Source: Law & Liberty
by Clifford Angell Bates Jr.
“As America teeters on the brink of its 250th anniversary as a sovereign republic in 2026, a fog of uncertainty shrouds the true meaning of freedom, rights too often reduced to slogans amid partisan strife. Counterintuitively, the surest path to clarity lies not in our revolutionary origins but in peering back at our mother country’s ancient constitutional tapestry. There, the British constitutional historian David Starkey emerges as a Virgil-like sage, charting England’s republican-monarchical tradition. As we approach the anniversary of our independence, it is worth revisiting his analysis of how the English ‘crowned republic’ — a monarchy tempered by communal consent—seeded American ideals of limited government, sidestepping the Puritan radicals’ chaotic bid to dismantle the throne altogether.” (10/23/25)