Hillsdale College Holds 16th Annual Constitution Day Celebration
Topics included sovereignty and the nation state, DOGE and the Constitution, the conservative legal movement, and the American Founding.
HILLSDALE, Mich. — Hillsdale College hosted its 16th annual Constitution Day Celebration Sept. 18-19 at the JW Marriott in Washington, D.C. The two-day program included a luncheon, dinner, panel discussions, and remarks by Reform UK Party leader Nigel Farage and author Daniel J. Mahoney.
“Everything that we value, everything that we are, is based on our Judeo-Christian culture and traditions — everything.”
Farage gave an opening talk on “Sovereignty and the Nation State.” Farage described his “one man-crusade to regain British national sovereignty” after Britain joined the European Union. He said that the threats facing America are exactly the same.
“I was cartooned. I was lampooned. But I just kept on going because I had this absolute determination and belief that the Western world was heading in the wrong place,” Farage said. “We’d lost sight of the fact that everything that we value, everything that we are, is based on our Judeo-Christian culture and traditions — everything.”
Panels the next morning discussed “DOGE and the Constitution” and “The Conservative Legal Movement.”
The first panel featured Tyler O’Neil ’15, author of “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” as well as Christopher DeMuth of The Heritage Foundation and Margot Cleveland of The Federalist.
The second panel featured Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network, Gary S. Lawson of the University of Florida, and Jesse Merriam of Patrick Henry College.
“The Founding Fathers understood the political events of the American Revolution in broad continuity with Western civilization as a whole.”
Daniel J. Mahoney, author of “The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now,” gave a concluding lecture titled “No Year Zero: The American Founding and the Continuity of Civilization.”
“One of the significant features of the United States is 1777 didn’t become Year One; 1788, the year after the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, didn’t become Year One,” Mahoney said. “The Founding Fathers understood the political events of the American Revolution in broad continuity with Western civilization as a whole.”
- Photos from Constitution Day
- Recordings of the talks
- Photos of Hillsdale in D.C.
- High-resolution copy of the Hillsdale College clocktower logo
About Hillsdale in D.C.
Hillsdale College’s campus in Washington, D.C., extends the College’s educational mission to the nation’s capital by teaching and promoting the principles and practice of American constitutionalism. As the home of the Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program, the James Madison Fellowship Program, the Van Andel Graduate School of Government, and a variety of lectures and events open to policymakers and the public, Hillsdale in D.C. seeks to inspire and form students, citizens, practitioners, and statesmen who will restore America’s principles and revive self-government in the political life of the nation. For more information, visit dc.hillsdale.edu.