Free Republic

An academic lecture by Professsor Thomas West from Hillsdale College. An excellent lecture from their Consitution 201 series plus links to other Hillsdale College lectures. An educational series that I wish would be viewed in our private high schools. Excellent material for home schoolers. Pass it on.

In 1935, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins was fretting about finding a constitutional basis for the Social Security Act. Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone advised her, "The taxing power, my dear, the taxing power. You can do anything under the taxing power."... So how did the power to tax under the Constitution become unbounded? The first enumerated power that the Constitution grants to Congress is the "power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." The text indicates that the taxing...

FEDERAL STUDENT financial assistance programs are costly, inefficient, byzantine, and fail to serve their desired objectives. In a word, they are dysfunctional, among the worst of many bad federal programs. These programs are commonly rationalized on three grounds: on the grounds that assuring more young people a higher education has positive spillover effects for the country; on the grounds that higher education promotes equal economic opportunity (or, as the politicians say, that it is “a ticket to achieving the American Dream”); or on the grounds that too few students would go to college in the absence of federal loan programs,...

David Bahnsen of Newport Beach, California is a Senior Vice President of Morgan Stanley, and also serves on the Board of Advisers of the California Recovery Project with Dr. Arthur Laffer. Bahnsen has abandoned his earlier support of the Ron Paul crusade, and now describes himself as an "economically literate Republican." He is the author of "The Undiscerning and Dangerous Appreciation of Ron Paul." Bahnsen says "It is the ironic that Ron Paul's alleged praiseworthiness comes from his devotion to the Constitution, when in fact, he has emphatically rejected it." Bahnsen has many family and business connections with libertarians. His...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum will speak on campus Monday night, Hillsdale College administrators and representatives from his campaign confirmed. Students have also invited Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney to speak at what could be the college’s first presidential candidate symposium. At press time, their campaigns had not committed to the event. Santorum said he was looking forward to visiting Hillsdale to participate in the forum. “I am excited to share my vision for a brighter America, and the life experiences that have helped shape those positions,” Santorum said. The Hillsdale College Constitution Symposium, a coalition of students...

“Constitution 101: The Meaning and History of the Constitution” is a 10-week online course presented by Hillsdale College. Featuring an expanded format from the “Introduction to the Constitution” lecture series with Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry Arnn, Constitution 101 follows closely the one-semester course required of all Hillsdale College undergraduate students. In this course, you can: watch lectures from the same Hillsdale faculty who teach on campus; study the same readings taught in the College course; submit questions for weekly Q&A sessions with the faculty; access a course study guide; test your knowledge through weekly quizzes; and upon completion of...

“Markets, Government, and the Common Good” Presented in conjunction with the Acton Institute and the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities Register to watch the free webcast of this event: hillsdalefmf.com Schedule of Events: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27 8:00 p.m. “The New Road to Serfdom: Lessons to Learn from European Policy” Daniel Hannan European Parliament FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28 8:00-9:45 a.m. “The National Debt and Entitlement Reform” Chair: Gary Wolfram Hillsdale College Presenters: “The Debt Crisis” David R. Henderson Naval Postgraduate School “The Entitlement Crisis” Michael D. Tanner CATO “The Politics of Entitlement Reform” Dean Clancy FreedomWorks 10:15 -11:45 a.m. “Can We...

Thank you for your invitation to be here today and I am very honored that you should ask me not only to join you in the observance of Constitution Week, but also permit me to express my respect and admiration for Hillsdale College and to thank each of you for everything you have done to make their tireless efforts possible. Now, I confess that I am not able to call myself a Hillsdale graduate nor can I lay claim to any formal affiliation with you. But, nonetheless, I come here as a very great beneficiary of your commitment to the...

Hillsdale CollegeAbout Imprimis Imprimis is the free monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College and is dedicated to educating citizens and promoting civil and religious liberty by covering cultural, economic, political and educational issues of enduring significance.  The content of Imprimis is drawn from speeches delivered to Hillsdale College-hosted events, both on-campus and off-campus.  First published in 1972, Imprimis is one of the most widely circulated opinion publications in the nation with over 1.9 million subscribers. April 2011 Ken Cuccinelli Attorney General of Virginia Reasserting Federalism in Defense of Liberty  KEN CUCCINELLI was elected the Attorney General of Virginia in November 2009....

Tomorrow evening my husband and I will be attending the Hometown Lecture Series in Pittsburgh sponsored by Hillsdale College. I was simply curious as to how many FReepers also plan on attending. If anyone has attended other events from the series, feel free to post what you thought of the presentations.

The 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War offers an opportunity to reflect upon the wartime statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln. Impelled to the presidency by a constitutional crisis, Lincoln stood on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution both before and during the Civil War. With special attention to what Americans today may learn from Lincoln as we grapple with a global war and prodigious debt, this lecture will illuminate Lincoln's example of self-government under law.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. The Preamble to the Constitution was added at the last minute by the Constitutional Convention, roundly criticized upon its announcement, and even today lacks any legal standing. So what does it mean, and why does it matter? “We the People” was a powerful and even revolutionary way to...

For more than half a century, biographers have treated Franklin Delano Roosevelt with Rushmore-like reverence, celebrating the nation's 32nd president as a colossus who eased the agony of the Great Depression and saved democracy from Nazi Germany. Which never sat right with historian Burton Folsom Jr. Growing up in Nebraska, Folsom remembers, his dad, a savings and loan executive, griped about high taxes and Roosevelt's voracious ambition. FDR was dead, but his legacy — deficit spending, an activist federal government, an expansive social safety net — lived on. About 15 years ago, Folsom read another of those historical surveys, this...

On February 19, 2009, when the finance commentator Rick Santelli indulged in a rant against the newly unveiled “stimulus” bill on the CNBC cable network and called for a demonstration in Chicago modeled on the Boston Tea Party, he fired a shot heard round the country. Santelli’s diatribe was focused on the fact that Americans who had played by the rules, had saved much of what they had earned, and had paid their bills on time were being required to bail out fellow citizens who had gotten caught short in purchasing a domicile they could not afford or while speculating...

Progressive Americans — the kind who voted for President Obama — champion progress, change and new eras of, well, everything as hallmarks of their success. Progressives, by definition, teach the American past as a sad story, the repeat of which should be avoided at all costs. They view with contempt the days when an individual's worth was determined by inescapable incidents of birth, especially skin color and gender, and they congratulate themselves for having evolved beyond those kinds of prejudiced discriminations.

Not many Americans know it, but today is Constitution Day. Well, technically, by force of 2004’s Public Law 108-447, it is “Constitution Day and Citizenship Day”—but never mind the fine print. Two hundred twenty-three years ago, on September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, after nearly four months of intense deliberation, 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution, sending it to the states for ratification. The ensuing state contests were hard fought, but the Federalists, who were in favor of the Constitution, prevailed, the Constitution was adopted, and the work of the Convention was vindicated. Before “social studies” replaced civics...

By way of Twitter, this just in from Uncommon Knowledge viewer Travis Lindsay: Peter, if you had to make a list of the top conservative intellectuals today who would make your list? A lovely question. We’ve come a long way since Lionel Trilling’s 1950 declaration that “[i]n the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominate but even the sole intellectual tradition.” Our side has brilliant scholars, think tanks, intellectual ferment. Of any number who belong on this long list, three who come immediately to mind:

Back in mid-June, Leslie Gelb floated an idea in an op-ed piece that he published in The Wall Street Journal. After the midterms, he argued, when Robert Gates resigned his position as Secretary of Defense, Hillary Clinton should be given the job in preparation for making her the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2012. As a booby prize – Gelb spoke, of course, in more flattering terms – Joe Biden could be made Secretary of State. Apart from fact that it requires one to suppose that a man known as “loose lips,” notorious for blurting out the first thing that comes...

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be deluged by polls. Most of them will be honestly conducted. Others will constitute an attempt to discourage the voters on one side or another. How can one separate the sheep from the goats? You should start with one key question. What are the pollsters’ turn-out expectations, and do they make any sense? Jay Cost went to the heart of the matter in his post this morning. As he put it, “the partisan composition of the electorate remains the critical unresolved issue of this cycle. Every pollster is making a guess as...

The election is now over and the results are in – except in Alaska, Colorado, Washington, and a congressional district here and there. And one by one the usual suspects are weighing in with their comments. Most of these are utterly predictable, and some are downright mendacious, as one would expect. When President Obama denied that the biggest Republican victory since the 1920s was a referendum on the policies embraced by his party and his administration, he was either lying or deep in denial – and the same thing can be said about The New York Times, which opined yesterday...