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March 18, 2020|class war, James Burnham, Michael Lind, neoliberalism

Michael Lind and the Forgotten Consumer

by James R. Rogers|

Walmart store in Miami, Florida in 2019 (Chekyravaa/Shutterstock.com).
Lind seems to have a picture in his mind of a more cooperative, more Tocquevillian America, but he endorses means that would be immensely destructive.

January 7, 2020|Alasdair MacIntyre, Christopher Lasch, George Grant, James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, Willmoore Kendall

Leaving the Faith

by Mark T. Mitchell|

Whittaker Chambers before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Aug. 25, 1948. He repeated his testimony that State Department Director, Alger Hiss, was a secret communist. Hiss is in mid-ground left, looking into camera. (BSLOC_2014_13_57)
Our own convictions are inevitably strengthened when someone who has long opposed our views experiences a change of heart and joins our side.

March 15, 2017|American Affairs, Conservative Movement, Donald Trump, free trade, James Burnham, Julius Krein, Ruling Elite, Silicon Valley

James Burnham and Our ‘Soul-Sick’ Elite: A Conversation with Julius Krein

by Julius Krein|

Comes now to Liberty Law Talk, Julius Krein, founding editor of the explosive new journal, American Affairs. We discuss the crack-up in our politics and in the conservative movement through the lens of James Burnham's classic work, The Managerial Revolution.

June 27, 2016|Conservatism, James Burnham, Liberalism, Suicide of the West

Adaptation or Abandonment?

by Patrick J. Deneen|

Burnham’s remarkable book thus gives us a clear outline of continuity and change in America’s political ideologies over the past 50 years.

June 21, 2016|

The End of the Great Compromise

by John Samples|

In response to: The Case for More Money in Politics

Constitutions are more than struggles over meaning or changing social values as interpreted by judges. Constitutions are part of larger political struggles and reflect that conflicts and compromises in those larger fights. The conflicts of the New Deal ended with a compromise—one that promised an open political process in lieu of constitutional protections for the rights of property. Eventually, policymakers turned to campaign-finance regulation to control opposition to what might be called the New Deal order. This interplay of a commitment to free speech and electoral vulnerability has shaped our nation for 80 years. Now we seem likely to take…

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Campaign-Finance Law, the State of Nature, and the Nirvana Fallacy

by Richard L. Hasen

One cannot fault Professor Derek Muller, whose work I admire and respect, for taking a hard libertarian line against campaign-finance regulation in his Liberty Forum essay. After all, that misguided approach is built into the prompt of the question posed by Law and Liberty’s editors: “Should a democracy through concerns about corruption in politics and equality…

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A Natural Right with Naturally Unequal Consequences

by John O. McGinnis

I am in strong agreement with the Derek Muller’s opposition to Progressive ideas to reform laws relating to campaign speech. He is particularly eloquent on why the Framers believed that limiting government was the best route to eliminating political corruption—the opposite of the Progressive agenda, which seeks to expand the state. We can build on his…

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Speech Equality’s Crushing Weight: Derek Muller Replies

by Derek Muller

It was a privilege to participate in this month’s Liberty Law Forum. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to contribute the lead essay, “The Case for More Money in Politics,” and I am humbled at the thoughtful commentary provided by Professors Rick Hasen and John McGinnis, and by John Samples, all of whose opinions…

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April 5, 2016|James Burnham, Journal of American Greatness, Managerial Revolution, Orestes Brownson, Territorial Democracy, Unwritten Constitution

Achieving Our Republican Greatness

by Richard M. Reinsch II|

Writing in the Journal of American Greatness, Plautus, who is more intent on making Trump to be the candidate he wants, as opposed to the vulgar brute that he is, calls for a conservative nationalism with tremendous purpose (link no longer available) whose chief goal will be the elimination of the “managerial class.”

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November 8, 2013|James Burnham, Joel Kotkin, Legal Education, Originalism, The Prince, The Wire

Friday Roundup, November 8th

by Richard M. Reinsch II|

Comes now a discussion of an originalism that can sing! This month's Liberty Forum considers Mike Rappaport and John McGinnis's new book, Originalism and the Good Constitution. Rappaport and McGinnis offer their thoughts in a lead essay with responses from Richard Epstein and Ralph Rossum. The current Liberty Law Talk is with Mark Helprin on his latest novel In Sunlight and In Shadow. We also talk politics, war, and what's right and wrong in Mad Men. Walking The Wire and learning criminal procedure and constitutional law in the process. Tony Freyer and Andy Morriss: The structure and strategy of the Caymans as an…

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July 9, 2012|Inflation, James Burnham, LIBOR Scandal, Managerial Revolution, Personal Liberation, Self Restraint, Shareholder Value

Diluting Self Restraint: A View from Lombard Street

by Theodore Dalrymple|

Banks are like governments, you can’t altogether do without them, however often you wish that you could. So when I read that one of the banks of which I am a small and unimportant customer had been engaged in the fraudulent manipulation of interest rates, fined accordingly, and denuded of its top management by involuntary resignation, I can’t say that I was altogether surprised.

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June 4, 2012|

From the Nation State to the New Church

by Daniel McCarthy|

In response to: Prospects for the Democratic Nation-State: What State Are We In?

Mankind is not easily rid of theology once it gets the bug. The nation-state tried to erase the distinction between earthly power and absolute right, but the attempt failed, with the result that the modern nation-state, its professed secularism notwithstanding, is once more coming under the tutelage of a clerisy. Almost since its beginning the nation-state has implied self-government in matters spiritual as well as temporal. It aspired to be an integral unit within whose borders a people were fully sovereign, answerable only to God—and perhaps not even to God, for what power could gainsay the people’s interpretation of His commands?…

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Loving the Democratic State Moderately

by Aurelian Craiutu

Ralph Hancock begins his interesting essay[i] be reminding us that, despite its internal contradictions and failures, the modern state has become the only conceivable political form in our post-modern world. This should be puzzling since the record is far from being a convincing successful story. At its best, the modern state has allowed us to…

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May 28, 2012|Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition, Contra Mundum, James Burnham, Jean Rousseau, Publius, The Federalist, The Two Majorities, Willmoore Kendall

Who is to say Nay to the People? Publius, Majority Rule, and Willmoore Kendall

by Grant Havers|

The Enduring Importance of Willmoore Kendall

Once upon a time in America, conservatives celebrated Congress as the last best hope to preserve the authentic traditions of republican government.  As recently as the 1960s, it was “conservative” to look to the first branch of government as the indispensable bulwark against the Imperial Presidency, Supreme Court activism, plebiscitary democracy, and federal social engineering programs.  As long as the American people also looked to Congress to play this defensive role, the political system would remain intact.

       No postwar conservative was more optimistically wedded to this perspective than Willmoore Kendall (1909-1967).  Kendall, a defender of majority-rule (with some qualifications), particularly stood out among conservatives of his time as a fervent believer in the good sense of his fellow Americans to elect the “best men” to office.  Americans were at least capable of being the “virtuous people,” who would insist that Congress preserve the traditions of the Founding.  The principal evidence to which Kendall referred here was The Federalist, a text that he treated as political scripture for Americans.  Kendall insisted that the Federalist provides the best possible interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.  In his 1965 essay, “How to read ‘The Federalist,’” (which can be conveniently found along with his other major political essays in Willmoore Kendall Contra Mundum, edited by Nellie D. Kendall, University Press, 1994), Kendall explained why this great work of political philosophy laid out what conservatives ought to be busy conserving: a particularly aristocratic version of majority-rule.  “Publius,” the famed pseudonymous author of The Federalist, teaches

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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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