The Brion McClanahan Author & Historian Blog

Asking if voting is a right is almost blasphemy in modern American society. We believe in democracy! Everyone should vote! But as a great piece at Chronicles highlights, you can make it “easy to vote” OR you can make it “hard to cheat.” You can’t have both. To those on the left, making it “easy” to vote means that they can ballot harvest or dig …more

Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia Governor’s race has spurred some to believe that Americans have thoroughly rejected critical race theory. Not so fast. While I agree that wokism may have reached its zenith and most Americans don’t like it, I’m not certain the soccer moms who have been labeled FBI terrorists aren’t on board with most of what critical race theory has to offer. …more

Breaking up should be easy to do, even for States. That is, of course, if Americans truly believed in self-determination. Most don’t. Couple that with the perception among some “conservatives” that secession is just a Leninist plot to destroy America and it’s really surprising that nearly a quarter of Americans think that a political divorce would be a good thing. It doesn’t mean we can …more

You aren’t conserving anything if you think Abraham Lincoln was a conservative. Or Frederick Douglass. Or Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Or Martin Luther King. Or frankly any Republican from the 1850s through the 1870s. Even after that is questionable. But that’s exactly what the modern conservative establishment wants to dupe the rest of American into believing. You see, all of these Republicans–King wasn’t a Republican no …more

It’s been a couple of weeks since you’ve heard from me. That’s bad. You will be hearing from me more often in the coming weeks, particularly if you are a subscriber to McClanahan Academy. That’s good. I haven’t stopped producing The Brion McClanahan Show. You can get it on all major podcast platforms. Just search for it wherever you get podcasts and subscribe, and once …more

A high school history teacher asked me this question: How do you teach Andrew Jackson, but more importantly, how do you incorporate John C. Calhoun into a unit on Andrew Jackson? I love answering these types of questions. I have already prepackaged my “Jacksonian America” lecture at McClanahan Academy, so if you want my full spin on the topic, get that class. Jackson is a …more

The only certain things in life are death, taxes, and “conservative” historian Allen Guelzo calling Robert E. Lee a traitor. In fact, his recent book makes that clear on the first page. Guelzo is a self described Yankee who bleeds blue and genuflects to his statue of Abraham Lincoln. That last part I made up, but he does call himself a Yankee. That means no …more

They don’t like them, that is unless they glorify some underrepresented group in America. In other words, wokies think there are too many monuments to white men, and in particular white men who owned slaves or they think were racist. Tearing down monuments is an indirect (and somewhat passive aggressive) response to “right wing” America. They don’t like you so they want to tear down …more

Last week, our SCOUTS wannabe Attorney General instructed the FBI to investigate “dangerous” activity by school board moms. You see, people are upset all over the United States about critical race theory and masking mandates for their kids. This, coupled with an already meager return for our education dollars in many States across America, has parents challenging elected and appointed school board officials. Some are …more

Earlier this year, I picked a fight with the Straussian/neoconservatives in Chronicles magazine. This led some people to openly wonder why now, and more importantly what was the point? If the right is being badgered by the left, why do we need to pick a fight with our allies? My response is simple: You can’t win if you are fighting by the enemies’ rules and …more