5/27/2025

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal starts off with a new interview conducted by Jack Miller Center Resident Historian Elliott Drago. He talks with J. Michael Hoffpauir, an assistant professor of political theory at the University of Austin, about political philosophy, podcasting, and what the ancient philosophers can teach us about civic education. As Hoffpauir notes, “As a citizen of this wonderful country and an individual who hopes to live well, I am interested in understanding the education offered by political philosophers and the American founders so I can clarify and apply what they grasped about liberty and virtue.” Past thinkers have much to teach us about how to sustain the lifeblood of nations: the character of the people. Hoffpauir also discusses the ongoing civic education renaissance in America, noting that civics “is enjoying a rebirth thanks to the public efforts of private citizens and state legislatures suggests a certain health in our republic.” The interview concludes with Hoffpauir noting that what strikes him about the American political tradition is its “accessibility. The principles behind and the justification of our political institutions are the result of much well-documented deliberation, debate, and blood. We can read them, and we can understand them.”

At the Civitas Institute, Ben R. Crenshaw reviews “Keeping the Republic” by political scientists Dennis Hale and Marc Landy of Boston College. Crenshaw catalogues the book’s strengths, especially its main thesis that “the Constitution accepted modernity, but at the same time sought to discipline modernity to make it compatible with republican government and human nature.” And he writes that their defense of the Constitution is crucial, as the document that established our present government has been attacked from before it was ratified, by politicians of both parties in the early Progressive era, and by its modern detractors. Finally, Hale and Landy devote needed attention to the key idea of American self-government. “Americans are not mere subjects of a king or serfs of a lord, but self-governing communities with agency and purpose,” writes Crenshaw. He concludes by calling the book “a spirited defense of the original American regime” that will “serve to educate future statesmen.”