On History and Political Thought

The Golden Thread (Substack), July 1, 2026 I have only once written a piece for the popular prints that had the dubious honor of going viral. It was called “Why I’m Leaving Harvard” and can be found here. I thought that readers of this Golden Thread Substack might find interesting a more intimate perspective on academe’s fall from grace, and particularly the malign effects of DEI on teaching. The following is a personal reminiscence given in 2016 at a memorial conference in h

The Golden Thread (Substack), June 22, 2026 Francesco Patrizi of Siena (1413-1494) was the most important political philosopher in the tradition of humanist virtue politics as well as a fine Latin poet (click here for an overview of his ideas). His short letter-treatise on How To Be a Good Magistrate (De gerendo magistratu) offers a striking contrast with Machiavelli’s approach to the exercise of political power. Patrizi in fact had far more practical experience in government

The Golden Thread (Substack), June 17, 2026 Francesco Patrizi of Siena (1413-1494) was the greatest political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance before the generation of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) and Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540). He is the principal exponent of the humanist tradition of ‘virtue politics.’ As such, he was the first Western political philosopher since antiquity to devote sustained attention to the question of how a republic devoted to liberty an

The Golden Thread (Substack), May 26, 2026 If ‘polyarchical’ means rule by more than one person, i.e., non-monarchical government, then the ideal government as depicted in the Republic is polyarchic. The regime Plato envisages is an aristocracy of the perfectly wise and good. These men have been chosen from among the guardian class (described as defensive warriors) for their aptitude for philosophy. They receive a special philosophical education leading to a vision of the Goo

The Golden Thread (Substack), May 11, 2026 Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Encounter Books, the two volumes that comprise The Golden Thread have achieved a physical monumentality that we never dreamed of when Allen Guelzo and I began to write them over four years ago. Laden as they are with hundreds of color images, maps and primary sources, and printed on sturdy paper, the volumes make, quite literally, a weighty impression: the two of them together weigh nearly 12 po

The Golden Thread (Substack), May 4, 2026 File this one under l’esprit de l’escalier: the staircase witticism, the clever remark you think of only after the opportunity to say it is past—only once you’ve left madame’s salon and are heading down the stairs. I’m convinced that one reason why so many people love X (née Twitter) is that it gives them sufficient time to formulate clever remarks. The true wit has clever repartee on the tip of his tongue; we mere Twitter-wits get an

The Golden Thread (Substack), April 24, 2026 This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Part 1 discusses the popular feminist slogan, “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” and proposes a different lens through which to view the great achievements of women. The first Western barbarian king to convert, far in advance of the rest, was Clovis I of the Franks, who was baptized as a Catholic on Christmas Day in the year 496. Our source, the historian Gregory of Tours, explains that C

The Golden Thread (Substack), April 22, 2026 The following is a condensed version of The President’s Lecture, given at Mt. Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on March 12, 2026. I’m grateful to the President, Dr. Todd Olson, and to Dr. Bryan Cross for the invitation to speak at this historically Catholic institution. In the course of writing The Golden Thread with my friend, Allen Guelzo, I tried to give a just appreciation of the roles played by women in Western societie

The Golden Thread (Substack), April 10, 2026 In the numerous interviews and podcasts I’ve done about The Golden Thread since the publication of vol. 1 last August, I’ve often been asked to explain how and why Christianity spread in the ancient world. I’m not sure why this subject comes up so often, unless my interviewers are trying to gauge just how Christian I am. I suspect some of them want to know whether I’m capable of a giving a secular, causal account in terms of socio

Law and Liberty, November 8, 2024 A disturbing feature of the present moment in our public life is that both sides are accusing the other of being a threat to democracy. People who hold that the events of January 6, 2020, can be plausibly described as the worst insurrection since the Civil War identify the Republican candidate as the chief source of this threat. The wealthiest man in the world shouts back through his megaphone on “X” that the real threat to democracy comes

Law and Liberty , November 27, 2023 I've long admired Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution as a model of intellectual...

First Things , November 7, 2023 With the victory of Octavian Caesar, the heir of Julius Caesar, over Antony and Cleopatra at the battle...

The New Criterion , September 2023 A c lassic debate among historians of Rome attempts to answer the question of how this city-state on...

First Things , May 12, 2023 King Alexander III of Macedon is beyond doubt among the greatest figures in world history. But was he a great...

First Things , March 4, 2022 Historians who write about merchant republics during the Renaissance often speak of an “honor deficit,” an...

First Things , February 4, 2022 Many academics today are dismayed by the growing intolerance of heterodox thinking in contemporary...

Société, Droit et Religion , February 2, 2022 Certains lecteurs peuvent être étonnés de voir le terme «sécularité» dans le titre de cet...

First Things, December 7, 2021 Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the European Renaissance was the profound harmony it achieved...

Law & Liberty , September 20, 2021 Old-school historians like me tend to be shy about using modern terminology to describe pre-modern...

The New Criterion, September 2021 A civilization is a complex system of customs, practices, and beliefs that binds a society or a...