Asserting Our American Christian and Classical Heritage
Asserting Our American Christian and Classical Heritage, A Summer of Reading on the Constitution, by Matthew G. Andersson, August 20, 2021 (posted by Mary Grabar)
“Order in the new republic was impossible without law, but law impossible without morality, and morality was impossible without religion. For early American jurists and scholars, in an attitude quite foreign to us now, the common law was of “obligation indispensable” and of “origin divine.” Indeed, to one United States Supreme Court Associate Justice, Joseph Story, it was the duty of the American government to promote the Christian religion, to aid in the salvation of American citizens.” Stephen Presser, Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History Emeritus, Northwestern University School of Law
“It is impossible for those who believe in the truth of Christianity as a Divine revelation, to doubt that it is the especial duty of government to foster and encourage it among all the citizens and subjects.” Joseph Story, Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, Dane Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States 260 (1840)
Read more: Asserting Our American Christian and Classical Heritage
In Defense of American Democracy
In Defense of American Democracy: Andy Ngo's New Book, Cowbells at Portland State, and Scaring Powell's Bookstore by Brandon Smith, guest contributor, June 15, 2021 (posted by Mary Grabar)
Nineteenth-century political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville declared a free press to be the most indispensable element of a functioning liberal democracy. Without the ability for journalists' thoughts and writings to be freely circulated, individuals in democratic nations may be isolated in their opinions. Yet combinations of private American citizens have attempted to stifle the dissemination of information compiled by certain journalists in order to achieve antidemocratic aims.
In between my separate stints of studying political science in community college and university, I developed a desire to gain a greater understanding of my own country's political system. I already learned to have a healthy fear of tyrannical majorities that tend to arise from pure democracies after studying James Madison's Federalist No. 10, but sought to differentiate such potentially repressive democracy from the character of American democracy as I conceptualized it. In examining Tocqueville's influential work Democracy in America, I realized America's early European settlers idealized political equality as many Americans do in the current age. However, it would take the recognition of certain liberties of its citizens for America to establish a system of political equality lest the freedom of minorities be trammeled by an overzealous majority. Tocqueville stressed the usefulness of a free press to act as a defense of oppressed members of a community through their ability to appeal to a national, or perhaps global, audience.
What Happens When Law Schools Embrace Critical Race Theory?
What Happens When Law Schools Embrace Critical Race Theory? by Matthew Andersson, guest columnist (posted by Mary Grabar, June 9, 2021)
“The Equal Protection Clause affirmed that the Constitution protected the situations of individuals, not groups. It is [otherwise] not a matter of unconstitutional subordination of one group to another, but of offensive segmentation by race. A whole elite cadre depends on racial division for its constituency and its position. Justices Powell and Marshall agreed that a single, unsegmented nation, where race did not matter, was the goal. But if we continue to divide ourselves by race, to make race dispositive in all sorts of contexts, with the ugly necessity of formally assigning individuals to particular racial groups, then the time will soon come when this new racial segmentation will become permanent, that the ideal of each person’s being judged as an individual and not as a member of a group to which he is assigned by somebody’s “public policy” will no longer be possible. Fifty years is long enough to make dividing us up by race a habit, to create a practically and politically unshakable sense of entitlement in those who think they benefit from such schemes, and in the racial entrepreneurs who know they do. It may be that the only way to get beyond racism is to just stop using race in a [reasonably short period]. Only with such a determinative end point will institutions have the incentive to confront the political pressure arrayed against a truly unitary concept of citizenship.” Charles Fried, Harvard Law Beneficial Professor, former Associate Justice Supreme Judicial Court Massachusetts and Solicitor General of the United States, in Saying What the Law Is: The Constitution in the Supreme Court (2006) 239-240
Read more: What Happens When Law Schools Embrace Critical Race Theory?
Why Are Universities Pushing Covid Vaccination?
Resistance is Futile: Why Are Universities Pushing Covid Vaccination? Guest Post by Matthew G. Andersson, April 27, 2021
“As an MIT PhD in Biological Engineering who studies & does research nearly every day on the Immune System, the coronavirus fear mongering by the Deep State will go down in history as one of the biggest frauds to manipulate economies, suppress dissent, & push Mandated Medicine.” Dr.Shive Ayyadurai
“The state has no interest in vaccinating people where transmissibility is not reduced or relevant. It cannot mandate submissive behavior that is an experiment on humans, which violates the Nuremberg Code.” Dr. Harvey Risch, Yale School of Public Health, 8 March 2021
“Beyond the unknown long-term health effects of the vaccines, there are ethical and moral questions that religiously observant Americans are likely taking into account. In March, the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans issued a statement urging Catholics not to get the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which it called “morally compromised” because of its “extensive use of abortion-derived cell lines.” John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist
The "Chicago School": What It Really Is and Why It Matters
The "Chicago School": What It Really Is and Why It Matters: Guest column by Matthew G. Andersson (posted February 12, 2021, by Mary Grabar):
[A] return to normalcy will require subduing radical factions that agitate for oppression. Restrictions such as mask mandates are like oxygen to followers of radical fundamentalist Covidianism — the abiding belief that only lockdowns, social distancing, and masks can deliver us from the deadly pandemic. The longer mandates stay in place and experts continue promoting mask use — “My mask protects you! Your mask protects me!” — the stronger and more widespread the extremism will grow, and the less influence experts will have over their behavior. Georgi Boorman] The Federalist, 22 September 2020
Non-objective law is the most effective weapon of human enslavement: its victims become its enforcers and enslave themselves. Ayn Rand, The Nature of Government
Universities and colleges are working to adapt and respond to a mix of information, signals and intentions concerning the Covid phenomenon, especially involving what conditions will be imposed in order to fully “re-open” (the assumption that a state of normalcy will greet everyone at the other end of current “lockdown” and other related “orders,” is not reasonable). Those have fairly significant policy implications that may range from screening, testing and vaccination (increasingly seen as “at gunpoint”), to tracing, profiling and tracking, among other authoritarian methods under consideration, including “health passports.” The modern university campus may eventually resemble the modern airport in how students, faculty, staff, alumnae and visitors are processed, screened and approved for entry onto the campus and its facilities. The scope of such institutional reactions will be comprehensive, as the reputational stakes are thought high: divergent thinking, or a challenge to consensus, is often deemed dangerous, conspiratorial, or even sociopathic.
Read more: The "Chicago School": What It Really Is and Why It Matters
- Samizdat, Beautiful Italy, January 10, 2021
- A New Direction or the Status Quo for University Leadership: The Case of the University of Chicago
- Speaking in Athens, GA
- Debunking Howard Zinn Portland to Atlanta Speaking Tour
- National Vietnam War Veterans Day 2020
- On Grading Zinn-ers' Papers
- Grievance Studies Exposed at Portland State
- Covid-19 on Campus: Turning the University of Chicago into a Re-Education Camp
- University Greek Life: A "Super-Spreader" of Independence?
- White House Conference on American History
- Save the Children from Howard Zinn, Speaking in Portland
- A College Student's Take on Howard Zinn's America-Is-Evil
- Reparations, a History Lesson
- Zinn Watch, Episode 1
- News from AHI
- Oh, the "Humanity"!
- History Writing News at Concord Review
- Why College Students Can't Write
- Contraries: The Swamp at DOE, Diversity, Retirements
- Christmas Shopping in Atlanta: Goldwater at Dollar Tree
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