Professor William B. Allen is a professor of Political Philosophy at Michigan State University and (for the 2008-09 academic year) Senior Visiting Scholar at the Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good at Villanova University. During a 2006-07 sabbatical leave, he served as the Ann & Herbert W. Vaughan Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program on American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. His areas of expertise include the American founding and U.S. Constitution; the American founders (particularly George Washington); the influence of...
Overview
In 1783 George Washington said that “we have a national character to establish.” 110 Years later Frederick Jackson Turner published “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” and wrote these words: “to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics… coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind…, that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom…” Turner identified the closing of the frontier as a watershed for national character. In the 110 years since, we have observed that Washington’s project could not be contained in limned geographic descriptions. Have we, then, a national character? And if we do, is it a friend to liberty?
