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Charles Kesler’s Struggle for the Founders’ Constitution
Charles Kesler’s defense of the American Founding from its critics on the left and right alike can help us recover our most cherished principles.
American conservatism finds itself in a strange place. A resounding electoral victory was achieved in the 2024 election by a Republican party that, while modified from its Goldwater-Reagan standard, remains comprehensible to the conservative temperament. Conservatism is the form of the Republican party, or the party ceases to exist. Yet, conservatism has never agreed on the measuring rod of its activity. What precisely does it want to achieve, such that it knows the truth of its strategies and tactics?
One thinker who has been teaching, writing, and editing in ways that help us answer these essential questions is Charles Kesler, the founding editor of The Claremont Review of Books and a Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College. His political essays and editorship of the CRB are widely known across conservatism. Kesler has also formed the minds of graduate students who have assumed leading roles in academia, politics, journalism, and non-profit work. A new book of essays, titled Leisure with Dignity, by former Kesler students bids us to consider Kesler’s career because his teaching and writing bear close study for the conservative cause and our constitutional republic.
We live in a season of thoughtful and, at times, highly contested grappling with the question of how conservatives recover an America paralyzed, if not broken, by progressive ideology. I interviewed Kesler and read his scholarly output to better understand his political thinking and what it means in this period of national tumult. Kesler’s distinctiveness is best understood through those who influenced him and shaped him to be a thinker capable of political writing who joins foundational principles with current events and circumstances to produce essays that enlighten our understanding, helping us understand pitfalls and opportunities.
Constitutionalism
Epstein & Yoo: Amicus Brief in Supreme Court of Maryland
Civitas Senior Research Fellows Richard Epstein and John Yoo, alongside the Mountain States Legal Foundation, filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court of Maryland.
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Religious Exemptions?: What the Free Exercise Clause Means
A conversation among three religious liberty scholars on the Free Exercise Clause’s original meaning.
Democracy in Britain: The Lords’ Work
Part 2: How the “hereditary peers” enhance lawmaking and support the soft power of the UK.
The American Revolutions of 1776
America's founding was animated by both the spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion — a philosophical and practical achievement worth understanding and attempting to recover today.
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Why Issues of Birthright Citizenship Are So Difficult
What makes this issue so difficult is that all these positions have evidence to support them.
Making Sense of the Court's Establishment Clause Doctrine
Chapman and McConnell acknowledge the judicial excesses of older caselaw and orient the doctrine toward a collection of historically sensitive second-best arrangements looking forward.
