Jorne Gilbert, Author at Constituting America

About Jorne Gilbert

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Entries by Jorne Gilbert

Tim Schantz, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Tim Schantz, Essay 27-C: The National Highway Act and the Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 27-C: The National Highway Act and the Founding Documents

When one considers the marvel that is our Interstate Highway System, few today could imagine that it ever posed a challenging constitutional issue for the nation.

Indeed, especially after the passage of the Highway Act in 1956 during the Eisenhower Administration with an 89-1 vote in the Senate—arguably the most significant national infrastructure project in American history—its constitutionality would appear to have been unquestioned. And, yet, in the first decades of the Republic, the idea that the federal government would sponsor and finance ‘internal improvements’ at all was highly contentious.

The impetus for this signature piece of legislation, which has come to be known as the

The “National Interstate and Defense Highways Act” was provided by President Eisenhower, although it was predicated upon many years of reflection, study, and planning.

As early as the summer of 1919, Lt. Col. Eisenhower served as an observer on a massive experimental military convoy across the nation from Washington, DC, to San Francisco. This challenging exercise highlighted the inadequacy of the nation’s domestic transportation infrastructure at the time. In contrast, during the Second World War, Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower viewed first-hand the extraordinary efficiency of the German Autobahn system largely constructed under the auspices of the National Socialist regime. In his own words, Ike recalled that, ”The old convoy had started me thinking about good two-lane highways, but Germany had made me see the wisdom of broader ribbons across the land.”

Of course, there were some earlier 20th-century American precedents upon which to build as well. In 1908, the Long Island Motor Parkway opened as one of the world’s first roads designed specifically for automobiles, and in 1938, Connecticut’s beautiful Merrit Parkway opened to the public, providing a scenic and swifter option to the highly congested Route One. Of even greater relevance was the construction of segments of the Pennsylvania Turnpike just prior to the outbreak of war, our first truly modern “superhighway,” which transformed travel logistics throughout the Keystone State.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Kirk Higgins Essay 27-B: The National Highway Act That Linked the American Nation and Dwight D. Eisenhower, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Kirk Higgins

Essay 27-B: Dwight D. Eisenhower And The Highway Act That Linked America

Next time you are stuck in traffic on the highway, and trust me, there will be a next time, take a moment to appreciate its architecture. The clear signage, standardized lane sizes, and even the quality of its pavement are a tribute to American planning and engineering. The story of its construction is the story of the power of self-government, compromise, and diligence in a time of economic and technological growth.

The United States stretches from sea to shining sea, covering a vast territory encompassing almost every geographic feature imaginable. From its earliest days, improving travel was seen as a key to economic growth and, more importantly, a key to unifying the nation. Improvements in travel would expand commercial and civic interests, knitting the nation together.

First turnpikes, then canals, and railroads improved the speed of goods to market and connected distant commercial centers. It also allowed individuals and families to crisscross the nation and build communities.

The invention of the automobile at the turn of the twentieth century offered even more opportunities to traverse the vastness of the United States. But packing the trunk and hitting the open road in those early days was not that easy.

Inconsistent and disconnected regional road networks crisscrossed the nation, and breakdowns were a common occurrence. Travel by car was difficult, if not impossible. Few knew these challenges better than Dwight D. Eisenhower.

90 in 90 2026, Jeff Scott, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 27-A: The National Highway Act That Linked The American Nation and the People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jeff Scott

Essay 27-A: The National Highway Act That Linked The American Nation and the People

The National Highway Act and Popular Consent in the American Republic

The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, commonly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, stands as one of the most ambitious public works projects in American history. Signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, it authorized the construction of a 41,000-mile system of interstate highways. This infrastructure network physically linked the nation, dramatically reducing travel times, spurring economic growth, and enabling millions of Americans to explore their country. Beyond its practical achievements, the Act illustrates a core principle of the American republic: government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. Far from an imposition by distant authority, the interstate system emerged from popular needs and democratic processes, reflecting Alexis de Tocqueville’s keen insights into how American democracy channels public will into collective action.

By the mid-20th century, America’s existing roads—many dating to the early automobile era—could no longer support a rapidly growing, mobile population. Veterans returning from World War II, suburban expansion, and surging car ownership created widespread demand for safer, faster highways. Eisenhower, drawing from his experience with Germany’s Autobahn and the U.S. Army’s 1919 transcontinental convoy, championed the project. Yet the initiative did not spring from the executive alone. It built upon decades of federal-aid highway legislation, congressional debates, and state-level input. Legislators, accountable to voters through regular elections, responded to constituent pressures from farmers needing market access, families seeking recreational travel, and businesses pursuing efficient commerce. This responsiveness embodied the republican mechanism of consent: elected representatives translating popular desires into law.

Jonathan Flora, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Jonathan Flora, Essay 26-C: The Gi Bill And The Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 26-C: The Gi Bill And The Founding Documents

The American Founders would have understood and appreciated the principle behind the G.I. Bill.

The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the G.I. Bill, provided World War II veterans access to higher education, low-interest home loans, business opportunities, and unemployment assistance as they transitioned back to civilian life. As a result, the G.I. Bill may be one of the smartest and most important things America ever did. Because it created opportunity.

It sent a message of commitment to millions of veterans returning home from World War II. You served your country. Now here’s a chance to build a life. And millions did exactly that.

They bought homes, started businesses, went to college, raised families, and built communities. In many ways, they built the modern American middle class.

In the decades to follow, that opportunity expanded to all those who wore the uniform of our nation.

I know because I’m one of them.

Here’s how my story started.

General Jack Briggs, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog General Jack Briggs, Essay 26-B: The Gi Bill And Harry W. Colmery & John Henry Stelle, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 26-B: The Gi Bill And Harry W. Colmery & John Henry Stelle

In Topeka, Kansas, there is a full-sized statue of Harry W. Colmery, the father of the G.I. Bill. Even more surprising, an entire plaza is dedicated to Colmery and the critical role he and his fellow American Legion leader, John Stelle, played in creating one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in American history.

As a result of the G.I. Bill, millions of veterans have earned college degrees, built careers, purchased homes, and improved the lives of their families because of the vision and persistence of these two men. If the G.I. Bill changed the trajectory of the United States, then Colmery and Stelle helped change the trajectory of generations of Americans.

As World War II neared its end, the nation faced a challenge unlike any it had encountered before. Millions of service members would soon return home from Europe, the Pacific, and other theaters of war. The question was not whether they deserved gratitude. The question was what that gratitude should look like.

Harry W. Colmery (1890-1974) was more than an attorney from Topeka. He was a decorated World War I veteran who had served in the U.S. Army, returned home to practice law, and had later served as National Commander of the American Legion from 1936 to 1937. Having witnessed firsthand the challenges veterans faced after World War I, he believed the nation owed returning service members more than a handshake and a thank you. Determined not to repeat those mistakes, Colmery envisioned a program that would provide opportunity rather than charity.

90 in 90 2026, Philip Bunn, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 26-A: The Gi Bill And The People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Philip Bunn

Essay 26-A: The G.I. Bill and the People

In 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly called the G.I. Bill. The bill made provision for a variety of economic and educational benefits for almost all veterans of World War II. Among other provisions, the bill provided tuition and a living stipend for veterans returning to school, unemployment benefits for veterans unable to secure employment, and subsidized loans for home building and business ownership.

The World War II American military was largely a volunteer force, not a long-term professional one, and huge swaths of people serving would be rotating out of their military careers in short order as the war reached its end. The American people and the policymakers representing them were rightly concerned about how those former servicemembers might best be integrated back into civilian life. In short, the bill was designed to secure the educational and economic well-being of millions of veterans at a pivotal juncture in American history broadly and American military history specifically.

The G.I. Bill in its original form was conceived of as a payment of a debt owed to servicemembers whose civic virtue was exemplary and admirable. In his signing statement in 1944, FDR declared that the bill and associated legislation “provide the special benefits which are due to the members of our armed forces—for they have been compelled to make greater economic sacrifice and every other kind of sacrifice than the rest of us and are entitled to definite action to help take care of their special problems.” That those same servicemembers who made those definite sacrifices should have the opportunity to receive a suitable education, pursue entrepreneurship, or own a home seemed like common sense at the time and has seemed so to multiple generations of legislators who have passed subsequent bills providing similar benefits to veterans.

90 in 90 2026, Benjamin Slomski, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 25-C: The Manhattan Project To Develop Nuclear Weapons And The Founding, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Benjamin Slomski

Essay 25-C: The Manhattan Project To Develop Nuclear Weapons And The Founding

When the Declaration of Independence invoked “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” that allow a people to assert their separate status as a nation, it certainly did not anticipate atomic weapons. Yet the Declaration rested on the understanding that there is a set order to the universe governed by the laws of nature. These laws extend beyond the physical laws of the natural world to moral laws of right and wrong that can be known through the use of reason. This natural law taught America’s founders the self-evident truths that “all men are created equal” with inalienable rights.

The Manhattan Project represented the weaponization of the laws of nature as scientists harnessed the natural energy of the atom to create a bomb of unprecedented power. In response to the Trinity test’s successful demonstration of an atomic explosion, physicist I.I. Rabi said that “a new thing had just been born: a new control; a new understanding of man, which man had acquired over nature.” Through knowledge of the laws of nature, science could unlock extraordinary power, but statesmen also had to consult the natural law for guidance on how to use that power.

The Manhattan Project was the result of decades of scientific investigation around the world into the atom. After using the atomic bomb, President Truman declared, “We have now won the battle of the laboratories, as we have won the other battles.” A leading reason why America won this scientific battle was the founding principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence. The Manhattan Project could not have happened without the collaboration of American and foreign-born scientists, most of whom came to the U.S. to escape the totalitarian regimes in Europe and became American citizens.

Dominic Aquila, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 25-B: The Manhattan Project To Develop Nuclear Weapons And Leslie Groves, Dominic Aquila, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 25-B: The Manhattan Project To Develop Nuclear Weapons And Leslie Groves

Brigadier General Leslie Richard Groves was perhaps the most talented engineering and organizational military officer in American history. Having overseen the construction of the Pentagon, he was assigned to a project so secret that most of the people who worked on it did not know what they were building. Groves initially sought a combat assignment in the European theater, but he set aside his personal ambitions for the needs of the nation. That decision, unglamorous and uncelebrated, was itself an act of civic virtue.

Worried that Nazi Germany was significantly ahead in developing an atomic weapon, Groves wasted no time. On September 17, 1942, his first full day in command, he secured 1,200 tons of high-grade uranium ore; the following day he acquired a processing site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He worked against significant obstacles with relentless and uncompromising purpose. Together with the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, his efforts produced the first atomic bomb in less than three years, on time and under budget.

Groves’s way of working left little room for sentiment. In the classic leadership binary of concern for people versus task achievement, Groves was decidedly focused on the latter. Brusque and widely unpopular, he had earned a reputation since his days at West Point for getting things done. His wartime aide, Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols, described him bluntly: “He is most demanding. He is most critical. He is always a driver, never a praiser. He is abrasive and sarcastic….He is extremely intelligent. He has the guts to make timely, difficult decisions.”

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Daniel Cotter Essay 25-A: The Manhattan Project To Develop Nuclear Weapons And The People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Daniel Cotter

Essay 25-A: The Manhattan Project To Develop Nuclear Weapons And The People

How can a government keep one of the greatest secrets in history while still claiming to govern by the consent of the people? That question lies at the heart of the Manhattan Project, the secret wartime effort in which hundreds of thousands of Americans worked to build an atomic weapon before Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Warned by physicist Albert Einstein that Germany might be pursuing such a weapon, the federal government launched one of the largest and most secret undertakings in American history. Yet it did so as a nation founded on the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that governments derive ‘their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ The Manhattan Project demonstrates that in a constitutional republic, popular consent does not require every governmental action to be publicly known as it occurs.

The Framers never intended to create a direct democracy in which every decision would be submitted to a vote of the people. Instead, they established a representative republic. In Federalist No. 39, James Madison explained that a republic is a government that ‘derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people.’ The Constitution entrusted elected representatives with the responsibility to make difficult decisions on behalf of the nation while remaining accountable through elections, separated powers, and the rule of law. Alexander Hamilton likewise argued in Federalist No. 70 that an energetic executive is essential to protecting the nation, particularly during times of crisis. That energy, Hamilton observed, often depended on secrecy and dispatch, qualities a numerous assembly like Congress could not supply, but a single, unified executive could.

90 in 90 2026, Thomas Bruscino, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 24-C: D-Day: The American Soldiers And The Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Thomas Bruscino

Essay 24-C: D-Day: The American Soldiers And The Founding Documents

In the midst of a fraught and glorious year, as a great battle approached, the commanding general addressed his army. It was August 23, 1776, less than two months after the Declaration of Independence. The British enemy had landed on Long Island, and General George Washington reminded his men the principles that were at stake in the Revolutionary War. “Remember officers and Soldiers,” he told them, “that you are Freemen, fighting for the blessings of Liberty—that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men.”

In 1787, the people of the United States adopted the Constitution with the explicit intent to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” It is fitting that General George Washington, talking to an army of common soldiers, expressed the principles of the Declaration in what would become the language of the Constitution. The purpose, violence, and cost of war are terrible and wonderful lenses, magnifying and clarifying who men and nations really are.

Generations on, romantic memories have come to obscure a historical truth about the American fighting man in World War II. At the time, they hesitated to describe why they fought in terms of high principles. When asked, they responded with banalities:”I’m here to finish the job and go home.” It wasn’t that they were cynical, not deep down, but that they had become cynical of talking about big ideas.

90 in 90 2026, Ron Meier, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 24-B: D-Day: The American Soldiers And John Trippon, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, Ron Meier, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 24-B: D-Day: The American Soldiers And John Trippon

D Day: June 6, 1944. H Hour, Omaha Beach: 0630. The Allies began to execute history’s most detailed and complex military invasion. Infantry officers in the front of their landing craft yell two words they internalized during their military training–follow me! A military axiom, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” began to unfold.

The 116th Regiment of the U.S. 29th Infantry Division was assigned to assault four of the five right-flank sectors of Omaha Beach. Each sector was about a quarter mile wide. Dog Green sector, on the 116th far-right flank, was assigned to A Company, the first wave to hit the beach. A Company included 31 soldiers from Bedford Virginia, called the Bedford Boys. Dog White sector, to the immediate left of Dog Green, was assigned to G Company of the 116th Regiment. C Company of the 2nd Rangers, with only 68 soldiers, was assigned to Charlie sector, to the immediate right of Dog Green.

Low tide had just ended, and the tide was beginning to move in at 0630. Many of the landing craft drifted with the tide to the left of their assigned sectors. G Company landed about half a mile to the left of its assigned Dog White sector. A Company and C Company of the Rangers landed exactly on their assigned sectors, leaving more than 270 soldiers in seven landing craft alone facing bullets from hundreds of German machine guns and rifles firing from high ground above the beach. One of the six A Company landing craft, containing 5 Bedford Boys, was swamped and sunk. Those Bedford Boys survived and rejoined their Regiment several days later. When the ramps of the landing craft dropped, German gunners killed or wounded many soldiers before they even exited. Within minutes of landing, only one-third of A Company’s soldiers were still able to fight. Many of their officers were dead; 19 of the 31 soldiers from Bedford, VA also were dead.

Stephen Puleo, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 24-A: D-Day: The American Soldiers And The People, Stephen Puleo, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 24-A: D-Day: The American Soldiers And The People

The general and the paratrooper spoke to each other for the first and only time on the most important night of their respective lives.

The photograph of their encounter remains one of the most compelling and classic images from World War II (in the mid-1990s, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp of the historic moment), both for its timing and the presence of one of its participants–General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. In the picture, taken at around 8:30 p.m. on the night of June 5, 1944–the eve of the Allied D-Day invasion of France–Ike is speaking to Lieutenant Wallace C. “Wally” Strobel of the storied 101st Airborne Division. It was Strobel’s 22nd birthday.

The photo captures Eisenhower in an animated moment, an intense expression on his face. His right hand is raised, his fist slightly closed, and he is speaking directly to Strobel, whose blackened face and jumpmaster’s No. 23 group identification hanging from a string around his neck, foretold the risks and dangers to come.

Strobel and his fellow Screaming Eagles at Greenham Common Airfield in England were awaiting orders. Once the invasion began, they were to be dropped in the pre-dawn hours behind the Normandy beach code-named “Utah.” Eisenhower had been advised by his tactical air commander that 50 percent of the paratroopers would be dead before they hit the ground. Though Eisenhower agonized over the projected heavy casualties, he decided to go ahead with the air drop that would spearhead and precede the massive amphibious invasion.

Alex Tokarev, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 23-C: The Invention Of The Mass-Produced Motor Vehicle And The Founding Documents, Alex Tokarev, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 23-C: The Invention Of The Mass-Produced Motor Vehicle And The Founding Documents

What does a car have to do with freedom?

Today, there are more vehicles than adults in the USA. Cars let people travel farther and faster. But the story of the automobile is about far more than transportation. It’s about one of the greatest expansions of our freedom to choose.

One of the main heroes in our story is an American entrepreneur. His name? Henry Ford.

Ford did not invent the automobile. What he did was revolutionize its production. In 1913, Ford introduced the moving assembly line. The process dramatically reduced manufacturing costs. Suddenly, an automobile was no longer a luxury enjoyed by the wealthy.

A car became something an ordinary working family could aspire to own. That achievement transformed the United States and, eventually, much of the world. Before the assembly line, the big cities were drowning in tons of horse manure. Ford saved us from that hellish stink and accompanying diseases.

Before the automobile, most Americans lived within a small geographic area. Their opportunities were constrained by walking and horse riding distance, or railroad schedules. Where you lived often determined where you worked, how you shopped, and even whom you married.

The fast, comfortable, affordable, durable, and reliable automobile shattered those limits.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 23-B: The Invention Of The Mass-Produced Motor Vehicle And Henry Ford, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 23-B: The Invention Of The Mass-Produced Motor Vehicle And Henry Ford

“I will build a motor car for the great multitude…constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise…so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one-and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.” Henry Ford

When Henry Ford and eleven investors incorporated Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903, he had a clear vision of the types of automobiles he wanted to produce—light, durable and inexpensive. This was a departure from the hundreds of other burgeoning automobile companies trying to establish themselves at the time. For most of the world saw the new horseless carriage as an expensive toy for the rich. In the early 20th century, there were hundreds of car companies trying to find their niche in the developing auto industry and most would come and go within months of starting. Henry Ford knew that too well, as his first two car companies came and went between 1901 and 1903.

Ford Motor Company started as a small venture with around ten employees in a small shop in Detroit, Michigan with $28,000 in cash, and struggled to stay afloat in the first few months. Investors watched wearily as that cash balance dwindled to $223.65, before the company made its first sale of a Ford Model A to a Chicago dentist. That first sale didn’t propel the company immediately; it did show that the company had a model people were interested in. Over the next 15 months, the small organization was able to produce 1,700 Ford Model As from its small wagon shop.

Lou Hutchison, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Lou Hutchison, Essay 23-A: The Invention Of The Mass-Produced Motor Vehicle And The People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 23-A: The Invention Of The Mass-Produced Motor Vehicle And The People

Lillian and Moses were two ordinary Americans in the 1920’s. Entrepreneurs who embraced Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. And they did this with their 1919 REO Speedwagon that they modified into a ‘house car’ or what we would refer to today as a ‘RV’. With their ‘RV’, Lillian and Moses made their living driving from county fair to state fair and sold merchandise that were the prizes at the fair games.

America’s Founders crafted many documents and words, but among them were the immortal words above, along with enumerating American’s rights under the Constitution. And while ‘freedom of travel’ is not specifically mentioned, the 9th Amendment makes clear that the omission of travel does not impair that right.

Americans embraced the concept of freedom of travel – by horse, by railroads and, in 1895, the automobile. With the founding of Charles and Frank Dureya’s manufacturing company, the Dureya Motor Wagon Company, America joined Europe in pursing this new form of transportation. The automobile blended the best of horse and rail transportation – flexibility in determining one’s own timing and route, along with the time saving benefits of mechanical engines.

On the heels of the Dureya brothers, competitors emerged with names that echo with American innovation, determination and entrepreneurship – names such as Olds, Charles Kettering, Buick, Chevrolet, William Durant, Henry Leland and the ‘needs no introduction’ Henry Ford. It was on the shoulders of these giants and countless other unsung inventors that the automobile industry was formed. Not by government fiat nor spending, but by individual effort as protected by our founding principles.

90 in 90 2026, Dr. Eric Schmidt, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 22-C: - The Battle Over The Versailles Treaty And The Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Dr. Eric Schmidt

Essay 22-C: The Battle Over The Versailles Treaty And The Founding Documents

When President Woodrow Wilson helped negotiate the Treaty of Versailles, he intentionally made the League of Nations the keystone of his vision of post-war peace. However, when he submitted the treaty to the Senate in 1919, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge led an effort to attach reservations that would preserve Congressional authority over war. When Wilson rejected those changes and failed in an unusual public campaign for popular support, the Senate refused the treaty.

The constitutional question over the Treaty of Versailles did not primarily concern the terms of the peace settlement. The chief constitutional controversy that animated the dispute between Wilson and Lodge was over who might legitimately bind the American people in matters of war and peace. The first twenty-six articles of the Treaty formed the Covenant of the League of Nations, including, most controversially for Lodge and Wilson, Article X, which required member nations to protect the territorial integrity and independence of other members of the League. While Wilson believed the Covenant was necessary to make and preserve peace, Lodge feared such a commitment would imperil the principled constitutional process that binds sovereignty and popular consent.

Even a cursory review of our founding documents finds clear guidance and antecedents for the Wilson-Lodge dispute. The Declaration of Independence establishes and testifies to the American regime’s understanding of popular sovereignty in plain language: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The signers of the Declaration had lived with and rejected the remote and unrepresentative institutions that had so often committed them to war, conflict, and other forms of coercion without their influence. The Treaty and Covenant did not open a new conflict in American political practice but rather revived an old and foundational dispute.

90 in 90 2026, John Bicknell, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 22-B: - The Battle Over The Versailles Treaty And Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, John Bicknell

Essay 22-B: The Battle Over The Versailles Treaty And Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

Henry Cabot Lodge was a Boston Brahmin, considered something of a snob even in Brahmin society, where social snobbery was raised to a high art. He had a distinguished academic and literary career. A graduate of Harvard Law School and one of the first men awarded a Ph.D. in history and government at Harvard, he was editor of the prestigious North American Review in the 1870s and a lecturer in history at his alma mater.

As his resume indicated, Lodge was not a man of the people. But he entered politics in 1880 and, after a few early bumps, served in Congress for the last 37 years of his life.

When President Woodrow Wilson attempted to take the United States into the League of Nations as part of the Versailles Treaty ending World War I, Lodge opposed the treaty. He rested his argument against the treaty on defending the right of the American people, through their representatives in Congress, to determine questions of war and peace rather than an international organization.

Lodge, who had at first supported the idea of a League of Nations, represented the middle of the Republican Party. To his left were members who supported U.S. membership. To his right were true isolationists. Lodge was no isolationist. His preference was for a league of democracies in which the United States could be an active partner in hemming in Germany while remaking the map of Europe to promote democratic values. He was willing to accept American membership in a League of Nations—just not the one on which President Woodrow Wilson insisted.

90 in 90 2026, Ben Peterson, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 22-A: - The Battle Over The Versailles Treaty and Popular Consent, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Ben Peterson

Essay 22-A: The Battle Over The Versailles Treaty and Popular Consent

The debate in the U.S. Senate on whether to join the League of Nations, part of the Treaty of Versailles, negotiated and championed by President Woodrow Wilson, is a famous example of a Senate rejecting a treaty negotiated by a president. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who coordinated Senate opposition to the League of Nations, opposed the idea of an unbounded commitment to defend other nations, tying future Congress’s hands. The debate raised issues of constitutional self-government, national honor, and the nature of international relations.

Through the League of Nations, Wilson pursued his vision of a world in which international politics was not based on force but diplomacy. Lodge and others were not entirely opposed to treaties aimed at securing a more peaceful world, but they thought peace requires preparation for war and the capacity to credibly threaten it.

Article X of the Covenant of the League of Nations was a sticking point. It read: “The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.” The article was open to the interpretation that the League would direct member states as to how to respond in case of aggression against member states.

Dominic Aquila, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Dominic Aquila, Essay 21-C: - World War I Soldiers’ Poetry and Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 21-C: – World War I Soldiers’ Poetry and Founding Documents

When the United States entered the First World War in April 1917, it did so in part under the banner of its founding principles. In his war message to Congress, President Woodrow Wilson echoed the universal aspirations of the Declaration of Independence: “We shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.” These ideals furnished the public language through which many Americans, including Wilson and a broad spectrum of intellectual opinion, understood and justified the nation’s entry into the war.

Among the most enduring literary responses to the Great War was the conviction that industrial warfare had exposed a profound disjunction between public language and lived experience. Writers who had endured the trenches returned with a vision of war whose scale and destructiveness defied inherited notions of honor, courage, and glory. Heroism had not disappeared, but it had been thrust into an environment dominated by machine guns, heavy artillery, poison gas, barbed wire, and mechanized logistics, where individual valor could no longer overcome the impersonal machinery of industrial war. To be sure, the aftermath of the war produced a certain amount of disillusionment. But, more constructively, there arose a requirement that the language of sacrifice, duty, and freedom be made answerable to reality.

Caleb Franz, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 21-B: - Alan Seeger and World War I Soldiers’ Poetry, Caleb Franz, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 21-B: Alan Seeger and World War I Soldiers’ Poetry

The outbreak of the First World War marked the moment an entire generation began to lose its hope and innocence. The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, on June 28, 1914, by Bosnian Serb nationalists created a domino effect that, due to various treaties that entangled most European nations with one another, resulted in the entire continent being engulfed by war.

This war unfolded at such an unfathomable scale, during an age of rapidly advancing technology and weaponry. In the beginning, they marched into battle with wide, optimistic eyes, eager to face the heroic battles that awaited them. By the time the fighting stopped with an armistice on November 11, 1918, the generation who eagerly marched off to war was now a generation completely disillusioned and lost.

They lost faith in the purpose of their fight and in the institutions that were supposed to support them. They lost direction in their own lives, struggling to find a way to move on or open up in civilian life. Many turned to the written word to express themselves, having now witnessed both extraordinary sacrifice and continental destruction. Some of history’s greatest writers and poets became prominent as a result of their post-war writings, such as T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Another figure whose work became a posthumous sensation was Alan Seeger.

90 in 90 2026, James Robbins, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 21-A: - World War I Soldiers’ Poetry and The People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, James Robbins

Essay 21-A: – World War I Soldiers’ Poetry and The People

“I have a rendezvous with Death,” wrote American poet Alan Seeger in 1916, envisioning sacrifice with almost romantic nobility. Like many young men of his generation, Seeger believed that service and even death in a great cause could give meaning to life. Killed while serving with the French Foreign Legion before the United States entered the First World War, his words foreshadowed the spirit of the generation of writers that emerged afterward and revealed how profoundly those hopes had been shaken.

In April 1917, young Americans marched off to Europe with enthusiasm and a sense of purpose. President Woodrow Wilson had asked Congress for a declaration of war to make the world “safe for democracy,” and many believed that the conflict would be “the war to end war.” People were willing to face great sacrifices because they believed this would secure a better and more peaceful world.

Yet by the 1920s, the veterans and writers who came to be known as the Lost Generation, a term coined by Gertrude Stein and popularized by Ernest Hemingway, looked back with profound disillusionment. Their dissatisfaction arose not merely from the horrors they had endured but from the belief that the ideals for which they had fought had been compromised or abandoned.

90 in 90 2026, James Clinger, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 20-C: The Invention Of The Telephone and Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, James C. Clinger

Essay 20-C: The Invention of the Telephone and Founding Documents

Alexander Graham Bell and his business partner, Gardiner Hubbard, filed a patent application for an invention entitled an “Improvement in Telegraphy” on February 14, 1876. A few hours later, a prominent inventor by the name of Elisha Gray applied for a patent caveat for a similar invention from the same office. In March, Bell’s patent was approved by the patent office and the legal battle over the rights to the telephone patent had begun.

At the center of this conflict was a statute explicitly authorized by the Constitution. Under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, Congress was empowered “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” The exclusive right to the discoveries of a scientific nature is known as a patent, while a comparable right to literary works is known as a copyright.

This constitutional provision was not an entirely new innovation drawn from the minds of the founders. There was a fairly long and not always noble history behind it. In Britain and elsewhere, monopoly rights were conferred by the crown to make use of a new technology or even an old asset, often in exchange for a fee paid to the treasury. Elizabeth I infamously granted monopolies for the sale of salt, starch, and glass in return for payments that for all practical purposes were specialized taxes. Parliament curbed these practices by enacting the 1623 English Statute of Monopolies. This law forbad the monarch from granting monopolies of any kind with the single exception of letters patent that were granted for new inventions that benefitted the country and which were limited in duration to no more than fourteen years.

Stephen Puleo, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Stephen Puleo, Essay 20-B: Alexander Graham Bell, the Invention of the Telephone, and the People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 20-B: Alexander Graham Bell, the Invention of the Telephone, and the People

In many ways, Alexander Graham Bell had been preparing since childhood for the epic moment that occurred in Boston on March 10, 1876.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland to extraordinary parents – a father who specialized in oration and elocution, and a deaf mother who trained herself to be an accomplished pianist – Bell from a young age possessed enormous curiosity about human speech and how it was transmitted and received. By sixteen, he was teaching music and elocution at a boys’ boarding school. Blessed with a resonant voice as he matured, he devised a unique system for communicating with his mother – unlike most people who spoke to Mrs. Bell through an ear tube, Bell placed his lips very close to her forehead and spoke in low, sonorous tones. He believed his mother could “hear” him through the vibrations his vocal tones would create.

In 1871, at the age of 24, Bell moved to Boston to teach at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes, and a year later, opened his School of Vocal Physiology. He quickly became known as a voice and speech expert, and his services were in great demand. Later that same year, Boston University appointed Bell professor of vocal physiology and elocution at its School of Oratory, where one of his students, Mabel Hubbard, would become his future wife.

At BU, Bell conducted acoustics experiments and worked on plans for a “harmonic telegraph,” which would allow the transmittal of multiple telegraph messages over a single wire using different sound-wave frequencies. Early in 1874, he met a young Boston electrical machinist named Thomas Watson – one account called the chance meeting “one of the most fortuitous in technological history” – and shared with Watson his dream of perfecting another machine that would allow the human voice to travel over wires. The pair forged a partnership and, while Bell was on sabbatical to conduct research, began work on a transmitting and receiving device. At one point in June 1875, the invention transmitted a “twang” from one room to another. An excited Bell believed the complex overtones and timbre of the twang to be similar to those in the human voice. Perhaps it wasn’t just sounds, but spoken words that could be transmitted.

Ken Cuccinelli, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Ken Cuccinelli, Essay 20-A: The Invention Of The Telephone and Popular Consent, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 20-A: The Invention Of The Telephone and Popular Consent

The invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 marked a turning point in human communication. For the first time, individuals could instantly exchange information across great distances, transforming how families, friends, and businesses interacted. While the telephone is often discussed as a technological breakthrough, its broader significance is equally important. By enabling widespread, rapid communication among private citizens and economic actors, the telephone strengthened the foundations of popular consent in our republic. It empowered individuals to participate more fully and immediately in social, economic, and political life, reinforcing the principle that authority ultimately rests with the people.

In a republic, popular consent depends on an informed and connected citizenry. Citizens must be able to communicate their interests, deliberate on shared concerns, and organize collectively. Before the telephone, communication over long distances relied on letters via mail, which were slow, or telegrams which were fast, but effectively limited to elites with access and resources. The telephone dramatically reduced these barriers. Ordinary people could speak directly with relatives, friends, and colleagues, fostering stronger personal networks and a much faster exchange of information and views. This increased connectivity helped citizens feel less isolated and more aware of events beyond their immediate surroundings, an essential condition for meaningful consent in a representative system.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Amanda Hughes, Blog Essay 19-C: The Application Of Electricity In Public Life And Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Amanda Hughes

Essay 19-C: The Application Of Electricity In Public Life And Founding Documents

The discovery and application of electricity was one of the many advances in America buttressed by the Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution for success.

To appreciate the advancement of industry in the United States that involves development of electricity, it is important to appreciate the minds of America’s Founders as they applied lessons from history to their current situation.

A list of grievances specified by the Founders against the British King addressed, among other things, George III destroyed industry, invention, advancement, and civilization of the American states. From overtaxation to blocked trade to bureaucratic red tape that placed a stranglehold on the new country, 27 grievances supported the Founders’ resolve in 1776 for just government. Examples of these grievances from the Declaration of Independence demonstrate their reasoning for completely dissolving political bands from the Crown:

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

Due to these acts of war, the American colonies broke off from tyranny by breaking away from any crown. Doing so provided them self-governing republicanism. Upon the Declaration’s closing words, America’s Founders reinforced the purpose, source, and sustainment of their independence, therefore safeguarding industry and development. It offered af government by the consent of the governed. Note these words were adopted July 4, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War which occurred from 1775 to 1783:

90 in 90 2026, James P. Pinkerton, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 19-B: Nikola Tesla and the Application of Electricity, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, James P. Pinkerton

Essay 19-B: Nikola Tesla and the Application of Electricity

Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest geniuses of American history. His brilliance strengthened the greatest document of American history, the Constitution. Tesla was born in Serbia in 1856, and showed early talent as an engineer. As a result, he was recruited to come to the U.S., in 1884, to work for legendary inventor Thomas Edison. Tesla became a U.S. citizen in 1891.

Yet by then Tesla was no longer working for Edison, because he had a better idea than his boss. Edison had plenty of smarts (he invented the light bulb, for example) and yet he could also be stubborn. On the crucial issue of electricity distribution—all those lightbulbs needed juice—Edison was convinced that DC (direct current) was best.

Yet DC suffered from bad energy inefficiency, and so it required a power station every few miles. By contrast, the AC (alternating current) system used transformers to step up the voltage for transmission, dramatically increasing efficiency. Then the transformers would step down the voltage for safe use in households and businesses. The young Tesla did not invent AC, and yet his polyphase induction motor made AC much more feasible.

By the 1890s, entrepreneurs such as George Westinghouse were using Tesla’s patented technology, proving that AC worked better. A good lesson was that the genius of Edison, or anyone, is not the final word. In a free and open system, others with better ideas can also step forward, taking their shot to prove themselves in the competitive marketplace. That’s how the best ideas emerge.

Caleb Franz, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Caleb Franz, Essay 19-A: Nikola Tesla, Electricity, and the People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 19-A: Nikola Tesla, Electricity, and the People

Americans have been fascinated with the power and possibilities associated with electricity since well before we declared our independence from the British. In June 1752, Benjamin Franklin conducted his famous kite experiment in Philadelphia during a thunderstorm. With the help of his son William, he attached a wire to the top of his silk kite and a key on the other end. In the midst of a storm cloud, the kite captured an electrical current sending it to the key near the ground. Through his sensational experiment, he demonstrated the connection between lightning and electricity in a dramatic fashion.

Franklin’s kite experiment captured the imagination of his then fellow colonists and the broader scientific community alike. As he continued to study and experiment with electrical properties, he often presented his findings to the general public to their great amusement, employing parlor tricks to demonstrate his fantastic discoveries. However, his study of electricity resulted in more than just entertainment. One of his inventions, the lightning rod, redirected lightning to the ground rather than having it strike homes during thunderstorms. Benjamin Franklin’s invention still protects structures from damage today. He wanted to protect lives, and did not take out a patent for his invention for the common benefit.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Peter Roff Essay 18-C: The Meat Inspection Act and Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Peter Roff

Essay 18-C: The Meat Inspection Act and Founding Documents

Washington, D.C. – The founders believed they had presided over the creation not just of a new nation but a new nationality: tougher, simpler, perhaps more violent, and less refined than their European forebears. These new Americans would be animated by the challenge of conquering first an Empire, then a continent, imbued with a spirit of what 19th-century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson would refer to as “self-reliance.”

As virtuous as the exposés of muckrakers like Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell might seem to us looking backward, when they were published they added fuel to the progressive fires already undermining the values of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson’s use of the phrase “pursuit of happiness” – borrowed from British philosopher John Locke, who, in developing the idea of a social contract between the citizens and their government, referenced “life, liberty, and the pursuit of property” – is not meant to convey an image of joyful post-colonialists chasing pleasure throughout their new nation. It instead refers to a continuing state of social and civic good that it is the duty of every American to reinforce in our daily actions.

Broadly expressed, that can be taken to mean our national ideal is based on the idea of “looking out for the other guy” and their interests while chasing your own share of the American Dream. We are not so much “communitarian” as we are a community, something de Tocqueville expounded upon perceptively in his landmark study “Democracy in America.”

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Essay 18-B: Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and the Meat Inspection Act

The Declaration of Independence affirms that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This principle is often understood in terms of elections and representation, but it rests on a more fundamental requirement: the people must possess sufficient knowledge of the conditions under which they live to give meaningful consent. Where information is obscured, incomplete, or inaccessible, consent becomes attenuated—reduced to form rather than substance. In the early twentieth century, Upton Sinclair played a pivotal role in exposing conditions that were largely hidden from public view. While Sinclair’s work helped catalyze public demand for government action, the long-term preservation of self-rule required mechanisms—such as the notice-and-comment process—that transform public reaction into disciplined, informed consent.

At its core, self-government depends upon an informed citizenry. Individuals must be able to assess risks, evaluate the actions of institutions, and make choices—both political and economic—based on reasonably accurate information. Without such awareness, participation in markets and in governance becomes compromised. Consumers cannot make informed decisions, and voters cannot meaningfully judge the actions of those in power. In this sense, transparency is not merely a desirable feature of a free society; it is an essential condition for the exercise of liberty.

The rapid industrialization of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created new challenges for this principle. As production became more complex and geographically concentrated, the distance between producer and consumer widened. Goods were no longer made in small, visible settings, but in large, often opaque industrial facilities. This transformation brought significant economic benefits, but it also introduced a profound information asymmetry. Consumers, increasingly removed from the processes that produced the goods they purchased, had little ability to observe or evaluate the conditions under which those goods were made.

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Essay 18-A: Meat Inspection Act, Public Health, and the People

If you like hamburgers, I would not recommend Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle. Its appalling depiction of the early 20th-century Chicago meatpacking industry is enough to churn the stomach of even the most dedicated carnivore.

An avowed socialist, Sinclair’s motivation in writing it was to turn the public against a capitalist system that he felt oppressed the working man. He did not succeed in winning the public over to socialism, but his graphic prose still caught people’s attention. Mere months after The Jungle hit the presses, the U.S. Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act, the latter of which created the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

As Sinclair himself put it, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

If you read The Jungle in high school civics, it was likely presented as a triumph of the public interest. And it certainly was that. It shows that “We the People” can bring about significant changes just by making our voices heard. Public opinion helped spur quick and durable congressional action. Over a hundred years later, a visit to a modern meatpacking plant may not be anyone’s idea of a fun field trip, but it would (thankfully) prove a lot more boring.

Joerg Knipprath, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 17-C: Interstate Commerce, the Sherman Antitrust Act, and Founding Documents, Joerg Knipprath, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 17-C: Interstate Commerce, the Sherman Antitrust Act, and Founding Documents

Monopolies have long been viewed with suspicion under Anglo-American law. In the 1602 Case of Monopolies, the Court of Queen’s Bench declared void a monopoly grant by Elizabeth I for the importation of playing cards. The court reasoned that monopolies harmed individuals by preventing skilled tradesmen from pursuing their trade. In addition, they harmed the public because the monopolist would raise prices, yet have no incentive to increase or even maintain the quality of the goods. Not long thereafter, in 1624, Parliament passed the Statute of Monopolies, which broadly forbade the practice of issuing royal patents.

Americans also looked askance at monopolies for the reasons mentioned in the English case. Justice Stephen Field gave voice to this thinking in a powerful dissent in the Slaughterhouse Cases in 1873. Denouncing the Supreme Court’s failure to declare void a Louisiana grant of a slaughterhouse monopoly, Field asserted that, at the time of American independence, it was part of the fundamental law that “every free subject in the British empire was entitled to pursue his happiness by following any of the known established trades and occupations of the country,” which could not be restrained by government-created monopolies. That principle, he argued, was included in the Declaration of Independence among those inalienable rights which constituted liberty and the pursuit of happiness and “which are the gift of the Creator.” Field also invoked the original Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment, whose texts protected the privileges and immunities of citizens. He approvingly quoted another case that “it is one of the privileges of every American citizen to adopt and follow such lawful industrial pursuit, not injurious to the community, as he may see fit, … without being restricted by any of those unjust, oppressive, and odious monopolies or exclusive privileges which have been condemned by all free governments.”

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Colin Hanna Essay 17-B: Theodore Roosevelt and the Sherman Antitrust Act, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Colin Hanna

Essay 17-B: Theodore Roosevelt and the Sherman Antitrust Act

“I told McKinley it was a mistake to nominate that wild man [Theodore Roosevelt]” as Vice President, Senator Mark Hanna of Ohio said. “I told him what would happen if he should die. Now look. That damned cowboy is president of the United States.” Mark Hanna, sometimes referred to as McKinley’s Karl Rove, and my distant relative, was a champion of consolidating power in large corporations and “trusts.”

When Roosevelt gave his first message to Congress in December, 1901, the nation’s leading industrialists watched to see what the “damned cowboy” would say about their power over the government and the government’s power over them.

Roosevelt did not initially oppose the huge new corporate combinations. “Once the government actually knew what businesses were up to, he said, it could consider regulation or taxation to protect the public interest… In early January 1902, Minnesota sued to stop the Northern Securities Company from organizing on the grounds that such a combination violated Minnesota law… In February, Roosevelt’s attorney general told newspapers that the administration believed the formation of the Northern Securities Company violated the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act and that he would be filing a suit to keep it from organizing… Business leaders were aghast, not only because Roosevelt was going after a business combination but also because he had acted without consulting Wall Street. When J. P. Morgan complained that he had not been informed, Roosevelt coolly told him that that was the whole point. Morgan implored Roosevelt to ‘Send your man [the attorney general] to my man [one of his lawyers] and they can fix it up.’ The president declined. ‘We don’t want to fix it up,’ explained the attorney general. ‘We want to stop it.’”

Alex Tokarev, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 17-A: Interstate Commerce, the Sherman Antitrust Act, and Popular Consent, Alex Tokarev, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 17-A: Interstate Commerce, the Sherman Antitrust Act, and Popular Consent

“The essence of government is power,” noted James Madison, “and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”

No part of the U.S. Constitution has been abused more often and with more dire consequences than the Commerce Clause. Throughout history, the federal government has created business obstacles under pressure from its constituents, amassed unconstitutional powers, and ended up serving special interest groups instead of the people.

When they met in Philadelphia in 1787, the Founders sought to establish a delicate balance between effective national governance, the rights of the states in the union, and the personal freedoms of the American citizens. They needed federal institutions that had enough resources to provide for the common defense. They also wanted the national government to be limited enough so that it would not control the lives of the people, including their market interactions.

The subsequent success of the American economy is evidence that they got the balance right at the start. During America’s Progressive Era at the turn of the twentieth century, innovator-entrepreneurs like Rockefeller and Ford produced economic improvements, amassing great fortunes by serving their customers.

C.C. Borzilleri, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 16-C: Newspapers, an Informed Citizenry, and The Founding Documents, C.C. Borzilleri, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 16-C: Newspapers, an Informed Citizenry, and The Founding Documents

From the nation’s earliest days, Americans celebrated their free and prolific print culture. In establishing their new nation, British colonists and later citizens of the United States drew legitimacy and power from the thriving print industry. In the new nation, printers identified themselves at the center of a civilizing mission to keep the people informed. A Pittsburgh printer, Zadock Cramer, wrote with pride to Thomas Jefferson in 1808 that a gold-leaf Bible “is altogether a western manufactory…this shows what can be done in this our new country when the channel of industry is conducted to a proper point.”

Some leaders even identified the nation’s legitimacy and purpose in its ability to foster such a strong industry of media. For example, in the opening of Isaiah Thomas’s 1810The History of Printing in America, the printer and historian wrote the following:

“Among the first settlers of New England were not only pious but educated men. They emigrated from a country where the press had more license than in other parts of Europe, and they were acquainted with the usefulness of it. As soon as they had made those provisions that were necessary for their existence in this land, which was then a rude wilderness, their next objects were the establishment of schools and a printing press.”

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Gary Porter Essay 16-B: Ben Franklin, Newspapers, and an Informed Citizenry, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Gary Porter

Essay 16-B: Ben Franklin, Newspapers, and an Informed Citizenry

As the movie, The Great Awakening, makes clear, Ben Franklin’s newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, played a role in helping the Reverend George Whitefield publish and distribute his sermons, thus making a significant contribution to America’s first great revival. But newspapers made other contributions as well.

Americans were a very literate people and were voracious readers—John Adams once remarked that finding a citizen who could not read and write was exceedingly rare—so newspapers naturally flourished. America’s largest towns had the most newspapers: Philadelphia had 11 newspapers; New York City had 9 newspapers; and Boston had 7 newspapers.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) learned the printer’s trade during an apprenticeship in his older brother’s Boston print shop, from which he famously fled to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, and during a brief stint in London, Franklin worked for several different newspapers before returning to the colonies and purchasing the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729. It grew to become one of the leading newspapers in the colonies. He also published Poor Richard’s Almanack annually with many sayings about civic virtue. Franklin wrote numerous essays commenting on current events for readers to keep them informed.

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Essay 16-A The Newspapers, an Informed Citizenry, and Popular Consent

Newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger was thrown into prison without a trial in 1734. His crime? Printing harsh criticisms of William Cosby, the newly-appointed Governor of the New York and New Jersey colonies. Cosby accused Zenger of seditious libel and angrily threw the weight of his administration against him.

Zenger was not Cosby’s only critic. The governor had already made himself a pariah in the colonies. He was described as a vile ruler. Zenger and his financial backers wanted the governor put on a ship back to London. So did a good many other colonists.

While Zenger languished in jail without a trial for nearly a year, his wife Anna kept the New York Weekly Journal in print. Zenger finally got his day in court. It had become very apparent that the young publisher’s fate was of great importance to the colonies and the future American Republic.

Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, told the jurors: “The question before the court and you gentlemen of the jury is not of small or private concern. It is not the cause of a poor printer nor of New York alone, which you are now trying. No. It may in its consequence affect every freedman that lives under a British government on the main of America. It is the best cause. It is the cause of liberty,” and you will have “laid a noble foundation for securing it for ourselves and our posterity.”

90 in 90 2026, Dorothea Israel Wolfson, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 15-C: The Fifteenth Amendment, Black Male Suffrage, and Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Dorothea Israel Wolfson

Essay 15-C: The Fifteenth Amendment, Black Male Suffrage, and Founding Documents

It might seem surprising that the word “equal” appears only once, and in a very narrow way, in the original Constitution. The word appears in Article V addressing the amendment procedure, specifying that no amendment could be ratified that revoked the “equal” suffrage of the states in the Senate. Not only does the Constitution omit invoking the natural right of equality, which is central to the Declaration of Independence, but it also says nothing about the right to vote, which can be derived from the Declaration’s axiom that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The issue of voting rights was debated at the Constitutional Convention, where some delegates argued that there should be a property qualification attached to the right to vote. The thought was that laborers and the poor did not have a stake in society and thus could not be trusted to vote responsibly. Benjamin Franklin vehemently opposed property qualifications and instead argued for universal male suffrage. Franklin argued that the “common people” had proved their mettle in the Revolutionary War and should be rewarded with the right to vote. Ultimately, of course, the delegates did not impose any property qualifications for voting or office holding, leaving it up to the states to regulate the right to vote. Many states did impose property qualifications and limitations on the right to vote.

90 in 90 2026, Eric Sands, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 15-B: Frederick Douglass, the Fifteenth Amendment, and Black Male Suffrage, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Eric Sands

Essay 15-B: Frederick Douglass, the Fifteenth Amendment, and Black Male Suffrage

Frederick Douglass was born in February of 1818 and later chose the fourteenth of the month as his birthday since it was the last time he saw his mother. From an early age, Douglass recognized the correlation between literacy and freedom. This, alongside his innate intelligence, set him on the task of educating himself. He then met his future wife, Anna Murray, who helped him escape his enslaver and make his way to Bedford, Massachusetts, where he began involving himself in the abolitionist movement. Anti-slavery groups invited Douglass to make speeches in the North and West, and his fame as an orator increased rapidly. Given the power of these speeches, some audiences doubted that Douglass had been a slave. To prove his background, Douglass published The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass to silence his critics. To avoid being captured, Douglass spent time abroad in places like England, Ireland, and Scotland. Finally, abolitionists offered to purchase his freedom; he accepted, and he and his family relocated to Rochester, New York. In 1855, Douglass started publishing his own newspaper, The North Star, to advance the abolitionist cause. He was a great advocate for Black suffrage after their service in the Civil War. He pushed for Black citizenship and suffrage to give their consent.

Unlike abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, who denounced the Constitution as a pro-slavery document, Douglass believed it was the duty of every American to work within the confines of the Constitution and the political process. Douglass believed that slavery in the Constitution was like scaffolding: ugly but temporary. He challenged the country to turn America towards the Constitution’s framing in freedom and natural rights. The Constitution should serve as a beacon to advocate for all people. The Constitution, for Douglass, spoke in an abolitionist tongue, and the nation needed to fulfill this promise.

Mark Shubert, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Mark Shubert, Essay 15-A: The Fifteenth Amendment, Black Male Suffrage, and Consent, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 15-A: The Fifteenth Amendment, Black Male Suffrage, and Consent

The word republic comes from the Latin phrase res publica, which translates to “thing of the people.” In a republic, government exists for the people, and its authority depends on their consent. But this consent is not just an abstract idea — it must be expressed and recognized in practice. Citizens grant legitimacy to the government when they participate in it including voting in elections. Few moments in American history illustrate this principle more vividly than the extension of suffrage to Black men through the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, especially after their service and sacrifice during the Civil War. By granting Black men the right to vote, the United States recognized that defending the republic carried with it a rightful claim to political voice and citizenship.

Before the Civil War, Black Americans — whether enslaved or free — were largely excluded from the political community. In 1857, the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney declared that Black Americans were not citizens of the United States and therefore had no political rights the federal government was bound to protect. This ruling made clear that, despite claims of popular sovereignty, consent in the republic was reserved for a narrow portion of the population.

Joerg Knipprath, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 14-C: The Morrill Act Is Passed In 1862 And The Founding Documents, Joerg Knipprath, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 14-C: The Morrill Act Is Passed In 1862 And The Founding Documents

Years after the event, John Adams recounted his admission exam to Harvard College: “Mr. Mayhew, into whose Class We were to be admitted, presented me a Passage of English to translate into Latin. It was long, and casting my Eye over it, I found several Words the Latin for which did not occur to my memory. Thinking that I must translate it without a dictionary, I was in a great fright and expected to be turned by [rejected], an Event that I dreaded above all things.” Fortunately, Mayhew kindly permitted Adams to use a dictionary, and the young scholar was on his way. As admission to Harvard also required knowledge of classical Greek, Adams could read and write that language, too.

Adams’ experience was familiar to many leading figures of the American founding, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson. These languages were an integral part of the classical curriculum, which constituted the education of the American elite from academies through colleges. Classical education was civilizational, to inculcate values distilled from the intellectual patrimony bestowed by the ancients. It was the acquisition of practical wisdom, not of practical skills.

The emphasis on classical languages coincided with a fascination for the cultures from which they sprang. The influence of the ancient Greeks and Romans on the Americans of that time is obvious from the writings during the struggle for independence and the adoption of the Constitution. Americans saw in their society the incarnation of classical ideals in a new order for the ages; “novus ordo seclorum” is a phrase derived from a work by the Roman poet Virgil. The civic virtue fostered by this “proper” education was considered the foundation on which rested the republicanism that was at the core of the American experiment.

90 in 90 2026, Matt Van Hook, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 14-B: The Morrill Act Is Passed In 1862 And Justin S. Morrill, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Matt Van Hook

Essay 14-B: The Morrill Act Is Passed In 1862 And Justin S. Morrill

In Justin Smith Morrill, historian Coy Cross ends his biography with a simple truth: “If Justin Morrill had done nothing else, the Land-Grant College Act would have assured his place in history.”

With at least one land-grant institution in every state in the U.S. today, Morrill’s lasting legislative legacy launched educational opportunities for millions of students and invaluably advanced American agricultural and technical knowledge and leadership for over a century and a half. As the hero of this national deed, Justin Morrill exemplifies a distinctive virtue necessary for a thriving republic: sacrificial service aimed at creating opportunities for others.

Like Alexander Hamilton a few short generations before him, Justin Morrill had a natural affinity toward accounting and financial planning. His early business and commercial financial successes in New England could have led him to use his considerable talents and energy for a lifetime of private gain and personal philanthropy in his home state of Vermont. Instead, he chose a lifetime of public service, first serving in 1854 in the U.S. House of Representatives at age 44 for six terms, followed by 32 years as a U.S. senator until his death in 1898.

John Kitch, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog John Kitch, Essay 14-A: The Morrill Act Is Passed In 1862 And The People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 14-A: The Morrill Act Is Passed In 1862 And The People

John Adams, writing to delegates of the North Carolina Provincial Congress in 1776, forcefully argued that the best form of government is a republic, rooted in virtue. Such a government would provide its citizens with the greatest chance for happiness and the nation with the best hope for stability. Key to this project, Adams believed, was a well-educated population. He put it like this:

“Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.”

It was not until 1862, with the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, that Congress moved to fulfill the Adams vision. This law provided states with federal land, which states could then sell to found colleges dedicated to educating ordinary citizens. Initially, these institutions focused on agricultural and military training. Quickly, though, many of these new schools grew into full universities, where studies focused on the liberal arts and business were just as important as those aimed at farming and ranching.

90 in 90 2026, Adam Carrington, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 13-C: The Homestead Act And The Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Adam Carrington

Essay 13-C: The Homestead Act And The Founding Documents

President Abraham Lincoln once said, “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” We readily can see those political feelings play out in his “House Divided” speech and the “Gettysburg Address.” Those political feelings shined forth in the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment.

However, we should not neglect a lesser-known action of our famous sixteenth president: signing into law the Homestead Act of 1862. The law took effect on January 1, 1863—also the first day that the Emancipation Proclamation was implemented.

As with the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s support for the Homestead Act flowed from the sentiments of the Declaration of Independence. The Homestead Act furthered two core principles of the Declaration: human liberty and human equality.

Libby Carty McNamee, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Libby Carty McNamee, Essay 13-A: The Homestead Act And The People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 13-B: The Homestead Act And Woman Settlers

Under the Homestead Act of 1862, any person age 21 or older who headed a household and filed for American citizenship was eligible to claim federal land. Although women seldom receive any recognition, many settlers were females. In fact, twelve to twenty percent of the homesteaders in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Utah were single women.

These gutsy unmarried ladies crossed the country to acquire up to 160 acres of federal land in their name. Advances in travel helped. By the early 1900s, a woman could board a train with her belongings and make the sojourn in a few days instead of months. Then a government land locator took her to locate her claim by wagon or Model T.

Alex Tokarev, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Alex Tokarev, Essay 13-A: The Homestead Act And The People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 13-A: The Homestead Act And The People

The Homestead Act of 1862 embodied the idea of popular consent in a republic, enabled 1.6 million individuals, their families, and descendants to pursue the American Dream, and can be used today to jump-start a new golden age for our country.

The principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed stands at the core of the American political identity. Rooted in Locke’s philosophy and articulated by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, it shaped our constitutional order. It has been the driving force behind many of the major political transformations in the United States.

The story of our country was written by people asserting the right to control their lives instead of sacrificing themselves in the name of visions and plans set by their masters and rulers. The refusal to bow down to aristocracies and other forms of elitism built a society free from the entrenched privileges that had oppressed the masses in the Old World for thousands of years. This heritage is still etched into the family farms and small towns that dot the American interior.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Gary Porter Essay 12-C: The Telegraph, the Railroad, and Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Gary Porter

Essay 12-C: The Telegraph, the Railroad, and Founding Documents

Invention of the telegraph in 1838 by Samuel F.B. Morse and completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, are typically hailed as technological breakthroughs that enabled America to become the world power it is today; and certainly the significance of these two events should not be underestimated, but they can also be seen as simply incremental steps in man’s innate quest to improve our shared society.

For millennia, the ability to communicate over distance was limited to carrying written or printed words from sender to receiver. Military flag systems and trumpet and drum calls helped when speed of communication was urgent, but their “vocabulary” was limited and their range equally so.

In today’s environment of instant communications, limited only, and literally, by the speed of light, it is difficult to imagine the communications world of even 250 years ago, where a letter, at its fastest, might have taken three weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean to or from Great Britain, and could easily have taken twice as long –or have been lost at sea.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Andrew Langer, Blog Essay 12-B: Samuel Morse, the Telegraph, and Connecting the People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Andrew Langer

Essay 12-B: Samuel Morse, the Telegraph, and Connecting the People

The Declaration of Independence proclaims that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This enduring principle is often discussed in philosophical or political terms, but it rests on something far more practical: the ability of the people to communicate, to share information, and to act upon it. Consent is not meaningful if it is uninformed, delayed, or fragmented. It requires that citizens be aware of events, policies, and debates as they unfold. In this respect, the advancement of communication has always been essential to the vitality of republican government. Few individuals did more to expand that capacity in the United States than Samuel Morse.

At its core, self-government depends upon an informed and engaged citizenry. The people must be able to understand what their government is doing, to deliberate among themselves, and to respond in a timely manner. Without the ability to exchange ideas and information efficiently, the principle of consent becomes attenuated. It risks becoming little more than a formal mechanism—periodic elections—rather than an ongoing, dynamic process. Communication, therefore, is not merely a convenience; it is a foundational component of republican governance.

90 in 90 2026, James Clinger, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 12-A: The Telegraph and the Railroad Connecting the American People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, James C. Clinger

Essay 12-A: The Telegraph and the Railroad Connecting the American People

The telegraph message sent in 1844 by Samuel Morse from Baltimore to The Capitol building in Washington, DC, read simply, “What hath God wrought?” This was the first major demonstration of the ability of Morse’s invention to send and receive messages over long distances. The general question could also be applied to other significant technological developments of the nineteenth century. Two innovations, the telegraph and railroads, dramatically impacted government, industry, and the American people overall.

The telegraph and the steam engine-based railroads developed along parallel lines in their early years, but their advent had ripple effects throughout the country and throughout the world. Before steam and later diesel engines powered modern trains, wheeled carriages ran along metal rails, usually pulled by horses or mules. With the invention of the steam engine, trains could transport freight and passengers much further and faster than was even imaginable only a few years earlier. At first, the railroad industry was a relatively localized enterprise, with tracks that stretched only a bit further than the rails traveled by horse-drawn vehicles. But the nascent business grew and expanded its reach with the help of state government subsidies and joint ventures between corporations and state governments.

Adam Mossoff, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Adam Mossoff, Essay 11-C: The Rise of Mechanical Farming and the Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 11-C: The Rise of Mechanical Farming and the Founding Documents

Cyrus McCormick received a patent in 1834 for his invention of the first successful mechanical reaper. McCormick is justly famous for solving the age-old problem of increasing food production beyond the physical limits of manual labor. Yet, few today appreciate that he was also fulfilling the Founders’ vision of American innovation that they embedded into the structure of our government at the birth of our nation.

McCormick’s patented invention, as well as the commercial innovations he developed in selling his invention to farmers, led to a radical transformation in human society. For this reason, his reaper is one of the great inventive achievements of the Industrial Revolution. It exemplifies perfectly what the Framers of the Constitution intended when they explicitly granted Congress the unprecedented power to secure patents to inventors.

The Founders were political innovators who created a radical new system of government, and they were also innovators in innovation policy. The Copyright and Patent Clause in Article I, section 8 of the Constitution empowers Congress “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” This provision departed from the English Crown’s policy of awarding patents as royal monopoly privileges. In this constitutional clause, the Founders discarded royal whim and monopoly grants. In its place, they created a new innovation system governed by the rule of law, with Congress enacting patent laws to secure to inventors a property right in their inventions.

90 in 90 2026, James P. Pinkerton, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 11-B: Cyrus Mccormick and the Rise of Mechanical Farming, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, James P. Pinkerton

Essay 11-B: Cyrus Mccormick and the Rise of Mechanical Farming

We’ve all heard about the crisis of artificial intelligence and jobs—how AI is going to render millions unemployed. Yet we may not know about the employment crisis of American agriculture in the mid-19th century when mechanical harvesters sliced through the employment of farm laborers.

That wasn’t a crisis at all, it was progress! You see, working as a manual laborer on a farm, cutting crops with a scythe in the hot sun, was actually not such a good job.

So when mechanical reapers were mass-produced, beginning in the 1840s, the standard of living for Americans rose: Farming grew more efficient, and so farm workers migrated to towns and cities, where they found jobs in factories, even as they benefited from lower food prices.

In 1820, nearly 80 percent of American jobs were on the farm; by 1900, that percentage had fallen to 40 percent (today, it’s less than two percent). During those same eight decades, it is estimated that the real gross domestic product of the U.S. rose by more than 600 percent.

Brita Horn, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Brita Horn, Essay 11-A: The Rise of Mechanical Farming and the Consent of the People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 11-A: The Rise of Mechanical Farming and the Consent of the People

The American farmer of 1820 was not free in any meaningful sense. He owned his land. He answered to no landlord. He believed in self-governance with his whole heart. But from the moment the wheat ripened until the last stalk was cut, he was a prisoner of his own harvest. A strong man working without rest might cut two acres in a day. Every acre beyond that was lost. A family’s future rested entirely on the strength of his body and the mercy of the weather. There was no time left for anything else, not community, not civic life, and not the work of being a citizen. When Cyrus McCormick demonstrated his mechanical reaper in a Virginia wheat field in 1831, he did not just change how Americans farmed. He changed what it meant to be an American.

90 in 90 2026, Stephen Tootle, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 10-A: The People’s Right to Petition and Fight Against The Gag Rule, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Stephen Tootle

Essay 10-A: The People’s Right to Petition and Fight Against The Gag

John Quincy Adams cared deeply about the success of the United States and preserving the idea that men could govern themselves. Slavery posed a unique threat to America. Anti-slavery abolitionists used the constitutionally protected right of petition to advocate for an end to slavery. Once Adams joined the fight, pro-slavery forces attacked him, overstepped, and Adams emerged victorious. The fight against slavery would continue along the path forged by Adams at this critical juncture—in the open.

As the son of Founding Father and President John Adams, John Quincy Adams had been reading, thinking, and applying the principles of self-government for his entire life. This included long stints as a diplomat in Europe, shaping American diplomacy as Secretary of State under President Monroe. He also held elective office in the Massachusetts Senate and the US Senate before finally becoming the 6th President of the United States. But his finest moments were yet to come.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Scot Faulkner Essay 10-B: John Quincy Adams and the Fight Against The Gag Rule, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Scot Faulkner

Essay 10-B: John Quincy Adams and the Fight Against The Gag Rule

John Quincy Adams was America’s most impactful former President. His most important accomplishment was risking scorn and even death to defend free speech and constitutional liberties.

Adams was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1830, the only former President to serve in that chamber. He would win election to nine terms, serving from 1831 until his death in 1848.

After one reelection victory, Adams said that he must “bring about a day prophesied when slavery and war shall be banished from the face of the Earth”.

As the abolitionist movement grew, the American Anti-Slavery Society filed over 1,000 petitions, with 130,000 signatures, focused on abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia since it was under federal jurisdiction. In 1836, in response to Adams’s consistent presentation of these citizen petitions, Southern Democrats imposed a Gag Rule that immediately tabled any petitions about slavery.

William Allen, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog William Allen, Essay 10-C: The Fight Against The Gag Rule And The Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 10-C: The Fight Against The Gag Rule And The Founding

The question that has been posed seeks an explanation of how John Quincy Adams’s fight to overturn the “Gag Rule” in Congress relates to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The nature of consent lies at the bottom of both the Declaration and the Constitution. We typically turn to the ratification of the Constitution to identify the moment of consent or even the “social contract” itself. I submit, however, that if we return to the initial formulations of the Declaration, we will discover good reasons to revise our typical approach. Let us begin, therefore, by rereading the key opening passages of the Declaration.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Troy Kickler, Ph.D. Essay 9-C: The Seneca Falls Convention And Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Troy Kickler PhD

Essay 9-C: The Seneca Falls Convention And Founding Documents

At Seneca Falls, New York, a convention of men and women invoked the spirit of American reform.

Many Revolutionary Patriots, such as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, called for the observance of their “unalienable Rights.” The founders of the United States and later the framers of the Constitution excluded women from the language of the Revolution. Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, the second president of the United States, called for women to have a representative voice in the new government.

It was in this age that the concept of republican motherhood matured fully. A republic, it was argued, depended on the rule of virtuous leaders. The mothers of the new republic were charged with rearing a moral citizenry and producing virtuous leaders. The republic depended not only on republican motherhood. In this limited capacity, women still acquired, albeit indirectly, a political role, for they trained virtuous leaders who ensured the success of the republic.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Janine Turner Essay 9-B: Belva Lockwood and the Seneca Falls Convention, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Janine Turner

Essay 9-B: Belva Lockwood: Historic Suﬀragette, Heroine and Humanitarian

You’ve heard the names: Susan B Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Victoria Woodhull, Amelia Bloomer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The founding mothers of the suﬀragette movement, yes? Yes. But, there were more. Have you ever heard of Belva Lockwood? She was a bit younger than most of her contemporary founding mothers but certainly not any less mature and successful. Belva Lockwood’s legacy, however, was broader in scope. She championed not only women, but humanity in general.

The true beginning of the American suﬀragette movement was thrust into the American psyche in March of 1776, by none other than our nation’s original, most revered founding mother, Abigail Adams. Her demand to, “Remember the Ladies,” was such a novel concept at the time that it literally left her husband, John Adams, and his band of revolutionaries, speechless, aghast.

90 in 90 2026, Heather Yates, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 9-A: Women’s Consent and the Seneca Falls Convention, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Heather Yates

Essay 9-A: Women’s Consent and the Seneca Falls Convention

“Resolved…it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means.” These words were issued at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, the foundational event for the American women’s suffrage movement. The gathering was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott on July 19-20, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York. The organizers were motivated to make the public aware of the broader inequalities women faced in American society. One of the most important features at the convention was the drafting of the Declaration of Sentiments, a keystone document of the women’s movement.

At the center of the women’s suffrage campaign was the principle of citizenship. The principle was anchored in the premise of gendered equality and equal abilities. By not recognizing women’s legal right to engage in political processes, the state denied half the population the ability to consent to be governed. Being denied the legal ability to vote, women were rendered invisible to the state and thus denied the protections of the state that are extended to recognized citizens. These grievances, it was argued, made women “civilly dead.”

90 in 90 2026, Jon D. Schaff, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 8-C: Universal Male Suffrage and Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jon D. Schaff

Essay 8-C: Universal Male Suffrage and Founding Documents

The Declaration of Independence notably expresses as a “self-evident” truth “that all men are created equal” and that governments derive “their just powers from consent of the governed.” In the decades that followed the founding of the United States, there would be much thought and debate dedicated to figuring out what exactly “created equal” and “consent of the governed” mean. There was certainly some notion that these commitments to equality and consent should allow for broad participation in political decision-making.

To see how striking this devotion was, remember the world of 1776. Almost nowhere did ordinary people vote. Even Great Britain—often considered one of the freest nations of the time—restricted suffrage so tightly that only about five percent of adults could vote and only around fifteen percent of adult males. Property qualifications for voting ensured that most Britons had no political voice. Yet Britain was still among the most democratic places on earth.

90 in 90 2026, Edward Lee, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 8-B: Andrew Jackson and Universal Male Suffrage In The Early 1800s, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Edward Lee

Essay 8-B: Andrew Jackson and Universal Male Suffrage In The Early 1800s

Reflecting on the 1829 inauguration of the first president to not come from either Virginia or Massachusetts, Washingtonian Margaret Bayard Smith observed, “It was the People’s day, the People’s President, and the People would rule.” Andrew Jackson, son of the Carolina frontier, shaped by his own brutal adolescent experiences during the American Revolution, would create the dynasty of the common man (and woman). Power would shift from the hands of the well-born (John and John Quincy Adams) and well-educated (Thomas Jefferson and James Madison) and find refuge in the rough hands of a ferocious warrior, a violent man overflowing with passion and a vision for an executive branch controlled by “the People,” spreading opportunity and wealth to previously excluded Americans.

Accompanying the new president, grieving for his beloved Rachel, to the nation’s capital steps in March 1829, were men and women who were not shaped by genealogy, education, or inherited wealth. As the sun peeked out that March day, it became apparent to the common men and women of America that it was a new age. Jackson, the Hero of New Orleans, a battle fought in 1815 after the Treaty of Ghent had formally ended the War of 1812, confirmed in his inaugural address that authority was now reallocated. A new dynasty of the common man and woman was unveiled that chilly March day. Its architect was a rough Carolinian, a hero who imprinted his name and style on an era. Government would now be controlled by people like Andrew Jackson.

Joerg Knipprath, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 8-A: The Spread Of Universal Male Suffrage In The Early 1800s, Joerg Knipprath, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 8-A: The Spread Of Universal Male Suffrage In The Early 1800s

Rhode Island, in 1842, was the venue of a skirmish grandiosely called the Dorr War, after Thomas Dorr [Door], the leader of the ultimately losing side. That skirmish, in turn, was rooted in the broader political struggle playing out in the United States between adherents to the founding generation’s republicanism and the increasingly emboldened “common people” embracing the ideas and shibboleths [Shi-buh-leth] of Jacksonian Democracy.

Although the Constitution itself is silent on the point, most states in the founding decades required voters to possess a freehold estate in land, or in a few more democratic-minded states, to meet a surrogate standard based on otherwise taxable personal property. The requirement rested on classic republican doctrine generally endorsed by Americans at the time. The broad propertied middle and upper classes were the main sources of public revenue. Thus, they could safely be trusted to act wisely due to their keener interest in the overall effects of public policies and to act more independently because their property insulated them from vote-buying schemes and similar base enticements. Those with “skin in the game” would decide based on reflection and reason, not enthusiasm and passion.

90 in 90 2026, Will Morrisey, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 7-C: The Northwest Ordinance and Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Will Morrisey

Essay 7-C: The Northwest Ordinance and Founding Documents

If English John Locke was the philosophic father of the Declaration of Independence, France’s Baron de Montesquieu was the philosophic founder of the United States Constitution—America’s first ally in peace, even as French soldiers and sailors served as our first allies in the Revolutionary War.

In his 1714 treatise, The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu posed a question to his contemporaries. Democratic regimes could arise in ancient Greece because the small city-states could assemble the few thousand citizens in one place to make decisions. Since large modern states cannot do that, how can the people be heard?

He answered: with such institutions as representation and separated, balanced powers, modern regimes could become sustainable democratic republics. Seven decades later, Publius would make that argument in The Federalist, defending the Constitution during the struggle for its ratification. America, he wrote, could be a new kind of republic, an “extended” republic, large enough to defend itself against the powerful monarchic empires surrounding it while still enabling the sovereign people to govern themselves.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Daniel Cotter Essay 7-B: Manasseh Cutler and the Northwest Ordinance, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Daniel Cotter

Essay 7-B: Manasseh Cutler and the Northwest Ordinance

In the years following the Revolutionary War, the new United States faced extraordinary challenges. The nation was burdened by war debt, unsettled territorial claims, conflicts with Indigenous peoples, and concerns that ungoverned western expansion might lead to disorder. As thousands of settlers looked westward beyond the Appalachian Mountains, the American experiment depended on a framework that could establish legal order, encourage economic growth, honor republican ideals, and prevent the emergence of colonial-style exploitation. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 emerged as one of the most important legislative achievements of the era, shaping the future development of the United States more than perhaps any law except the Constitution itself. Central to its crafting, advocacy, and ultimate success was Manasseh Cutler, a clergyman, scholar, and statesman.

The Northwest Ordinance directly reflected the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration proclaimed that legitimate government derives from the consent of the governed and exists to secure natural rights. However, turning those ideals into functioning institutions required thoughtful design. In the territory north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River, an immense region that would eventually become Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota, the United States faced the task of building new communities aligned with self-government rather than replicating systems of imposed colonial rule.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Scot Faulkner Essay 7-A: The Northwest Ordinance And Settlers in The West, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Scot Faulkner

Essay 7-A: The Northwest Ordinance And Settlers in The West

America’s westward expansion reshaped the way the world worked. Never before had a national government strategically outlined how settlement would evolve, how new lands would be governed, and how settler rights would be protected.

The movement of people into unsettled or unorganized land was historically shaped by conquest and occupation. Settler rights and representation were at best an afterthought. Rome and other empires granted land to soldiers and political favorites. England and the other European powers granted specific charters for colonies and trading zones. In all cases, these expansions were tied to existing centralized powers and their agendas.

90 in 90 2026, Christopher C. Burkett, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 6-C - The Ratification Debate Over The Constitution and Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Christopher C. Burkett

Essay 6-C: The Ratification Debate Over The Constitution and Founding Documents

Americans have done many political things in new and unique ways from their very beginning. When establishing independence, they decided that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” After declaring independence, most of the original states decided that written Declarations of Rights – clearly delineating the legitimate powers and limits of governments – were essential characteristics of republican constitutions. When framing the new Federal Constitution in 1787, they decided this should be done by delegates selected by the legislatures of each state. But perhaps most unique of all was the manner in which the new Federal Constitution was to be ratified. It was to be ratified in a manner that was not only federal (that is, on a state-by-state basis) but also involving a unique democratic quality.

90 in 90 2026, Tom Hand, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 6-B - James Madison, George Mason, and the Ratification Debate Over The Constitution, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Tom Hand

Essay 6-B: James Madison, George Mason, and the Ratification Debate Over The Constitution

In the summer of 1787, leaders from across the United States gathered in Philadelphia for the stated purpose of fixing flaws in the Articles of Confederation. But in the minds of nationalists like James Madison, fixing issues with the Articles was not the answer. What was needed was an entirely new form of government that could allow the fledgling nation to grow. This convention, known at the time as the Philadelphia or Federal Convention was largely organized by Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the government created at that gathering bore Madison’s indelible stamp.

To give the gathering the credibility it needed to make significant changes to the government, Madison and Hamilton recognized the importance of having both Benjamin Franklin and George Washington in attendance, thus implying their tacit approval. Franklin, despite his age (he was 81) and constant issues with gout, happily attended, telling his friend Benjamin Rush that the convention was “the most august and respectable assembly he was ever in in his life.” And, after much consideration and numerous letters and visits from Madison, Washington also agreed to attend. In a sign of the importance Madison placed on this convention, he assigned himself the task of taking detailed notes each day and refining them each night, leaving to posterity the most complete record of the convention.

90 in 90 2026, Randolph May, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Randolph May, Essay 6-A - The People and the Ratification Debate Over The Constitution, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 6-A: The People and the Ratification Debate Over The Constitution

In declaring the purposes of establishing a new government under the newly-drafted Constitution, the Preamble is elegant in its simplicity: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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 three words – “We the People” – at the beginning arguably are the most important of all the 4543 words contained in the Constitution signed in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. After a long, hot summer of debate, we can be sure that the Constitution’s first three words were not chosen casually. The Constitution’s framers were well aware of the importance of beginning the Preamble with “We the People.” Indeed, by the time the delegates met in Philadelphia, the phrase had already appeared in two state constitutions, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Tony Williams Essay 5-C - The Freedom Suits And Freedom Petitions and Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Tony Williams

Essay 5-C: The Freedom Suits And Freedom Petitions and Founding Documents

In the 1760s and 1770s, several enslaved people sued slaveholders in New England courts for their freedom. They also used the traditional British right of petition to ask colonial legislators for their freedom. Enslaved people pursued these “freedom suits” and “freedom petitions” by claiming the rights and liberties in American founding documents. Black Americans appealed to the same universal ideals of natural rights, liberty, and equality.

A young lawyer named John Adams observed that New England enslaved people were influenced by the rights talk that was so pervasive in print and conversations in the years before the start of the Revolutionary War. He noted, “The arguments in favour of their Liberty were much the same as have been urged since in Pamphlets and Newspapers, in Debates in Parliament &c. arising from the Rights of Mankind.” Initially, slaves used the courts to confront the institution of slavery and secure liberty, equality, and inalienable rights.

Lucas Morel, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Lucas Morel, Essay 5-B - Elizabeth Freeman (Mumbet) and the Freedom Suits And Freedom Petitions, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 5-B: Elizabeth Freeman (Mumbet) and the Freedom Suits And Freedom Petitions

The story of how an enslaved black woman known as “Mum Bett” (aka “Elizabeth Freeman”) won her freedom by suing in state court during the Revolutionary War illustrates personal courage and legal daring, while also showcasing a foundational principle of the Declaration of Independence—consent—which was an important feature of the Massachusetts Constitution.

Although no black Americans helped frame that constitution, the freedom lawsuits of Mum Bett and other enslaved black people in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts led not only to their individual manumission but also to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts between 1781 and 1783. Freeman can be considered a hero of consent because her liberation by lawsuit reinforced the idea that people should not be forced to work, let alone follow any laws, without gaining their permission first. Freeman’s lawsuit to reclaim her own authority and control over her life was no different than the revolutionary slogan, “No taxation without representation.” Both were the product of the American Revolution; both sought to prevent slavery from continuing in the American states once independence from England was achieved.

C.C. Borzilleri, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog C.C. Borzilleri, Essay 5-A - Enslaved People and the Freedom Suits and Freedom Petitions, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 5-A: Enslaved People and the Freedom Suits And Freedom Petitions

Freedom was the word on everyone’s lips in the eighteenth century, including the enslaved people throughout the rebelling colonies and new states formed during the American Revolution.

Establishing legal claims to freedom was a complicated process for enslaved persons bringing lawsuits and petitions to American colonial and early state legislatures. In areas where enslavement was legal, a suit or petition for freedom had to prove a condition and exception of unjust slavery within the larger system. In jurisdictions with bans on enslavement, claims to freedom depended in part on proving that an enslaved person was not a fugitive from a slaveholder in another jurisdiction. Nevertheless, taking legal action for the cause of freedom was a popular practice. Colonial and early state legislatures and courts received thousands of petitions and suits from individuals and groups of enslaved people hoping to leverage the system in their favor. Working within the bounds of legality, enslaved persons sought freedom using legal precedent and the same

Elizabeth Kaufer Busch, 90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Elizabeth Kaufer Busch, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 4-C: The Battles Of Lexington & Concord And Bunker Hill And Founding Documents

The Battles of Lexington and Concord responded to ideals and initiated a series of events that mark the true beginning of America’s national creed. While April 19, 1775, initiated the fighting of the Revolution, these events followed and were influenced by an even more radical intellectual revolution that began “in the Minds and Hearts of the People.” The battles marked a shift from allegiance to the King to allegiance to universal principles, including humans’ unalienable rights and their entitlement to consent-based constitutional government, ideals later articulated in the Declaration of Independence.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Kirk Higgins Essay 4-B: Captain John Parker and the Battles Of Lexington & Concord and Bunker Hill, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Kirk Higgins

Essay 4-B: Captain John Parker and the Battles Of Lexington & Concord and Bunker Hill

The morning of April 19, 1775, dawned clear and cool on Lexington Common, but by the end of the day, the sun would set over a scene of violence and death. That violence would prove to be the spark that ignited the American struggle for Independence.

The Common was a fitting place to start a revolution for self-government. The Common was, in part, where the militia trained. The militia system in New England was over a century old by 1775. Towns formed local militia companies to defend their communities. These were armed citizens, organized into companies who would set aside the tools of their daily lives to arm themselves and protect their neighbors in emergencies. Increasing tensions with British authorities in the 1760s and 1770s seemed to constitute just such a threat.

90 in 90 2026, Jay McConville, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 4-A: The Battles Of Lexington & Concord and Bunker Hill and the Minutemen, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, Jay McConville, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 4-A: The Battles Of Lexington & Concord and Bunker Hill and the Minutemen

On the night of April 18, 1775, British General Thomas Gage, the Commander-in-Chief in North America and the royal governor of Massachusetts, sent about 700 elite troops on a secret mission to seize colonial military stores at Concord and, if the opportunity presented itself, arrest rebellious colonial leaders, including Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Gage believed a single sharp blow would cripple what was clearly a growing rebellion. He was wrong. The real problem was not a few troublemakers. Gage and his superiors failed to realize that a series of British actions had destroyed the last remaining trust in royal government and convinced a critical mass of Americans that a systematic and deliberate plan was being executed against them by their own government to steal their rights and liberties. Britain had lost the consent of the governed.

90 in 90 2026, Jonathan Den Hartog, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 3-A: The Boston Tea Party and The People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jonathan Den Hartog

Essay 3-A: The Boston Tea Party and The People

Imagine yourself on Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. It’s the evening of December 16, 1773—dark and undoubtedly cold. Three ships rest gently at the wharf, each with a cargo of a contested good—East India Company tea. From the darkness emerges a company of men, just over one hundred, with faces darkened and dressed like Native Americans. They proceed to board the ships, carry more than three hundred casks of tea onto the deck, break them open, and toss the tea into Boston Harbor. You’ve just witnessed the Boston Tea Party—although it didn’t get that name until the nineteenth century. The Tea Party matters both as a statement of the lack of popular consent to taxation and as an action that would thrust the question of consent to the foreground for all American colonists.

90 in 90 2026, Elizabeth Amato, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 3-C: The Boston Tea Party and Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Elizabeth Amato

Essay 3-C: The Boston Tea Party and Founding Documents

On December 16, 1773, men dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded three ships belonging to the East India Company and dumped its tea cargo into Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party exposed the fragility of British authority and forced colonists to confront whether law could command obedience without consent—a problem later answered by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
What precipitated the action was not a tax increase, but a tax break. The colonists were upset, not because tea became more expensive, but because they had no say in the decision.

From Great Britain’s perspective, the Tea Act of 1773 was a critical part of a bailout for the East India Company, whose collapse would have endangered British economic and political interests. Parliament lowered the tax on tea in hopes of increasing American consumption and offsetting the Company’s losses, assuming that colonists would welcome a cheaper luxury good. Instead, the measure made the imperial logic unmistakable.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, James D. Best Essay 3-B: Samuel Adams and the Boston Tea Party, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, James D. Best

Essay 3-B: Samuel Adams and the Boston Tea Party

“Friends! Fellow Countrymen! We have petitioned. We have remonstrated. We have supplicated. We have prostrated ourselves before the throne of British majesty, and it avails us nothing! This meeting can do nothing more to save the country! Let every man now turn his face toward Griffin’s Wharf.”

I heard these words from Samuel Adams at the Old South Meeting House in Boston. I immediately leaped to my feet and joined the throng marching to Griffin’s Wharf. The destination of the rowdy mob was a cargo of tea owned by the British East India Company. We tossed the tea into the harbor in protest of taxation without representation.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Joseph Knippenberg Essay 2-C: The Stamp Act and Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Joseph Knippenberg

Essay 2-C: The Stamp Act and Founding Documents

In March 1765, faced with the challenge of paying for stationing roughly 10,000 soldiers in its American colonies after the end of the French and Indian War, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which imposed taxes of varying amounts on paper used for official documents, college diplomas, and newspapers, among other things, in the colonies.

Since it departed from the traditional means of raising revenue from the colonies—asking colonial legislatures for funding—the Act evoked a spirited response. In October 1765, the Stamp Act Congress convened in New York City. Representatives from nine colonies adopted a series of resolutions affirming and asserting “the most essential rights and liberties of the colonists.” Their central claim was that “it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted rights of Englishmen, that no taxes should be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.”

90 in 90 2026, Jason Stevens, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 2-B: Patrick Henry and The Stamp Act, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jason Stevens

Essay 2-B: Patrick Henry and The Stamp Act

Eleven years before the Declaration of Independence, twenty-two-year-old Thomas Jefferson stood at the lobby door of the House of Burgesses in the colonial capital of Williamsburg, Virginia, listening intently to what he later described as a “most bloody debate.” For two days in May, the Burgesses exploded in debate over a series of controversial resolutions introduced by the young upstart Patrick Henry, condemning the 1765 Stamp Act and demanding its immediate repeal. More than half a century later, after he had witnessed all the great orators of his day, Jefferson reflected on hearing “the splendid display of Mr. Henry’s talents as a popular orator” during that furious debate. “They were great indeed; such as I have never heard from any other man,” Jefferson said . “He appeared to me to speak as Homer wrote.”

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Scot Faulkner Essay 2-A: The Stamp Act and The People, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Scot Faulkner

Essay 2-A: The Stamp Act and The People

America has always been a nation of communities. Its pattern of settlement, through Royal Charters, gave wide latitude for establishing local governance. Because the colonies were over 3,500 miles from London, detailed oversight of the colonies was impossible. By necessity, and by desire, colonists embraced local authority over distant rule from England.

This pattern of delegating powers to American-based local governments was promoted by King George II (reigned 1727-1760). He supported a “hands-off” approach to Colonial Administration, allowing local governments to establish and enforce their own laws and establish and collect their own revenue, overseen by passive Royal Governors.

90 in 90 2026, Will Morrisey, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog Essay 1-C The Declaration of Independence, the Lockean idea and the Founding Documents, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Will Morrisey

Essay 1-C The Declaration of Independence, The Lockean Idea and The Founding Documents

As a declaration, the Declaration of Independence argues a claim before the international ‘court of public opinion,’ showing respect for “the opinions of mankind.” To do so effectively, it must appeal to some human capacity that transcends borders, languages, customs, and even religions. Only the natural human capacity to reason can meet that requirement. That is why the independence the Declaration declares is a logical syllogism.

A logical syllogism consists of one or more ‘major’ premises – for example, “All men are mortal.” A ‘minor’ premise or set of premises – “Socrates is a man” – follows. To be reasonable, the conclusion of the syllogism must ‘follow from’ the premises: “Therefore, Socrates is mortal.” No part of the syllogism must contradict any other part.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Eric Wise Essay 1-B: The Declaration of Independence, the Lockean Idea and Reverend Thomas Hooker, 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Eric Wise

Essay 1-B: The Declaration of Independence, the Lockean Idea and Reverend Thomas Hooker

As the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence approaches, it is fitting to reflect on beginnings, in particular the beginnings of this beginning. The story of liberty in America does not begin with the Declaration of Independence. Rather, one may fairly say the Declaration is an end of a beginning.

So basic to the American story are the ideas of the Declaration that their emergence from the committee of Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston expresses an ethos that by 1776 colonial Americans had already made second nature. The rest of the world needed to hear—”a decent respect for the opinions of mankind,” as the Declaration put it—what Americans had long known by heart.

90 in 90 2026, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, The Honorable Bob Pence Essay 1-A The Declaration of Independence and the Lockean idea rule/popular sovereignty and government by consent. Examine the popular support for American independence., 2026 - Consent of the Governed, 15. Consent of the Governed, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, The Honorable Bob Pence

Essay 1-A The Declaration of Independence and the Lockean Idea of Government By Consent

For the student of government and of the nature and characteristics of the various forms of constitution, almost the first question to consider is in regard to the state: what exactly is the essential nature of the state?” Thus, Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.E) begins Book III of his Politics. He continues: “It is clear then that those constitutions that aim at the common advantage are in effect rightly framed in accordance with absolute justice, while those that aim at the rulers’ own advantage only are faulty, and are all of them deviations from the right constitutions; for they have an element of despotism, whereas a city is a partnership of free men.” (Pol. III, iv, 7).“Deviations from the constitutions mentioned are tyranny corresponding to kingship, oligarchy to aristocracy, and democracy to constitutional government; for tyranny is monarchy ruling in the interest of the monarch but none of govern for the profit of the community” (Pol. III, v, 4). Aristotle therein refers to a royal government as “one of the correct constitutions.” He writes that all kingships are not equal: one may be a military general, perhaps hereditary, and others elective (and there are variations/permutations under these classes of rulers). A separate “class of royal monarchy consists of the hereditary legal kingships over willing subjects in the heroic period. For, because the first of the line had been benefactors of the multitudes in the arts or in war, or through having drawn them together or provided them with land, these kings used to come to the throne with the consent of the subjects and hand it on to their successors by lineal descent . . . ; but later on. . .gradually the kings relinquished some of their powers and had others taken from them by the multitudes. . . .” (Pol. III, ix, 7-8, my emphasis)

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2026 Annual Study: The Consent of the Governed: Celebrating America’s 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

This year’s study focuses on the “consent of the governed” as a founding principle of American republican government. The consent of the governed is one of the main principles of the Declaration of Independence, which we are celebrating throughout 2026. Our online study on the “consent of the governed” focuses on monumental events in American […]

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Elizabeth Amato, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay. 103: General Survey Of The Subject (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 8), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Elizabeth Amato

Essay. 103: General Survey Of The Subject (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 8)

In the final chapter of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville says that he has one task left—to provide a summative judgment on how democracy, or the equality of conditions, will help or hinder “the lot of man.” In so doing, he provides a robust account of democratic greatness and offers cautious hope for the future of democracy.

Before giving his opinion, De Tocqueville hesitates. He says “I feel my sight becoming blurred and my reason wavering.” He is less confident about this final remaining task.

What prompts this circumspection? New democratic societies, De Tocqueville points out, are “only being born” and so “[t]ime has not yet fixed its form.” Here De Tocqueville revisits (and gently revises) a metaphor he used at the beginning of his book in which he compared newborns and nations. There he boasted that the best way to understand the habits, passions, and characteristics of a man’s maturity was to study him as a child. The whole man was “in the swaddling clothes of his cradle” (1.1.2). Likewise, nations always feel the effect of their origins. The problem that De Tocqueville admits here is that if the “whole” is contained in the beginning, then there’s no room for human freedom to play a role.

Philip Bunn, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay. 102: Continuation Of The Preceding Chapters (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 7), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Philip Bunn

Essay 102: Continuation Of The Preceding Chapters (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 7)

In Chapter 7 of Part 4 of the Second Volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville rounds out a thought he has been developing in preceding chapters. In Chapter 6, De Tocqueville has told us that democracies have to fear a particular kind of despotism. While the language of “despot” and “despotism” recalls the Caesars and oppressive tyrants, De Tocqueville says that “if despotism came to be established in the democratic nations of our day… it would be more extensive and milder, and it would degrade men without tormenting them” (662). In other words, in a democracy, the despotism most likely to emerge is one of a schoolmaster-like despot, exercising “tutelary power” over a mass of people “who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls” (663). The democratic spirit risks creating a mass of disconnected individuals, each pursuing petty pleasures, and in so doing opening the door for a “paternal power” that “seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood” (663).

William Duncan, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay. 101: What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 6), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, William Duncan

Essay 101: What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 6)

Alexis de Tocqueville is known as the most perceptive observer of the United States in the 19th Century, but at the end of volume two of Democracy in America, he demonstrates another, and perhaps even more remarkable, gift—foresight.

Specifically, while in the United States, De Tocqueville observed some tendencies that he thought could lead to a form of government that then seemed confined only to the past, despotism. Despotism is a loaded term. It refers to a government system where a single person or group exercises all power but usually indicates an arbitrary and oppressive system characterized by violence and repression.

De Tocqueville’s unique insight was that a form of despotism was possible even in democratic societies where people choose their own leaders.

In fact, ancient despotisms, like the Roman Empire, had natural limits on their power. Though a Caesar could exercise arbitrary power, the actual scope of the ruler’s power would be limited by differences in the groups of people he ruled and the wide scope of the territories they administered. They could make life miserable for some people or groups but others could exist without much direct interaction with the ruler.
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Robert Elder, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay. 100: Among Contemporary European Nations The Sovereign Power Is Increasing Although The Rulers Are Less Stable (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 5), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Robert Elder

Essay 100: Among Contemporary European Nations The Sovereign Power Is Increasing Although The Rulers Are Less Stable (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 5)

Nearly two centuries after he wrote it De Tocqueville’s conclusion about the democratizing states of Europe in his day— “each step they take toward equality brings them closer to despotism”—still crackles with provocation. De Tocqueville claimed that he was only observing the phenomenon he described, not passing judgment, and yet his description is tinged with the same apprehension that colors the rest of the second volume.

De Tocqueville described two seemingly contradictory trends that were transforming the nineteenth century world, or at least the United States and Europe. On the one hand, European monarchies and the aristocratic societies that supported them were being dismantled by the forces of equality and democracy rippling out from the Atlantic Revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century. The central ideal of this historical sea change, De Tocqueville argued, was equality. To achieve this end nations across the western hemisphere were busy reconfiguring their governments and societies in ways that made their citizens more alike in rights and responsibilities but which also and necessarily increased the centralized nature and power of the governments that secured this sameness. Instead of the archipelago of special rights, privileges, and administrative duties that characterized the aristocratic society of the eighteenth century, in which the local lord, the church, or the city council had authority over discrete geographies and narrow areas of life, but no one authority (even the monarch) could claim authority over all, in the new reality a centralized state took responsibility everywhere and over everything, reaching unmediated into the most mundane areas of each individual citizen’s life.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Andrew Bibby, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 99: A Few Special And Accidental Reasons Why A Democratic Nation Adopts Centralization Of Government Or Turns Away From It (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 4), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Andrew Bibby

Essay 99: A Few Special And Accidental Reasons Why A Democratic Nation Adopts Centralization Of Government Or Turns Away From It (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 4)

American federalism is often seen as one of the great innovations of American Constitution writing. It has often been observed that the United States system of decentralized federalism is the key to understanding American freedom. But federalism is not merely an institution, or a set of procedural power sharing agreements.

According to De Tocqueville, it is also a cultural phenomenon, a way of life. Federalism grew out of a complex interplay of factors, including history, accident, and the legislative genius of the American framers. American decentralized federalism is therefore both an object of political science (because it can be studied empirically) and political culture, because it involves the habits and mores of a democratic culture. It involves “thinking federal,” as the federalism scholar Daniel J. Elazar would say. In Part Four of Volume Two, De Tocqueville looks at the main threats to American federalism, both as an institution and as a way of life.

Randolph May, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 98: The Opinions Of Democratic Nations Are In Accord With Their Ideas, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 98: The Opinions Of Democratic Nations Are In Accord With Their Ideas, Leading Them To Centralize Political Power (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 3)

Perhaps more than anything else, De Tocqueville is remembered for his observation that early Americans were inclined to participate in many voluntary associations. In one of the most oft-quoted passages from Democracy in America, De Tocqueville reported that “Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations.” These include “not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds – religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive.”

For De Tocqueville – at least for the traveling reportorial De Tocqueville – this proclivity to engage in all manner of voluntary associational activity created an optimistic cast for the future of democracy in America. Not only would such “habits of the heart” satisfy what De Tocqueville considered to be an innate need of individuals to lead fulfilling lives, but they ought to reduce the need for the government to play as large a role in supporting the populace as would otherwise be the case.

90 in 90 2024, Edward Lee, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 97: The Ideas In Democratic Nations Have On Government Naturally Favor The Concentration Of Political Powers (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 2), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Edward Lee

Essay 97: The Ideas In Democratic Nations Have On Government Naturally Favor The Concentration Of Political Powers (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 2)

In 1831, twenty-six year old Alexis de Tocqueville found the United States to be a nation of 13,000,000 inhabitants, experiencing the early years of the Age of Jackson. As he surveyed the democratic character of America taking root in a land of considerable natural wealth, the young Frenchman reached several conclusions about democratic peoples and their government.

Coordination of power and authority should be exercised by competent, trustworthy, and confident leadership. De Tocqueville explains his belief that such efficiency will create an effective government “in which all the citizens resemble a single model and are directed by a single power” (640). The government will be lean and well-disciplined, with unity among its people. Slothful bureaucracy will be resisted in favor of responsive action.

90 in 90 2024, Benjamin Slomski, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 96: Equality Naturally Gives Men A Liking For Free Institutions (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 1), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Benjamin Slomski

Essay 96: Equality Naturally Gives Men A Liking For Free Institutions (Vol. 2 Pt. 4 Ch. 1)

Today’s chapter begins the last part of Democracy in America. To conclude, De Tocqueville will reflect on the practical effects that the doctrine of equality produces in human government. The chapter begins with a restatement of De Tocqueville’s assessment of the promises and dangers of equality: “Equality, which renders men independent of one another, makes them contract the habit and taste of following their will alone in their particular actions.” Under equal conditions, individuals are completely independent and become suspicious of all forms of authority. This fact of independence “suggests to them the idea and love of political freedom.” The natural result of equality is that people come to cherish political freedom on an instinctual level. If a random person from democratic society is placed in a state of nature outside government, he will first think of and favor a government that he can elect and control.

De Tocqueville is not entirely sanguine about the desire for political freedom. This love of independence, out of the many political effects of equality, “most frightens timid spirits, and one cannot say that they are absolutely wrong to be so.” These timid spirits are not absolutely wrong to be frightened because independence can lead to anarchy, which has worse results in democratic countries. De Tocqueville describes the process by which independence can result in anarchy:

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Paul Schwennesen 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 95: “What Marks Democratic Armies Weaker Than Other Armies At The Outset Of A Campaign And More Dangerous In Prolonged Warfare”, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Paul Schwennesen

Essay 95: “What Marks Democratic Armies Weaker Than Other Armies At The Outset Of A Campaign And More Dangerous In Prolonged Warfare”, “Discipline Democratic Armies” & “A Few Remarks On War In Democracies” (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Chs. 24-26)

Alexis de Tocqueville is most famous (in America anyway) for his observations on our democratic republic, and for good reason—he was especially gifted in observing the nuances of social evolution and those of the American experiment in particular. But America, per se, was not the center of his attention – rather, he was more interested in the evolution of Old-World culture as “democracy” dragged it from its traditional aristocratic past, and he looked to America as a kind of case study for aspects of what Europe might reasonably expect.

One subject upon which this evolution touched was that most venerable of European activities—Warfare. Carl von Clausewitz’s On War, published in 1832, preceded Democracy in America by only a few years and it touched on many of the same themes—in particular the changes Europe faced from the democratic revolutions springing from France, and the subsequent military imperialism of Napoleon Bonaparte.

James Robbins, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 94: “Why Democratic Nations Have A Natural Desire For Peace, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, James Robbins

Essay 94: “Why Democratic Nations Have A Natural Desire For Peace And Why Democratic Armies Naturally Seek War” & “Which Is The Most Warlike And Revolutionary Class In Democratic Armies” (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Chs. 22-23)

In Chapters 22 and 23 of Part 2 of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville addressed the proper role of military affairs in a democracy. In his time as today, the limits of military power in politics are an important concern. De Tocqueville was born during the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, a General who had overthrown the French First Republic and made himself Emperor. When De Tocqueville was still a child, he saw Napoleon’s downfall and the restoration of a constitutional monarchy in France. His experience helped shape his views on how a democracy can be undermined by the ambitions of men in uniform.

In Chapter 22, De Tocqueville noted that democracies are generally interested in living at peace with their neighbors. He wrote that “amongst civilized nations, the warlike passions will become more rare and less intense in proportion as social conditions shall be more equal.” Ideas such as this would later evolve into concepts like the democratic peace theory, i.e., since democracies seldom go to war with each other, a more democratic world will necessarily be more stable and peaceful.
However, since “war is nevertheless an occurrence to which all nations are subject,” even peaceful democratic nations “must hold themselves in readiness to repel aggression” with some form of standing military force. This force can pose problems for democratic governments.

Gary Wolfram, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 93: Why Great Revolutions Will Happen Less Often (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 21), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Gary Wolfram

Essay 93: Why Great Revolutions Will Happen Less Often (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 21)

As Rosenberg and Birdzell discuss in their book, How the West Grew Rich, over the course of centuries the economic structure of Western Europe gradually moved from a feudal system to what is essentially market capitalism. De Tocqueville’s observation of how economic and political systems are related leads him to the observation that a society that has made the transition to a market-based economy, where individuals are able to escape poverty and become wealthy, will be politically stable and that in the America of his time, which had made this transition, democracy will surely not be overthrown through a violent revolution.

De Tocqueville notes that “almost every revolution that has changed the shape of nations has been made to consolidate or destroy inequality.” When talking about inequality he is referring to a political and economic system where the impoverished masses do not have a mechanism to improve their economic condition without a revolution to overthrow the aristocracy.

It is interesting that the Civil War was in a sense a revolution that attempted to “consolidate inequality” of the black population. De Tocqueville notes that if there is a revolution in America it will be due to the inequality of blacks.

90 in 90 2024, James P. Pinkerton, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 92: The Trade Of Seeking Official Positions In Certain Democratic Nations (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 20), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, James P. Pinkerton

Essay 92: The Trade Of Seeking Official Positions In Certain Democratic Nations (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 20)

If the government is small, ambitious people, seeking economic opportunity, will tend to go where the action is: to the private sector. They will, in a phrase, follow the money. However, if the government is big, ambitious people are more likely to seek out careers in the public sector.

This point is made in the second volume of Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic work, Democracy in America. As with so many of De Tocqueville’s insights, it’s common sense, informed by first-hand observation—he spent nearly a year traveling through the U.S. in 1831-32—and armored further in erudition. As he wrote, “In the United States as soon as a man has acquired some education and pecuniary resources, he either endeavors to get rich by commerce or industry, or he buys land in the bush and turns pioneer.” The author notes a distinctly American characteristic: “All that he asks of the State is not to be disturbed in his toil, and to be secure of his earnings.” In other words, Don’t tread on me.

However, Europe was different. As De Tocqueville wrote of the ambitious European, “The first thing that occurs to him is to get some public employment.” In Europe, public employment didn’t just mean an income, it also meant power and privilege, the ability to lord it over others while perhaps wheedling a special favor out of some crowned head.

90 in 90 2024, Eric Sands, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 91: Why So Many Ambitious Men Exist In The United States But So Few Lofty Ambitions (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 19), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Eric Sands

Essay 91: Why So Many Ambitious Men Exist In The United States But So Few Lofty Ambitions (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 19)

In this section of Democracy in America, De Tocqueville elevates his analysis from just focusing on America to discussing democracy in the abstract. He begins by observing that most everyone in America aspires to be nothing more than middle class. “There are no Americans who do not show that they are devoured by the desire to rise, but one sees almost none of them who appears to nourish vast hopes or aim very high. All want constantly to acquire goods, reputation, power; few envision all these things on a grand scale.” In other words, Americans are highly ambitious people, but they do not have great ambitions. They work tirelessly to achieve little more than a comfortable self-preservation.

What causes this? De Tocqueville points out that democratic revolutions create great ambitions because during them nothing seems impossible. Ambitions will show themselves to be great so long as the revolution continues. The passions of revolutions will extend for several generations and keep ambitions elevated. But, as Lincoln pointed out in his famous Lyceum Address, the passions of revolutions fade with time. What replaces these passions is normalcy, which in democracy means ambition that is “ardent and continuous but cannot habitually aim very high…and life is ordinarily passed in eagerly coveting petty objects that one sees within one’s reach.” In short, what turns democrats away from great ambitions is the sheer amount of time and effort they put into improving their station in life. They “compel the soul to employ all its strength in doing mediocre things.” But the problem, as De Tocqueville points out, is that “one does not gradually enlarge one’s soul like one’s house.” In democracy, “ambition is therefore ardent and continuous, but it cannot habitually aim very high; and life is ordinarily passed in eagerly coveting petty objects that one sees within one’s reach.”

90 in 90 2024, Edward Lee, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 90: Honor In The United States And In Democratic Societies (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 18), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Edward Lee

Essay 90: Honor In The United States And In Democratic Societies (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 18)

During his nine month tour of America, De Tocqueville analyzed the virtue of honor and how it strengthens a democratic society. He observed, “honor…rules the will more than belief….” It towers over the mortal human, infusing the spirit with energy and purpose. He reminds us that all people are united by their quest for honor: “The human race feels permanent and general needs that have given birth to moral laws; all men have naturally attached in all places and all times the ideas of blame and of shame to the nonobservance of them.” The pursuit for honor evolves, but it remains a potent force which beckons constantly to all people as they strive “to do good.”

Focusing his attention on honor in the antebellum South during his 1831 visit, De Tocqueville attempts to dissect honor in the relationship between slave owners and enslaved people. Tensions and pressures are spewing worth as ethnic groups interact. He tells us, “to debauch a girl of color hardly harms the reputation of an American; to marry her dishonors him.” Omitted, unfortunately, is concern for the debauched female’s predicament but clearly defined is the preservation of the southern elite’s position of personal honor. His honor must always be maintained.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 89: How American Society Appears Both Agitated And Monotonous (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 17), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Kirk Higgins

Essay 89: How American Society Appears Both Agitated And Monotonous (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 17)

In his masterpiece, Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville interrogates the currents that shape American democratic society. One feature he investigates concerns how American society can simultaneously appear monotonous and agitated.

De Tocqueville describes the agitation as a constantly changing landscape of shifting laws, fortunes, and ideas. It is a society constantly in motion and seemingly unsettled, driven by a restless pursuit of something else, something more. This shifting is so constant that, in the long term, it becomes rather predictable and, in De Tocqueville’s words, boring.

It is freedom that leads to this predictable restlessness. And the shared engagement in this restlessness makes men alike in their habits, values, and actions.

This differs from an aristocratic society. Nothing changes in an aristocratic society grounded as it is on accidents of birth, not of individual choice. Life is dictated by tradition, inheritance, and family rather than opportunity or choice. However, all men in it are different, pursuing individual passions, interests, and ideas that have no material impact on society.

Heather Yates, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 88: Why The National Vanity Of The Americans Is More Restless And Quarrelsome Than That Of English (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 16), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Heather Yates

Essay 88: Why The National Vanity Of The Americans Is More Restless And Quarrelsome Than That Of English (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 16)

Alexis De Tocqueville’s mission to North America was to study the new case of American democracy. De Tocqueville analyzed the living standards and conditions of individuals with particular attention to their relationship to the new political state. In volume 2, part 3, chapter 16, De Tocqueville examined how an individual sense of pride, fashioned by the absence of a heredity-based aristocracy, formulated a new collective identity. Fundamentally, De Tocqueville observed that the Americans’ intense love for country is restless because it has a tendency to be forward, public, out loud, and indefatigable, which some international observers and allies find to be exhausting. While De Tocqueville’s observations might be interpreted as a criticism toward American hubris, he also explains why it reflects the exceptional nature of the American experience.

De Tocqueville’s analysis of a new American, yet restless, national identity contributes to the notion of American Exceptionalism. The idea asserts that the American experience is an exceptional one and that the American institutions and practices are distinctive, and in this case, are distinctive from England. What is purportedly unique about the American experience can be traced to its political and ideological origins. Very few nations have simultaneously invented themselves both politically (physical territory, borders, and institutions) and conceptually in the manner that the United States did. Furthermore, the exceptional American experience is also attached to notions of “newness” meaning the novel aspects of the lived experiences in the new America.

Erin Brooks-Hindman, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 87: The Serious Attitude Of Americans And Why It Often Does Not Prevent Them From Ill Considered Actions (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 15), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists

Essay 87: The Serious Attitude Of Americans And Why It Often Does Not Prevent Them From Ill Considered Actions (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 15)

This section of De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America highlights a unique paradox in how democratic peoples, generally, and Americans in particular, approach their daily economic and political lives. De Tocqueville makes two critical observations about our very American frenetic energy. First, he observes that Americans spend their days in business and politics more fervently than in an aristocratic or monarchial society. However, he secondarily notes that this fervency leads to quick and constant changes that may render us more foolish in our judgments than in these other political systems.

In the first sense, De Tocqueville argues that Americans are always busy but attentive, moving constantly from one serious task to another. Accordingly, our American approach to government and economics prioritizes productivity over frivolity and wasted time. Even today, many of our leisure activities mix satisfaction of our goals with enjoyment. In short, we combine our “side hustles” with our hobbies. De Tocqueville notes this saying: “[M]en who live in democratic countries do not prize the sorts of naïve, unruly, and coarse entertainments that the people give themselves over to in aristocracies […]; they must have something more productive and substantial in their pleasures, they want to mix satisfaction with their joy.” Democratic institutions inspire citizens to believe their involvement can improve their lives and country. Since citizen activity can impact policy and one’s financial well-being, Americans consider all their activities in this light. They choose how they spend their time and seek to maximize its productivity rather than waste it. De Tocqueville notes that they “want to mix satisfaction with their joy” because they know production comes with both good effects and pleasure. He argues here that people who live under democratic systems want to see productive, positive results from how they spend their time.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Troy Kickler, Ph.D. 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 86: Some Reflections On American Manners (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 14), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Troy Kickler

Essay 86: Some Reflections On American Manners (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 14)

Alexis de Tocqueville was a French aristocrat and historian who endeavored to understand more concerning the United States of America’s distinct culture. The Frenchman wrote Democracy in America, rather it was published, in 1835. Remaining true to his noble identity, he traveled to America and traveled its landscape and observed its sub-cultures. To him, the experience was intellectually inspiring yet challenging.

His beginning question, more or less, was the following: Are people born refined or taught to be so? It was a conundrum for him. Some people are born so wealthy that they don’t care for others with less economic means. Those not at the “foremost” of society yet have means of wealth continually strive to move up the social ladder. Therefore, their public manners often include nothing more than envy of the higher level and contempt of the lower class.

John Boehner, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 85: “How The Equality Of Social Conditions Helps To Maintain Good Morals In America”, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, John Boehner

Essay 85: “How The Equality Of Social Conditions Helps To Maintain Good Morals In America”, “How The American View The Equality Of Men And Women” & “How Quality Naturally Divides Americans Into A Multitude Of Small Private Societies” (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Chs. 11-13)

As a regular guy who once had a big job, I’m grateful to have this opportunity to once again take part in Constituting America’s 90-Day Study, with this year’s focus on Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. It was the honor of my life to serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives; a position that required me to serve simultaneously as my party’s leader and as leader of the institution itself. The direct and frequent election of our representation in the lower chamber makes it unique in that it allows for more engagement and responsiveness to the will of the electorate. It’s why we call it the People’s House, as our Founders believed it should have “an immediate dependence on, and intimate sympathy with, the people.”

In Volume 2, Part 3 of De Tocqueville’s book, morality and equality take center stage in Chapters 11 through 13. His foresight on the gradual journey for equality as it applied to women’s rights was profound, and was likely met with skepticism by the society of his time, but his prediction was based on the laws and how our Founders described our rights. As you’ll recall, the Founders wrote that every individual possessed fundamental rights, even before these rights were ever put into writing. They were described, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, as ‘unalienable’ and their existence was a ‘self-evident’ truth. This notion affirmed this equality De Tocqueville is discussing, as well as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While the societal times may not have shown us to be there yet, the truth was clear and thus, our gradual growth to reach equality would continue as long as we the people continued to support this grand experiment in democratic governance.

Dorothea Israel Wolfson, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, Essay 84: “Education Of Girls In The United States” & “How The Girl Can Be Seen Beneath The Features Of The Wife” (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Chs. 9 & 10), 14. De Tocqueville Study, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Dorothea Israel Wolfson

Essay 84: “Education Of Girls In The United States” & “How The Girl Can Be Seen Beneath The Features Of The Wife” (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Chs. 9 & 10)

Nearing the end of his brilliant study of American democracy, in which De Tocqueville has shared an account of the many strengths of American democracy and its national character, De Tocqueville tells his readers that if they want to know which factor most accounts for America’s success, for its “singular prosperity and growing force of this people, I would answer that it is to the superiority of its women.” De Tocqueville’s acknowledgment of women as the source of America’s strength may come as a surprise. How could women – who back in the 1830s were not considered citizens, and were not allowed to hold jobs, speak in public meetings, inherit property, or go to college, be the decisive factor explaining the flourishing of America?

De Tocqueville’s praise of American women needs to be considered within the context of his political science. De Tocqueville thought that America was such a successful democracy chiefly because of its unique ‘mores’ which he defines as “habits of the heart.” (275) Mores are the habits and practices that constitute American culture – how Americans think, feel, and interact not only with each other but with the rest of the world. The mores De Tocqueville observed in the US – its religiosity, innovation, strong marriages, enterprise, high levels of civic engagement, and overall freedom-loving disposition – served to stabilize America’s democratic polity. But where did these mores come from? De Tocqueville stressed that in the United States they are cultivated primarily by women: “There have never been free societies without mores, and…it is woman who makes these mores. Therefore, all that influences the condition of women, their habits, and their opinions has great political interest in my eyes.”

Jon D. Schaff, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 83: “How Democratic Institutions And Customs Tend To Raise The Cost And Shorten The Eleventh Of Leases”, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jon D. Schaff

Essay 83: “How Democratic Institutions And Customs Tend To Raise The Cost And Shorten The Eleventh Of Leases”, “Influence Of Democracy On Wages” & “Influence Of Democracy On The Family” (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Chs. 6, 7 & 8)

Alexis De Tocqueville came to America in the 1830s. At that point industrialism had already made significant progress in Europe. In the United States, industrialization would not really explode until after the Civil War in the 1860s. In the first two chapters considered here De Tocqueville seems to be anticipating American industrialization. De Tocqueville ponders how, as a democracy, America’s economy will develop differently than that of aristocratic Europe.

Economically, America was distinct from Europe in two important ways, according to Tocqueville. First, America had vast expanses of undeveloped land. Land was relatively easy to acquire. Also, America had rejected the aristocratic practice of primogeniture, the notion that all land is inherited by the eldest son. Put these two notions together, you get an America without enormous estates that pass undivided from one generation to the next. Any grand estates in America get divided amongst all children (at the least the males, in this era) and anyone seeking land can acquire it cheaply.

Jonathan Den Hartog, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 82: How Democracy Alters The Relations Between Master And Servant (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 5), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jonathan Den Hartog

Essay 82: How Democracy Alters The Relations Between Master And Servant (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 5)

De Tocqueville in this chapter continues his investigation of social customs and mores in America, but he uses his description to support his larger point about the contrast between aristocratic society and democratic society. His analysis here reinforces his on-going contention that democracy in America means much more than simply having large numbers of citizens voting. When it comes to employment and working for others, De Tocqueville asserts, “Democracy does not prevent these two classes [masters and servants] from existing; but it changes their spirit and modifies their relations.”

In describing the aristocratic view, De Tocqueville describes a society in which servants accept and endorse hierarchy of both authority and social standing. Because servants are permanently in a lower class, they cannot change their standing. They accept the commands of their master and often come to identify their interests with their master’s interests. They also accept a hierarchy amongst themselves. De Tocqueville observes, “Whoever occupies the last step in a hierarchy of valets is base indeed.” This reality has been captured for Americans by depictions of service in the period drama Downton Abbey. While all those in service acknowledge the superiority of the Grantham family, there exists “downstairs” among the servants a rigid hierarchy that extends from the Butler Mr. Carson all the way down to the newest footman. The youngest footman can dream of nothing more than over many years ascending within this household hierarchy.

Frank Garmon Jr, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 81: “How Customs Become Softer As Social Conditions Become More Equal”, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Frank Garmon Jr

Essay 81: “How Customs Become Softer As Social Conditions Become More Equal”, “How Democracy Makes The Normal Relations Between Americans Easier And Simples”, “Why Americans Are So Difficult To Offend At Home Yet So Easily Offended In Europe” & “Consequences Of The Three Preceding Chapters” (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Chs. 1-4)

One of the running themes throughout Democracy in America is De Tocqueville’s contention that the equality of conditions exerts a moderating influence on American culture. Compared to the various European powers with entrenched social hierarchies, vast wealth disparities, and undemocratic political systems, Americans appeared egalitarian in their social relations, material prosperity, and politics.

In these chapters De Tocqueville asks a series of questions: Why do customs become milder as conditions become more equal? Why are Americans excited when they encounter their fellow citizens when travelling overseas? Why are Americans so difficult to offend at home yet easily insulted abroad?

The first chapter builds upon his earlier arguments by proposing that as conditions become more equal, tastes and preferences become milder. Whereas a huge gulf existed between elite culture and peasant culture in nineteenth-century Europe (between ballet and boxing), Americans generally preferred simple and popular entertainment.

Melissa Matthes, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 80: “What Gives Almost All Americans A Preference For Industrial Occupations" & “How An Aristocracy May Emerge From Industry” (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Chs. 19-20), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Melissa Matthes

Essay 80: “What Gives Almost All Americans A Preference For Industrial Occupations” & “How An Aristocracy May Emerge From Industry” (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Chs. 19-20)

“It has been remarked several times that industrialists and men of commerce are possessed of an immoderate taste for material enjoyments, and commerce and industry have been blamed for that; I believe that here the effect has been taken for the cause.”

In this rather remarkable chapter, What Makes Almost All Americans Incline Toward Industrial Professions, Alexis de Tocqueville offers a sociology of homo economicus. Conditions of equality he asserts make men industrious. Equality makes him “active, enlightened, free, at ease, full of desires” and thus he begins to conceive “the taste for material enjoyments.” Industry and commerce, De Tocqueville insists, are democratic man’s natural inheritance. In addition, because man’s natural inclinations make him restless, appetitive, and fearful these qualities, too, turn him toward commerce and industry as well as its corollary – wealth accumulation.

Agriculture, on the other hand, is static and more often the purview of those who already have wealth and can tolerate the slow process of accumulation it provides, “one is enriched by it only little by little and with difficulty.” For De Tocqueville, this explains, as well, why aristocratic societies, the landed gentry, so to speak, are agrarian rather than industrial.

Jeff Scott, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 79: Why Americans Consider All Honest Occupations As Honorable (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 18), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jeff Scott

Essay 79: Why Americans Consider All Honest Occupations As Honorable (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 18)

Alexis de Tocqueville made detailed observations about the American work ethic in his travels through America. De Tocqueville noted during his time studying democracy in America, that rich people, maybe not all, found that work was owed by them to the general public. This is largely because heredity wealth wasn’t prevalent during the early American era. Today, heredity wealth is more prevalent in our society and has possibly altered the attitudes toward some “honest occupations” as being always honorable or worthwhile. However, Americans generally have kept the attitude of “giving back,” especially in times of emergencies, travesties, and holidays.

In Democracy in America, De Tocqueville brings to light how honest work is viewed in America compared to Europe. He notes the idea of profit and work being seen as separate identities in Europe, but openly connected in America. This may be obvious as to why for many readers, but as one looks to the beginnings of America, work, often farming, led to regular citizens being able to create wealth that was handed down from one generation to the next in Europe. It took Americans a few generations to create “old money.” Since many of our country’s early American founders and builders, from Stephen Girard to John D. Rockefeller to Henry Ford, among others, built their fortunes mostly from the ground up, it was a given that honest professions would be an accepted path to upward mobility in America.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Tony Williams 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 78: How In Ages Of Equality And Doubt It Is Important To Move The Goal Of Human Endeavor Beyond Immediate Concerns (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 17), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Tony Williams

Essay 78: How In Ages Of Equality And Doubt It Is Important To Move The Goal Of Human Endeavor Beyond Immediate Concerns (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 17)

In his 1796 Farewell Address resigning from the presidency after two terms, George Washington advised his fellow Americans to understand the link between religion, virtue, and self-government. Washington wrote, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

Washington continued to elaborate, explaining with a syllogism that, “It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” He reasoned, along with most other founders, that religion was the basis of virtue and morality, and that virtue and morality were necessary foundations of republican self-government. This is because republics needed citizens and leaders who practiced patriotic self-sacrifice, moderation, self-control, and the public good over private interest.

During the 1830s and 1840s, the Second Great Awakening was a time rife with religious revivalism and expansion of Protestant denominations focusing on a personal and emotional relationship with Christ. The Second Great Awakening had profound social effects as it promoted widespread moral and social reforms including abolitionism, temperance, prison reform, and women’s suffrage.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 77: How An Excessive Love Of Prosperity Can Harm That Very Prosperity (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 16), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, William Reddinger

Essay 77: How An Excessive Love Of Prosperity Can Harm That Very Prosperity (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 16)

In the preceding chapter, De Tocqueville argued that religion serves to moderate materialism in democratic societies. Here in chapter 16, he again explored the social utility of religious beliefs, but it almost seems that he wished to give a word of caution to the reader, as if to say that while democratic cultures have a natural drift toward materialism, material goods are still desirable and necessary.

We may summarize the argument of the chapter as follows. De Tocqueville explains that the ability to promote the goods of the body is closely connected to the health of the soul. Indeed, human beings differ from the lower animals in that we use our souls and our rational faculties to create material goods. We do not use only instinct, as with beasts. Moreover, with the soul, we multiply these enjoyments of the body. One can provide for the needs of the body in proportion as the soul is strong; as the soul is weakened, it is less able to provide for the needs of the body. In a healthy political community, the souls of citizens must remain strong, if only to put its force behind the necessary activity of providing for the needs of the body.

Zachary German, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 76: How Religious Belief Sometimes Diverts The Thoughts Of Americans Toward Spiritual Pleasures (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 15), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Zachary German

Essay 76: How Religious Belief Sometimes Diverts The Thoughts Of Americans Toward Spiritual Pleasures (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 15)

While generally positive, De Tocqueville’s analysis of the relationship between religion and democracy contains both complexity and tensions. He notes that religion will be shaped by a democratic society and that it must be so shaped in order to be sustainable and suitable for a democratic age. At the same time, he maintains that a democratic society should be shaped by religion in order to thrive. In Vol. 2, Pt. 2, Ch. 15 of Democracy in America, De Tocqueville outlines one sense in which he thinks that religious belief improves both the lives of democratic individuals and democratic societies.

Just two chapters earlier, De Tocqueville describes how intensely Americans pursue material well-being. On the one hand, they are so obsessed with material goods that one would think that they must believe that their earthly existence will never come to an end. On the other hand, they are in such haste to acquire and enjoy as many of those goods as possible that it appears as though they live constantly driven by a fear of imminent death. To illustrate this characteristic of Americans, De Tocqueville remarks, “In the United States, a man carefully builds a dwelling in which to pass his declining years, and he sells it while the roof is being laid.”

Joey Barretta, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 75: How In America The Taste For Physical Pleasures Is Combined With Love Of Freedom And Concern For Public Affairs (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 14), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Joey Barretta

Essay 75: How In America The Taste For Physical Pleasures Is Combined With Love Of Freedom And Concern For Public Affairs (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 14)

In Democracy in America, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville provides a comprehensive account of the nature of democracy based on observations made while in America. He examines the qualities of the American people that enable its free society to persist, and he describes what could lead to its decline. He argues that a movement toward democracy is inevitable in a commercial society, and this is borne out in the industrial growth that enabled the foundation of America. The development of industry enabled a greater diffusion of material goods among the mass of the people. In a democracy the people rule, and the institutions of government and manners of the people must both be ordered in a way that is conducive to a free society.

In this particular chapter, De Tocqueville describes how a free society is uniquely suited to long-term prosperity. While a monarchy ruled by a king with the elevation of the few initially enables material prosperity for a small group, De Tocqueville argues it would not endure. It is free societies which continue to prosper throughout history. He concludes that freedom and prosperity are intertwined, most particularly within democratic nations.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Wilfred M. McClay 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 74: Why Americans Are So Restless In The Midst Of Their Prosperity (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 13), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Wilfred M. McClay

Essay 74: Why Americans Are So Restless In The Midst Of Their Prosperity (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 13)

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a Frenchman, and one of the most important European social and political thinkers of the nineteenth century. Yet his most famous work was about America, which he visited for nine months in 1831, and then analyzed in his book Democracy in America (1835-40). He saw the United States as a pioneering nation moving in the front ranks of human history. In America, one could gaze upon “the image of democracy itself, of its penchants, its character, its prejudices, its passions”—and having so gazed, could perhaps take away lessons that would allow leaders in his own country to deal more intelligently and effectively with the democratic changes coming to Europe.

He was firmly convinced that the movement toward greater social equality—which is what he meant by the word “democracy”—represented an inescapable feature of the modern age. And he was in favor of it. There would be no going back. But he also saw some downsides to democracy and insisted on pointing them out. His chapter on “Why the Americans Show Themselves so Restive in the Midst of Their Well-Being” is a perfect illustration of his position.

Kevin Vance, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 73: Why Certain Americans Display An Exalted Form Of Spirituality (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 12), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Kevin Vance

Essay 73: Why Certain Americans Display An Exalted Form Of Spirituality (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 12)

De Tocqueville frequently draws attention to the ways in which American religion has conformed itself or been conformed to the habits of thinking and acting within the democratic social state. In general, one would expect American religion to support bourgeois virtues and to inoculate the people against fanaticism that would draw them too far away from the goods of this world. At the same time, a sharp-eyed observer of American religion could not help but be struck by the proliferation of small and zealous sects that constituted a contrast with the dominant religious ethos. In this chapter, De Tocqueville tries to make sense of these paradoxical phenomena.

In the preceding chapters, De Tocqueville considers the passion for material well-being, which he takes to be a general and even dominant passion among the American people. Despite the public advantages of this passion, De Tocqueville nevertheless expresses regret that it entirely absorbs Americans and distracts them from more noble or leisurely pursuits that are praiseworthy for a human being. In Chapter 12, De Tocqueville notes that the “taste for the infinite” is an instinct grounded in the “immovable foundation” of human nature. Though it is weakened, it has not been extinguished by the advent of the democratic social state. It is therefore quite understandable that as the general American population narrows its focus on material goods, some will rebel against that circumscription of human life. “There are moments of respite,” says De Tocqueville, “when their souls seem all at once to break the material bonds that restrain them and to escape impetuously toward heaven.”

Jon D. Schaff, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 72: “The Taste For Material Prosperity In America” & “Particular Effects Of The Love Of Physical Pleasures In Democratic Times” (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Chs. 10-11), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jon D. Schaff

Essay 72: “The Taste For Material Prosperity In America” & “Particular Effects Of The Love Of Physical Pleasures In Democratic Times” (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Chs. 10-11)

Starting roughly in the 17th century, Europe found itself moving from an agricultural economy to one based on trade, banks, and industry. Aristocratic society consisted of a few wealthy, aristocratic landowners and the many who worked the land. In the emerging commercial society, there were various avenues of access to a comfortable living. In short, we were starting to see the rise of the middle class. Wealth went from being based on family and landownership to something that one could gain from hard work, knowledge, and thrift.

Many people connect the rise of the middle class to the ascent of democracy. The essential notion is that if people of a non-aristocratic background could acquire wealth, which included paying taxes, they deserved some say in how government operates. Government was not the plaything of people who happened to come from the right family. Free markets and a budding commercial class promoted various democratic principles such as the rule of law, the notion of consent, the right to property, and basic liberties.

America was no different. If anything, America’s democratic ethos was more advanced than in Europe as aristocracy never really had a hold in America. We might think of Ben Franklin’s famous essay “The Way of Wealth” and his aphoristic advice regarding how to get ahead in the world. “A penny saved is a penny earned” and “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” put gaining material comfort at the heart of happiness. In the early 19th century Americans developed the idea of the “self-made man,” the notion that through hard work, sound habits, and frugality a person could rise from meager circumstances to relative success. The biographies of Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln illustrate this theory well.

Kevin Vance, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 71: How Americans Apply The Doctrine Of Self-Interest Properly Understood To Religious Matters (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 9), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Kevin Vance

Essay 71: How Americans Apply The Doctrine Of Self-Interest Properly Understood To Religious Matters (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 9)

De Tocqueville has already explained the danger of individualism in the democratic social state as well as the likelihood that these dangers are mitigated in America by the doctrine of self-interest well understood. Why does De Tocqueville now apply the doctrine of self-interest well understood to matters of religion? He has already emphasized the importance of religion in America, and the reader can easily begin to imagine the potential utility of religion in further protecting the people from individualism. De Tocqueville’s framing of this chapter suggests that his contemporaries often regarded religion as a support for duty, which they pitted against utility or interest, so it may have been important to show how religion and self-interest are harmonized. De Tocqueville also raises the possibility that a conventional understanding of self-interest sans religion would fail to sufficiently remind those tempted to timidity or motivated only by self-preservation that death is not the worst outcome.

In the first part of the chapter, De Tocqueville reconciles the doctrine of self-interest to religion, or, rather, he shows how Christianity has long reconciled itself to the doctrine as a means to bring the mass of people into its ranks. For the adherent, according to De Tocqueville, it would satisfy self-interest well understood to persevere in belief despite doubts, as “he will judge that it is wise to risk some of the goods of this world to preserve his rights to the immense inheritance that he has been promised in the other.”

John D. Wilsey, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 70: How Americans Counteract Individualism By The Doctrine Of Self-Interest Properly Understood (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 8), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, John D. Wilsey

Essay 70: How Americans Counteract Individualism By The Doctrine Of Self-Interest Properly Understood (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 8)

Virtue, Individualism, and Self Interest Rightly Understood

Much could be said about the prescience of Alexis De Tocqueville, reflected especially in his classic work, Democracy in America. De Tocqueville’s two volume work is not called the most insightful work on American political culture and institutions ever written by a foreigner for nothing. One of the key reasons why historians and political theorists have placed De Tocqueville’s Democracy in such a lofty position is that the book is more than just political science. De Tocqueville based his political insights on human nature itself.

De Tocqueville saw human nature as complex, yet as being broadly two-fold. On the one hand, persons were self-centered, prone to concentrating and abusing power, and greedy for material wealth. On the other hand, persons yearned for freedom, were disposed to direct their thoughts and actions toward virtue and the eternal world, innately religious, and communal. Persons were always looking to secure the common good.

Thus, De Tocqueville saw a conflict in human nature between the tendency toward individualism (which fed greed, isolation, and despotism) and the longing for virtue (which fed public spirit, religious faith, and freedom).

The founders of our republic are well-known for insisting on the indispensability of virtue for the success of a republic. Republics cannot survive if the citizenry lacks virtue, that is, moderation, courage, justice, and wisdom. When De Tocqueville came to America in 1831, he did not consider Americans a virtuous people. However, he did think they had mastered the art of channeling the vice of selfishness in a virtuous direction. He thus described Americans as having l’interêt bien entendu, or self interest rightly understood.

Robert John Burton, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 69: Connections Between Civil And Political Associations (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 7), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Robert John Burton

Essay 69: Connections Between Civil And Political Associations (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 7)

Imagine living in a community with the following problems: the senior living center needs $1 million for updates, Main Street needs to be revitalized, and debates need to be organized to elect a new mayor. Now imagine a community where these problems are solved, not by government, but by the voluntary association of citizens: the chamber of commerce organizes local business owners to invest in the senior living center, churches of various denominations hold a day of service to revitalize Main Street, and delegates from both political parties form a debate commission.

According to De Tocqueville, communities like this are not only good because they may be effective at addressing political and civic problems (in truth, one can imagine that such “free labor” comes in various degrees of quality). Far more important is that the citizens in such communities are, through association with their fellows, developing the skills and habits necessary for democracies to remain happy, prosperous, and free.

In considering chapter 7, it may be helpful to step back and recall one of the major questions De Tocqueville is asking and the thesis he proposes in response: Question 1: When all citizens are free and equal, how do they learn to self-govern in exercising liberty, putting aside their own good for the common good?

John Bicknell, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 68: Connection Between Associations And Newspapers (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 6), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, John Bicknell

Essay 68: Connection Between Associations And Newspapers (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 6)

Modern readers who turn to any number of media options other than newspapers might find De Tocqueville’s focus on print to be archaic. But his thesis remains valid today when applied to those alternative forms of news and information gathering.

“Only a newspaper can come to deposit the same thought in a thousand minds at the same moment,” he wrote in the 1830s.

He wrote at the very moment when newspapers were beginning to boom, and just before the revolution in communication and transportation that accompanied the invention of the telegraph and the spread of railroads.

De Tocqueville tied the importance of newspapers in developing and fostering associations to his work’s main focus, the centrality of civil society to American culture.

Where groups of ordinary but active citizens matter more than elites, their ability to communicate with each other – in dependable forums with regular publication and an agreed upon idiom – was essential.

For him, this was not simply a matter of politics – of being a critical voice in defending the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Newspapers, De Tocqueville asserted, “maintain civilization.”

In the classic construction, newspapers have never been very good at telling people what to think, but have been quite successful in telling people what to think about. “If there were no newspapers,” he wrote, “there would almost never be common action.”

90 in 90 2024, Robert E. Wright, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 67: The Use Americans Make For Public Associations In Civil Life (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 5), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Robert E. Wright

Essay 67: The Use Americans Make For Public Associations In Civil Life (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 5)

This is the part where De Tocqueville famously argued that Americans of all types voluntarily associated to carry on “commercial and industrial” enterprises and also a “thousand” other types of endeavors “religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small.” Over twenty years ago, I set out to put quantitative bones on his insight and concluded that he did not exaggerate.

A decade ago, I published in Corporation Nation detailed data regarding the formation of for-profit corporations in each of the U.S. states, territories, and District of Columbia from the formation of the nation until the outbreak of the Civil War. The “commercial and industrial” enterprises given legal life by special act of incorporation numbered over 23,000 and included banks, bridges, canals, ditch drainage companies, insurers, lumber companies, manufacturers, mining companies, railroads, telegraphs, tunnels, and turnpikes. Many thousands more chartered under general incorporation laws but could not be counted as comprehensively due to records destruction and bureaucratic barriers to access in states like New York and Michigan.

90 in 90 2024, Benjamin Slomski, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 66: How Americans Combat The Effects Of Individualism By Free Institutions (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 4), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Benjamin Slomski

Essay 66: How Americans Combat The Effects Of Individualism By Free Institutions (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 4)

De Tocqueville continues his discussion of the effects of equality. The great vice promoted by equality is individualism, the idea that one can withdraw from society and only tend to himself. Equality, when misunderstood, can make people think that they have no need of each other. De Tocqueville is offering a friendly warning so that democracy can be made to work. In this chapter, he points to an answer to the challenges posed by the doctrine of equality. It turns out that Americans have found a very American solution to a very American problem.

The danger is that individualism, the vice bred by equality, is the lifeblood of despotism. Individualism allows despotism to thrive because isolated individuals do not care what the government does as long as they can remain isolated. Despotism asks people to abstain from public life. The natural meaning of words becomes inverted in a despotism. The good citizen keeps to himself while bad citizens want to work together for the common good. De Tocqueville is not necessarily speaking of the classic despotism of a cruel tyrant, but is foreshadowing the possibility of a new, “soft” despotism that can develop in democracies. Democratic despotism is less obvious but more dangerous as all it requires is for citizens to ignore public affairs.

Jack Barlow, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 65: How Individualism Is Greater At The End Of A Democratic Revolution Than Any Other Period (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 3), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jack Barlow

Essay 65: How Individualism Is Greater At The End Of A Democratic Revolution Than Any Other Period (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 3)

De Tocqueville turns his sights to France in the third chapter. In this discussion, he notes that Americans had “the great advantage” of “being born equal instead of becoming so.” Because of this advantage, he thinks, the U.S. was able to escape some of the childhood diseases of the democratic condition. In particular, the American institutions that help to check the results of individualism are more likely to be successful than those in Europe.

Yet this chapter is not really written for or about Americans. It gives us an important clue, however, to the political science and political psychology that De Tocqueville is describing in the book. Classical political philosophy taught that each form of government – monarchy, aristocracy, and so on – created a distinct psychology in the citizens. The classical ideal was an aristocracy composed of liberally educated, moderate gentlemen who provided the solid base of virtuous citizens. In the middle ages, the ideal was the beneficent prince. De Tocqueville (along with J.S. Mill and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among many others) thought that the changes created by “equality of conditions” demanded a new psychology. “Individualism” is a key finding of this new psychology. The democratic citizen is hard working, practical, and concerned with the well being of himself and his family, but he lacks the concern for others born of aristocracy.

Jack Barlow, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 64: Individualism In Democratic Countries (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 2), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jack Barlow

Essay 64: Individualism In Democratic Countries (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 2)

Individualism is an idea that was not known in the English speaking world until Democracy in America, and De Tocqueville’s first translator is credited with the first use of the word in the English language. The new word is a part of the new politics ushered in by the spread of democracy, and is one ground of De Tocqueville’s claim that America demonstrates the need for a new science of politics. The society created by the first generations of Americans resulted in this entirely new social condition, and De Tocqueville sets out to document its nature and its progress.

The first thing he makes clear is that individualism is not selfishness, even though it looks like selfishness and can lead to selfishness. Selfishness is not confined to democratic society, in the way that individualism is, but is a vice that affects humans in general. A selfish person does not concern himself with society and its standards, but measures all social relations by his own desires. This can happen anywhere. Individualism comes from the structure of democracy. Aristocratic societies lead people to consider the needs and desires of those around them, but rarely think about humankind. Democracy leads people to care about mankind, but lose a sense of obligation to the particular people nearest them.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 63: Why Democratic Nations Display A More Passionate And Lasting Love For Equality Than For Freedom (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 1), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jonathan Yudelman

Essay 63: Why Democratic Nations Display A More Passionate And Lasting Love For Equality Than For Freedom (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 1)

“Why Democratic Peoples Show a More Ardent and more Lasting Love for Equality than for Freedom” is a short, vital chapter with a long title. It exposes the basic thought behind many of De Tocqueville’s various fears for the future of democracy. Democratic citizens have a great passion for both freedom and equality, De Tocqueville argues. But their love for equality threatens always to become exclusive and excessive, eclipsing and destroying freedom.

In making this argument, De Tocqueville implies that over the long-run democratic order is threatened far less by its failures to live up to democratic ideals, than by an excessive or one-sided attachment to one of those ideals. This was surely an unwelcome lesson for the French and American democrats of De Tocqueville’s day, and it’s scarcely likely to be more easily accepted today. Human beings generally have an understandable predisposition to resist the notion that their ideals could be a source of danger. If one fails in realizing one’s ideal, one can simply do better next time. But if one’s ideal is to blame, one must take on the more difficult and daunting work of changing direction.

Perfect equality together with perfect freedom “is the ideal toward which democratic peoples tend.” Perfect freedom and perfect equality, however, is logically possible only under the very unlikely circumstance that “all citizens concur in the government and each has an equal right to concur in it.” De Tocqueville means that the democratic ideal of perfect freedom and equality is contradicted by democratic experience; in reality, dispute characterizes democracy, a voting majority decides, and the rest must follow whether they like it or not. The only way of achieving true equality and perfect freedom would be the fundamental sameness of everyone. If, for instance, everyone voted the same way, then everyone would be politically equal and everyone would likewise be free to live just as they like.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Eric Wise 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 62: Parliamentary Eloquence In The United States (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Ch. 21), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Eric Wise

Essay 62: Parliamentary Eloquence In The United States (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Ch. 21)

Modes of political behavior run along the grooves of the larger habits of the social organism. Call it culture, if you will. De Tocqueville, in his chapter on political eloquence in the United States, compares the European aristocratic mode to the American democratic mode. Before we examine De Tocqueville’s discussion, two digressions.

Eloquence conventionally means “fluent or persuasive speaking” and is used today to indicate objective oratory talent. If now we say “The Congressman spoke eloquently” we tend to mean finely. But the origin of the word is the Latin “e” for out [as in “exit”] and “loqui” to speak. The French word is “éloquence”, and the English word is borrowed from this mother language. In French, “éloquence” can also mean raw loquacity and volubility. I take De Tocqueville’s meaning to be mainly the method of speaking out rather than the finer quality of it.

In the 1986 hit comedy “Back to School” the protagonist, Thornton Melon, fumbling for words to ask his professor — who at least sounds European — out on a date, says “Call me sometime when you have no class.” This joke is funny precisely because America, in its prohibition of titles of nobility, is, in more ways than one, a classless society.

Few things show this more clearly than a common American method of fraud, which is to assume the air of European class structure to gain some advantage. A fine illustration of this comes from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

Trevor Shelley, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 61: Characteristics Peculiar To Historians In Democratic Ages (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Ch. 20), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Trevor Shelley

Essay 61: Characteristics Peculiar To Historians In Democratic Ages (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Ch. 20)

Vol. II Part 1 Chapter 20: On Some Tendencies Particular to Historians in Democratic Centuries
The second volume of Democracy in America is divided into four parts, the first of which is devoted to the “Influence of Democracy on Intellectual Movement in the United States.” De Tocqueville is here interested in understanding the ways democracy shapes and forms the minds, and so the mental activities, of democratic peoples.

In chapter 20 he takes up the topics of historians, who are often intellectuals, and the writing of history (or historiography), an important exercise of the intellect, which influences how people perceive themselves and their times. There is no single or definitive account of the past; nor is the best method of historiography a settled matter. The way historians approach the facts of the past is itself affected by factors beyond the individual historian, including the social state and period in which they write. One of the most intellectually influential activities of the human mind is itself subject to influences outside the intellect. Thus, in this chapter De Tocqueville discusses the kinds of causes in history and the different practices in writing history, while he likewise provides guidance to historians about intellectual errors of grave social and psychological consequence. The chapter is therefore both descriptive and evaluative of the tendencies of historians in aristocratic and in democratic ages.

Matt Van Hook, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 60: “A Few Sources Of Poetry In Democratic Nations”, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Matt Van Hook

Essay 60: “A Few Sources Of Poetry In Democratic Nations”, “Why American Writers And Speakers Are Often Bombastic” & “A Few Remarks On The Theater Of Democratic Nations” (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Chs. 17-19)

Zachary German, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 59: “Why The Study Of Greek And Latin Literature Is Particularly Useful In Democratic Communities” & “How American Democracy Has Modified The English Language” (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Chs. 15-16), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Zachary German

Essay 59: “Why The Study Of Greek And Latin Literature Is Particularly Useful In Democratic Communities” & “How American Democracy Has Modified The English Language” (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Chs. 15-16)

What kind of education should people receive in a democratic society like the United States? Tocqueville has a characteristically nuanced answer to this question. One part of that answer reflects his understanding that Americans, as democratic citizens, are educated—or formed—by various sources beyond formal schooling. A second element derives from his willingness to tailor his prescriptions to the circumstances and character of a democratic people. A third piece exemplifies his commitment to pushing back against the regrettable tendencies of democratic life and thereby channeling it in salutary directions.

We might be initially surprised that, in Vol. 2, Pt. 1, Ch. 15 of Democracy in America, Tocqueville makes no mention of civics—education for citizenship—in his brief commentary on education in a democracy. That surprise will dissipate, though, if we remind ourselves that Tocqueville observes an array of sources of civic formation at work in the United States in the 1830s. Local political institutions, he says, “are to freedom what primary schools are to science,” habituating citizens to self-government; the institution of the jury is akin to “a school, free of charge and always open,” wherein jurors are the students; and political associations amount to “great schools, free of charge” for “all citizens” to learn about associational life. Religion fosters a sense of moral limits on democratic majorities, and Americans grow accustomed to a peaceful and orderly way of life. through their families In short, Tocqueville contends that all of these aspects of Americans’ lives contribute to an education for self-government.

Jack Fitzhenry, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 58: “How Literature Appears In Democratic Times” & “The Literature Industry” (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Chs. 13-14), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jack Fitzhenry

Essay 58: “How Literature Appears In Democratic Times” & “The Literature Industry” (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Chs. 13-14)

Literature hews to standards outside of the democratic logic. A canonical work does not attain that status by majority consent. Claims of merit do not require a reader’s consent to be authoritative. And the pursuit of sublimity, literature’s proper object, reveals that men have always been created unequal in their intellectual endowments.

Literary excellence is not inherently political, and its claims need not raise a direct challenge to democracy. Yet in a society that exalts equality and promotes self-expression for its own sake, literature stands uneasily at the margins—tolerated, perhaps ignored.

As part of his seminal survey of America, Alexis de Tocqueville lingers for a few chapters on the reciprocal influences running between democracy and literature. By the time he reaches literature, De Tocqueville has toured through adjacent subjects such as Americans’ pursuit of arts and sciences. He has been critical, but the professed friend of democracy takes pains to convince readers that the “irresistible” democratic revolution does not trail cultural poverty in its wake.

David Schaefer, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 57: “In What Spirit The Americans Cultivate The Arts” & “Why The Americans Erect Both Insignificant Monuments And Others Which Are Very Grand” (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Chs. 11-12), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, David Schaefer

Essay 57: “In What Spirit The Americans Cultivate The Arts” & “Why The Americans Erect Both Insignificant Monuments And Others Which Are Very Grand” (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Chs. 11-12)

A friend once remarked to me that he disliked visiting our nation’s capital because it had come to remind him of imperial Rome. He had in mind the plethora of massive office buildings most constructed to house the large Federal bureaucracies that developed owing to the expansion of the government’s domestic responsibilities beginning in the 1960’s. Through the comparison with the Roman Empire, he was suggesting the incompatibility between massive government and the spirit of genuine republicanism, or self-rule.

This, precisely, is De Tocqueville’s point in his chapter on “Why the Americans at the Same Time Raise Such Little and Such Great Monuments.” Despite having observed in the previous chapter that in democratic times “the monuments of the arts tend to become more numerous and less great,” he immediately adds the exception to that rule. In democracies the size of public monuments tends towards the gigantic, reflecting the fact that while “individuals are very weak …. The state, which represents all” of them and “holds all in its hand, is very strong.”

Antonio Sosa, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 56: Why Americans Are More Attracted To Practical Rather Than Theoretical Aspects Of The Sciences (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Ch. 10), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Antonio Sosa

Essay 56: Why Americans Are More Attracted To Practical Rather Than Theoretical Aspects Of The Sciences (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Ch. 10)

In this chapter, De Tocqueville gives an account of the problem of science in democratic times. Science, he says, may be divided into three parts: the first and most fundamental is the purely theoretical part, which “contains the most abstract notions, those whose application is not known or is very distant.” The second part contains “general truths” that are derived from pure theory but which “lead by a direct, short path to practice.” The third and least fundamental part contains “the processes of application and the means of execution.”

America, which De Tocqueville takes for his model of democracy left to its natural instincts, shows that democracy strongly favors practice over theory. There is no leisured nobility or propertyless peasantry in a democracy. In a democracy, nearly everyone works for a living and nearly everyone can lose what wealth they have. Everyone is therefore striving for material wellbeing. Science is therefore prized not for its power to reveal the most fundamental truths of nature but for its power to conquer nature. Not knowledge for its own sake but for the sake of relieving man’s estate, not the satisfaction of the mind but the comfort of the body, is the goal of science in democratic times. De Tocqueville singles out the steamboat as a representative example of what human intelligence aspires to achieve in democratic times. In our own time, we may say this aspiration looks to the next generation of computers, rocket ships, and medical therapies. These projects doubtless require a monumental effort of theoretical intelligence. De Tocqueville would not deny this. But he would stress that only such theory as is required to achieve the next leap in technology will be regarded as an object of high intellectual concern in democratic times. There is ample room for theory in democratic times, but it is the type of theory that corresponds to the middle part of science. It is not pure theory. It is theory in the service of application, rather than theory for the sake of contemplation.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, The Honorable Frank M. Reilly 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 55: How The Example Of The Americans Does Not Prove That A Democratic People Would Have Neither The Aptitude Nor The Taste For The Sciences, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Frank M. Reilly

Essay 55: How The Example Of The Americans Does Not Prove That A Democratic People Would Have Neither The Aptitude Nor The Taste For The Sciences, Literature, And The Arts (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Ch. 9)

In Volume 2, Chapter 9 of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville challenges the beliefs of some European cynics of democracy that America’s equal political system suppresses or destroys interest in, and indeed the development of, sciences, literature, and arts.

De Tocqueville opens with the presumption “that among the civilized people of our day there are few in whom the advanced sciences have made less progress than in the United States, and who have furnished fewer great artists, illustrious poets, and celebrated writers.” The presumption, based on his observations in 1840, warrants additional scrutiny.

The presumption glosses over the then-contemporary and significant contributions of Americans such as Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Morse to science; Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore (Fen-i-moore) Cooper, and Washington Irving to literature; and Morse, Gilbert Stuart, Charles Wilson Peale (peel), and John Trumbull to art.

Second, the presumption ignores the fact that the population of the U.S. was then only about seventeen million people, about 10 percent of Western Europe’s population, and less than 2 percent of the world’s population.

Dr. Eric Schmidt, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 54: How Equality Suggests To Americans The Idea Of The Indefinite Perfectibility Of Man (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Ch. 8), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Dr. Eric Schmidt

Essay 54: How Equality Suggests To Americans The Idea Of The Indefinite Perfectibility Of Man (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Ch. 8)

Volume Two of Democracy in America is divided into four parts: how democracy shapes the intellectual movement, sentiments, mores, and ideas of Americans. Chapter Eight is of unique importance to the whole of Volume Two because it offers an account of what seems to be American democracy’s most hopeful intellectual movement, a belief in “indefinite perfectibility” or progress.

De Tocqueville tells us that the notion of indefinite progress is a product of the equalization of conditions, which is central to democracy’s “irresistible revolution.” Equality, displayed by the leveling of social hierarchy and the rise of economic or material equality, suggests new intellectual currents to democrats, which De Tocqueville contrasts with those of the previous regime. For aristocratic nations with definite stratifications, man could progress definitively toward a limited ideal. The clarity with which aristocratic nations could view the limits of politics prevented them from “judg[ing] [perfectibility] to be indefinite.” The idea of indefinite perfectibility belongs to democratic peoples who are “mixed tumultuously” by equalizing conditions so that “the image of an ideal and always fugitive perfection is presented to the human mind.” In the tumult, man sees repeated success and failure in all his efforts to progress—never can he be satisfied that anyone has the absolute truth. The democrat is thus someone who “tends ceaselessly toward the immense greatness that he glimpses confusedly at the end of the long course that humanity must still traverse.” The democratic revolution overturns aristocratic practice and establishes new modes and orders that befit this restless pursuit of perfection.

Jacob Wolf, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 53: “How Religion In The United States Makes Full Use Of Democratic Tendencies”, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Jacob Wolf

Essay 53: “How Religion In The United States Makes Full Use Of Democratic Tendencies”, “The Progress Of Catholicism In The United States” & “What Causes The Minds Of Democratic Nations To Include Toward Pantheism” (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Chs. 5-7)

Upon visiting the United States, De Tocqueville was enamored of the fact that lovers of liberty and democracy were not enemies of religion, but rather its sincere friends. This was not the case in France, where religion was so bound up with the aristocracy and the monarchy that the French revolutionaries sought to topple the church along with disfavored hereditary institutions. In America, religion and liberty—faith and democracy—found themselves on the same team.

This is important because De Tocqueville believes that religious beliefs are profoundly determinative of human action. Such beliefs influence nearly everything about a person’s conduct: “There is almost no human action … that does not arise from a very general idea that men have conceived of God, of his relations with the human race, of the nature of their souls, and of their duties toward those like them.” For De Tocqueville, politics is downstream from theology.

Michael S. Greve, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 52: Why The Americans Show More Aptitude And Taste For General Ideas Than Their Forefathers, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Michael Greve

Essay 52: “Why The Americans Show More Aptitude And Taste For General Ideas Than Their Forefathers The English” & “Why The Americans Have Never Been Enthusiastic As The French For General Ideas In Political Matters” (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Chs. 3-4)

Any society, De Tocqueville explains in Part I of the Second Volume of Democracy in America, must be “brought and held together” by some shared ideas. This implies that people must accept a great many ideas on the authority of others. Intellectual authority there must be; the questions concern its source, its extent, and what one might call its tenor or tone.

The answers, De Tocqueville writes, will depend on political conditions. Members of aristocratic societies—England’s “ancient constitution,” pre-revolutionary France—will be drawn to the opinions and prejudices of their own class or estate. Not so in democratic societies, whose members suppose that no one is very different from, let alone better than, anyone else. Folks will want to make up their own minds. But they cannot do so all the time, and on everything, for sheer lack of time. There is something liberating about thinking for oneself, but also something dangerous. “As citizens become more equal and alike, the penchant of each to believe blindly a certain man or class diminishes.” Correspondingly, “the disposition to believe the mass is augmented.” Public opinion—what the mass of citizens believes and propounds without much thought—will rule. What begins as man’s liberation from “self-inflicted immaturity” (Kant, not De Tocqueville) may prove a “new face of servitude.”

Michael Johnson, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 51: “The Americans’ Philosophic Method” & “The Principal Source Of Beliefs Among Democratic Nations” (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Chs. 1 & 2), 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Michael Johnson

Essay 51: “The Americans’ Philosophic Method” & “The Principal Source Of Beliefs Among Democratic Nations” (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Chs. 1 & 2)

Democracy in America: What We Learned from a French Aristocrat Long Ago

“I think there is no country in the civilized world where they are less occupied with philosophy than the United States.”

Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II Chapter 1, Democracy in America

Alexis de Tocqueville, the son of French aristocracy, journeyed to America at the ripe old age of 25 originally to assess its prison system that was considered a new progressive approach to criminal justice. His real interest, however, was in America itself, the birth of the new Republic, how it was faring and what distinguished it from the events in European nations.

A man of frail voice, fragile body but clearly of expansive mind and taste for adventure traveled to America with Gustave de Beaumont, described as his best friend, who he met at the Court of Law at Versailles. That’s where he also met his future wife, Mary Motley. The French political scientist, sociologist and historian and his friend Beaumont stayed in America for six months on their first visit in 1834 and four months on their second a year later.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Horace Cooper 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 45: A Few Remarks On The Present Day State And The Probable Future Of The Three Races Which Live In The Territory Of The United States (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 10, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Horace Cooper

Essay 45: De Tocqueville– “A Few Remarks On The Present Day State And The Probable Future Of The Three Races Which Live In The Territory Of The United States” (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 10, Subch. 2)

Alexis de Tocqueville uses his keen insights and talents for observation to focus on the question of slavery and blacks in the newly created United States of America.

Near the end of his essay on this topic he once again demonstrates the prescience and perception that he has revealed throughout the book “Democracy in America”. In this essay, he predicts slavery’s demise.

He explains at the end of the essay, “… whatever the efforts of Americans of the south to preserve slavery, they will not succeed at it forever….in the midst of the democratic freedom and enlightenment of our age [slavery] is not an institution that can endure.”

Indeed, slavery ended in the US. It proved incompatible with the remarkable ideas of our founders including the foundational principle that “All Men are Created Equal.” The end came about as the result of the most consequential war that this nation had ever experienced. Greater and more deadly for Americans than World War I and World War II. Certainly, greater than the losses of the Revolutionary War. The Civil War cost more American lives than any war the US has ever been involved in.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, The Honorable Bob Pence 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 44: A Few Remarks On The Present Day State And The Probable Future Of The Three Races Which Live In The Territory Of The United States (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 10, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, The Honorable Bob Pence

Essay 44: De Tocqueville: “A Few Remarks On The Present Day State And The Probable Future Of The Three Races Which Live In The Territory Of The United States” (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 10, Subch. 1)

Democracy in America recounts Alexis de Tocqueville’s reflections on his extensive travels in America. In the chapter under discussion (Volume 1, Part Two, Chapter 10), he considers the present and probable futures of the three races [the white man, the Negro and the Indian] that inhabit the territory of the United States. De Tocqueville found the three races to be naturally distinct and inimical to each other. Fortune had gathered them together and mixed them without the ability to intermingle, to the end that each pursued its own destiny. My focus is De Tocqueville’s answer to the question, vis a vis the Indian, “What is to be the future of the Indians?” He saw it as bleak. Very bleak. To the point of extinction.

Will Morrisey, 90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 43: The Main Causes Which Tend To Maintain A Democratic Republic In The United States (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 9, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Will Morrisey

Essay: 43 The Main Causes Which Tend To Maintain A Democratic Republic In The United States (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 9, Subch. 10)

Founding a democratic republican regime is one thing. The American founders had done that. Maintaining it is another, as Benjamin Franklin famously remarked upon emerging from the final session of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and as a sober young American attorney named Abraham Lincoln saw and considered in his “Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum” in Springfield, Illinois in 1838, some two generations later.

Writing a couple of years before Lincoln, Alexis de Tocqueville understood that his fellow Europeans hesitated to found democratic republics because they did not see how such regimes could sustain themselves in Europe, where geopolitical, constitutional, and civil-social circumstances differed substantially from those prevailing in North America. By then, Americans faced no formidable enemies, needed to fight no major wars, and consequently afforded no opportunities for a native Napoleon to hunger for military glory and move against republicanism. The American capital was no Paris, no Rome; a centralized government can fall prey to mobs, with ‘the democracy’ threatening the government, whether monarchic, as in 1789 and again in 1848, or republican, as the Romans had seen in the military coup of Julius Caesar. And North America is much bigger than Europe; on a large continent, “nature itself works for the people,” giving them an outlet for their restless ambitions. Dissatisfied with your lot in life? If you’re an American, go West, young man; set yourself up as a farmer, not as a revolutionary.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Danny de Gracia 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 42: The Main Causes Which Tend To Maintain A Democratic Republic In The United States (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 9, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Danny de Gracia

Essay 42: The Main Causes Which Tend To Maintain A Democratic Republic In The United States (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 9, Subch. 9)

The Way We Were (And Could Be Again)

“The Americans have no neighbors and consequently no great wars, financial crisis, ravages, or conquest to fear; they need neither large taxes, nor a numerous army, nor great generals; they have almost nothing to dread from a scourge more terrible for republics than all those things put together – military glory.”
-Alexis de Tocqueville

The late Ronald Reagan after losing his party’s nomination for president in 1976, spoke of a time capsule that he had the opportunity to write a letter for that would be later opened for the American Tricentennial 100 years later in 2076.

“And suddenly it dawned on me, those who would read this letter a hundred years from now … will know whether we met our challenge,” Reagan explained. “Whether they will have the freedom that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here.”

Reagan then went on to say:

“Will they look back with appreciation, and say, ‘Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom? Who kept us now a hundred years later, free? Who kept our world from nuclear destruction? And if we fail, they probably won’t get to read the letter at all, because it spoke of individual freedom and they won’t be allowed to talk of that or read of it. This is our challenge and this is why we were here in this hall tonight. Better than we’ve ever done before, we’ve got to quit talking to each other and about each other and go out and communicate to the world that we may be fewer in numbers than we’ve ever been but we carry the message they’re waiting for. We must go forth from here united, determined, and what a great general said a few years ago is true: There is no substitute for victory, Mr. President.”

History both repeats and rhymes, and the challenge and battle that Reagan had spoke of for the soul and future of America is the same struggle that every American has been fighting since The Shot Heard Round The World on April 19, 1775 and maybe even earlier.

90 in 90 2024, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Richard Epstein 2024 - De Tocqueville Study, 14. De Tocqueville Study, Essay 41: The Main Causes Which Tend To Maintain A Democratic Republic In The United States (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 9, 90 Day Studies, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Richard Epstein

Essay 41: The Main Causes Which Tend To Maintain A Democratic Republic In The United States (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 9, Subch. 8)

It is widely acknowledged that Democracy in America, written in 1835 and 1840, is the greatest book on that topic—a period of America long gone and never to return. De Tocqueville offers an optimistic chapter describing the forces working to preserve a democratic republic. Conjoining those two words obscures the traditional philosophical opposition between republics and democracies. In so doing, De Tocqueville offers several explanations that, while accurate for his time, are as dead as a dodo bird in ours.

His first explanation is that “The Americans have no neighbors and consequently no great wars,” except, of course, with themselves (the Civil War of 1861-1865 was at the time the bloodiest and most sophisticated war fought anywhere in the world). We still have quiet borders with our northern and southern neighbors (putting aside the problem of illegal immigration). But today, new technologies that span oceans call for military interactions with countless nations, both friend and foe—China, Germany, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and many others. Our current military budget, foreign policy, defense capabilities, intelligence sources, and foreign aid programs never crossed De Tocqueville’s mind. But to read him as a blind isolationist would draw exactly the wrong inference. Today, he would know that the question is not only whether to interact with these formidable world powers but also how to do so. Do we sign bilateral or multilateral treaties? Can we continue to follow a constitutional system that requires, except in emergencies, the Congress to declare war before the President as commander-in-chief can intervene in Kosovo or Libya? These all present tough issues. And if De Tocqueville was right to attack General Andrew Jackson when he ascended to the presidency, should we say the same about Dwight Eisenhower? Don’t blame De Tocqueville for not seeing the future. Don’t rely on him as if he did.

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Mason Edwards, Streetman, Texas – 2026 Turner Maurice Gauntt, Jr. Exemplary Citizen Award Winner

First and foremost, I am a follower of Jesus Christ. My faith is crucial to my everyday life. In high school, I became very involved with many groups. Namely, I was captain of the football team and I played center; in powerlifting, I squatted 540 lbs, bench-pressed 475 lbs, and deadlifted 500 lbs; I managed […]