Andrew P. Napolitano

I spent last week living and studying at the Vatican as a guest lecturer at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, or PASS. PASS is an organization of scholars that explores ideas of interest to the Vatican. Last week, PASS addressed the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, since March 8, 2024, was the 750th anniversary of his death.

            This is not an esoteric subject. Aquinas taught that all rational persons are capable of discerning right from wrong and good from evil by the exercise of free will and. . .

“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion,            Mankind would be no more justified            In silencing that one person,            Than he, if he had the power,            Would be justified in silencing mankind.”            -- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873. . .

When the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed that God was dead, he didn’t mean it literally, as that would have been impossible. He meant that God’s creatures have so failed to acknowledge Him and relate to Him, it is as if He decided to end His own existence.

            Stated differently, Nietzsche recognized that Christianity had ceased to be influential in contemporary life. Though properly rejected as a madman, he reminded the world that the loss of virtue can only be sustained from the bottom up, not. . .

Can the government prevent Big Tech from censoring political and cultural voices on their platforms? Can the government regulate these platforms to compel speech the government wants to hear and to prevent speech it believes may harm innocents? If you believe -- as I do -- in natural rights, minimal government and that owners of private property can use it as they see fit, the short answers to both questions is NO.

            These questions arise from a vicious Senate inquisition last week, during which a senator who never met a. . .

“The Framers ... conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men.”
-- Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941)

While we are all consumed with Joe Biden’s bumblings and Donald Trump’s trials, the federal government’s rapacious appetite for spying on the private behavior of Americans as to whom it has no suspicion of wrongdoing continues unabated. Last week, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., revealed that the National Security Agency has been buying huge caches of. . .

I have often thought that after Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson was our worst president. By worst is meant least faithful to the Constitution and most destructive of personal liberty.

            With the exception of Lincoln’s dictatorship -- during which the federal government used violence to crush the states’ natural right to secede from a union they had voluntarily joined and instead brought about the systematic murder of 750,000 persons -- America from its founding to the early part of the 20th century more or less enjoyed the James Madison. . .

Just as a fictional emperor paid his tailors a fortune for clothes that no one could see, and then marched naked in a grand public procession while his subjects roared with laughter, so, too, is President Joe Biden attempting to march clothed with the Constitution he dishonors. He will have the same fate as the emperor.

            Last week, Biden used the U.S. Navy to attack militias in Yemen. He did so after learning that the militias had attacked non-American ships carrying goods and fuel destined for. . .