The George Buchanan Forum

by The George Buchanan Forum

Jon Staab: Protocols for Conviviality

Digital communication technology has exceeded its optimal scale, establishing a radical monopoly over human interaction. Internet platforms intermediate private relationships, extract value through surveillance capitalism, and reduce people to quantifiable metrics. However, certain digital tools can subvert the architecture of the corporate internet to safeguard individual freedom and human flourishing within digital environments. Two digital tools embody this conviviality in particular: open source software and asymmetric cryptography. Open source software empowers users to understand, modify, and control their tools rather than being controlled by them, while asymmetric cryptography enables private communication over untrusted networks, as well as credible exit through digital signatures. Together, these tools offer a bottom-up approach to incrementally reclaiming control over our digital lives making small-scale resistance against intermediation and surveillance more feasible within the hostile environment of the modern internet. George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyranny, and the freedom of Christian citizens. Like its namesake, the George Buchanan Forum is a community of liberty-minded Christians seeking to integrate theology, political theory, economics, and history. Learn more at... https://www.tgbf.org

E41

Feb 23, 2026

28:35

Jonathan McIntosh: Minding Your Own Business: A Libertarian Reading of Plato’s Republic Bks I-II

Plato's Republic is regarded by many as the foundational text in the history of western political philosophy. Yet with its totalitarian and communistic "ideal" or "noble" city at its heart, the Republic might seem to contain little of value to the libertarian. A careful reading of the opening two books of the work, however, shows Plato wrestling with a number of issues of critical libertarian interest: the antithesis of persuasion and coercion as forms of social relation, the ruler as in the employ of the ruled, a rejection of the principle of might-makes-right, the origins of the political community in economic need and voluntary exchange, and more. This paper surveys the opening two books of Plato's Republic, highlighting its insights, and also some of its confusions, from a libertarian perspective. George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyranny, and the freedom of Christian citizens. Like its namesake, the George Buchanan Forum is a community of liberty-minded Christians seeking to integrate theology, political theory, economics, and history. Learn more at... https://www.tgbf.org

E40

Feb 23, 2026

30:12

Jordan Dorney: The Killing of Cardinal Beaton - Three Views

What happens when priests obtain “the whole regiment of the realm,” with “[the Devil’s] own son” as the head of this ecclesial usurpation? In this talk I will present the views of John Knox, George Buchanan, and David Hume on the killing of Cardinal Beaton (d. 1546) at St Andrews Castle. Was this notorious episode from the Scottish Reformation a justified if irregular quasi-judicial proceeding, a cold-blooded murder, or something else entirely? Did it involve the right of resistance to tyranny or a purported right of revolution? The talk will seek to address prudently the topic of political assasination from a historical and historiographical perspective. George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyranny, and the freedom of Christian citizens. Like its namesake, the George Buchanan Forum is a community of liberty-minded Christians seeking to integrate theology, political theory, economics, and history. Learn more at... https://www.tgbf.org

E39

Feb 23, 2026

36:50

Jeremy Bunch: Paul Kingsnorth, Capitalism, and the Machine

Paul Kingsnorth's recently released book Against The Machine pushes the discussion on modern cultural and religious disintegration in a significantly helpful direction. His analysis places the blame for global dehumanization largely upon technocracy, individualism, and the pursuit of progress-for-the-sake-of-progress. Capitalism is likewise indicted. This talk aims to bring a corrective to Kingsnorth's critique of capitalism, showing that it is foundational and proper to the human nature he wants to see freed from The Machine. George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyranny, and the freedom of Christian citizens. Like its namesake, the George Buchanan Forum is a community of liberty-minded Christians seeking to integrate theology, political theory, economics, and history. Learn more at... https://www.tgbf.org

E38

Feb 23, 2026

28:58

Jonathan McIntosh: Figuratively Speaking: the Old Testament, Natural Law, and Libertarianism

According to the natural law tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Old Testament civil law wasn’t merely political, but was also “figurative” or symbolic in nature. Yet in his actual interpretation of the judicial precepts, Aquinas treats them almost entirely as political, an error that results in an overly broad and (ironically) theonomic understanding of the general equity principle of Old Testament civil law. In this paper, I critique Aquinas’s account, and argue that a narrower, libertarian interpretation of the general equity of the judicial precepts (along the lines of the Non-Aggression Principle) is able to more consistently appreciate their biblically figurative character. George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyranny, and the freedom of Christian citizens. Like its namesake, the George Buchanan Forum is a community of liberty-minded Christians seeking to integrate theology, political theory, economics, and history. Learn more at... https://www.tgbf.org

E37

Feb 17, 2025

27:24

Nathan Stenzel: Preambles to Politics - Reformed & Roman Catholic Views of Human Constitution

Behind Roman Catholic and Reformed debates over soteriology, or the doctrine of salvation, lie conflicting views of man’s pre-fall nature. The donum superadditum, or “superadded gift,” is the Roman Catholic doctrine that when Adam was created, he had to be given a special, supernatural grace just to harmonize his spiritual and bodily natures. The Reformed theologians rejected this idea, believing it implied a degrading view of man’s original, unfallen nature, and taught instead that man’s original righteousness, while created by God, was not alien but integral to his natural state. But aside from its implications for the doctrine of salvation, what might be the political and social ramifications of these divergent anthropologies? This paper will examine early modern Reformed and Roman Catholic views of the image of God and the donum superadditum, attending to the ways in which these competing visions imply different notions of the naturalness of political society. George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyranny, and the freedom of Christian citizens. Like its namesake, the George Buchanan Forum is a community of liberty-minded Christians seeking to integrate theology, political theory, economics, and history. Learn more at... https://www.tgbf.org

E36

Feb 17, 2025

27:15

Will Boyd: We Are Not Beavers - The Cost of Creating Slack Water

The free-running Snake and Clearwater Rivers once provided significant natural assets to mankind: beauty, clean water, fish, recreation, transportation, inspiration, waterfowl, solace. Many of these assets are now compromised. Since the four lower Snake River dams were finished in 1976, return rates for salmon to Lower Granite Lock and Dam have consistently fallen below 2%. Dam construction transformed the free-flowing river into a series of slack water “lakes” running over one hundred miles from Tri-Cities, WA to Lewiston, ID. The low flow, increased temperature, and high nutrient load in these lakes significantly limit juvenile salmon’s ability to migrate to sea and mature salmon’s ability to spawn. Snake River salmon and steelhead currently require significant ecological subsidy to prevent complete failure. Removal of the four lower Snake River dams and select others including Dworshak would restore these natural assets and eliminate the need for billions of tax-payer dollars earmarked for salmon restoration and dam maintenance annually. George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyranny, and the freedom of Christian citizens. Like its namesake, the George Buchanan Forum is a community of liberty-minded Christians seeking to integrate theology, political theory, economics, and history. Learn more at... https://www.tgbf.org

E35

Feb 17, 2025

32:47

George Harrell: Re-enchanting History in an Age of Woke Ideologies and Christian Nationalisms

Through historical narratives like the 1619 Project and critiques of the “post-war consensus,” both the post-liberal Left and Right seek to find meaning in our past while dismantling our national myths. This raises a critical question for Christians: are the historical methods employed by these political identities defensible? Or is there a more historically Christian approach to understanding and remembering the communal past? George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyranny, and the freedom of Christian citizens. Like its namesake, the George Buchanan Forum is a community of liberty-minded Christians seeking to integrate theology, political theory, economics, and history. Learn more at... https://www.tgbf.org

E34

Feb 17, 2025

32:30

Jeremy Bunch: Burning the Land Slowly

This talk will help define the increasingly popular term 'regenerative agriculture,' and will explore how it intersects with critical elements of food production sustainability, which is foundational to civilization itself. The systems we have built to produce and distribute food, and just about anything else for that manner, extract and consume finite resources, while at the same time our agricultural systems do not maximize constant or infinite resources. In response to this challenge, we have turned to technology. But the technology simply props up those unsustainable systems. The world has seen this folly before. George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyranny, and the freedom of Christian citizens. Like its namesake, the George Buchanan Forum is a community of liberty-minded Christians seeking to integrate theology, political theory, economics, and history. Learn more at... https://www.tgbf.org https://www.facebook.com/TheGeorgeBuchananForum

E33

May 13, 2024

30:02

George Harrell: Peter Zeihan & The Myth of the Pax Americana

Contrary to the post-Cold War, triumphalist narrative, after WWII the United States did not altruistically transcend power politics and become the world’s stabilizing umpire. Geopolitics was never turned off as Peter Zeihan claimed, nor did history end as Francis Fukuyama predicted. Instead, it was a period of brutal business as usual, and we are just now becoming aware of the cost. George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyranny, and the freedom of Christian citizens. Like its namesake, the George Buchanan Forum is a community of liberty-minded Christians seeking to integrate theology, political theory, economics, and history. Learn more at... https://www.tgbf.org https://www.facebook.com/TheGeorgeBuchananForum

E32

May 13, 2024

32:06

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