Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'founding fathers'

December 29, 2025

Is America Simply Jefferson vs. Hamilton?

Herbert Butterfield in his The Whig Interpretation of History argued that assessing the past in light of the present, what we call “presentism,” is the source of all historical errors. Our tendency to do so results from a very real problem: How do we impose some sort of narrative order on the complex, disparate, and voluminous material presented in historical reflection? Continue Reading...
September 30, 2025

The Virtue of Patriotism

As an American who grew up amid the Cold War, patriotism had an obvious attraction. Who wouldn’t prefer the United States of America, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, free markets, belief in God, and rock and roll over the gray, atheistic, materialistic totalitarianism of the Soviet Union. Continue Reading...
August 13, 2024

A Revolution Captured on Canvas

In John Adams’ estimation, the American Revolution began with an argument in a back room in Boston. “Who of your profession will undertake to paint a Debate or an Argument?” the former president asked of the artist John Trumbull in a letter in 1817. Continue Reading...
March 09, 2022

Chronological snobbery and the search for the authentic self

It has become commonplace in America’s elite institutions to attack and delegitimize our forebears for various crimes, some of which are undoubtedly real, while others are more imagined and anachronistic. As for the former, we can cite the fact that many Americans—including some of our greatest heroes—were slave owners and exploiters of indigenous Americans. Continue Reading...
June 16, 2021

The necessity of boring politics

Movie audiences experience high emotional engagement when they identify personally with the characters. The same is true in modern American politics, which increasingly have become treated as a source of social identity and entertainment. Continue Reading...
January 22, 2021

The death and resurrection of ‘The 1776 Report’ (full report text)

While I was reading The 1776 Report, it disappeared. The publication commissioned to “enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States,” which found itself memory-holed by one of the initial executive orders President Joe Biden signed during his first day in office, expertly explains the American philosophy of liberty and applies it to the most threatening modern-day crises. Continue Reading...