Richard Samuelson
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Articles by Richard Samuelson
El bien común y la república compuesta
Opinión ¿Cuál es el bien común de una nación? La respuesta depende, en parte, de la naturaleza de la nación. Estados Unidos es una república de un tipo peculiar. Como señaló James Madison, somos una "república compuesta", no una simple. Estados Unidos es demasiado grande y diverso para ser una comunidad simplemente unificada, y eso tiene implicaciones muy importantes para la naturaleza de nuestro bien común. En términos clásicos, una república tenía que ser pequeña.
The Common Good and the Compound Republic
America is too large and diverse to be a simply unified community. And that has very important implications for the nature of our common good. Commentary What is the common good of a nation? The answer depends, in part, on the nature of the nation. The United States is a republic of a peculiar kind. As James Madison noted, we are a “compound republic,” not a simple one. America is too large and diverse to be a simply unified community.
John Adams and the Meaning of Independence
According to John Adams, if you cannot fail, you’re not truly free. In his last public statement, honoring the 50th anniversary of American Independence in 1826, Adams wrote that the American Revolution would be A Memorable epoch in the annals of the human race; destined, in future history, to form the brightest or the blackest page, according to the use or the abuse of those political institutions by which they shall, in time to come, be Shaped, by the human mind. That was not a new thought.
Exclusive—Richard Samuelson: Founding Friendship: In Life and in Death John Adams and Thomas Jefferson Were Bound by July 4
The contrast between the concerns of 1776 and the celebrations of 1826 are hard to understate. In July 1776, the British King had sent the largest military force ever sent to the Americas to subdue the colonists. On July 2, 1776, the day on which Congress voted that “these colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states,” the troops began landing in New York. There was no guarantee that the Americans would succeed. And yet they believed they would.
Claremont Review of Books
Download Subscriber Only Subscribe As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States’s emergence as an independent nation—a celebration that will culminate with a wide range of national and local observances on July 4, 2026—the question naturally arises as to how best to incorporate the American Revolution into the education of Americans, and in particular the civic education of young Americans.
Claremont Review of Books
Download Lindsay Chervinsky, the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, has written a book on the one-term John Adams presidency as a follow-up to her book The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution (2020).
Claremont Review of Books
Download Subscriber Only Subscribe At the time of his death in the summer of 1987, James Burnham was falling into obscurity. Today, though, his work has surged rapidly in prominence on the right, especially among some of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters. The reasons for this merit close attention. At one time, Burnham was widely known as one of America’s sharpest Marxist intellectuals. His most recent biographer, intellectual historian David T.
Claremont Review of Books
Download Subscriber Only Subscribe In the early hours of March 11, 1874, word spread around Washington that Charles Sumner was on the brink of death. The 63-year-old senator from Massachusetts had suffered a massive heart attack the previous evening. By 9 a.m., a crowd of several hundred had gathered in front of his home on Lafayette Square. “Colored men and women mingled with white in knots about his home,” wrote The New-York Tribune.
Is a tariff a tax? Original
Is a tariff a tax? Many Americans have forgotten that this question, which has been in the news more or less all year, was fundamental to the American Revolution. And among American Patriots, or Whigs, meaning those who supported the colonists’ claims against Parliament, there was almost universal consensus that they were different things, constitutionally speaking.
Is a Tariff a Tax?
Many Americans have forgotten that this question, which has been in the news lately, was fundamental to the American Revolution. And among American Patriots, or Whigs, meaning those who supported the colonists claims against Parliament, there was almost universal consensus that they are different things, constitutionally speaking.
The Worlds Between Adams and Burke
May 6, 2025 By Richard Samuelson In “The Constitution in Their Hearts” Michael Lucchese has written a Burkean account of conservatism that follows Russell Kirk in arguing: A) conservatism is fundamentally the same in America as Britain; and B) that John Adams plays the role of Burke in the United States.
Revolution and Progress on Lexington Green – Richard Samuelson
Richard Ryerson’s essay on the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord ends extremely provocatively. Ryerson quotes “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “published,” he notes, “on the eve of the Civil War,” commenting on the poem’s “lesson, always timely in any free republic, has never been more urgently needed than in 2025.” But what was this lesson? Given when he published, and the actual events of Lexington and Concord, the answer seems obvious.
A Puritanical Constitutionalism – Sarah A. Morgan Smith
It is an unusual book about the Puritans that opens with a bar brawl. Adrian Chastain Weimer begins her book, A Constitutional Culture, by introducing us to one of its villains, royal commissioner Sir Robert Carr, who apparently relied upon the warmth of liquor to keep off the January chill.
Something Wicked This Way Comes – Daniel Klein
One of the most famous elements from Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is his discussion of “soft despotism.” Tocqueville’s description of soft despotism is familiar—“despotism of this kind does not ride roughshod over humanity,” “it does not tyrannize”—and the immediate result is that the nation is reduced “to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.” Tocqueville speaks of “an immense tutelary power” looming over the...
The Breakfast Club at 40 – Bradley J. Birzer
One of the most important but largely unsung heroes of the Reagan Era was movie-maker John Hughes. A close friend of P. J. O’Rourke, Hughes wrote, directed, and/or produced a whole slew of movies, including Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Pretty in Pink, to name a few. Born in Lansing, Michigan, and raised during his teenage years in a suburb of northern Chicago, Hughes’s career began with writing jokes for famous comedians as well as writing regularly for National Lampoon.
The Fraudulent Laboratory – Theodore Dalrymple
When I was young and naïve, the thought never occurred to me that what appeared in medical journals might be fraudulent. I knew that there had been scientific hoaxes, such as the Piltdown Man, and I knew that, man being fallible, mistakes were made. Papers in medical journals were often followed in the correspondence columns by lively debate over the interpretation of findings, which were seldom indisputable, especially when they involved complex statistics.
Budgeting for Fiscal Sanity – James C. Capretta
If the 118th Congress is remembered at all, it will likely be for its ineffectiveness and dysfunction, which persisted until the merciful end. In its last days, as it rushed for the exits, it put off, once again, final decisions on federal agency budgets until at least mid-March (nearly six months into the current fiscal year). This delay included military spending, which has obvious security consequences.
Breaking the DEI Trance – Mike Gonzalez
At the height of the fateful year of 2020, while Black Lives Matter activists roamed the streets of our cities, setting fire to buildings and shocking much of the country into weirdly accepting provable lies, I warned that America faced mass hysteria akin to the Salem witch trials.
Colliding with Wokeism – Robert C. Thornett
In his 1859 treatise On Liberty, John Stuart Mill observed that one reason for protecting free speech is that there is value in arguing with false opinions. It brings about “the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error,” he wrote. For example, arguing with “Flat Earthers” helps to bring about a better understanding of geodesy, the science of measuring and representing Earth’s shape.
The Rise and Fall of Woke? – Law & Liberty Editors
Five years ago, cities across America faced an upheaval inspired by an ideology now called “wokeism.” Combining progressive notions of social justice with critical race theory and calls for revolutionary political action, it rapidly became a major force in American life. Just as suddenly, though, it now seems that “wokeism” is fading away. In this symposium, two Law & Liberty contributors explore the origins and demise of this ideology.
A Reckoning for Teachers Unions – Frederick M. Hess
March 5, 2025 There’s no way to sugarcoat this. During the pandemic, America’s schools failed students and families. In early March 2020, I woke each morning to a flood of calls from reporters asking about school closures even as my wife and I anxiously speculated about whether our kindergartener’s school would be open that day. Every parent remembers that feeling of confusion and helplessness. It was a lost-at-sea moment.
James Madison and the Crisis of the New Order – Richard Samuelson
In his history of the New Deal, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the events that precipitated the election of Franklin Roosevelt and the creation of the New Deal “The Crisis of the Old Order.” Building on the ideas of the earlier Progressive Movement, (FDR ‘s “Commonwealth Club Address” outlining the agenda for his presidency is officially a “Campaign Address On Progressive Government”), Roosevelt led a realignment, and helped to create a new political order under our Constitution.
Born American? A look at 'birthright' citizenship * WorldNetDaily * by Richard Samuelson, Real Clear Wire
Our political class is aflame, and our lawyer-ocracy is up in arms over President Trump’s executive order limiting the scope of “birthright” (or “soil-based”) citizenship to children of permanent legal residents. Children born to tourists, students from other countries, and others here on a short-term basis, plus people here illegally, are no longer to be regarded as citizens of the United States merely because their mothers happened to be on American soil when they were born.
Born American? A Look at ‘Birthright Citizenship’
Our political class is aflame, and our lawyer-ocracy is up in arms over President Trump’s executive order limiting the scope of “birthright” (or “soil-based”) citizenship to children of permanent legal residents. Children born to tourists, students from other countries, and others here on a short-term basis, plus people here illegally, are no longer to be regarded as citizens of the United States merely because their mothers happened to be on American soil when they were born.
Born American? A Look at 'Birthright Citizenship'
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Born American? A Look at 'Birthright Citizenship'
Our political class is aflame, and our lawyer-ocracy is up in arms over President Trump’s executive order limiting the scope of “birthright” (or “soil-based”) citizenship to children of permanent legal residents. Children born to tourists, students from other countries, and others here on a short-term basis, plus people here illegally, are no longer to be regarded as citizens of the United States merely because their mothers happened to be on American soil when they were born.
Unwinding Woke: America’s Classless Act
In the 1920s, Joseph Stalin coined the term “American Exceptionalism.” He called it the “heresy of American exceptionalism.” In his Marxist religion, the class struggle outlined in the words of the prophet Marx were gospel. To suggest that the universal history described in Marx’s works somehow didn’t apply to America was therefore a heresy. This story comes to mind as leftists, in the wake of the election, take to re-evaluating the prudence of wokeness.
Hume’s History of Liberty – Max Skjönsberg
David Hume (1711–76) is mainly known today as one of the great philosophers. But in his lifetime, he became rich and famous as a historian. It was also as a historian that he was best known to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and other American Revolutionaries. In the twentieth century, Hume’s History of England fell out of print, but it eventually regained its reputation as a masterpiece, partly thanks to Liberty Fund’s edition of the work, published in 1983.
Painting the Revolution – Kevin Gutzman
Conservative journalist Richard Brookhiser, author of, inter alia, well-wrought biographies of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris and a perceptive account of “America’s First Dynasty,” the Adamses of Massachusetts, has now taken on a different kind of subject: the life of Revolutionary America’s most famous painter, John Trumbull.
The Souls of Soldiers – Matthew Stewart
In 2011, the English photojournalist and videographer Tim Hetherington was killed in a mortar attack while covering the Libyan Civil War. His death at age 40 was tragic but not surprising given his penchant for documenting the unpredictable combat of asymmetric warfare. His thoughtful, probing work is the product of deep and extended involvement with the human beings caught up in some of this century’s most dangerous and volatile war zones.
Dereliction and Daring on United 93 – Titus Techera
It seems inevitable that with every passing year, we give less thought to 9/11. It’s not clear that there is anything new to say and “the silent artillery of time” must gradually do its work. Although the event was on TV and the live coverage is still easily available, we do not wish to relive it. It’s not exactly that we lack either civic rituals or public spirit, but more that there is no national leadership, and we lack works of art.
Learning Civics from History – James Hankins
When confronted with confusing or appalling new events—and the last few years have surely had plenty of them—the instinct of historians like myself is to look for historical parallels. Finding a good historical parallel can be alarming or consoling, but whatever the nature of the parallel, there is comfort in knowing that there is a parallel.
A Culture of Immediacy – Robert C. Thornett
In the last lines of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville says that in writing the book, “I did not mean either to serve or to contest any party; I undertook to see, not differently, but further than the parties; and while they are occupied with the next day, I wanted to ponder the future.” Seeing further than the prevailing culture is often difficult.
The Enlightenment's Addicts and Fanatics – Graham McAleer
David Hume is famous for his seminal contributions to philosophy and economics during the Enlightenment. He may also have been the principal diagnostician of his time. This at least is Richard Whatmore’s contention in The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce, Crisis. He argues that Hume’s early optimism about the Enlightenment, followed by a growing pessimism, was emblematic of the age. Whatmore grants that there was a plurality of enlightenments.
America’s King - Howe Whitman III
This year election day in America falls on the 5th of November, a date innocuous for us, but auspicious for our British cousins (who themselves just held a consequential election on our hallowed July 4). On that day in 1605, a Catholic plot to blow up the House of Lords—with King James I in it—was happily foiled. The conspirators, including most famously Guy Fawkes, were executed. To this day, people across the pond celebrate November 5 with bonfires and fireworks.
Bomb at a Funeral – Geoffrey Sigalet
The late Canadian Prime Minister John George Diefenbaker’s state funeral was held on August 19, 1979. As dignitaries gathered, a bomb threat was called in and police advised then-Prime Minister Joe Clark to evacuate the cathedral. As John Ibbitson notes in his new book, The Duel, Clark took the opportunity to crack a joke about Diefenbaker: “He pointed to the casket. ‘The only one who wants us all dead is lying right there.
Why Progressives Hate Israel – Richard Samuelson
Hatred of Jews, Judaism, and Israel is hardly a new phenomenon. There is a reason the hatred of Jews is sometimes called the “oldest hatred.” To the progressive, therefore, conservative or traditional hatred of Jews needs little explanation. A conservative is a supporter of tradition, and hatred of Jews has a long history. You do the math. From the perspective of the modern progressive mind, on the other hand, progressive antisemitism presents itself as a paradox.
250 Years of Jeffersonian Constitutionalism – Hans Eicholz
Thomas Jefferson’s Summary View of the Rights of British America, composed sometime in the latter half of this month, 250 years ago, ought to be regarded as among the most fundamental primary sources informing our understanding of the spirit and history of the American constitutional tradition, but it is rarely considered in this way. Rather, it has served mainly as a backdrop to its more famous linear offspring, the Declaration of Independence.
A Tale of Two Commanders – Rachel Lu
Why do nations go to war? Why do young men fight and die over the causes that normally occupy the minds of aged statesmen? These are age-old questions, but I didn’t think about them in my youth. I served for two years in the Peace Corps (in Uzbekistan), but gave no thought at all to a military career. Now that I have youth, these questions recur often, in my mind and at my dinner table.
A Loper Bright Future for Statutory Interpretation – Chad Squitieri
July 3, 2024 With the overruling of Chevron, courts must interpret statutes independently. The Supreme Court’s 1984 opinion in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.was not supposed to be revolutionary.
National Security Policy for Great Power Competition – Ralph L. DeFalco III
In his timely essay, “The Return of Great Power Competition,” Jerry Hendrix makes the case the United States is ill-prepared to meet the challenges of the emerging multi-polar world order. Brief periods of bipolar great power competition and unipolar dominance—like that of the United States after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—have been exceptional. The return of great power competition on multi-polar axes is very much a return to the historical norm.
A Specious Form of Judicial Restraint – Nelson Lund
When eight members of our disputatious Supreme Court join an opinion on a controversial topic like the Second Amendment, it’s safe to expect a narrow decision. Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion in United States v. Rahimi is indeed narrowly drawn, and this consensus will encourage proponents of strong gun rights to applaud the Court’s restraint.
Finding Virtue in an Age of Anger – Tyler Syck
It is evident to anyone watching the news that our political climate is consumed with fractious, hyper-polarized, gamesmanship. To put it simply, our government resembles less and less the orderly debating society envisioned by the Constitution, and more and more some sort of blood sport—everybody has a team, they cannot fathom the other team having any redeeming qualities, and all the onlookers are howling for the slaughter to start.
The Return of Great Power Competition – Jerry Hendrix
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” – Lord Palmerston, March 1, 1848 The citizens of the United States are unique in that their sense of national identity is derived from ideas rather than an ethnic or language base. To the extent that there is an American “culture,” it is tied to this sense, which can be briefly described, as Tocqueville did, as American individualism.
Simone de Beauvoir’s Narcissism – Emina Melonic
To ask what is a woman, or womanhood, philosophically speaking, will always be a relevant question in our society. Unfortunately, our chaotic world has moved so far from the fundamental questions that many of us are forced to affirm the basic elements of being a woman, or even a human being.
Artistic License Stretched Too Thin? – Henry T. Edmondson III
Flannery O’Connor warned that “there won’t be any biographies of me because … lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make for exciting copy.” The challenge, then, for Ethan and Maya Hawke in creating a biopic about O’Connor was to decide whether to focus on her life or her work. They decided to do both, with modest, but limited, success, combining a mundane life with grotesque stories.
Can the Republic Survive Corrupt Presidents? – Richard Samuelson
In October 1800, on his first night in the Executive Mansion in Washington, DC, John Adams wrote home to Abigail that he hoped “none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” That statement now adorns the State Dining Room in the White House. Adams may be often quoted, but we seldom consider that his hope was not a mere moral exhortation. It was a statement of practical necessity. In the founding era, the question of executive power was a profound—and profoundly difficult—one.
The Telos of Business – Richard M. Reinsch II
Crucial institutions in education, government, healthcare, and media, to name a few, have lost their foundational standards that provided them with purpose and direction. This deformation now shapes our social and political order for the worse. Institutions in these sectors stumble forward, grasping for reasons to explain who they are and what they should do. Businesses are not exempt from this fate.
Thomas Jefferson, Christian Nationalist
Politico’s Heidi Przybyla recently caused a ruckus when she declared that Christian nationalists are people who “believe that our rights as Americans and as all human beings do not come from any earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, from the Supreme Court, they come from God.” Przybyla tried to walk her comments back, but only somewhat, leading many to suspect that they reveal what she truly thinks.
Samuel Gregg, Author at Law & Liberty
116 articles , book reviews , podcasts , forums & classics by Samuel Gregg.
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