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July 5, 2019|Clint Eastwood, Declaration of Independence, Jacques Maritain, John Locke, Michael Zuckert, Natural Rights, Thomas Hobbes, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

When Exactly Did the Idea of Rights Go Off the Rails?

by Peter C. Myers|

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the opening of the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sep 20, 2016 (Drop of Light/Shutterstock.com).
The present deformation of rights was not fated from the beginning, as some prominent conservatives have claimed.

November 30, 2018|Alan Jacobs, C.S. Lewis, Christian Humanism, Jacques Ellul, Jacques Maritain, James Conant, Simone Weil, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, World War II

Christian Humanism: A Path Not Taken

by Paul Seaton|

Ruins of Coventry Cathedral after bombing by Germans during WWII. (Photo by Hans Wild/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
If only Christian humanism can safeguard the best of paganism and of modernity in a way worthy of man, what must we learn from those that taught it?

August 2, 2018|Free Persons and the Common Good, Jacques Maritain, Michael Novak, R.R. Reno, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Michael Novak, Defender of the Common Good

by Nathaniel Peters|

Michael Novak, October 1, 2004 (Image Credit: Basso Cannarsa/Opale/Amaly.com).
He lamented Americans’ lack of moral consensus about the common good. But unlike his critics, Novak would not impose his vision of it from the top down.

February 27, 2018|Christian Wiman, Dante, Jacques Maritain, Joy, lyric poetry, Romanticism, T.S. Eliot, William Wordsworth

Joy’s Mysteries

by James Matthew Wilson|

Grasmere and Langdale, the Lake District
Can lyric poetry save us from our Hobbesian selves?

September 5, 2014|Common Core, Friedrich Hayek, Jacques Maritain, NCLB

Bringing an End to National Education Reforms

by Richard M. Reinsch II|

 

Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard said recently that the Common Core state standards will ultimately be nothing more than another pile of ashes on the smoldering fire of national education reform. His excellent article reviewed the long and sorry history of such efforts, detailing how the Common Core came to replace George W. Bush’s vaunted (and then hated) No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, itself an effort to replace President Clinton’s Goals 2000, which superceded, that’s right, George H.W. Bush’s America 2000.

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February 28, 2012|Common Good, Integral Humanism, Jacques Maritain, Natural Law, Scholasticism and Politics, Soft Despotism

Scholasticism and Political Freedom

by Russell Hittinger|

http://traffic.libsyn.com/libertylawtalk1/Russell-Hittinger.mp3

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In this edition of Liberty Law Talk, we discuss with Russell Hittinger, the William K. Warren Chair of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, Jacques Maritain’s Scholasticism and Politics, recently republished by Liberty Fund. The text is

 a collection of nine lectures Maritain delivered at the University of Chicago in 1938. While the lectures address a variety of diverse topics, they explore three broad topics: 1) the nature of modern culture, its relationship to Christianity, and the origins of the crisis which has engulfed it; 2) the true nature and authentic foundations of human freedom and dignity and the threats posed to them by the various materialist and naturalistic philosophies that dominate the modern cultural scene; and 3) the principles that provide the authentic foundation of a social order in accord with human dignity. 

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February 27, 2012|Jacques Maritain, Russell Hittinger, Scholasticism and Politics

New Podcast with Russell Hittinger on Jacques Maritain’s Defense of Liberty

by Richard M. Reinsch II|

In light of Liberty Fund's republication of Jacques Maritain's Scholasticism and Politics, I discuss with Russell Hittinger Maritain's defense of liberty from his perspective of integral humanism. The idea forms the core of the text, which also provides a method for imagining an innovative response to soft-despotism. According to Liberty Fund's description, the book is a a collection of nine lectures Maritain delivered at the University of Chicago in 1938. While the lectures address a variety of diverse topics, they explore three broad topics: 1) the nature of modern culture, its relationship to Christianity, and the origins of the crisis which has…

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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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