2025 Books in Review
Thoughts and quotes from this year’s reading
Conservative sensibility by George Will
This is the book I’ve been looking for, though it was written ahead of its time. Will says – at the time of writing – conservatism is a “persuasion without a party”, but he couldn’t have known how much more true, though in a different way, that sentiment would become as we reach the end of 2025.
The principle philosophical battle for conservatives is no longer against progressives or the Democratic Party. Yes, the enduring differences between the two parties persist, but the dominance of this long-standing rivalry is now overshadowed by a more formidable force, which is the Republican Party itself. The call is coming from inside the house, as it were.
My two favorite things about this book are that (1) it logics through the utility and, thus, the validity of political philosophy – the idea that our understanding of the human condition is a critical heuristic tool for the continuous exercise of calibrating current circumstance to political principles in order to steer the country towards a more perfect union. (2) And that it demonstrates how the culmination of the Founders’ political philosophy was articulated in the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, which followed, laid the legal architecture to accomplish the Declaration’s vision. It sounds simple, but I think we often forget how to read the Constitution, which must be through the lens of the Declaration itself.
No word is wasted. The entire book is rich and quotable:
American conservatism is an ongoing meditation on America’s founding.
How does a society decide what the natural rights are? The answer is: It argues. The argument can never be concluded because it has a large empirical dimension, the ongoing accumulation from history and contemporary life…So public policy must be informed by political philosophy.
American conservatism has a clear mission: It is to conserve, by articulating and demonstrating the continuing pertinence of, the Founders’ thinking.
My conviction is that, properly understood, conservatism is the Madisonian persuasion…there is more to the American purpose, and more to justice, than majorities having their way.
Presidents
I’m attempting to read through the US presidents sequentially. Not to study them exclusively but to better learn the country’s history through it’s most prominent subjects.
A couple of things stand out. First, Founding Fathers were hard to come by. There was not a deep bench of brilliant, wise and capable individuals who were able and willing to contribute to the country’s intellectual formation.
Another observation is how remarkable it was that the Founders’ collective brilliance was channeled in near unison towards articulating a shared vision during the country’s formative years. After establishing independence though, and particularly during Washington’s second term, the primary questions facing the nation moved away from abstract theory and towards practical governance. At this point, the Founders’ views began to diverge sharply, and their less admirable qualities, including myriad mistakes, began to surface. Prior harmony gave way to bitter feuds and political parties, the very thing they had been leery of in the beginning.
John Adams by David McCullough
I’ve setout to read each president, and Adams is an early favorite. A few things stand out.
He was deeply principled, honest and likably ambitious in that he was candid about his flaws compared to, for example, Jefferson who didn’t seem to be aware of his. Or if he was, they didn’t seem to concern him. Often gracious even to his enemies, and the only founding father who did not die in debt.
Adams had an acute understanding of philosophy that informed his vision of America and was presciently aware of the influence of his work on future generations. His main concern was the growing enmity among political people and the rise of two parties. Though assumed to be a federalist by his detractors, he was more independent than his critics gave him credit for. In fact, I find most of the common criticisms against him to be fairly weak.
Like his contemporaries, he studied literature comprehensively. He also studied the Bible, and his words and actions demonstrated some of most profound sentiments of Christianity. He grappled with his sin and seemed to have worked the truths of Scripture into all the corners of his being, such that when grief came upon him, he was able to balance mourning with truth to maintain a steady joy. And he genuinely forgave those who acted against him. Not just in word, but he graciously pursued true friendship with them, a signpost of one whose identity is not wound up in themselves.
I think his wife Abigail tops him as the better writer, and it was clear she shared his profound understanding and ability to articulate the American cause.
Thomas Jefferson, The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
Jon Meacham is my favorite biographer of the founding presidents thus far, though Thomas Jefferson is my least favorite of subjects.
Jefferson comes across in his letters as effortlessly brilliant. On its own, it would seem an appealing trait but, at times, proves reckless. He presents ideas with poetic confidence, but they are sometimes half-baked or are removed from reality altogether.
This flaw is most evident in is his famous statement regarding Shay’s Rebellion: “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” Writing from Paris, Jefferson badly misjudged the severity of the crisis. The rebellion almost destabilized the fragile republic, which was, at the time, still operating under the Articles of Confederation, and was the singular event that convinced George Washington and others that a new government was necessary.
Jefferson physical proximity mattered. At the time, he was stationed in Paris as a diplomat, witnessing the early rumblings of what would become the French Revolution, which was highly romanticized at the time by Americans in the throws of their own revolution. But, in fact, he left Paris before the Jacobin’s descent into the horrors of what became the French Revolution.
This misjudgment put him on the wrong side of history. He was cynical towards the American rebellion that desperately needed a strong federal government to uphold the rule of law and sympathetic to the French Revolution that devolved into bloodshed and near anarchy, the antithesis of protecting the natural rights he claimed to uphold.
And he always claimed to be a staunch supporter of the general public opinion. But, as president, theory yielded to necessity. When faced with the responsibilities of governance, he often acted against pure majoritarian ideals in favor of a centralized (Congress) or even a singularity the president (himself).
They weren’t bad decisions, but they demonstrate the unavoidable tension between purist political theory and the pragmatic demands of reality. Contextual events matter. As the saying goes, you campaign in poetry but govern in prose. Modern politicians would do well to be explicit about their ideals versus what they can tolerate as a matter of public policy. Democracy loves a purist, but it only functions if they’re know when to compromise.
As a related point, the brilliance of James Madison was that he put a check against the prevailing emphasis on democratic majority rule. His claim was that majorities themselves can be tyrannical against minority viewpoints. They’re different than the tyranny of monarchy but tyrannical nonetheless. The answer, Madison insisted, was not to get rid of them but rather to “extend the sphere”, such that there are sufficient factions/viewpoints that none can domineer over the other.
The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President by Noah Feldman
Two key takeaways from this book.
First, Madison, the true authority on the Constitution, offers the clearest answer to a debate that still divides American politics today: Whether the Constitution is strictly relegated to enumerated powers or a living document that evolves with time.
In the early years, Madison argued forcefully to establish norms for how the Constitution should be interpreted, namely, opposing any law not explicitly enumerated. Yet he came to support Hamilton’s national bank and a standing army. This change demonstrates something essential: that Madison did not believe interpretation could be simply relegated to enumerated powers. Rather, he believed interpretation rests in “the true spirit of liberty”.
As the founders transitioned from abstract political theory in the founding years into the realities of governing, they learned that constitutional judgement requires a application that is anchored by first principles. The Constitution was written to secure “the blessings of liberty” but was unable to anticipate all future circumstances. This flexibility is not license to excuse unchecked power or arbitrarily expand the federal government. Rather, Madison’s framework resolves this tension in that laws should be evaluated through the lens of whether they preserve or diminish liberty.
The enduring lesson of Madison’s work is that constitutional interpretation must be principled without being restrictive and adaptive without being unmoored. As conservatives know well, liberty can be diminished with too much government, but it can also be diminished on the other end of the spectrum through a rigid constitution that would prevent protections on anything from civil rights to data privacy.
Second, Madison was the needed check on colonial America’s rush into pure majoritarianism government. Prevailing republican theory assumed a small homogenous society, but the Founders witnessed a nation fractured by growing and competing factions. Madison inverted the theory by arguing the Jeffersonian faith in majority rule contained a fatal flaw: That majorities, just like kings, can also be tyrannical. His solution to “extend the sphere” diluted power by dispersing it across diverse interests so that no single faction could dominate. The Senate today, and the filibuster in particular, remains a critical and enduring component of Madison’s American philosophy.
Working by Robert Caro
I was drawn to Caro’s latest book, because I loved his work on LBJ and now, after reading, look forward to to his book on Robert Moses. Caro wrote about both historic figures not for their own sake but as instruments to examine power and all who were affected by it. This book looks under the hood at his wisdom of craft.
…I want students to learn that writing, the quality of the prose, matters in non-fiction, that writing matters in history.
…my writing seems never to come out well if I’ve talked about it beforehand.
[Excerpt on why he chose LBJ as a subject]:
It was his six years -1955 through 1960-as Senate Majority Leader. For a hundred years before Lyndon Johnson, since the halcyon era of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, no one had been able to make the Senate work – as, in the fifty-nine years since Lyndon Johnson left the Senate, no one’s been able to make the Senate work. But he made it work. During the six years of his leadership, in fact, the Senate became the center of governmental ingenuity, creativity and energy in Washington.
Really, my books are an examination of what power does to people. Power doesn’t always corrupt…[sometimes it] cleanses. But what power always does is reveal.