Cooking has never been my comparative advantage. In grad school, my motto was, “As long as I have a tortilla, anything can be a burrito.” This led to much trial and error in my apartment kitchen with (mostly) edible results. When I splurged on takeout, burritos gave me a large quantity of good food at a decent price. 　　More than...

　　This is the third essay in a symposium that reconsiders neglected conservative thinkers. The essays were originally presented at the 2026 meeting of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. The next entry, on Willmoore Kendall, will be published tomorrow, August 27. You can read about Robert Nisbet here and Wilhelm Roepke here. 　　Mike Wallace told Frank Meyer on television in...

　　David Hume thought philosophically about politics. If he had not, John Witherspoon, the Princeton educator who taught a future president, a future vice president, as well as future judges, senators, and representatives, would not have recommended his writings to his students. Thomas Reid, the Scottish philosopher, would not have developed an entire system of thought—taught in Scotland and the United...

　　This is the second essay in a symposium that reconsiders neglected conservative thinkers. The essays were originally presented at the 2026 meeting of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. The next entry, on Frank Meyer, will be published tomorrow, August 26. You can read about Robert Nisbet here. 　　In his A Program for Conservatives, Russell Kirk once recounted the story...

　　The 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations has brought a burst of renewed attention to the Scottish Enlightenment. Discussions have ranged widely, from Adam Smith’s conception of aesthetics to how the thought of his teacher, the “never-to-be-forgotten” Francis Hutcheson, shaped the American Revolution. 　　But amidst these discussions, one important question has received little consideration. Why did such a remarkable...

　　There’s too little sex and violence in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. And it matters. There’s too little religion and supernaturalism, too. That the anodyne Epicureanism of Nolan’s Odyssey is widely construed as Nolan “Christianizing” Homer’s story is testimony to the insipidity of much of what passes today for Christianity. 　　We’ll start with sex and violence, and then get to religion. 　　First,...

　　The year 1776 is notable for new beginnings. But it also saw the death of one of the greatest philosophers in the Western tradition. David Hume (1711–76) is often described by ideological labels such as liberal or conservative, as well as eighteenth-century party names (Whig and Tory). But these labels obfuscate Hume’s intentions. Neither an ideologue nor a party man,...

　　The wave of anti-Semitic violence, threats, and harassment that swept US campuses immediately after the barbaric Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, should have constituted a wake-up call to all Americans. It revealed the cowardly character of the country’s academic leaders, especially those directing our most prestigious universities. Over 1,200 Israeli civilians were murdered; another 250 were kidnapped...

　　Is New York Times v. Sullivan, the case in which the Supreme Court sharply limited libel suits by public officials—a group later expanded to “public figures”—now on shaky ground? 　　Not long ago that would have been unthinkable. But nowadays, particularly in the wake of a stiff and scholarly Clarence Thomas dissent in McKee v. Cosby, it’s become so thinkable that...

　　Originalism today is predominant yet divided. Courts regularly invoke original meaning, but originalist scholars still debate what interpretation itself requires. At the center of that division is the interpretation-construction distinction. Interpretation is the process of determining the meaning of a constitutional provision. Construction begins only when that meaning is deemed indeterminate—that is, when it is thought to run out—and the...

　　Editors Note: This is the third and final essay in a symposium on the executive removal cases, Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook. The first essay can be read here and the second essay here. 　　For most court watchers, the blockbuster case of 2026 was the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara. But for teachers of National Powers cases like...

　　Editors Note: This is the second of three essays in a symposium on the executive removal cases, Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook. The first essay can be read here and the third essay will be published tomorrow. 　　On June 29, the Supreme Court decided two cases that together transformed the law of removal. In Trump v. Slaughter, the...