• The Heritage Network
    • Resize:
    • A
    • A
    • A
  • Donate
  • Founders

    Morning Bell: Why Does America Welcome Immigrants?

    Across the country, lawmakers are working to limit illegal immigration and reform policy so that more individuals can honorably and legally become American citizens. Last year’s notorious immigration battle in Arizona was met with hostility from pro-illegal immigration forces who misunderstood the Founders’ intent for a legal and meaningful naturalization … More

    Were the Founders Committed to Eradicating Slavery?

    Were the founders really committed to eradicating slavery? It is commonplace to dismiss the Founders as racists who may have attacked slavery from time to time in writing but never in action. Critics of the Founders often claim that, since the Constitution did not abolish slavery, the Founders were unconcerned … More

    Campaign Finance Freedom Is Freedom for All

    This week the U.S. Supreme Court rounded out its session by striking down an Arizona law that provided publicly funded candidates with funds matching those of their privately funded opponents. Heritage expert Hans von Spakovsky explains in more detail here. Campaign finance reform nerds of the conservative persuasion cheered, but … More

    Isolationism? A False Choice on Foreign Policy

    On Sunday, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) had a stark message for the GOP candidates on ABC’s This Week:  “We cannot move into [becoming] an isolationist party.  We cannot repeat the lessons of the 1930s when the United States of America stood by while bad things happened in the world.”  Senator … More

    The Founders on a Standing Navy: American Military Action Abroad (1783-1860)

    In 1794, President George Washington requested and Congress authorized the building of six frigates, a type of warship widely used at the time. The presence of a standing U.S. Navy was deemed necessary in order to defend American citizens and commerce from European wars and the Barbary Coast pirates. By … More

    Nancy Pelosi: Reader of the Constitution

    The sublime irony of having Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) not only participate in a reading of the Constitution, but be assigned Article I, Section 1, seems to have been lost on those who attended the first-ever reading of the august text in the House of Representatives this morning. This, after all, … More

    VIDEO: Honoring Constitution Day

    September 17 is Constitution Day, a day set aside to reflect on the ratification of the United States Constitution. Towards that goal, we have produced a short video honoring the Constitution and urging everyone to pause and reflect on how we can return our country to its First Principles. We … More

    The Founders, Free Markets, and Sound Money

    When most people think about the Founders and economics, two common myths arise. The first is that the Founders vehemently disagreed about economics and, therefore, reached no consensus on the subject. This contention is evident in Alexander Hamilton’s and Thomas Jefferson’s famous exchange about whether the American economy should consist … More

    First Principles and Foreign Policy

    One common way of thinking about foreign policy is that it exists in its own world, separate from domestic policy or the first principles on which a nation is founded. According to this view , the job of the foreign policy expert is to deal dispassionately with the world as … More

    In Their Own Words: A Warning Label on the Constitution

    Diane Macedo over at FoxNews.com points out that one publishing company–Wilder Publications–has put warning labels on their editions of the United States Constitution. The warning label  on “Foundations of Freedom: Common Sense, The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, The Federalist Papers, The U.S. Constitution” reads: “This book is … More