John Adams
The Founders and the Constitution: John Adams
Unlike the other Founders profiled in this series, John Adams of Massachusetts didn’t attend the 1787 Constitutional Convention. He was America’s ambassador to England when the convention met, and he didn’t return home until the ratification process was well underway....
The ideas that formed the Constitution, the pioneers: Socrates, Xenophon, Plato
This is the fourth in a series of essays on the ideas behind the Constitution. You can find the first two essays here, here, and here As explained in the second installment, 18th-century schoolboys were not expected to be as proficient in Greek as in Latin. However,...
Oppose a Disease at its Beginning
If you give politicians an inch, they’ll take a mile. The Founders and Old Revolutionaries warned us about this over and over. Take John Dickinson, for example. Known as “the Penman of the Revolution,” he was one of the leading writers in the early...
Obsta principiis: Nip the Shoots of Arbitrary Power in the Bud
John Adams warned us. When you spot even the slightest violation of the Constitution, it’s imperative that you nip it in the bud. In 1774 and 1775, Daniel Leonard wrote a series of essays under the penname Massachusettensis asserting Parliaments unlimited authority...