RealClearPublicAffairs Articles

As I have noted previously in my 1735 Project, freedom of expression didn't spring full-blown from the brow of George Mason, James Madison, and the other authors of the U.S. Constitution. It's more properly understood to be the other way around: The American Experiment was made possible by freedom of the press, which enlightened men on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean began agitating for almost as soon as it became technologically viable to mass publish treatises on civics and politics. Is it jarring today to read the words of brilliant Virginians who waxed eloquent on the virtues...

The curation at RealClear Censorship this week reflects on a dramatic, defining moment for free speech in this country. On April 17, students at Columbia University began an occupation of the campus in protest of Israel’s ongoing military assault on Gaza. Specifically, hundreds of students and non-student demonstrators established the Gaza Solidarity Encampment with tents on the campus’ East Butler Lawn, demanding their university divest from various corporations and military contractors that profit from trade with Israel. Similar demonstrations sprang up at Princeton, Yale,...

Although you may not realize it, the common phrase "out of the mouths of babes" comes from the Bible. The way it's used in modern English – to indicate humorous or insightful things children say – is something of a stretch. The first such reference comes in the eighth Psalm and refers to the way children (or new believers) praise God. In the New Testament book of Matthew, Jesus refers to this Old Testament verse: "Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants you have perfected praise.'?" By 1906, a character in one of Rudyard Kipling's stories...

Our curation on RealClear Censorship this week was largely devoted to Murthy v. Missouri, the landmark First Amendment case argued before the Supreme Court on March 18. If you’ve followed our page in the last few months, you’re aware of how anticipated this case has been, at least among those of us concerned with the federal government’s recent encroachments on the free speech of several prominent dissenting voices. The initial suit, filed by then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, alleged that the White House and other federal agencies were “working with social...

America's first income tax was signed into law by its first Republican president on Aug. 5, 1861. With a massive number of troops mustered in response to the attack on Fort Sumter, the 37th Congress was looking at a $30 million projected budget deficit for the coming year. Its response was the Revenue Act. Like much modern revenue legislation, the 1861 law was both regressive and progressive at the same time. The bill signed by Abraham Lincoln called for a flat tax rate of 3 percent on net income -- and 5 percent on Americans living abroad. That was the regressive aspect. The...

Today's words to remember come from James A. Garfield, the 20th U.S. president. James A. Garfield didn't seek -- and didn't particularly want -- the 1880 Republican Party presidential nomination: He'd gone to the GOP convention in Chicago to support fellow Ohioan John Sherman, the brother of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. It wasn't to be. A rival wing of the party was pushing the candidacy of James G. Blaine. A third faction led by New York political boss Roscoe Conkling thought they'd take advantage of the friction by nominating incumbent President Ulysses Grant for a third term....

On this date in 1865, Jefferson Davis was attending Sunday services at St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Grace Street in Richmond when he received word that Petersburg had fallen. The president of the Confederacy knew what this meant: Nothing could now stop the Union Army, which was only 25 miles away. In case he didn't know, Robert E. Lee spelled it out for him. "I think it is absolutely necessary," Lee wrote in a telegram, "that we should abandon our position tonight." Although he'd previously sent his wife out of the city, Davis' confidence in Lee was so great that he delayed his departure...

Friday is also the day of the week when I pass along a quotation meant to be uplifting or informative. Today's quote is the latter, but not the former, and it comes from the grandson of a former U.S. president. It was on this date in 1790 that John Tyler, our 10th president, was born. The human footnote to the famous 1840 campaign slogan, "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!", Tyler assumed the presidency when William Henry Harrison died shortly after taking the oath of office. For Tyler's troubles, he earned the wrath of Harrison's fellow Whigs, and was derided by critics as "His Accidency."...

Every five years, I write an elegy to a famous poem about war. Barack Obama figures in this tradition, too: It started 10 years ago when he placed a wreath at Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial in Belgium. "We can say we caught the torch," Obama said that day, addressing the fallen Americans buried in that hallowed ground. "We kept the faith." The commander-in-chief was speaking at the backdrop for one of the most famous sonnets in the English language, "In Flanders Fields," which was penned on the spot by a grieving World War I Canadian Army officer named John McCrae....

It's Friday, the day of the week when I pass along a quotation intended to be uplifting or educational. Today's words of enlightenment come from a high school student I've never met or even heard about until yesterday. Her quote is about Richard C. Higgins, who died at 102 this week. Dick Higgins was one of the last remaining U.S. Navy "band of brothers" who survived Japan's Dec. 7, 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. He passed away on Tuesday. If you worry that Americans today, particularly Millennials and their young Gen Z successors, are pampered woke snowflakes who take this country...

Forty-five years ago today, future vice president Albert Gore Jr. stood in the well of the House of Representatives to discuss an innovative development in television programming. There was nothing remarkable about that in itself: Al Gore had been a newspaperman before becoming a Tennessee congressman and had a genuine interest in both new technology and mass communication. Except that there was something momentous about Gore's speech that day. It was the first time that remarks delivered on the House floor by a member of Congress were televised. It was an event long envisioned by...

This week’s curation on RealClear Censorship was structured around our recent Samizdat Prize Gala, which took place in Palm Beach, Florida on March 7. Hundreds of writers, thinkers and concerned citizens convened in solidarity against the creeping threat of censorship, and to honor the three inaugural Samizdat Prize winners—Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Miranda Devine and Matt Taibbi—each of whom embody the values of a free society in their work. The evening was a fantastic success, and you can look forward to more content from the event in the coming days. Taibbi was recognized...

Another State of the Union address is in the books. These have been partisan affairs for decades, but in last night's speech Joe Biden made no pretext that this was anything but a pure campaign speech. On the other hand, I feel obliged to note that his predecessor -- the man Biden repeatedly lambasted Thursday night, albeit not by name -- couldn't even muster a nonpartisan speech on Inauguration Day. So there you have it. This doesn't mean that the exercise was meaningless. Many Republicans have been saying that in terms of his mental acuity, the current president is, well, one taco short of...

This week’s curation at RealClear Censorship began where last week’s ended: the inaugural RealClear Samizdat Prize, which will be presented on March 7 in Palm Beach, Florida. Salena Zito offered an excellent profile of the award and its inspiration in the Washington Examiner this week, quoting RealClear Foundation president and publisher David DesRosiers at length on the manifold threats posed to the First Amendment in our day. While the Pulitzer appears inert in the face of advancing threats to a free press, other awards, such as the upcoming RTDNA Free Speech Awards (emceed by...

In mid-August 1790, the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, sent a letter to George Washington, welcoming the president to the city. Written by Moses Seixas on behalf of "the children of the stock of Abraham," the letter alludes to past persecutions of Jews around the world and trumpets the new nation's commitment to religious liberty. Moses Seixas was a first-generation American whose parents had emigrated from Portugal. He'd risen to prominence in Rhode Island as warden of Newport's Touro Synagogue of Congregation  Jeshuat Israel. He was also...

This week’s curation at RealClear Censorship was unavoidably shaped by two events of historic importance in the resistance to global repression, totalitarianism and censorship. Alexey Navalny—Putin opposition leader, dissident, anti-corruption activist—died in a Siberian prison, where he had been held in solitary confinement on dubious, exaggerated charges for three years. Before his death on February 16, most Americans’ familiarity with Navalny began with his poisoning in 2020, after surviving which he was able to record a confession from the FSB operative who had...

On this date in 1945, the U.S. Marines raised the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi on the island on Iwo Jima. Captured on film by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, the image became an instant classic that helped buck up a war-weary nation. It is still an iconic symbol of the war in the Pacific -- and of the United States Marine Corps itself. The provenance of that photo, and the details of the men pictured in it, has long been the source of scrutiny, but the sacrifice it depicted is indisputable. Of the 9,000 U.S. Marines in the initial landing force, 550 were killed and another...

Good morning, it's Tuesday, Feb. 20. Sixty-two years ago today, at 8:35 a.m., United States Marine Corps Lt. Col. John Glenn placed a phone call to his wife, Annie, from Florida's Cape Canaveral. "Well," Glenn said with studied nonchalance, "I'm going down to the corner store and buy some chewing gum." Why do we care what a U.S. Marine -- even a storied combat pilot -- told his wife on this date in 1962? Because John Glenn was speaking in code, that's why. Annie knew it. He was going somewhere very far from the "corner store," as I'll relate in a moment. John Glenn was a...

This week’s curation at the RealClear Censorship page began with independent journalist Alex Berenson’s report on the latest development in his federal censorship lawsuit against the Biden Administration. Berenson v. Biden was filed in the Southern District of New York in March of last year and alleges the defendants—President Biden, former advisor Andy Slavitt, White House Director of Digital Strategy Robert Flaherty, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and two executives at Pfizer—coordinated with social media companies, primarily Twitter, to censor Berenson’s...