“The senses are not given us to furnish us with a complete knowledge of things, but to direct us in the affairs of life, and to point out to us those objects which are useful or hurtful; and it is by reflection that we discover the laws of nature and the attributes of the Deity.”

“Too bad Lincoln didn’t take Calhoun’s advice.” This phrase only works if you assume Calhoun’s theory is already correct. Lincoln’s disagreement was deeper: he denied that secession is a constitutional remedy at all, rather than a policy option he declined to adopt.

“To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.” — James Madison

This must be comedy

They're going to try to memory-hole this, but we can't forget that the Left put America through a reign of terror after 2020. This is some of what they did to me and my family, in an attempt to shut me up: When I was in Seattle, they put up posters around my neighborhood with insane lies about me and my home address, instructing activists to show up at my door. Later, they sent letters to a few hundred of my neighbors, claiming I was a Nazi white supremacist. Death threats, references to my family, the whole deal. A few times, we had to take the kids and leave town. One of these activists found one of my children at the park with the babysitter and yelled at him until he started crying. My son came home terrified, so I figured out who this person was—a software developer in the neighborhood—got his number, called him, delivered some "persuasive" words, and forced him to apologize to my son over the phone. I made sure he was much more frightened than my son. The same group organized employees within Microsoft to bomb my wife's boss with emails claiming she was a white supremacist. Thankfully, he thought it was strange for her to be an Asian white supremacist and knew it was all a fabrication. I tracked down the ringleader and, "coincidentally," he was fired a few months later. He overestimated his position and underestimated mine. Then there were the calls and texts to our private numbers. Threats to rape my wife and murder my children. At one point, I was working with the FBI about it, but the perpetrators had used number-cloaking apps and there was nothing law enforcement could do. I thought we had a lead in St. Louis and hired a private investigator to look into it, but the trail went cold. We fortified our home and studied the law. I was prepared to kill anyone who crossed the threshold. The institutions got in on it, too. Organized campaigns to ruin my reputation, manipulate my Wikipedia page, cancel my speaking engagements, and list me on the websites of the SPLC and ADL, in an attempt to get me banned from social media. The censorship apparatus put a target on my back and the federal government egged them on. Fortunately, they all failed. For years, I refused to publicly acknowledge much of what happened to my family—I didn't want to give my enemies the satisfaction—but now is the time to get it out and address it. My experience is hardly unique; many other conservatives have faced similar circumstances. It's about CRT, DEI, and all of the other intellectual issues, but even more, it's about having a society free of threats, violence, intimidation, and madness.

"The founding fathers of modern philosophy . . . went so far as to assert that, just as the knowledge of each individual progresses in the course of his life, the knowledge of the whole human race necessarily advances from day to day, i.e., from generation to generation. In asserting this, they underrated the difference between inherited knowledge, i.e., the knowledge which one acquires in schools and universities, and independently acquired knowledge, i.e., knowledge acquired by a mature scholar. Thus it came to pass that inherited knowledge was given the same cognitive status as independently acquired knowledge. (Witness the phrase: the results of modern research.) Whereas, actually, inherited knowledge is hardly distinguishable from prejudice: inherited knowledge is, in the typical case, a collection of true prejudices. . . . In some cases, it so happens that what, to begin with, is supposed to be inherited knowledge or true prejudice proves to be an inherited error." Leo Strauss "Historicism" (1941 lecture)

1 of the most interesting things about Daniel Webster is that his nationalism was rooted in natural rights & popular sovereignty, not in consolidation. The Union existed to secure rights & govern through constitutional forms—not to extinguish the states, nor to permit disunion

The “exceptions” are Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Pufendorf, Grotius, Blackstone, Locke, Sydney, Montesquieu, Hume, Reid, Machiavelli, Milton, Shakespeare, Burke, etc. The “History” the Founders read (Plutarch, Thucydides, Livy, Polybius) were more like philosophers than the stuffy pencil pushers we call “historians” today.

A constitutional majority “A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.” Lincoln