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James Poulos Subscribe

James Poulos is Executive Editor of The American Mind, a publication of the Claremont Institute. He is the author of The Art of Being Free (St. Martin's Press, 2017), contributing editor of American Affairs, and a fellow at the Center for the Study of Digital Life.

July 26, 2019|Aleister Crowley, Apollo 11, David Bowie, decline, dystopia, Gnosticism, nihilism, Steve Jobs

Apollo 11 and the End of Cosmic Civilization

by James Poulos|

David Bowie as Major Tom.
By the 1990s, space in the American imagination had become, outside the precincts of Trekkies and Jedi enthusiasts, fully dystopian.

March 28, 2019|anti-growth, Digital Technology, Greta Thunberg, Jonah Goldberg

The Technological Sources of Anti-Growth Politics

by James Poulos|

Greta Thunberg speaks at the European Economic and Social Committee plenary session in Brussels, Belgium on February 21, 2019 (Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com).
Growth is only being demonized because it has been disenchanted, courtesy in part of digital technology.

January 21, 2019|James Williams, Jimi Hendrix, Marshall McLuhan, Matthew Crawford, Social Credit, social media, Stand Out of Our Light

The Birth, and Digital Death, of the Electric Dream

by James Poulos|

Those shaped by the televisual imagination, like author James Williams, were staggeringly naïve and optimistic at the time of social media’s advent.

November 19, 2018|Alexis de Tocqueville, America, G.K. Chesterton, Max Weber, Sayyid Outb

Reading America from the Outside

by James Poulos|

Outsiders often see more about us than we do ourselves: James L. Nolan shows us what Tocqueville, Weber, Chesterton, and Qutb noticed.

October 17, 2018|Freedom, Henry Kissinger, J.G. Ballard, Jurassic Park, Jürgen Habermas, social media, Technology

Life Finds A Way: Jurassic Park‘s Warning at 25

by James Poulos|

Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park (1993). Image: Universal Pictures.
Jurassic Park's question remains: is technology subject to our control anymore?

September 14, 2018|

Nihilism, Active and Passive

by James Poulos|

In response to: The Frivolous Valley and Its Dreadful Conformity

Apple's Cupertino, California headquarters (image: Uladzik Kryhin / shutterstock.com)
Michael Anton is right that our politics and culture will eventually “begin to draw blood” from the gods of entertainment in Silicon Valley.

More Responses

The Needs of a Nationalist-Populist Ideology

by James Pethokoukis

Michael Anton has a fundamental problem with capitalism itself, and how it is practiced in 21st century America.

True Overlords Don’t Work This Hard

by John Tamny

It’s creative destruction that rules in Silicon Valley, not tech arrogance—and that’s a good thing.

Michael Anton’s Rejoinder: Dear Avengers of the Free Market . . .

by Michael Anton

The techies want to reconstitute the ancien regime on silicon rather than soil. Tamny and Pethokoukis, whether they realize it or not, are helping.

July 6, 2018|CJ Ciamarella, community, Dungeons & Dragons, games, Gary Gygax, imagination, memory, Stranger Things

An Unlikely Restoration of Memory: Why Dungeons & Dragons Matters

by James Poulos|

Dungeons & Dragons (Blackregis/Shutterstock.com).
Many predicted that tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons would disappear, but this discounts the power of memory and the need for community.

April 2, 2018|Enlightenment, institutions, Internet, Liberalism, trolls

Automated Liberalism?

by James Poulos|

Ravil Sayfullin / Shutterstock.com
The machinery of enlightenment, in short, requires of liberalism a new digital immune system.

Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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Recent Posts

  • The Just Restraint of the Vicious

    For some contemporary criminal justice reformers, devotion to ideology leads to illogical conclusions about human nature and character change.
    by Gerard T. Mundy

  • Too Immature to be Punished?

    When I look back on my own life, I think I knew by the age of ten that one should not strangle old ladies in their beds.
    by Theodore Dalrymple

  • A Badge of Discrimination

    The British National Health Service has spoken: Wear the badge or declare yourself to be a bigot.
    by Theodore Dalrymple

  • A Judicial Takeover of Asylum Policy?

    Thuraissigiam threatens to make both the law and the facts in every petition for asylum—and there are thousands of them—a matter for the courts.
    by Thomas Ascik

  • The Environmental Uncertainty Principle

    By engaging in such flagrant projection, the Times has highlighted once again the problem with groupthink in the climate discussion.
    by Paul Schwennesen

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About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
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