The Brion McClanahan Author & Historian Blog

The Claremont Institute has raised a lot of money with the slogan “Recovering the American Idea.” What that means precisely is open to debate. What idea? Of course, if you’ve followed my work for any amount of time you know that their “idea” is Lincoln’s “proposition nation” myth. They proudly point to his interpretation of the Declaration as the key to understanding America. The left …more

I published my Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers in 2009 knowing that it would only be a matter of time before the left fully embraced tearing down what I consider to be America’s greatest generation. They are as relevant today as they were in 1789 or 1776. But to the left, the founding generation always presents problems. Some leftist historians admire the generation, …more

Leftists don’t know what to do. They correctly were against American occupation of Afghanistan, but now that the Biden administration has followed through on plans to withdraw American troops, they worry about the impact on “human rights.” This puts them in a difficult position with their base. On the one hand, modern wokes think men and women are the same and therefore women and girls …more

The feds don’t like Missouri and Florida standing up for real federalism. They never will. And they’ll tell you that the “supremacy clause” gives them arbitrary power they don’t possess. This is the precisely why opponents of the Constitution warned that the “supremacy clause” would be dangerous. They were told not to worry. It would only be applied to laws that were made in “pursuance …more

Sometimes we need a break from politics, war, and economics. We all agree that the world has gone insane. What do you do to unplug, to escape? Baseball has long been one of my distractions. We all know MLB is a woke corporation. Their decision to pull the All-Star Game from Atlanta this summer was embarrassing. So is their constant hat tip to wokism in …more

I recorded episode 496 of The Brion McClanahan Show on Afghanistan over the weekend, before the events of Monday and Tuesday. Before we had people getting run over by airplanes and falling off the sides of the aircraft at 5000 feet. Before we had several laughable moments from the Biden administration asking the Taliban to have an “inclusive” government. Before Joe Biden made a decent …more

This is a given, but stupid leftists say stupid things. And it seems to be getting worse as more “college educated” people are sent into the American workforce. There’s a reason “Joe the Plumber” had some common sense. He never went to college. Now, what does that say about yours truly who spent years in universities? My wife has all the common sense. I just …more

I’ve often said that almost every president in the last one hundred years should have been impeached and removed from office for violating their oath to “uphold and defend the Constitution.” But I have never seen a president openly say they knowingly violated the document. That is until Joe Biden. When the “CDC” extended its illegal and unconstitutional eviction moratorium, Biden did just that. He …more

American political parties are generally a joke. They don’t contain any substance, are hidebound by large donors or the prospect of appealing to a “big tent,” and always betray their constituents. Progressives complain loudly about Joe Biden. He isn’t one of “them,” but he wasn’t Donald Trump so the establishment backed his candidacy. Trump was the outlier. He didn’t seem particularly interested in toeing the …more

What can the “Civil War” teach America? If you asked this question in 2011, at the 150th anniversary of the event, the modern historical establishment said something like, “The South went to war to defend white supremacy and slavery and we should put an end to the “Lost Cause” myth of the event.” Or “Let’s understand that Southerners were un-American white supremacist traitors who waged …more