CATEGORY: HISTORY (5 min)
Unpopular opinion: history is complicated.
It’s too easy to reduce Western civilization to white supremacy (whatever that means). Or progress. Or determinism.
It’s also easy to make sweeping claims and poor comparisons.
So what’s the alternative?
A Corpse and a Sack of Potatoes
Historian Wilfred M. McClay prefaces his little book A Student’s Guide to U.S. History with an unusual analogy. Drop a corpse and a sack of potatoes from the Tower of Pisa, he writes, and they will illustrate the laws of science.
But science will tell you nothing about the corpse’s life.
Think Like a Historian
History is too odd and too human to be treated like a science. It’s better to think of it as a kind of laboratory. The question is: Exactly what kinds of experiments can be performed in this strange lab?
McClay’s preface is so good that we published an excerpt. Read it to appreciate history from a unique and urgently needed perspective.
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CATEGORY: POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY (9 min)
Why are you conservative?
There are two possible ways to answer that important question. One way is to understand why you believe something.
The other is to know why you don’t believe its opposite.
Not the Liberalism It Used to Be
In this thoughtful National Review essay, Michael Brendan Dougherty provides a clear outline of conservatism and classic liberalism.
Dougherty’s essay explores:
- What George Will’s new book, The Conservative Sensibility, gets wrong about the right
- What Justice Anthony Kennedy’s controversial Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling actually meant
- The components of freedom
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CATEGORY: CULTURE (23 min)
Get comfortable: this article is long.
But for anyone alarmed by campus madness or American leadership, reading it is like getting drinks with an insider.
There’s Something Under the Ivy
Yale’s student protests and craven administration are troubling. You expect more from a venerable institution dedicated to “truth and light.”
But as Natalia Dashan reveals in Palladium Magazine, Yale’s free speech issues are just symptoms. The real problem lies with the elite themselves.
Buying the Rich Kid a Sandwich
America’s elite, Dashan writes, no longer have an identity. What they do have is guilt about their wealth and power. So students pretend they’re poor.
We count on Yale to produce Supreme Court justices. So if the elite refuse to accept the responsibility that comes with their privilege, we’re in real trouble.
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CATEGORY: HISTORY (50 min)
The Founders weren’t known for being perfectly harmonious. (Have you ever read the Federalist Papers?)
But they had one thing in common: they were all readers.
The Books that Made America
In this archived lecture, historian George H. Nash reveals the literary culture of the Founders, and what was in their libraries.
Listen to his lecture to learn:
- Which languages the Founders were practically fluent in
- The subjects they studied most
- What their reading habits looked like
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Most thoughtful college students are sick of getting a shallow education in which too many viewpoints are shut out. We teach you the principles of liberty and plug you into a vibrant intellectual community so that you get the collegiate experience you hunger for.
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