Ethos 76

Civic Commentary by Taf Odenson

AN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY

The Broadsheet

Commentaries

Sharp civic commentary on government, accountability, and the American project — written in the tradition of those who believed citizens must stay informed to remain free.

Recent Commentaries:

E Pluribus Unum: The Motto We Have Forgotten

Federalism: The Genius of Shared Power

Civic Virtue: The Forgotten Foundation

Taxation Without Accountability: The Modern Paradox

The Rule of Law: Why No One Is Above It

What Education Owes the Republic

The Fourth Estate: A Free Press and Its Sacred Obligation

The Duty of the Informed Citizen

Limited Government Is Not Weak Government

FROM THE ARCHIVES

THE PAMPHLETEERS: On the Sacred Tradition of Public Argument

BEING AN ACCOUNT of Those Brave Souls Who Did Print and Distribute the Arguments of Liberty, and a Consideration of What Their Example Demands of Us in This Present Age. Before the printing press was a business, it was a weapon of liberty. In the years before and during the American Revolution, the pamphlet was the medium through which an entire people was persuaded that self-governance was not only possible but necessary. Thomas Paine's Common Sense, published in January 177

ON COMMERCE AND THE COMMON GOOD: The Merchant, the Laborer, and the Republic

FROM THE BROADSHEET — On the Relationship Between Trade, Labor, and the Republic, Being a Dispatch Offered in the Spirit of Those Who First Considered These Questions in the Infancy of This Nation. The merchant builds wealth. The laborer builds the nation. The republic survives only when neither is exploited by the other. This was understood, imperfectly but sincerely, by the founders — who were themselves merchants, lawyers, farmers, and tradesmen, and who had experienced fi

ON FOREIGN ENTANGLEMENTS: A Warning from the Pages of History

On Foreign Entanglements: A Warning from the Pages of History THE BROADSHEET — MAY 1796. There is a species of wisdom that arrives too late for the man who ignored it and too early for the generation that has not yet suffered the consequences of his error. George Washington understood this when he penned his Farewell Address to the citizens of these United States. His warning against permanent alliances and foreign entanglements was not the counsel of an isolationist fearful