Jon D. Schaff
Jon D. Schaff is professor of political science at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota where he teaches courses on American politics and political thought. He is author of Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy (SIU Press) and co-author of Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics in 21st Century Film and Literature (Lexington Books). He lives in Aberdeen with his wife and four children.
Articles by Jon D. Schaff
The Death of a Justice and the Hope of Magnanimous Statesmanship
We do not need reminding of how bitter, partisan, and polarized American politics is today. In order to have a community, people need to hold some things in common. America…
Not Throwing Away My Shot: Alexander Hamilton and the Militarization of the American Police
Like the “good men” that Lincoln noted will give up on free government in the wake of mob rule, Hamilton warns that those who fear their rights are threatened will…
Calling For A 21st-Century Magna Carta: A Review of Joel Kotkin’s The Coming Neo-Feudalism
The global middle class of Kotkin’s subtitle must unite with the working class for a new Magna Carta for the 21st Century, one that will, in Lincoln’s words, make us…
In Our Memory Lock’d: Memorial Day and the Need to Remember
One of the arts of statesmanship is the use of language, of rhetoric, to reshape the architecture of people’s souls and orient them towards political truths.
With One Eye Squinted: R.R. Reno and Living Life in a Time of Death
Let us not, however, in our haste to condemn Reno for his imprudent practical advice, ignore the truth of the underlying point. Religious believers hold that there is more to…
Catholic Social Thought, Abraham Lincoln, and Common Good Capitalism
One need not support every economic prescription of the distributists or Lincoln. Each, however, presents certain principles that we can use to orient our economic thinking in the era of…
When Protestants Became Libertarians
Protestants and American Conservatism reveals a capacious knowledge of American religious history. As skeptics of the liberal order slowly work out a positive vision for the republic, they now know…
Justice, Sovereignty, and the Throwaway Culture: Reading Charles Camosy
We live in a time of political disruption. In the United States and around the developed world we are seeing nationalist and populist agitation against the established liberal order. While…
Regional Universities Educate for Merit—It’s too Bad Our Elites Just Want Prestige
The Varsity Blues parents didn’t really care if their children learned anything; they were concerned that they got their ticket to success stamped by the right institution.
Fighting Demons, Liberal and Otherwise
We like to flatter ourselves that we live in extraordinary times. Every four years, for example, we are told that this presidential election is “the most important of our life.” Those of…
What Groucho Marx Can Teach Us About Liberal Education
The world wearies of defenses of liberal education and the humanities. What cannot be denied is that all over the country the liberal arts are dying out, with students abandoning…
The Cornhusker Berryian: Ben Sasse’s Argument for Rootedness
It was said of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) that he had written more books than most senators had read. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) seems to aspire to…