This is one of the project’s core tags. It is used for Papers grounded in parliamentary traditions, the role of the Crown, or the distinctive features of British and Canadian constitutional development.
Loyalist № 18. Might the Empire have prevented the American Revolution by expanding Westminster into an Imperial Parliament? One of many proposals that were put forward by American and British Statesmen alike, demographics would have doomed it to failure. Canada's Confederation offered a new way forward in loyalty to the Crown.
Loyalist № 17. The machinery of a republic must be carefully regulated. When the energy of government rises unchecked, it risks surging into tyranny; when it declines too far, it stalls into gridlock or chaos. The role of institutions, as the Founders envisioned, is to maintain this equilibrium – preserving a government vigorous enough to act decisively yet restrained enough to protect liberty.
Loyalist № 15. The Framers believed that regular reviews would guard against military overreach. Unlike Britain – where oversight grew out of war, oppression, and hard-won tradition – America built its safeguards on reason alone. But history suggests that civic memory, not argument, is the most enduring foundation of liberty.
Loyalist № 13. Hamilton called the judiciary the “least dangerous” branch. Yet history played out very differently. From Marbury to Dobbs, the U.S. Supreme Court has shaped the political order as deeply as any elected branch. Its real power lay not only in constitutional design, but in popular legitimacy – something the Westminster experience shows cannot be engineered, only inherited.
Loyalist № 11. The U.S. Presidency, once a modest office constrained by law, has swelled into an entity with near-monarchical power – issuing thousands of executive orders, waging undeclared wars, and reshaping global treaties without Congress. The very safeguards that Hamilton extolled now seem weakened, raising the question: has the Republic strayed too far from its founding principles?
Loyalist № 10. In the hands of one who wears not the Crown but lusts after it, the noble prerogatives of mercy and pardon turn to malignancy. Not unlike the failure of Reconstruction following the end of the Civil War, the pardoning of the January 6th insurrectionists who sought to overturn the constitutional order of the United States foreshadows a long and terrible night ahead.
Loyalist № 9. Madison warned that even a chamber of sages could descend into a mob. Today’s Congress faces the opposite danger: silence, submission, and the slow death of deliberation. When its power was challenged, it did not resist – it abdicated.
Loyalist № 8. The Electoral College was meant to shield the presidency from partisanship and populism – but quickly became their tool. Federalist No. 68 offers a window into the original design and its failure, raising deeper questions: What can Westminster democracy teach us about balancing local and national interests? And have Canadians unknowingly created an Electoral College of Our own?
Loyalist № 7. The rise of factional politics in Canada and the U.S. reveals a deeper failure of design. Whether through regional fragmentation or ideological polarization, Our institutions no longer reward broad-based coalitions. Madison warned against these very dangers – and what they would mean for democracy in North America.
Loyalist № 5. The United States has long imagined itself the “indispensable nation,” a force for a rational global democratic order. Yet from Wounded Knee to Iraq, history shows a different pattern – one of unrestrained power, failed principles, and abandoned allies. Whether the myth was ever a force for good, the world may now be better off without it.