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  1. James Madison

The Perils of Religious Liberty

On January 24, 1774, the young James Madison, twenty-two years old and two years out of Princeton, wrote an exasperated letter to his college friend William Bradford, who lived in Pennsylvania. In Virginia, Madison wrote, a season of intolerance had dawned. “That diabolical, hell-conceived . . . . Continue Reading »

Notable New Books I Read in 2012, pt. 1

The holiday season was too busy for me to compile this sort of list, especially with a move to a new home thrown in, an event that always makes one ambivalent about book ownership anyhow. “Isn’t time to invest in a Kindle?” was the crack my younger economist friend made as we filled . . . . Continue Reading »

Linkety-Dinkety

1. Found a cool new blog today: Pundit and Pundette. Classy. Christian-friendly. Links to lots of good music. 2. One of the things I’m reading right now is the new Brookhiser bio of James Madison . It seems to have been overlooked a bit, but it’s quite good. Tasty morsels on what an . . . . Continue Reading »

Madison’s Madison

The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic by lance banning cornell university press, 543 pages, $35 For students of the early American republic, James Madison has long been something of a riddle. No one disputes, of course, his vital contributions to the . . . . Continue Reading »

Taking Religious Freedom Seriously

Passage of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .”) was one of the first effective exertions of political muscle by minority groups in the United States. James Madison, . . . . Continue Reading »

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