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1 week ago | 
rlo.acton.org | Michael Lucchese
Today marks the 160th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s death. Almost immediately after the terrible event of his assassination, the martyred president was elevated to the heights of American civil religion. Despite their earlier opposition to the conduct of the war, Radical Republicans sought to appropriate his legacy to justify their extreme plans for Reconstruction. They wanted to draft him as a kind of secular saint to symbolize their revolutionary cause.
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1 week ago | 
lawliberty.org | Bruno Macaes |Graham McAleer |Michael Lucchese |Joseph Holmes
Techno-futurists commonly believe that a totally human-made future will advance individual liberty. Bruno Maçães is doubtful, arguing in World Builders: Technology and the New Geopolitics that the future will more likely see us living inside a metaverse crafted by one of the superpowers.
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1 week ago | 
lawliberty.org | Michael Lucchese
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2 weeks ago | 
fusionaier.org | Michael Lucchese
April 10, 2025 By Michael Lucchese“When the greatest power coincides in a human being with prudence and moderation, then occurs the natural genesis of the best regime.”- Plato, The Laws, 712aAmerica has never quite satisfied political theorists. On the one hand, it can seem as though the Founders were idealistic revolutionaries, committed to an abstract notion of the “rights of man” that can obliterate tradition and introduce disorder.
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1 month ago | 
washingtonexaminer.com | Michael Lucchese
Divided as we are, the American public nonetheless widely agrees that the Chinese Communist Party is our enemy. Poll after poll has shown that Americans understand the CCP’s hegemonic ambitions are a threat to national security. A unique cross-party coalition has even emerged in Congress to build on this public sentiment and prepare the United States for a serious confrontation with this rising totalitarian power.
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1 month ago | 
providencemag.com | Michael Lucchese |James Diddams
Recent surveys indicate the decades-long ebb in religious observance has finally bottomed out. Last month, Pew Research released data indicating that the declining share of self-identified Christians in America has stabilized around 62 percent. Other surveys have found that young men especially are taking up more spews, with many seeking out the more traditional practices of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communions. Why are Americans suddenly returning to tradition?
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1 month ago | 
athwart.org | Michael Lucchese
On April 29, 1778, two great figures of the Enlightenment, Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire, met at the Paris Academy of Sciences. As Voltaire saw Franklin approaching, he declared “Behold the man who tamed the lightning!” Then, stretching his hands over the Philadelphian’s accompanying grandson, Voltaire anointed the young Franklin with the words “God and Liberty.”The American delegation to Europe used this moment to great effect as a stroke of propaganda.
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1 month ago | 
lawliberty.org | Michael Lucchese |Samuel Gregg |Thomas Powers |Robert G. Natelson
Samuel Gregg has written a powerful assessment of the challenges facing the free society today—clearly the “true friends of liberty” have many causes to be worried. Triumphant illiberal forces on the left and right alike have little use for constitutions, free government, or even the American tradition itself.
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2 months ago | 
providencemag.com | Michael Lucchese |James Diddams
In times as troubled as our own, one would think that praying for the country ought to be entirely uncontroversial. The “Congressional Free Thought Caucus,” however, begs to differ. In a letter they sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson last week, its members expressed their outrage at the National Prayer Breakfast recently hosted in the United States Capitol.
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2 months ago | 
washingtonexaminer.com | Michael Lucchese
Without question, the formation of the Abraham Accords was the greatest foreign policy achievement of Donald Trump’s first term as president. The major step toward Arab-Israeli normalization was a blow to the Iranian regime’s ambitions for regional hegemony, took pressure off American resources, and provides a glimpse of what a future of peace might look like for the Middle East. Expanding the accords ought to be a major goal of Trump’s second term in office.
