Joseph Loconte
Heritage Foundation
Washington, DC, United States
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Past articles by Joseph:
Russia and Realism, American-Style
At the start of the Cold War, American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr addressed critics of his magazine, Christianity and Crisis, who faulted him for taking a hard line against Joseph Stalin’s Russia. Niebuhr recalled that many of America’s domestic critics also believed that Nazi Germany could not be as bad as it seemed because we were not as good as we pretended. In this, he wrote, they failed to… → Read More
Renewing Respect for American Character, Citizenship
It seems appropriate that one of the most creative and dynamic programs in American citizenship in the country is held in Philadelphia, at the Union League, the city club founded in 1862 to support President Abraham Lincoln and the Union cause. The Civil War, of course, created a crisis in the concept of American citizenship. By advocating for abolition and defending the Constitution, the Union… → Read More
Locke’s Radical Claims for Conscience
Perhaps the most undervalued quality of a great mind or, at least, an awakened mind is the willingness to abandon cherished ideas that cannot stand up to new evidence. English philosopher John Locke possessed such a mind. And a good thing, too: His revolutionary thinking about political and religious freedom laid the cornerstone for liberal democracy. → Read More
Renewing Respect for American Character, Citizenship
Good Citizenship Day is an opportunity to speak to students about the meaning of American citizenship—and how precious a gift it is. → Read More
Putin’s Bloody Leviathan
The Russian autocrat’s dark and violent vision of state power is not without precedent—but neither is the Lockean answer to it. The rise of authoritarian regimes, wars of aggression, the erosion of basic human rights, a bloody civil war, a refugee crisis in the heart of Europe—welcome to the 17th century. → Read More
Realism, Religion, and the Republic
When George Washington sought to warn Americans about the most fearsome threats to their liberty, he did not cast his eyes toward Europe, where nations were waiting, like vultures, to pounce upon the carcass of a failed experiment in self-government. → Read More
Christendom’s Greatest Satirist
“I do not deny that I seek peace wherever possible,” Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) wrote at the start of the Protestant Reformation. “I believe in listening to both sides with open ears. I love liberty. I will not, I cannot serve any faction.” → Read More
Gorbachev’s Christmas Farewell to the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union’s revolutionary experiment in Marxism-Leninism was launched, at least in part, as an assault on the beliefs and ideals of biblical religion. Religion, according to Karl Marx, was “the opiate of the masses,” a fantasy enlisted to exploit the working class. Yet, on Christmas Day, 1991, it was Soviet communism that proved to be illusory: the day when Mikhail Gorbachev announced his… → Read More
A Brief History of Individual Rights
In his opening address at the 1945 war-crimes trials at Nuremberg, U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson accused Nazi leaders of assaulting “all those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable rights in every human being.” The horrific negation of those rights—by the agents of totalitarianism—threatened the fabric of world civilization. → Read More
Cicero: A Republic—If You Can Keep It
Formia, Italy—When the American struggle for independence was beginning to look like a fool’s errand, John Adams left for Paris to help Ben Franklin secure a military alliance with the French. His ten-year-old son, the future president John Quincy, was with him when they sailed from Massachusetts in February 1778. During the journey, Adams helped his son translate a famous address by Cicero in… → Read More
An American Defense of Britain’s Constitutional Monarchy
The radical left's attack on the monarchy is an assault on memory. → Read More
The Mayor, the Monuments, and the Mayhem
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is launching an assault on the most cherished and unifying symbols of American democracy. → Read More
Pandemics and the survival of the fittest
Heroic efforts to protect and save people from the coronavirus pandemic show society has come a long way since 1918. → Read More
When human rights are abused from all sides
"Propaganda about human rights abounds. Only statesmen with moral clarity can cut through the fog." → Read More