Unheralded

CLAY JENKINSON: The Future In Context — James Monroe: Living In The Shadow Of Giants

This is another in an occasional series of articles by Clay Jenkinson on some of the less well-known presidents of the United States. Poor James Monroe (1758-1831). His greatest challenge was living in the shadow of his two illustrious predecessors, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Most people know that Jefferson and his frenemy, John Adams, died on the same day, the …


Unheralded

CLAY JENKINSON: The Future In Context — What If Every Generation Of Americans Wrote Its Own Constitution?

“The earth belongs … to the living,” Thomas Jefferson famously wrote to James Madison in 1787, and “the dead have neither power nor rights over it.” Jefferson offered these words in support of his belief that succeeding generations of Americans had the right to develop their own constitutions. But Madison shot down Jefferson’s idea, arguing that “improvement made by the dead … form a debt …


CLAY JENKINSON: The Future In Context — Do Economic Sanctions Work? A Brief History

In 2014, Vladimir Putin’s Russia invaded Crimea, a peninsula of southern Ukraine that juts into the Black Sea. The West grumbled and imposed economic sanctions, expelled Russia from the Group of Seven (G7) political and economic forum but chose not to go to war against Russia. Although the sanctions hurt the Russian economy, and no doubt impaired the lives of the 144 …

CLAY JENKINSON: The Future In Context — A Dose of Liberty After Death For Patrick Henry

We lose a lot in our understanding of the Founding Fathers, says John Ragosta, a historian at the Robert H. Smith Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, when we see them only as marble statues. They were real people who made mistakes and who got mad at one another. Patrick Henry so angered fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson in 1781, Ragosta maintains, that …

CLAY JENKINSON: Future In Context — The Electoral College Explained: Its History And The Tensions of Democracy

The Electoral College is back at the center of our national political conversation. The fact that Hillary Clinton received 2.7 million more popular votes in 2016 than Donald Trump and still lost the presidential election, and that it was possible that Donald Trump might win the 2020 election while losing by more than 5 million popular votes, has led to …

CLAY JENKINSON: Future In Context — Is it Time For Texas And California To Leave the Union?

David French begins his book about the disintegration of America along what is by now a well-worn path: “We increasingly loathe our political opponents.” “A person belongs to their political party not so much because they like their own party but because they hate and fear the other side.” “The number of Americans who live in so-called landslide counties— counties …

CLAY JENKINSON: The Jefferson Watch — Guns And Madness

In the wake of Dayton and El Paso, we flirt again with the idea of doing something to lessen or prevent mass gun violence in America. All the polls show the same thing. The overwhelming majority of the American people want reasonable gun regulation: serious universal background checks, the banning of certain types of advanced weapons of war, the right …

CLAY JENKINSON: The Jefferson Watch — Madison’s Gift

Sometimes I wonder what it must have been like to be James Madison. He was a diminutive genius who did not call attention to himself. He was a balding hypochondriac who was always sure he did not have enough vitality for the hurly burly of our early national politics. He was a profound reader, a digester of the history of …

CLAY JENKINSON: Let Us Now Praise The Robustness Of American Democracy

To my friends who are feeling frightened and damaged by the election of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016, I offer the following thoughts. First, the people have spoken. Virtually the entire American establishment —mainline politicians, the media, the major religious leaders, Hollywood, the pundits of both parties, former and current national security personnel, the diplomatic corps, the leaders …