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February 6, 2020|Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Foreign Policy

No Policy, No Strategy, No End?

by William Anthony Hay|

A soldier at rest in the desert (shutterstock.com).
Public relations seems to have been the Afghanistan War’s most successful operation.

January 15, 2020|Age of Iron, Conservative Internationalism, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Immigration, Realism, Trade Wars

Conservative Nationalism and American Statecraft

by Colin Dueck|

Colin Dueck discusses his new book, Age of Iron, with Richard Reinsch

August 7, 2019|China, Foreign Policy, free trade, illiberalism, tariffs, WTO

The Rise of Economic Illiberalism as Foreign Policy

by John O. McGinnis|

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND: The headquarters of the World Trade Organization (EQRoy, shutterstock.com).
The rise of economic restrictions as a tool of American foreign policy is propelled by factors that will continue long after the Trump administration.

July 16, 2019|China, Foreign Policy, George Magnus, Red Flags

Decline and Fall of China?

by A.E. Clark|

George Magnus has written an astute and nuanced assessment of the economic challenges facing the Chinese dictatorship.

December 17, 2018|Abraham Lincoln, Civil Religion, Cold War, Foreign Policy, George Washington, Iraq War, Progressivism, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy, Theodore Roosevelt

American Heresies and the Betrayal of the National Interest: A Conversation with Walter McDougall

by Walter A. McDougall|

Walter McDougall discusses how America's civil religion has shaped our foreign policy.

November 6, 2017|

Walter McDougall Responds: Woodrow Wilson as Seen through the Lenses of Bourne, Clausewitz, and Lodge

by Walter A. McDougall|

In response to: The Madness of Saint Woodrow: Or, What If the United States Had Stayed out of the Great War?

April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson declares to Congress that America would “make the world itself at last free.”

My congratulations to Richard Reinsch for selecting this outstanding panel and thanks to the commentators for their fair and insightful reviews. All of them have addressed the topic for the standpoint of their particular expertise – church history in Richard Gamble’s case, grand strategy in Karl Walling’s case, and constitutional theory in Paul Carrese’s case – and all of them have considerably enriched my counter-factual thesis on what might have happened if the United States had stayed out of the Great War.  Did each of them know the identities of the others?  I wonder because of Gamble’s prescient remark about…

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Did Woodrow Wilson Engage in the Education of Strategic Judgment?

by Karl Walling

In asking us to consider alternative histories of American responses to the Great War, Walter McDougall provides a splendid model of what the strategic theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, called “critical analysis.” Said the famous Prussian war college professor, it is not enough to complain that the results of a particular strategic decision were bad. One…

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Chief Crusader of a Crusader State

by Richard Gamble

Not only was Wilson what Bourne called a “state idealist,” but he talked about imperial war in way that enhanced the mysticism of the modern state.

America Should Isolate Wilson and His Religion of Democracy, Not Adopt Isolationism

by Paul Carrese

  Walter McDougall’s trenchant Liberty Forum essay on Saint Woodrow and the Great War is as much concerned with the present and future of American foreign policy or grand strategy as with the past. The closing reference to Donald Trump warns the current administration and its supporters to sustain their focus on U.S. national interest as the…

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October 15, 2015|Afghanistan, Drone warfare, Foreign Policy, Iraq, ISIS, President Obama

“Don’t do stupid stuff”: A Conversation with Mark Moyar about President Obama’s Foreign Policy

by Mark Moyar|

This next edition of Liberty Law Talk is a discussion with historian Mark Moyar about his new book, Strategic Failure, which critiques the foreign policy pursued by the Obama administration.

September 15, 2015|Cold War, Foreign Policy, Globalization, Paul Kengor, Reagan's Legacy in a World Transformed, Ronald Reagan

Reagan’s Legacy in a World Transformed: A Conversation with Paul Kengor

by Paul Kengor|

This next edition of Liberty Law Talk features a discussion with Paul Kengor, co-editor with Jeffrey Chidester, of a new volume titled Reagan’s Legacy in a World Transformed that explores the incredible presidency and continuing impact of Ronald Reagan.

March 18, 2015|America in Retreat, Bret Stephens, China, Foreign Policy, ISIS, Neoconservatism, Russia

Is America in Retreat? A Conversation with Bret Stephens

by Bret Stephens|

This edition of Liberty Law Talk discusses with the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens his recent book, America in Retreat. Stephens argues that an America which declines to engage globally with its military is accepting a false promise of peace at the expense of rising disorder. The introduction chapter is entitled “The World’s Policeman” where Stephens quotes President Barack Obama’s proclamation in a 2013 speech: “We should not be the world’s policeman.” Similarly, Rand Paul states that “America’s mission should always be to keep the peace, not police the world.” “This book,” says Stephens, “is my response to that argument.” Our conversation focuses on…

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November 7, 2014|CIA, Conservatism, Dwight Eisenhower, Eisenhower: A Life, Foreign Policy, Paul Johnson

Ike’s Mystique

by Ron Capshaw|

 

ike 1

At the height of the Iran Contra scandal in Washington, “Saturday Night Live” had a funny skit about Ronald Reagan. It showed the President’s folksy, out-to-lunch personality to be a façade. Behind closed doors, he was a worker bee, driving younger staff members to exhaustion. Liberals could only entertain such a possibility fictionally. To them, Reagan was a lazy leader, “sleepwalking through history.”

Liberal avoidance of such a possibility tracked back to Dwight David Eisenhower’s 1953-1961 administration. To the liberals of that era, he was a disconnected President, more interested in his golf game than in leading the nation. Worse, he lacked political courage, specifically with regard to halting a rampaging Joe McCarthy.

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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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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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