This edition of Liberty Law Talk welcomes back Yuval Levin to discuss his latest book, The Fractured Republic. Levin notes that our decentralizing republic, as observed in the decades long trends in social, economic, religious, and cultural diffusion, provides both opportunities and difficulties. America's ongoing deconsolidation from a nearly unprecedented period of national cohesion after World War II has led to numerous benefits for individual freedom and economic prosperity. However, if we are more free than ever, we may also be more alone than ever and bereft of the contexts for a responsible freedom and citizenship. And this has sparked a…
The essays collected in Tocqueville’s Voyages trace the political thought of the author of Democracy in America and probe whether Alexis de Tocqueville’s ideas have meaning to societies beyond the United States of the mid-19th century. Drawing heavily on the impressive two-volume, bilingual Liberty Fund edition of this seminal work (which includes Tocqueville’s notes and earlier manuscripts), these essays are not only a valuable addition to Tocqueville scholarship but help to explain the trajectory of politics in our democratic age. Tocqueville meant for his work to be a possession for all time. Contributors to this volume treat his project with corresponding care,…
Ted McAllister and the Liberty Law Forum at Liberty Fund are to be thanked for resurrecting a vitally important but seemingly forgotten, or, at least, neglected topic. The subject of McAllister’s essay is the American tradition of liberty, which he contrasts with perfect or abstract liberty. He asks two important questions: What is distinctive about this American-style liberty, and how does it differ from the liberationist liberty of the modern progressive? For McAllister, American liberty is unique, precious, and worth fighting for. There is much in McAllister’s essay that I like and agree with. For instance, I very much approve of…
“The Institutions of American Liberty” is a nicely written and, for the most part, compelling encomium to the tradition of American liberty and the institutions upon which it rests. The author of this piece, as so many following Tocqueville have observed, rightly notes that American history displays “a fervor of institution building by people who…
The Rev. Timothy Dwight (President of Yale, 1795-1817, leading Congregational and Federalist thinker, enemy of Thomas Jefferson), wrote about the three great good works: piety, benevolence, and self-government. Self-government meant the well ordering of one’s life so he could live as a free and responsible human being. If a person was well self-governed, he would…
Lamentably, I find myself in general agreement with the thoughtful commentaries on my essay by the three respondents, C. Bradley Thompson, Steven Grosby, and William Dennis. This is not to say that underneath this broad consensus there aren’t serious and enjoyable differences of philosophy that warrant sustained engagement. Taken as a whole, the body of…
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