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January 13, 2020|Cass Sunstein, coercion, Freedom, Nudge

On Freedom, Paternalism, and Power

by Guido Pincione|

Nudgers must then be endowed with significant interpretive leeway when it comes to setting priorities. Is this freedom?

February 1, 2019|Alan Moore, Freedom, heroes, Individualism, Watchmen, Zach Snyder

The Dark Individualism of Watchmen

by Titus Techera|

Promotional still for Zach Snyder's The Watchmen (Warner Bros. Pictures).
There are limits to self-delusion for a free people, and Snyder's Watchmen ruthlessly probes them.

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 5, 2018|Corey Robin, Freedom, Markets, socialism, work

Is Having a Boss So Bad?

by James R. Rogers|

Image: jesterpop/shutterstock.com
Robin celebrates socialism as “freedom from rule by the boss,” but is being ruled by bureaucrats better?

December 12, 2015|Donald Trump, Free Speech, free trade, Freedom, Immigration, Political Correctness, University

Trump and PC Leaders: Peas in a Pod

by John O. McGinnis|

Donald Trump and the new campus political correctness movement have a lot in common. Both want to create safe spaces where people fear no challenge from the exercise of others’ liberties. In the case of the campus PC movement, their disdain for freedom is obvious. They want to stop others from saying things that may offend them or undermine their world view. But the modern university grows out the enlightenment, which of course gave much offense to aristocrats, priests, and various other purveyors of received wisdom. Illiberal political correctness is thus at war with the classical liberal ideas on which our universities are founded.

Donald Trump also wants to create safe spaces for people who do not want to be challenged by the liberty of others. This self-proclaimed master of the art of the deal is no friend of making markets more open.  He opposes free trade agreements that would let our citizens and those of other nations make more mutually beneficial deals. He also promises literally to build a fence around America. To be sure, there is a national security threat to the United States from radical Islamic terrorism. But Trump’s proposals to ban Muslim immigration is at once excessive and ineffective. Why couldn’t jihadis simply pretend to be Middle Eastern Christians? Trump’s proposal is better understood as an attempt to insulate America from religious ideas that many disdain. His illiberal program is at war with America’s freedom.

The safe spaces offered by Trump and the PC movement lure people inside for similar reasons.

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February 19, 2014|American Liberty, Freedom, George Washington, Roosvelt, Taft

President Taft on “the Danger of a Third Presidential Term.”

by Josh Blackman|

After serving two terms in office, with some reluctance, President Theodore Roosevelt decided not to run for an unprecedented third term, keeping with the tradition started by George Washington. Though, that decision was not an easy one. He stepped aside for two main reasons: first, he had (begrudgingly) made a pledge not to run for a third term, and second, he personally selected William Howard Taft, his longtime friend and confidant, as his successor with the understanding that Taft would continue his progressive policies. Even until the Republican Convention, Teddy considered throwing his hat into the ring, but stood by his pledge.

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September 19, 2013|Executive Discretion, Freedom, Videotaping Police

Constraining Executive Discretion

by Mike Rappaport|

Freedom means different things to different people. But one way of understanding what it means to live in a free country is that you don’t have to worry about the government taking action against you for no good reason.

What is a good reason? One possibility is that you have not broken the law. But in the US, this is no longer an adequate reason. There are so many laws that people probably break them daily. Thus, if the government wants to get you for some other reason, they can arrest and prosecute you for breaking one of the laws that everyone breaks. This is obviously a strong reason for cutting back on the scope and number of our laws.

But under the existing system, your freedom and protection turns on the discretion and judgement of prosecutors, police officers, and other government officials. Thus, if one pisses them off – if they get mad at you for a good or bad reason – one is in danger of being prosecuted. This suggests that our system requires a mechanism for constraining discretion.

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April 1, 2013|British Medical Journal, Freedom, Mental Disorder, Personal Responsibility

The Righteous Generosity that Denies Personal Responsibility

by Theodore Dalrymple|

Untruth is more insinuating than truth and flatters to deceive. An untruth is easy to slip into a passage about a different subject, especially when it is covered in a patina of righteous generosity. It is then not so much unnoticed as unexamined, for who wants to examine righteous generosity? In the case of such untruths repetition is made to play the role of verification: what everyone, or at any rate everyone of a certain standing, says three times is true.

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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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