John Willson

Why I am a Conservative

June 24, 2010

If you love place, limits, liberty, and think they are words that have meaning, you are probably conservative, and should honor that word also.

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Generations

May 9, 2010

I sense a gap on FPR between NoNamers and most of the rest.

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Our Lost Founders

May 4, 2010

We should have been courageous, he said; we will have to face the consequences of our lack of courage, he said.

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I’ve been reading Bill Kauffman’s immensely entertaining, and very serious, Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin. This is Bill’s attempt to get us antifederalists back into the discussion. One of my Straussian friends (a friend, truly!) once…

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The Next Time You’re in New Hampshire

April 5, 2010

Now that GM stands for “Government Motors” who can love a Chevy? In many ways, seat belt laws paved the way for this transformation. Government straps me in, government keeps me safe.

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On the Road Again

March 15, 2010

. . . we rediscovered the meaning of Place. Limits. Liberty.

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Ideal Curriculum

March 13, 2010

This term gets used too much. Whenever you are exiled to a curriculum committee run as fast as if you were asked to serve on a tax-cutting committee run by Democrats. Curriculum committees are run by people who were always…

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Louis Auchincloss, RIP

March 4, 2010

Louis Auchincloss died January 26, 2010, aged 92. Most of the obits talk about his prolific writing career while working as a serious attorney until age 87. They also emphasize his concern for “eastern elites” and forgotten WASP culture. Most…

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Tiger, Tiger

February 25, 2010

But what would bring Tiger back? Does anybody think he would go to confession? I mean, heck, Bill Clinton still thinks he has the moral upper hand on Ken Starr.

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Friendship with New England Reserve

February 15, 2010

As the half-savage neighbor in Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

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Be My Valentine

February 14, 2010

Of all the Valentine legends I’ve heard, my favorite is the one that martyred St. Valentine because he secretly married Roman soldiers against the order of the Emperor Claudius. It seems that after Romans lost their patriotism, their pietas, and…

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Newburgh and “President’s Day”

February 13, 2010

We have a Constitution and separation of powers and at least the idea of limited government because of the character of George Washington. Don’t think of Monday as “President’s Day.”

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The Heart of Light and the Heart of Darkness

January 15, 2010

He is resigned to the inertia of the old Spanish cult, and willing to just let it fade away. The voluptuousness of European culture had no way to gain traction in the purity of the New Mexican desert.

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It’s the Family, Stupid

December 24, 2009

Hillsdale,MI. …David the King ordered the beautiful Bathsheba to come to him because he could. He also could have her husband killed, and sent the letter that condemned Uriah the Hittite to death in Uriah’s own hand, because David knew

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Fifty Dollar Tomato

December 10, 2009

Hillsdale, MI. …When I first thought about writing this it was the “Ten Dollar Tomato.” But historians are more or less required to tell the truth, and it now costs amateur (literally, “lover”) gardeners about five times as much to

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