The George Buchanan Forum

Digital communication technology has exceeded its optimal scale, establishing a radical monopoly over human interaction. Internet platforms intermediate private relationships, extract value through surveillance capitalism, and reduce people to quantifiable metrics. However, certain digital tools can subvert the architecture of the corporate internet to safeguard individual freedom and human flouri...

Plato's Republic is regarded by many as the foundational text in the history of western political philosophy. Yet with its totalitarian and communistic "ideal" or "noble" city at its heart, the Republic might seem to contain little of value to the libertarian. A careful reading of the opening two books of the work, however, shows Plato wrestling with a number of issues of critical libertarian inte...

What happens when priests obtain “the whole regiment of the realm,” with “[the Devil’s] own son” as the head of this ecclesial usurpation? In this talk I will present the views of John Knox, George Buchanan, and David Hume on the killing of Cardinal Beaton (d. 1546) at St Andrews Castle. Was this notorious episode from the Scottish Reformation a justified if irregular quasi-judicial proceeding, a...

Paul Kingsnorth's recently released book Against The Machine pushes the discussion on modern cultural and religious disintegration in a significantly helpful direction. His analysis places the blame for global dehumanization largely upon technocracy, individualism, and the pursuit of progress-for-the-sake-of-progress. Capitalism is likewise indicted. This talk aims to bring a corrective to Kingsno...

According to the natural law tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Old Testament civil law wasn’t merely political, but was also “figurative” or symbolic in nature. Yet in his actual interpretation of the judicial precepts, Aquinas treats them almost entirely as political, an error that results in an overly broad and (ironically) theonomic understanding of the general equity principle of Old Testam...

Behind Roman Catholic and Reformed debates over soteriology, or the doctrine of salvation, lie conflicting views of man’s pre-fall nature. The donum superadditum, or “superadded gift,” is the Roman Catholic doctrine that when Adam was created, he had to be given a special, supernatural grace just to harmonize his spiritual and bodily natures. The Reformed theologians rejected this idea, believing...

The free-running Snake and Clearwater Rivers once provided significant natural assets to mankind: beauty, clean water, fish, recreation, transportation, inspiration, waterfowl, solace. Many of these assets are now compromised. Since the four lower Snake River dams were finished in 1976, return rates for salmon to Lower Granite Lock and Dam have consistently fallen below 2%. Dam construction transf...

Through historical narratives like the 1619 Project and critiques of the “post-war consensus,” both the post-liberal Left and Right seek to find meaning in our past while dismantling our national myths. This raises a critical question for Christians: are the historical methods employed by these political identities defensible? Or is there a more historically Christian approach to understanding and...

This talk will help define the increasingly popular term 'regenerative agriculture,' and will explore how it intersects with critical elements of food production sustainability, which is foundational to civilization itself. The systems we have built to produce and distribute food, and just about anything else for that manner, extract and consume finite resources, while at the same time our agricul...

Contrary to the post-Cold War, triumphalist narrative, after WWII the United States did not altruistically transcend power politics and become the world’s stabilizing umpire. Geopolitics was never turned off as Peter Zeihan claimed, nor did history end as Francis Fukuyama predicted. Instead, it was a period of brutal business as usual, and we are just now becoming aware of the cost. George Buchana...

Cherished by some while deplored by others, the concept of natural rights has had a deeply ambivalent legacy among conservative Christians. This presentation will give a definition and short history of the concept of natural rights, review some of the main objections to the idea, and conclude with a defense of the coherence and, indeed, inevitability of the doctrine of natural rights. George Bucha...

Monetary and fiscal policy have undergone dramatic changes since Covid-19, and movement towards Modern Monetary Theory has accelerated in the U.S.. Economics as a profession still views the theory as heterodox and has largely left it alone to “die on the vine” as it were. Because MMT is a bit of an intellectual curiosity and is politically advantageous to both the democrats and the republicans, it...

Why does it seem so difficult for people to acquire, exercise, and establish political rule over others? Why can't human rulers get their human "herds" to obey them willingly like shepherds can with sheep? Why is everyone always revolting against the regime? Xenophon's Education of Cyrus begins with reflection on these questions apparently connected to the anthropological case for libertarianism....

For over a decade Pr. Douglas Wilson has been introducing the highly suggestive term Mere Christendom into contemporary Christian discourse as a way of describing what it is that Christians ought to be striving for politically. With the recent publication of his book by the same title, this is as opportune a time as any to ask: Just what is “Mere Christendom”? What appear to be its essential affir...

The French Revolution has entered the popular imagination as a class conflict arising from Rousseau’s Enlightenment philosophy. However, if we analyze the French revolutions of 1789 and 1792 with a proper historical approach that appreciates the true nature of human action, we discover that the motivations behind these events were far more complex, and even conservative, than have been popularly p...

Believe it or not, land use policy and its array of offshoots form one of the most hotly contested political issues in the USA today. Topics such as comprehensive plans, conditional use permits, re-zoning, and variances are keeping some of your neighbors up at night. With materials and development costs skyrocketing, state and local elected officials are desperately looking for answers that can pu...

The French Revolution has entered the popular imagination as a class conflict arising from Rousseau’s Enlightenment philosophy. However, if we analyze the French revolutions of 1789 and 1792 with a proper historical approach that appreciates the true nature of human action, we discover that the motivations behind these events were far more complex, and even conservative, than have been popularly p...

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted an issue in tertiary Christian education. Many Christians are deficient in their understanding of statistics. Whereas a lack of understanding in specialized fields (e.g. soil science) results in an excusable knowledge gap, an inadequate understanding of statistics bars access to a great deal of knowledge which relies on data. Data is used to make inferences in the...

Does government derive its legitimacy from the consent of the governed? In the modern era, the doctrine of consent has become so popular as to be commonplace, yet it is far from clear what it would actually mean for government to be truly based on consent, or how such a theory is to be reconciled with other Christian convictions on authority, custom, tradition, and submission. This presentation tr...

Frédéric Bastiat's (1801-1850) project of critically explaining the glories of free and voluntary markets from an economic perspective went left unfinished due to disease that took him at a relatively young age. However, many of his key thoughts are contained in his book Economic Harmonies. For Bastiat, economic harmony is naturally a result of men living according to God's design. But when men ki...

Christian Nationalism has specifically come into its own in the last year as an ideological movement. One of the core driving forces of this movement is the insistence on recognizing objective truth about the world, not giving into ideologically progressive lies about the nature of creation, and therefore recognizing that dictionaries are important to any meaningful discourse in society. Libertari...

Calls for a resurgence of American nationalism are often defended by a supposed historical American national identity that emerged either with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 or with the adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1789. And indeed, throughout the 1770s, 80s and 90s, American politicians often argued for separation from Britain, and American union, due to their claims of a nationa...

A dive into a critical analysis of monetary premia held by current currencies, and a proposal to support local human flourishing through digital currencies targeting local price stability via algorithmic central banks. George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyra...

Social contract theory is the idea that the political community has its origins in, and that political legitimacy and obligation therefore rest upon, the consent of the governed. This lecture will revisit John Locke’s famous version of the social contract, while also touching briefly on both its antecedents in earlier political philosophy and its later influence on the American founding. The lectu...

The doctrine of common grace is important for helping us avoid two opposing ditches that Reformed Christians are prone to fall into in thinking about the possibility of a shared social order between believers and non-believers. Related to avoiding these two ditches, the doctrine of common grace also helps us unite two impulses that are often assumed to be antithetical to each other.