CLASSES & TOURS

Online Classes - Recorded live and live, online classes

Hillsdale College Online Courses

ONLINE COURSES​
​1.    How well do you understand our Constitution?
The Constitution Minute is a series of brief, informative one-minute radio messages designed to improve your understanding of the meaning and history of the U.S. Constitution. Each Minute features Dr. Larry Arnn or another Hillsdale faculty member—the same ones who teach our students on campus—explaining one key constitutional principle.
List of Minutes:
1.    How did America’s Founders understand the words, “All men are created equal”?
2.    What is the difference between natural rights and entitlements?
3.    Did America's Founders intend to create a separation between church and state?
4.    Why does the Constitution limit government?
5.    President Larry Arnn discusses bureaucratic despotism.
6.    The continuing relevance of the Constitution.
7.    What is the Relationship of the Three Branches of Government Under the Constitution?
8.    Why is Federalism crucial to free government?
9.    President Larry Arnn discusses the presidential oath of office.
10.    President Larry Arnn discusses Congress granting itself legal exemptions. 
11.    What is the Legislative Vesting Clause of the Constitution?
12.    President Larry Arnn explains the principle of equality in the Declaration of Independence. 
13.    What did the Founders mean by "general welfare"?
​2.    Conversation on the Constitution
Sit with students from Hillsdale College as they explore our founding principles.  This six-part series is topical videos 7-14 minute in length. Perfect for the busy person. 

https://online.hillsdale.edu/courses/constitution-2017/lesson-01/lesson-1
​3.    Constitution 101
This is the full version course, 10 lectures, 45-50 minutes each 
https://online.hillsdale.edu/course/con-101/lecture-1/lecture
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Educational Videos
A Time for Choosing ​Televised Campaign Address for the Goldwater Presidential Campaign - 10/27/64
Prager U Videos you may find helpful:

Reading List | ​"There’s Nothing Like a Good Book"

​The U.S. Constitution: A Reader – Edited by Hillsdale College Politics Faculty
Want to read our founding documents and others that defined our nation, but the colloquial is just too hard to follow?  The Hillsdale College’s, The Constitution:  A Reader is the same book used as a text at the college and the same book is available, free to you, online.  This website is so much more. 

Featuring 113 essential primary source documents, THE U.S. CONSTITUTION: A READER is taught as part of the core undergraduate course on the U.S. Constitution at Hillsdale College.
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Divided into eleven sections with introductions by members of Hillsdale's Politics Department faculty, readings cover the American founding, Civil War, Progressivism, and the rise of the administrative state.
​The Heritage Guide to the Constitution – Edited by David Forte & Matthew Spaulding
​The Heritage Guide to the Constitution will give you a brief and accurate explanation of each clause of the Constitution as envisioned by our Framers and as applied in contemporary Law.  You’ll learn about our founding principles, the nature of man, how the founders designed our government to prevent abuse of power and other foundational concepts that make the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution much easier to understand.  

Learn about significant cases such as Row v. Wade, the Dred Scott decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, and other landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions and how they’ve shaped our public policy.  (For Constitution nerds like Suzanne, you can fact check the presidential candidates and see if they’re correctly reciting court decisions.  Great stuff to impress your friends at parties.)

​The Future of Education:
Education is a process that doesn’t end.  It’s a commitment of love that we make to ourselves, to learn and understand history, to pass it along to our children and grandchildren, and to protect it from being stolen from us.  The future of education is in the hands of each of us.  Now it’s up to each of us to make a scared commitment to keep it alive and to keep the embers of freedom burning in hearts and minds everywhere.

​Socialism:  Front and Center for the 2020 Election

​President Trump kicked off his 2020 reelection bid in August 2019 and his speech gave us insight into the issues we can expect to see going forward.  Without a doubt, for the first time in American history, socialism will be front and center as never before. 

We’ve all seen photos of the RESULTS of socialism - inflation, poverty, no food, no electricity, long lines, no gasoline, property confiscation, etc. – and have used those examples of why socialism fails.  But what, exactly, is it that CAUSES socialism to fail? Mismanagement, as Bernie Sanders claims, and that it can be done better?  He uses Sweden and other countries as examples.  (Watch the videos about Socialism on the RWOP website under Education, for more information.)

As an avid researcher, I’m always looking for explanations about information on the “why” something happens, especially when it comes to our founding.  Were our founders right about “the nature of man” or, as the socialists claim, through improvements to technology and medicine, society will do a better job of governing?  They claim that the founders were right, for the time they lived in, but their principles don’t work now and that government needs to evolve in order to meet the needs of a new, complex modern society.
There’s a study from UC Berkeley that hasn’t gotten much attention.  It’s called The Power Paradox:  How We Gain and Lose Influence by Dacher Keltner, a psychologist in the Psychology department.  Here's what the study found:  The more power and influence someone has, it leads to empathy deficits and diminished moral sentiments, self-serving impulsivity, incivility, disrespect, and narratives of exceptionalism.   He dedicates a whole chapter to the Abuses of Power in which he begins by quoting Lord Acton, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Our brilliant founders, who studied every government since the beginning of time, knew that the nature of man includes ambition and self-interest to the detriment of others.   This study is significant because our government was structured into three branches in order to mitigate the effects of power and for one to act as a check on the others. 

“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition... It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections of human nature?”  - James Madison, Feb. 8, 1788 (Federalist No. 51)

The reason Socialism fails is because, when the ambitious are given total, unmitigated power, they can’t resist the temptation to use it for their own benefit, often to the detriment of the people they serve, and this is the CAUSE of its failure.

It looks like our very wise founders were right after all.