Part one of a series By Nancy Spannaus March 5, 2021—If there’s one issue the “left, right, and center” of American politics agree on, it’s that our country desperately needs to repair and upgrade its infrastructure, from transportation to water, broadband, and energy. Electricity failures like Texas and bridge closures […]
Canada and the American Revolution By Gerald Therrien[1] February 18, 2021—Editor’s Note: While this article may appear tangential to this blog’s theme of the American System, I find it highly interesting. After all, why didn’t more of Great Britain’s many colonies – India and Canada, for instance – achieve their […]
By Nancy Spannaus Jan. 17, 2021—While much of the nation celebrates Martin Luther King. Jr. on this weekend, my mind also goes to another American fighter for the common good, Founder Benjamin Franklin. (1706-1790) Today is the 315th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin’s birth. Franklin was the quintessential organizer of our […]
By Nancy Spannaus[1] Jan. 8, 2021—In the midst of escalating racial and mob violence in the late 1830s, Abraham Lincoln raised the very same question which stands before us today: How can we save the institutions of our republic? His remarks were made in 1838, in an address at the […]
by Anton Chaitkin January 6, 2021–Eighty years ago, on January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt summarized America’s mission in the world in his Four Freedoms speech. In subsequent declarations and world agreements, the principles of the Four Freedoms came to be recognized as international law, which civilized nations are […]
Dante Alighieri’s Concept of Statecraft And the Lorenzetti Frescoes in Siena by Bonnie James Jan. 5, 2021–The following article was originally published on June 28, 1999 in The New Federalist newspaper. It is reproduced here with minor editing by the author. The occasion for its republication is the 700th anniversary […]
By Nancy Spannaus Dec. 7, 2020–The newly released 2020-2021 edition of Bulletin of Loudoun County History contains a story that will come as a surprise to many: Loudoun County, Virginia was a stronghold of the Federalist Party up until the demise of that institution in 1817. Indeed, this fact even […]
By Nancy Spannaus November 26, 2020—Contrary to popular culture, Thanksgiving Day in the United States was never just about family. From the time of the Pilgrims, to George Washington, to Abraham Lincoln, it was about humbly expressing our gratitude for surviving as a nation (or a community), and committing ourselves […]
By Nancy Spannaus Nov. 21, 2020—When FDR’s relief expert Harry Hopkins told FDR about the looming emergency for tens of millions of Americans in the winter of 1933-34, FDR authorized action. If nothing were done, Hopkins had said, people would starve en masse. Immediate action was needed, because, as he […]
By Nancy Spannaus Feb. 20, 2021—The dramatic failure of the electric grid in Texas this week, which at one point left more than 4 million of the state’s residents without electricity, should be an object lesson to the country. Texas’s deregulated energy grid is quintessential energy insanity; unfortunately, much of […]
By Nancy Spannaus Feb. 3, 2021—The AmericanSystemNow YouTube channel now features the recent video documentary by Alexander Hamilton researcher Marianne Als, “The Evidence for Hamilton Against Slavery.” I hope you will review it and also subscribe, for there will be much more educational material on Hamilton and the American System […]
Let Us Have Faith That Right Makes Might
In honor of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday By Nancy Spannaus February 11, 2021–“Let us have faith that right makes might, and, in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” Those were the words with which presidential aspirant Abraham Lincoln concluded his speech […]