| Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal starts off with an excerpt of a new book by Dennis Hale and Marc Landy, “Keeping the Republic: A Defense of American Constitutionalism.” As Hale and Landy sum it up, the book “is a defense of the American constitutional order, and a response to its critics, including those who are estranged from the very idea of a fixed constitution.” They argue that the Constitution remains the only vehicle that offers a means to address the myriad problems modernity poses. The key to the Constitution, Hale and Landy write, is that it “places effective limits on the exercise of power,” which is “an essential ingredient of any good government.” They contend that though “the people should rule,” the claim that the people “can do anything they want is a proposition that no sane person could believe.” Hale and Landy conclude by urging citizens to recover the art of “thinking constitutionally,” which begins by working “with the ‘constitutional grain’ rather than against it.” At Public Discourse, Hadley Arkes wades into the free speech wars on college campuses that have erupted after Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack on Israel. Arkes argues that we need to ensure that the search for truth, the goal of the university, is not equated with a “soft relativism.” He writes that there is no need for college presidents and administrators to “recede in any way from the surety that we have with us, now as ever, the standards for judging evil ends to be truly evil.” He cites Justice Frank Murphy’s opinion in the classic case of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, which “offered the ‘commonsense’ understanding of the moral boundaries that we ever see at work about ‘speech,’ as in every other dimension of our personal freedom.” Arkes concludes by arguing that Justice Murphy's superior understanding of speech and its rightful limits—and not praising a right to do a wrong, as too many otherwise good professors are doing today—would give university presidents the moral confidence to do something about the creeping, violent antisemitism increasngly seen on college campuses. In the News Allen Guelzo, Public Discourse Lorén Cox & Karen Nussle, The74 Zach Montague, New York Times Rosemarie Zagarri, Ford Forum Hadley Arkes, Public Discourse Dennis Hale & Marc Landy, RealClearBooks Chester E. Finn, Fordham Institute Gary Schmitt, American Purpose Donald Stoker, RealClearDefense Elliott Drago, Jack Miller Center John Tamny, RealClearMarkets Claire Stremple, Alaska Beacon Scott Johnson, Power Line Jack D. Warren, The American Crisis Mark Tooley, Providence The Learning Curve This week on The Learning Curve, guest co-hosts University of Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng and Charlie Chieppo... Prager U As America's 28th president, Woodrow Wilson greatly expanded the size and scope of the federal government... Carl Cannon's Great American Stories Today's words to remember come from James A. Garfield, the 20th U.S. president. James A. Garfield didn't seek -- and didn't ... On this date in 1865, Jefferson Davis was attending Sunday services at St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Grace Street in ... Friday is also the day of the week when I pass along a quotation meant to be uplifting or informative. ... | 
