Clarence Thomas at the Crossroads

Are the most pressing legal matters facing our nation bound to be determined either by legalistic originalism or realpolitik disguised as “living constitutionalism”?  

If you’re a conservative, you have to wonder: Are those the only options?  

Writing in Public Discourse, Christopher Goffos argues that Justice Clarence Thomas’s 1991 confirmation hearings offer us a blueprint for a better approach to constitutional interpretation today.  

Goffos reads in Thomas’s remarks a distinctively American conception of natural law—one anchored in a text that predates even the Constitution itself. 

What is that source . . .

And what makes Thomas’s insights so urgently needed today?  

You’ll need to turn to the text yourself to answer those questions.  
 

Christmas and the Uncanny

The holidays are right around the corner. And, in First Things, John Wilson has the book for your break: When Christmas Comes: A Yuletide Mystery, by Andrew Klavan. 

It’s a novella, and an uncanny tale of “violence and betrayal and deceit” in small-town Ohio. But, Wilson argues, Klavan “refuses to harden his heart.”  

Just in time for the holidays . . . a murder mystery?  

And in this mystery and moral complexity, it becomes thoroughly Christmas-y. For “what is at the heart of the Christmas story, after all, but ‘the uncanny’ transformed into the blessedly ordinary, a baby . . . in his makeshift cradle?” 

We're curious what you think about the connection Wilson makes between uncanny stories and novellas—and why it’s so important to see Christmas “from an unexpected angle” today.  

You can find those insights right here. And who knows—you just might have found your post-Thanksgiving pleasure read.  

What Every Classics Major Should Know About the Discipline

• What the Classics really study
• The three skills Classics majors will draw on throughout their career
• The difference between ancient and modern understandings of classical poems and plays

The George Washington Statesmanship Program, Application Deadline Dec. 3

• Study prominent thinkers and statesmen like Aristotle, Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and of course, George Washington
   
• Participate in a series of ‘modern day application’ sessions like “Civil Rights, Race, and Identity,” and “America is the World’s Technological City on a Hill”
   
• Enjoy a trip to Normandy to participate in the annual Tocqueville Conversations conference at Alexis de Tocqueville’s family chateau and to visit historic sights including the beaches stormed by American troops in World War II

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