Special Report posted February 10, 2012 by Allen C. Guelzo
Abraham Lincoln or the Progressives: Who was the real father of big government?
Abstract: Early Progressives co-opted Abraham Lincoln’s legacy to justify their program of expansive government powers over American life. In so doing, they obscured how their philosophy of government broke with Lincoln and the Founding to which he was heir. Nevertheless, much conservative and libertarian thinking today has assumed, at once and without serious reflection,…
First Principles Series Report posted August 17, 2007 by Allen C. Guelzo
Prudence, Politics, and the Proclamation
Constituit bonos mores civitati
princeps et vitia eluit, si patiens corum est, non tamquam probest,
sed tamquam invitus et cum magno tormento ad castigandum
veniat. [Justice is established, and vice eliminated, in the
state if the ruler is patient with vice, not as if he approved of
it, but as though he pursued it seemingly unwillingly and could
only use force as a…