AUDIO ONLY

In 1997, Margaret Thatcher asked Charles Moore (also known as Baron Moore of Etchingham) to write her biography, under two conditions: that she would never read the manuscript and that the work would appear only after her death. Twenty-four years later, Moore has just published the third and final volume of Herself Alone: The Authorized Biography. In this conversation, Peter Robinson and Moore discuss Thatcher’s final years as prime minister and her life out of office.

AUDIO ONLY

In what has now become an annual tradition on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, law professors John Yoo and Richard Epstein join the show to opine on a newly minted Supreme Court. For the first time in decades, today’s court is dominated by a majority of originalist justices—justices who believe the Constitution means today just what the document meant when it was ratified more than 200 years ago.

How close in style and substance is Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln, one of our greatest presidents, who also hailed from Illinois and emerged from a humble background to lead our nation in a time of crisis? Ferguson and Long examine the first inaugural addresses of both men to explore the parallels between the two and offer insights into how President Obama will guide our nation. (36:54 ) Video transcript

The Constitution “is not living, but dead.” With these words Associate Justice Scalia sums up how he believes we should think about the Constitution – a way of thinking that underpins the theory of “originalism” which guides his approach to cases that come before the Supreme Court. In expounding on originalism, Scalia takes the Court to task on past decisions, including Roe v. Wade, and measures just how far the Court can and should go in reversing these mistakes. (37:24 ) Video transcript

Should we care what the founders would say about modern-day America? Richard Brookhiser says yes. If so, how should we consider some of our thornier contemporary issues in light of what the founders thought, such as “originalism” in constitutional matters, America as a “religious” nation if not a Christian nation, or even the fundamental principles of U.S. foreign policy? Even the bruising political battles currently being waged in Washington may be better understood in the context of the political wars our founders fought when the Republic was born. (32:55) Video transcript

Shelby Steele asserts that Barack Obama won the presidential election by successfully basing his candidacy on race, “Obama’s special charisma … always came … from the racial idealism he embodied. … This was his only true political originality.” Steele holds that whites voted less for real “change” than for documentation of a change that has already occurred in race relations in America. But will four or eight years of Barack Obama free whites from the taint of racism or make them still more complicit in it? (37:40) Video transcript

Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government--and Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency

AUDIO ONLY

Has increased immigration to EU member nations created distrust and delusion, contributing to a continent in the grip of a culture in the midst of its own suicide?

AUDIO ONLY

A special one-on-one interview with Vice President Mike Pence.