this failure is inseparable from the rights failure, even in periods of electoral power, to offer any effective resistance to the ever conquering globalist managerial class or attain any effective cultural significance. Perhaps one unintended consequence of constant Lincoln talk was that it created the space for equality to be the definitive guide for policy and statecraft. But this hasnt been Jaffas equality and our rhetoric has largely been shaped by calls for equality of outcome. So Plautus has something here, I think. But this is to skip a few steps, important steps, foregoing a much deeper understanding of the sources of our confusion regarding what American republicanism requires for constitutional vigor. This is to say nothing of how thoroughly the classes of folks that Plautus points to as willing participants in such a contest are themselves dependent on the government. They arent likely to be the Schmittians some conservative theorists have been waiting for. Before even touching policy disputes, much less the American managerial class and its globalist pretensions, however, might we look to American constitutionalism and inquire differently how we are failing to think, live, and act as a constitutional people? Getting on the path to recovery requires asking basic questions that precede either perennial attempts to gauge success by how much the tax code is being trimmed or, as Plautus prefers, wars against managerial elitists. And this requires us to have a conversation over the origins and nature of American constitutionalism and how this should inform our attempts to be constitutional. Completely developing such an argument isnt the purpose of what follows, but I am trying to note how it could begin. More specifically, are we locked forever in a row between the aggressive states rights posture on the one hand, and a consolidated nationalist position that undergirds the regulatory state on the other? Is there a point of mediation between the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian positions? What about the nature of the human person and how our thinking on anthropology drives disputes over liberty and power? Is American constitutional liberty only defensible on the basis of modern individualism which rejects the collectivity of big government but increasingly shows little regard for any other collectivity as well, i.e., social, familial, or religious? To begin answering these questions, Robert Moffit and I co-authored an essay about Orestes Brownson, who staked out entirely new ground by articulating and defining the concepts of an unwritten, providential constitution and territorial democracy as the foundation of our republican journey. Our essay Unwritten Constitutionalist, which appears in the March-April edition of The American Conservative, argues that the American conservative project is not a doctrine, but is better understood as a practice grounded in the countrys unique political culture. Conservatives have overrelied on sources like free-market theory, the abstract principles in the Declaration of Independence, or simply the post-World War II role of the United States in attempting to maintain global hegemony for democracy. In that vein, we point to Orestes Brownson who forged a theory of constitutional order that secures at once the authority of the