Published in Ashbrook Center

We started NLT in October of 2001.  I thought it was a good idea, as did many of you even back then.  In fact, in my typical bragadoccio mode I warned Jonah Goldberg a few months later that we would put NRO out of business.  I'm glad we didn't do that, of course.  But I am happy that we had a good run at things.  In fact, I am proud of our effort and I want to thank our fine authors.  Thank you very much!  As you know we were one of the few serious blogs where no one was paid for writing, and yet our authors wrote and wrote, plus there were some very good conversations with readers.  Thanks to all of you for that.

Over a decade of writing isn't bad. It's an accomplishment we can be proud of.  I know all our words at NLT were not birds in flight, some were, inevitably, potatoes.  But all of it was thoughtful, sometimes full of flair and ardor, sometimes full of deep learning, almost always revealing a liveliness of mind found only at a few other blogs.  I am grateful to all the bloggers  for their work.  I have learned much.  We have taught one another much.  We acted like citizens.

We will archive it all, and it will be accessible from our new Ashbrook site that will go up in three or four weeks.  It will be a fine site.  I hope you will like it.

I don't have to get too soft and weepy with y'all for you to know that I am--as is everyone at the Ashbrook Center--very grateful that we had this opportunity and that it lasted so long.  God Bless.

Our bloggers can be found at other places, including Postmodern Conservative, Liberty Law, and Power Line.

I recorded a podcast last week with David Tucker who has been visiting Ashland for most of the past six months or so.  We discussed many things, but primarily his new book, Illuminating the Dark Arts of War: Terrorism, Sabotage, and Subversion in Homeland Security and the New Conflict.

David also discussed these issues with the Ashbrook Scholars on Friday at a colloquium.  They, too, had a good conversation which you can listen to here.

Professor Robert George of Princeton will moderate and question the South Carolina GOP candidates forum.  He is a man of rare substance and grace, who can get to the heart of the matter with few words.  (Read the profile on him in the NY Times Sunday Magazine--damning him with faint praise:  "the reigning brain of the Christian right.")  Having precepted for him years ago at Princeton, I can attest to his ability to get skeptical students to consider questions they would never have thought about otherwise.  If the forum gets boring, I hope Robby pulls out his banjo....

H/t Michael Krauss.

Other candidate forums should consider such non-traditional talent (get the press out of there!):  Peter Schramm of Ashbrook, Larry Arnn of Hillsdale, Brian Kennedy of the Claremont Institute--each could perform such a role superbly and enrich political discussion for not only Republicans but for the general public as well.

"No Left Turns," in Hangul (Korean).

I'm taking a driving test tomorrow. My cultural pain is your educational gain. NLT is a global force!

The audio from last Friday's colloquium with Robert Reilly on his book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis is now available on the Ashbrook site.

I highly recommend that you give it a listen. Bob gave a great talk, very thoughtful, which is to be expected, but also very clear and direct. The students enjoyed it immensely.  I literally had to pull him away from a group of them afterward in order to get him to dinner or they would have talked to him for several more hours!

Also, yesterday I recorded a podcast with Andy Busch on the 2010 races for the U.S. Senate. Thanks to Andy for helping me to better understand the current political landscape. Needless to say, perhaps, Andy sees a lot of gains for the GOP in the Senate, though perhaps not enough to bring about a majority. Andy and I will be talking again soon and will bring you a podcast outlining the House elections as well.

Got back safe and sound (and dry) from my 1,400 mile ride to Vermont. Had a fine time at Plymouth Notch, watching Governor James Douglas cut the ribbon to the new Coolidge Museum and Education Center (he also gave a good talk on Coolidge's character). There were many interesting folks there, including Bernie Sanders, Amity Shlaes and George Nash. George introduced me to Jim Cooke--at first sight looked much like Calvin--an actor turned performer of Coolidge, Everett, Daniel Webster, J.Q. Adams. I begged him not go into his Edward Everett mode (I didn't have two hours plus!), no problem he said, he was doing Coolidge all that day. I asked President Coolidge a few questions and he knew all the answers, made specific reference to speeches, etc. Pretty impressive. In the conversation, Coolidge said we should "think the thoughts," that the Founders thought, George Nash pointed out that it was President Harding who first used the term "founding fathers." I didn't know this.

Isabella, see her pretty self here weighed down like a pack-mule at the end of the trip, loved the ride and she did everything that was asked of her. She loves the slow pace of the mountain roads as well as the fast-paced interstate. Best thing I ever did for her (and me!) was to put on a Corbin saddle. Long ride without pain of any kind, just pleasure. She's a great ride.

Congratulations to this month's winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows:

Robin Fought
Debbie Shelley
Christy Mays
Sarah Marallo
James Heimer

Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn't win this time, enter the next drawing.

WaPo notes the attraction of Colonial Willliamsburg for Tea Party adherents and other anti-liberals who are inspired by the Constitution and seek guidance from the founding.  Obviously, they won't find what they are seeking in historical exhibits, however well done.  Of course, the Federalist Papers and other founding documents are on-line, but they require mentors for more than a superficial understanding.  Popularly written commentaries, websites, and media appearances can help, but nothing replaces an inspiring teacher.

Why not a consortium of trusted, thoughtful conservatives who can teach the founding to thirsty citizens?  The project will need to extend to every major and medium population center and require years of involvement.  The Ashbrook Center, Hillsdale College, and the Claremont Institute can offer resources, and numerous other think-tanks and scholarly centers can contribute to these "Committees of Correspondence" as well.   Maybe these fine institutions should just continue doing what they have been doing and not adjust their programs to the instant situation.  But it would be a shame to waste this constitutonal crisis.

We don't have a missile defense that can handle threats from Iran.  So warn former CIA Director James Woolsey and Rebeccah Heinrichs.  The Bush Administration was building one, but Obama scrapped it, replacing it with one that "offers no added protection for the U.S. until 2020. That's almost certainly too little too late."   Moreover, might the new Obama strategic arms agreement with Russia limit our sovereign right of self-defense?

Rebeccah Ramey Heinrichs is a former Ashbrook Scholar.   A former manager of the House Bipartisan Missile Defense Caucus, she is now an adjunct fellow of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.   (She is also officially a DC  beautiful person, a status she indeed holds by nature.)

Congratulations to this month's winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows:

Robert Ellis
Denver Higley
Philip Paulette
Howard Akin
Sue Kassulke

Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn't win this month, enter May's drawing.

Congratulations to this month's winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows:

John Vaughn
K.W. Thompson
Clark Irwin
Christian Zwick
Marsha Brannan

Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn't win this month, enter March's drawing.

Congratulations to this month's winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows:

Rae Jeanne Cunningham
Josh Werner
James W. Eilert, Jr.
Kevin B. Barker
Robert Whitright

Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn't win this month, enter February's drawing.

In case you've been locked away from media today, the impoverished Caribbean island of Haiti has been devastated by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake which struck near, and largely destroyed, the capitol city of Port-au-Prince. Thousands are thought dead, infrastructure has collapsed and the country is largely without electricity - all indicators that disease, hunger and desperation are staged to kill many more without a rapid response.

We offer our heartfelt prayers for the dead and mourning.

If you'd like to help save lives, may I recommend donating here.

And so, these are the first of many words I hope to write for NLT.  It seems only proper to pause for a brief moment and publicly extend my humble gratitude for the privilege of contributing my voice alongside the esteemed fellows of the Ashbrook Center.  To Dr. Schramm, then - the first among equals - I offer my thanks. 

To my new blogging cohorts and all those who frequent these fine pages, I hope to make a happy home of sorts amongst you in our little corner of the world.  I'll try not to burn popcorn, play obnoxiously loud music or otherwise steer astray our common ship of state.

To a hopeful voyage, then, and a distant horizon.  Ahoy!

Congratulations to this month's winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows:

Robert Cunningham
Elizabeth Garvey
Dan Rosenburg
Corinne Sammartino
James Clark

Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn't win this month, enter November's drawing.

Congratulations to this month's winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows:

Jeffrey Valladolid
Michael Wallace
Amy Marie Taylor
Charles Hanks
Susan Banton

Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn't win this month, enter October's drawing.

Brutal murderers on death row or imprisoned politicians get themselves nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in order to prove their continued worth to humanity.  To see how this is done, check the process for nomination, and the qualifications for nominators.  Peter Schramm should nominate the Ashbrook Center--for something.  He and many of his academic colleagues are qualified to do so.

A better nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize would have been this Romanian (try to ignore the frightening photo) who writes mostly in German about life under Communism.  Herta Mueller snagged the Nobel Prize in Literature instead.

All graduating Ashbrook Scholars are required to write a thesis as part of their participation in the Ashbrook Scholar Program. Over the past few weeks I have recorded three separate podcasts with the authors of the theses that were given the Charles Parton Award for best thesis this past spring.  These three students graciously agreed to spend some time talking with me about their theses.

I commend each of these students again for their impressive work.    

The links below will take you to a PDF file of each thesis.  To listen to the podcasts, go here. 

Lauren Arnold's thesis, "Rule in The Tempest: The Political Teachings of Shakespeare's Last Play," was of particular interest to me as my love of Shakespeare's work is no secret.  She does an excellent job in the podcast of explaining the political complexities of the play.

Colleen Carper wrote her thesis on British code-breaking efforts during WWII and her thesis is entitled "Bletchley's Secret War: British Code Breaking in the Battle of the Atlantic."  Ms. Carper clearly made herself an expert on the subject, as you will hear in the podcast.

Michael Sabo worked with an old friend of mine, Ken Masugi, on his thesis, "The Higher Law Background of the Constitution: Justice Clarence Thomas and Constitutional Interpretation."  He did an excellent job of explaining Thomas's method of interpreting the Constitution and I applaud him for his efforts.

Congratulations to this month's winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows:

Douglas Anderson
Susan Benedict
Robert Ingle
Susan Ely
April Portillo

Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn't win this month, enter September's drawing.

In the seven years since October 2002 when we launched No Left Turns, our authors have written over 14,000 entries on this blog and our readers have left almost 60,000 comments. In the past year, over 350,000 people visited the site. We think the site has been long overdue for an upgrade, and we are happy to launch it today.

In addition to looking a bit better, the new site allows you to share our writer's comments on Twitter, Facebook, and many other web sites, it offers many improvements in the ways readers can comment on blogs, it offers a much better set of RSS feeds for those of us who use newsreaders like Google Reader, and it helps us fend off those pesky spammers who cluttered up the old site.

Take a look around, and if you have any suggestions for the site, please leave them as comments to this entry. Happy reading.

Jerry Short
Jennifer Williams
Lauren Griffith
Thomas Dousa
Alfreda Holloway

Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn't win this month, enter April's drawing.

This is the PDF version of our recent issue of On Principle, devoted entirely to Abraham Lincoln. There are ten pretty good essays by people you know and the artwork is by our own Chris Burkett. You can also access the individual essays at our main site. I hope you like it.

I note that we complained about the McCain campaign's unimpressive ground game. It certainly pales in comparison both with the GOTV efforts of the 2004 Bush campaign and the exceedingly well-organized and well-funded 2008 Obama effort. But I'll also note that my drive through the Ashbrook part of Ohio (on my way to the Turnpike and ultimately to my alma mater, Michigan State University) displayed plenty of physical evidence of a McCain presence. Indeed, there are surely more yard signs for both campaigns this time than there were in 2004.

If I may offer myself and my fellow bloggers a gentle criticism, I would say that while an honest assessment of the negatives in front of us is important--it isn't important only for the sake of brutal academic honesty. Such brutal honesty is fine as far as it goes and we'd all rather be right than wrong in seeing the outlines of the political field before us. But once a brutal political fact is asserted, it is also important that we not seem to permit marinating in it or appear to be satisfied merely with nailing the diagnosis. We ought, also, to point to a prescription. Political problems require political answers and an important first step in getting to one, of course, is a more complete understanding of the nature of the problem. But we should also remember that we are talking about political consequences that will have a real impact on the lives and futures of our friends and fellow citizens (to say nothing of ourselves). Given that reality, there is also something to be said on the side of duty; duty to look beyond the problems and toward solutions.

After last night, I am more convinced than ever that the conservative political problem is at once rhetorical and intellectual in that it has failed to connect with the people in such a way as to lift them up to understand as well as love their country. The post-60s Liberal problem might be said to be a reverse of the conservative one in that it offers an understanding of America (that it is an incorrect understanding is beside the point) but it has failed--at least until, perhaps (oddly) this year, to give convincing evidence of love for country. I recognize that this is an odd thing to say, in a way. In a year when the Democrat candidate appears to have connections to questionable people who have expressed more than one variety of deep-seated contempt for America, Conservatives ought to have been able to make a convincing case that Obama did not, in fact, love his country. But this assumption misses the fact that Obama and Conservatives are talking about two completely different things when they talk of love for country. Conservatives made a mistake in thinking that it would be sufficient (to say nothing of possible) to tie Obama to the contempt of Wright, Ayers, and even Michelle.

Obama claimed not to share the sentiments of his more hate-filled associates even as he embraced them as something of a piece with the American experience; a piece of the fabric of our lives. He tells us that he loves America because he is capable of loving all things and, especially, of loving those things that he thinks can be "changed" or made to serve something called progress or--even less dogmatically--"the future." His love letter to America may, in fact, be a love letter to himself. But it should also be remembered that Obama, in embracing Wright at the same time that he distanced himself from Wright, gave every other American permission to write themselves a similarly self-indulgent love letter if only they agreed to come along and be a part of this important moment in our history.

With Obama, you are entitled to your weaknesses and to your cynical narrow interests--especially if you can put them to work for the purposes he believes will move us forward. The only thing you are not permitted to do or to be is someone who is retrograde or reactionary in Obama's view. If your own particular brand of weird opinions do not permit you to move forward with the rest of the country shouting "Yes We Can!" from on high, then you must be defeated. And Obama will not blink as he sets about defeating you. If Conservatives and Republicans fail in this election--as appears now to be the trajectory of events despite some cheering poll numbers--I believe it will be because in recent years (when, by the way, we had ample opportunity to do otherwise) we have failed. We have failed not to prove that we love our country but, rather, to give a satisfactory and compelling explanation of why we love our country.

For good or ill, it now seems clear to me that Barack Obama understands himself to be offering both an understanding of and a reason to love America. Remember that he described his "A More Perfect Union Speech"--where he addressed the question of the Reverend Wright--to be a "teaching moment." From Obama's point of view and if you share Obama's views, this was exactly the right way to understand the situation. He rightly saw the danger and, instead of seeking to mitigate it, he embraced it as he embraces all things. He made it his opportunity.

It is not sufficient to argue that his brand of "love" for America amounts to a condemnation of America as we ought to understand it. This assumes too much. People are looking for a way to understand their country and no politician today can assume that he's working from a pre-existing or deeply held understanding that is healthy at the start. Our educational system has made sure of that. So there is no way for a politician today--particularly an American politician--to speak in short hand about his love of country and putting his "country first" and expect that people will understand him as he understands himself. He is obliged to teach.

It is true that this simpler and older expression of love for America still has some massive appeal (it's not for nothing that Sarah Palin drew crowds of 60,000 + and inspired a two-week surge in the polls for McCain) but good as that was, it required a follow up--an explanation or an understanding of itself that could have been shared with the American people and would have translated itself into confidence in our ticket. People need to know that a candidate thinks he knows what he is doing and why he is doing it. They need to know that a candidate has confidence in his understanding of his purpose. This is why people think Obama is cool. He has that confidence. I think he is wrong to have that confidence because he is wrong in his understanding of America--to say nothing of the character of Americans. Unfortunately, the argument about why he is wrong has not materialized in any public way that was sufficient to our purpose. It may be--though I cannot say for certain--that this has to do with a lack of understanding about that purpose at the top of the ticket.

Having said that, however, I understand that the odds against McCain and Palin (and we don't really need to review those) were stacked heavily against them. Their instincts in responding to the onslaught from Obama and those seduced by him in the media were not entirely wrong and we should be grateful to them for the few high points in the campaign that pointed to hopeful signs on our side (including some healthy fundamentals) and, at the same time, speak volumes about the problem. That there was so much energy stirred by a young, attractive, and conservative governor from America's Western Frontier who exuded a kind of manful (yes, I understand and appreciate the irony in that term) independence is a massive fact that ought not to be forgotten as we move forward. And that a humble guy in Ohio named Joe could come closer than any politician in this election yet has done to causing Barack Obama to lose his "cool" and inspiring the hearts of the American people is also not an insignificant fact. Starting here, we might begin to build a more resonating case for ourselves as we look ahead both to the Congressional races in 2010 and, of course, for a more serious challenge in 2012.

Allen is the author of Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. She spoke on the theme of the book at the Ashbrook Center in 2005.

Earlier this month at CPAC, Ashbrook Chairman Marv Krinsky gave the annual John Ashbrook Award to Lee Edwards. We put together the following video for the dinner as an introduction to John Ashbrook and the work we are doing here at the Center.

Washington always both reminds us of our limitations and our virtues, and any conversation about Washington teaches us something about the virtues necessary for self-government. You Americans do well to remind yourselves of this great man, this peak of human excellence, and you have reason to be proud of your country, both for its Constitution and its Father.

Derek Bok, the former Harvard president, made the shocking observation that "faculties currently display scant interest in preparing undergraduates to be democratic citizens, a task once regarded as the principal purpose of a liberal education and one urgently needed at this moment in the United States." Bok was right on both counts--the neglect and the urgency--but he relegated his statement to a footnote. It should have been a headline.

Not long ago, I had a discussion with a friend who teaches at Harvard, and he asked me whether he should include Xenophon's Education of Cyrus in a 300-level class he was offering. It is a difficult book, he told me, and he wondered whether Harvard juniors could be expected to understand it. It is a difficult book, and I wondered aloud whether his students would be up to the task. But I replied that I assign the book to one of my classes--and assign them to read it cover-to-cover. He was astonished--"Your juniors can handle that?" No, I replied, this is what I assign for our freshmen. You see, it is still possible to get a good, liberal arts education.

Appropriate to my conversation with the Harvard professor, the NYT's article ends:

As our children go through the arduous process of choosing a college and trying to persuade that college to choose them, it will be a sign of improved social health if we can get to the point of asking not about the school's ranking but whether it's a place that helps students confront hard questions in an informed way. If and when the answer is yes, that's a college worthy of support, and all the alumni gifts and tax breaks can never be enough.

Today we are launching a new web site on the ratification of the Constitution. This great site is the result of the work of Professor Gordon Lloyd of Pepperdine University and of Roger Beckett. The site is by far the best Internet resource on the ratification of the Constitution.

This new site tells the story of the out of doors debates over the Constitution in pamphlets and in newspapers by the Federalists and Antifederalists. It is the story of the indoors debates in the thirteen state ratifying conventions and the formal struggle over whether the proposed Constitution should be approved.

The site contains an extensive timeline of the events related to the ratification of the Constitution and a map showing the Federalist/Antifederalist vote across the thirteen states. There are introductions and day-by-day summaries of the state ratifying conventions in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York. Also available is the full five-volumes of Jonathan Elliot's Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution. There are biographies of the leading founders in each state involved in ratification, and in case you ever get lost, there is an overview table with links to every major part of the site.

This is not only the most comprehensive site on the ratification, it is also the clearest, with wonderful introductions and explanations provided by Gordon Lloyd.

Like everything we do, it is useful for teachers, students, and citizens alike. I encourage you to visit the site at: http://www.TeachingAmericanHistory.org/ratification.