'd still rather watch you than Jimmy or Jimmy [Fallon, Kimmel, respectively] because I'm a kind of edgy guy myself, but I'm glad to see you go. The Jimmys are more delightfully silly than you ever were, and they're less corrosive to the culture. Sarcasm has its place [I loved Frank Zappa], but it should be a very small place.
_____________________________

Epilogue, more to come: Dave's successor, debating the theology of the Eucharist with a Pulitzer-winning Catholic dissident and kicking his ass? Stephen Colbert, now, there's an interesting fellow. 

Stephen Colbert vs. Garry Wills on the Real Presence: Guess Who Carried the Day?

Russell Kirk's Rights and Duties

The University Bookman reprints a very fine review by Bruce Frohnen of Russell Kirk's book on the American Constitution, Rights and Duties:  The Character of Our Constitution.  As Frohnen notes,

Early in the book, Kirk points out that our “Constitution had been designed by its Framers, in 1787, to conserve the order and the justice and the freedom to which Americans had grown accustomed.” Thus Kirk takes issue with ideologues who seek to convince us that America was created ex nihilo through the drafting of an abstractly philosophical Declaration of Independence. The Declaration, and the War for Independence, must be seen as our Founders saw them: as defensive measures intended to protect Americans’ traditional and chartered rights from an overreaching English Parliament.

That's just a taste of Frohnen's review -- read it all, and better yet, get a copy of Kirk's book and read it closely.  There is much wisdom there.  I first read Kirk's book on the Constitution when I was a law student, and it was the first book by Kirk that I ever read.  I was immediately impressed by his wisdom and insight, and quickly devoured everything he had written that I could get my hands on.  I would have loved to have met him and studied with him, but alas that was not to be.  But he lives on in his writings, and thanks to them we can all be Kirk's students.  And he is a fantastic teacher!  Of history and literature and on the roots of our country's polity and order.

Free to Speak Our Mind; Too Bad We've Lost It

A friend, knowing me to be a religious conservative, was surprised when I favorably cited Life of Brian. He sent me a YouTube link to a debate between John Cleese and the Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood, televised shortly after the film's release in 1979, in which the bishop claimed that Cleese’s humor would be the downfall of Christendom.  It was presumed I should sympathize with that view.

But history has proven the bishop wrong. These days, entertainers like Cleese and Ricky Gervais, down to political types like Bill Maher, and further down to purportedly serious types like Richard Dawkins, and so on, are not the faithful’s principal concern. Sure, I might wish for less crass humor at the expense of religion, or for more serious engagement with the arguments by those who purport to be high-minded.  But I am ultimately comfortable with the debate, because that’s what it’s all about: a prolonged exploration of the issues that hopefully turn up flecks of truth along the way.

No, the problem for Christendom is that today, the televised debate between Cleese and the bishop probably couldn't happen without an elaborate scheme of trigger warnings, possibly resulting in a disinvitation or calling the whole thing off.

Last week, several members of PEN America, "a nationwide community of novelists, journalists, editors, poets, essayists, playwrights, publishers, translators, agents, and other professionals," decided that they would not honor those murdered at Charlie Hebdo.  In short, even avowed free-speech advocates start checking the fine print of their mission statement when the speech in question takes a critical eye at a presumptively aggrieved minority.

Matt Welch takes the air out of the charges that Charlie Hebdo is racist, but that misses the point. Liberalism has legal and cultural components. Legally, we guarantee free speech. Culturally, however, we try to signal that certain speech is boorish and unwelcome. What irked Christians about Piss Christ, for example, was cultural radicals misusing the law for cultural ends. Everyone understands artists are provocateurs, but surely the state need not subsidize the provocation. That was liberalism’s left foot stepping on its right foot — going beyond legally permitting speech to affirmatively encouraging oafish, disrespectful speech. It was the law treading on culture.

The massacre of Charlie Hebdo is the opposite.  Muslims deserve cultural respect like anyone else. And in the abstract, we might be uncomfortable with ridiculing religion just to have a go.  It's a jerk move. On the other hand, when Muslims threaten violence against lawful speech, that’s the right foot treading upon the left — culture trouncing the law.

This aggression will not stand, man. That culture needs to be reminded of its place. One way to do that is for liberalism to flex both its legal and cultural muscle.  It can reaffirm its legal protection for free speech regardless of who it offends.  And just as important, it can widely publicize the cartoons and venerate their deceased creators. Tastefulness is a luxury liberalism cannot afford. Yes, the works might disrespect many good, faithful Muslims’ beliefs, and that is unfortunate. But it appears that too many have not taken the lesson that their culture must co-exist within a legal framework.

Garry Wills on conservatism and its view of government

What is the conservative conception of the proper role of government? The American Conservative has posted an essay originally written in 1964 by now-liberal but then-conservative Garry Wills that seeks to answer that question: The Convenient State. Just in the midst of the Goldwater moment in the GOP, Wills wrote a cogent and classically informed take on the necessity and limits of the state in conservative thought.

Far from being utopian or ideological, conservatism as Wills explains builds upon the fundamental conviction within western civilization that there is a zone of individual liberty upon which the state may not intrude, a part of man that is his and his alone. Libertarianism expands this zone beyond its prudential limits, while totalitarianism denies its existence altogether. In the western world, conservatism has thus seen the role of the state as limited, as a vindicator of justice that respects the individuality of the human person. In this, it seeks (as conservatism always does) to preserve balance. In this, Wills follows no less a conservative thinker than Edmund Burke.

Where libertarianism suffers the temptation to eschew justice in favor of maximization of private privilege and restraint from limitation, and totalitarianism absorbs the individual into a vision of the true, the good and the beautiful that is uniform and coerced, for the Wills of 1964 conservatism embraces the contingent nature of justice in human societies marked by diversity and variety. In its quest, conservatism avoids the sterile and dogmatic seduction of rationalism; not for the conservative is the quixotic attempt to remake society on the basis of abstraction. As Wills puts it:

Each society must form a unique constitution, an “agreed station” of components, growing out of the resources it can command. The ideal state–of a justice or a freedom defined outside any particular human context–is as meaningless as some uniform ideal of individual fulfillment. Is monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy the best form of government? Such a question simply breeds further questions: Best for what society? And what kind of monarchy or democracy? These questions are as hopeless as similar ones would be in the case of an ideal life for individuals. Is it better that man be an artist or philosopher, monk or martyr, doctor or teacher, worker or statesman? And if he is a doctor, should he engage in research, psychology, or compassionate work among the poor? If an artist, should he write or paint in an austere or demonstrative style? To attempt an abstract answer to these questions is to deny the mystery of individuality, the secret springs of motive, that make up the human fact of freedom. As ever, rationalism leads to sterile paradox, to an ideal freedom that is a denial of freedom. 

Read it all.

The multitudes of Oscar Wilde

One of the great wits of Victorian literature had a life-long fascination with Catholic ritual & art which eventually blossomed, toward the close of his life, in a conversion to the Catholic faith. This is explained in this article over at the Catholic Education Resource Center: The Long Conversion of Oscar Wilde. In our era Wilde is usually celebrated for his embrace of a bohemian lifestyle, but if one looks deeper into the works & life of the man, strong currents of a spiritual river that eventually flowed to the Tiber become visible. So, who was Wilde? As the author of the article, Andrew McCracken, points out, Wilde contained multitudes: "writer, wit, voluptuary, gay man, failed father and husband, sensitive soul, laughing stock, broken heart, eleventh hour Catholic convert."

Stephen Fry, who embodies many of the same traits as Wilde in modern cloth (replacing, unfortunately, Wilde's interest in Catholicism with an avant-garde embrace of atheism), conveys some insight about Wilde's humor & deeper spiritual perspective in this discussion of Wilde's approach to literature:

 

Thomas Paine's surprising influence on Ronald Reagan

Awhile back I finished up historian John Patrick Diggins' book on President Ronald Reagan. Diggins brings up an interesting point that I hadn't realized, namely that Reagan's views were strongly influenced by Thomas Paine. Paine is the one founding father that Reagan quoted the most, and much of Paine's ideology -- individual liberty, a suspicion of large institutions, hostility to taxation and government regulation, etc. -- is evident in Reagan's general approach to conservatism as a governing political philosophy.

Paine's influence on Reagan accounts, in Diggan's telling, for much of Reagan's unorthodoxy as a modern conservative. As a result, Reagan's brand of conservatism was remarkably untraditional in its rhetoric. In several different contexts, Reagan quoted Paine's stirring line, "We have the power to begin the world anew" -- a very untraditional sentiment, one that displays the precise opposite of the customary conservative impulse to embrace the necessity of restraint in public reform. Reagan embraced Paine's idea that human beings can liberate themselves from corrupt & oppressive structures in order to create a new order of liberty & individualism.

While Reagan appealed to voters of a more traditionalist perspective, he was no fawning disciple of Russell Kirk & even less a disciple of Edmund Burke. Behind Reagan's conservatism was a streak of radicalism that is unappreciated by many conservatives today who tend to be overly hagiographic when speaking of the former president. The lack of depth about the nature of Reagan's beliefs is sadly shared by many progressives who demonize Reagan because of his success in shaping the political landscape in a more conservative direction.

It is a fascinating twist of history that the most radical founding father serves as a primary philosophical influence on the most successful conservative president of the 20th century. Any attempt to understand Ronald Reagan must take into account the influence of Thomas Paine on his work. And any attempt to appreciate Thomas Paine's influence on America must look to the impact his work had on the ideas, rhetoric & program of President Ronald Reagan.

The evangelical-deist alliance at the American founding

Historian Thomas Kidd, one of the sharpest evangelicals working as a professional historian today, has a well-worth reading post over at the Southern Baptist Ethics &  Religious Liberty Commission website asking the question: Founding faiths: Was America founded as a Christian nation? This nuanced and deeply thought out post examines the alliance of devout evangelicals and more skeptical deists that brought about the unique American experiment in ordered liberty, especially religious liberty. As Kidd writes:

Even Thomas Jefferson, a deist hailed as a hero of today’s secularists, took a generous approach toward the public role of religion after disestablishment. For example, Jefferson routinely attended religious services in government buildings as president. Jefferson was the author, of course, of the 1802 letter in which he argued that the First Amendment had erected a “wall of separation” between church and state. But the same weekend he sent this letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut, a Baptist minister named John Leland preached before a joint session of Congress, with the president in attendance. The actual history of faith and the Founding, then, confounds our expectations. Evangelical Baptists were the staunchest advocates of church-state separation, and their union with deists like Jefferson made the Baptists’ vision of religious liberty a reality. You could hardly imagine this collaboration of skeptical politicians and traditional believers today. Their partnership worked, however, because deists such as Jefferson realized that religious liberty did not require rigid secularism. The Baptists, for their part, knew about Jefferson’s personal skepticism, but they supported him because he was the champion of real religious freedom. Not all America’s Founders were devout Christians, but America was founded with Christian principles in mind. Among the most vital of those ideals – one that could bridge the gap between evangelicals and deists – was an expansive concept of religious liberty.

Read it all.

The conservatism and limits of John Jay, American founder

John M. Pafford makes the argument that John Jay was the most conservative of the American founders in this book review posted over at The Imaginative Conservative: John Jay: Man of Order, Justice, Freedom.  As Pafford points out, Jay's work and contribution to the Founding were substantial, and he deserves far more attention than he usually gets in discussions of the Founding period.  Personally, I would rank Jay alongside Samuel Adams and Fisher Ames as the most overlooked of the founders. 

Which is not to say that Jay's approach to ordered liberty was optimal. As I posted over at the blog American Creation awhile back, Jay shared much of the common bigotry against Catholics so prevalent during the Founding Era. As I wrote over yonder:

I've been reading through The Myth of American Religious Freedom by David Sehat (Oxford Univ. Press, 2011).  One of the interesting points raised thus far in the book is the troubled history of religious liberty for Catholics in the colonial and revolutionary periods in our nation's history. It is well-established that notable Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had little respect for the Catholic Church, seeing it as both as a staunch defender of orthodox trinitarianism and as a barrier to a rationalized and largely de-supernaturalized re-imaging of the Christian faith. And it bears noting that those two Founders were right on both counts. Sehat discusses some of the deeper roots of anti-Catholicism in early America, and he pays particular attention to the prime secular justification for anti-Catholic prejudice at the time, namely that Catholics, due to their spiritual allegiance to the Pope, could not be trusted to be faithful citizens.

This concern was so strong, Sehat notes, that it lead to specific language being included in New York's 1777 constitution limiting religious freedom so as not to "justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of this State." This wording reflected the concerns of John Jay, to limit the religious freedom enjoyed by Catholics. As quoted at length by Sehat, Jay spoke out in defense of religious freedom, but did not believe that basic civil liberties should be extended to Catholics. As Jay put it, liberty should be granted to everyone,

Except the professors of the religion of the church of Rome, who ought not to hold lands in, or be admitted to a participation of the civil rights enjoyed by the members of this State, until such a time as the said professors shall appear in the supreme court of this State, and there most solemnly swear, that they verily believe in their consciences, that no pope, priest or foreign authority on earth, hath power to absolve the subjects of this State from their allegiance to the same. And further, that they renounce and believe to be false and wicked, the dangerous and damnable doctrine, that the pope, or any other earthly authority, have power to absolve men from sins, described in, and prohibited by the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ; and particularly, that no pope, priest or foreign authority on earth, hath power to absolve them from the obligation of this oath. 

Any Catholic who had so sworn such an oath, of course, would by its terms have to affirm doctrines contrary to those of the Catholic Church. Specifically, a Catholic who complied with Jay's proposal would have to deny one of the sacraments of the Church (confession), and would have to deny the power of the Pope to release people from vows and oaths. No Catholic, then or now, could in good conscience swear to such requirements. As Sehat notes, "Jay's problem with Catholicism was similar to the views held by many Protestants." Jay viewed Catholicism as conflating spiritual and secular authority, providing too much institutional power to the Catholic Church to intervene in civil affairs. Fortunately for Catholics in New York and for liberty in that state, Jay's efforts to restrict the rights of Catholics only garnered the assent of a little more than a third of the members of the New York constitutional convention. Jay did, however manage to include language in the New York constitution that, to again quote Sehat, "suffused New York's guarantee of religious liberty with Protestant sectarianism, in spite of its apparent separation of church and state."

There is much history within the English political and religious landscape that fueled Jay's attempt to restrict the religious and civic liberty of Catholics in New York. Jay's concerns about papal authority to release people from oaths stretched back to the "Bloody Question" that was posed to Catholic martyrs slaughtered for their faith under Queen Elizabeth I. And even that ardent defender of religious liberty, John Locke, drew the line at toleration for Roman Catholics, as the original text of his Letter Concerning Toleration indicates. And Locke's objection was in substance the same as Jay's -- a concern that Catholics would not be faithful to their nation in light of their obedience to the Pope.

This objection has largely disappeared from American civic life, thanks in large part to the patriotism and service that Catholics have demonstrated for this country. In addition, Catholics have run for high office throughout the country, and served with distinction in public life. Yet while most anti-Catholicism has retreated into the shadows, it is important to note the widespread and deep anti-Catholicism that was present among much of the populace during the Founding period, and to recall how often religious liberty was sacrificed on the altar of prejudice.

Something to keep in mind as the principle of religious liberty again becomes controversial to many of our elites and their institutions.

Update:  over on Twitter the writer and founding father biographer extraordinaire Richard Brookhiser comments:

#JohnJay's anti-Catholic proposals re New York's constitution were blocked by his friend #GouverneurMorris. https://t.co/YBnEdQHrxA
— Richard Brookhiser (@RBrookhiser) April 18, 2015

Sen. Mike Lee's "Our Lost Constitution"

Via The Originalism Blog [itself highly bookmarkable], which is affiliated with the University of San Diego School of Law's Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism:




Recently published—Senator Mike Lee, Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America's Founding Document (Sentinel 2015).  

Here is the book description from Amazon: 

In Our Lost Constitution, Senator Mike Lee tells the dramatic, little-known stories behind six of the Constitution’s most indispensible provisions. He shows their rise. He shows their fall. And he makes vividly clear how nearly every abuse of federal power today is rooted in neglect of this Lost Constitution. For example:

   • The Origination Clause says that all bills to raise taxes must originate in the House of Representatives, but contempt for the clause ensured the passage of Obamacare.

   • The Fourth Amendment protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures, but the NSA now collects our private data without a warrant.

   • The Legislative Powers Clause means that only Congress can pass laws, but unelected agencies now produce ninety-nine out of every one hundred pages of legal rules imposed on the American people.

Lee’s cast of characters includes a former Ku Klux Klansman, who hijacked the Establishment Clause to strangle Catholic schools; the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who called the Second Amendment a fraud; and the revered president who began his first of four terms by threat[en]ing to shatter the balance of power between Congress and the president, and who began his second term by vowing to do the same to the Supreme Court.

Fortunately, the Constitution has always had its defenders. Senator Lee tells the story of how Andrew Jackson, noted for his courage in duels and politics, stood firm against the unconstitutional expansion of federal powers. He brings to life Ben Franklin’s genius for compromise at a deeply divided constitutional convention. And he tells how in 2008, a couple of unlikely challengers persuaded the Supreme Court to rediscover the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.

Sections of the Constitution may have been forgotten, but it’s not too late to bring them back—if only we remember why we once demanded them and how we later lost them. Drawing on his experience working in all three branches of government, Senator Lee makes a bold case for resurrecting the Lost Constitution to restore and defend our fundamental liberties.

From Randy Barnett:

Senator Mike Lee knows how to tell a story. Combining historical fact and his own legal expertise with imagined dialogues and settings, Lee brings the sometimes dry and archaic debates of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia and other episodes to life, and with them the Constitution itself. This is truly an inspired, fascinating, and important book.

And from Michael McConnell: 

Mike Lee won election to the Senate by traveling around his state giving talks about the Constitution. Now he has written a most unusual book, which interweaves lively histories of what he calls the lost clauses of the Constitution with biting critiques of such modern issues as delegation of legislative power to agencies, NSA data collection, church and state, and Obamacare. Readers may not agree with all his conclusions, but they will encounter serious history and a conscientious attempt to grapple with modern issues in light of an enduring Constitution.

Abraham Lincoln and Kirkian conservatism

One finds, here and there, on the fringes of the Right and in the mainstream of the Left, the strange idea that Abraham Lincoln was not a conservative.  Portrayed as a radical centralizer and opponent of the old Constitution, he is viewed as a man who ushered America  into the era of big government. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lincoln was a conservative thinker and politician, a devotee not of the radical theories that would give rise to the modern Left but by the natural law principles of the Founding generation, particularly as expressed publicly by Thomas Jefferson.

The conservative mind of Abraham Lincoln is explored by T. Elliot Gaiser over at The Imaginative Conservative: Abraham Lincoln: A Man and a Leader of Men. Gaiser explores five key conservative principles and finds Lincoln as an exmplar of all five. Of course, Russell Kirk would approve of such an investigation of Lincoln, as he himself throughout his career contended repeatedly that Lincoln was a model of conservative statesmanship. For Kirk's views of Lincoln, see the following:

• The Measure of Abraham Lincoln (1954).
• Lincoln and the Dignity of the Presidency (1970), with an introduction by Brad Birzer.

Nat Hentoff on the continued relevance of founding father George Mason

"How many of you know who George Mason was? Does our president?" So asks the noted civil libertarian journalst in this op-ed on the importance of the Bill of Rights and the 4th Amendment in particular: Who will teach our police the Bill of Rights?

As Hentoff notes, most people are largely ignorant of their rights under the Constitution, and such ignorance bodes catastrophic consequences for self-government under our republican (with a small "r") democratic (with a small "d") system. And just as the citizenry need to know their rights under the Constitution, Hentoff argues that the police need to know and protect the people's rights as well. And it is here that the work of George Mason is so important, as Hentoff writes: 

My primary hero of the full existence of the Constitution is George Mason, a Virginia delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Why him? He refused to sign the Constitution because it didn’t have a “declaration of rights” – the individual liberties of American citizens. 

Because of George Mason, who was followed by other non-signers, James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights. These first 10 amendments to the Constitution, when ratified by enough states in 1791, guaranteed to We the People specific limits on government power.

A government of limited and enumerated powers is one of the great gifts that the American Founders left to posterity. But if we don't understand that, if we don't know what the Founders knew, that gift too often falls by the wayside. And that isn't just bad for the folks who find themselves in need of the Constitution's protections in specific instances, it's bad for our public culture and the rule of law.