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October 14, 2019|Edmund Burke, England, European Union, French Revolution, Lord Acton, Nation-State, Nationalism

What Lord Acton Can Teach Us about Nationalism

by Kai Weiss|

Ferdinand Delacroix (1798-1863) "Liberty on the Barricades" (1830). Reproduction of illustrated album "Delacroix", published in Budapest, Hungary, 1963. (Image by Oleg Golovnev at shutterstock.com)
Kai Weiss considers Lord Acton's timely essay "Nationality" to better understand our current political fevers.

January 15, 2016|Lord Acton, NLRB v. Noel Canning, Town of Greece v. Galloway, Washington v. Glucksberg

Locating Traditionalism in Jurisprudence

by Marc DeGirolami|

How might we distinguish the traditionalist judicial decision?

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February 7, 2014|Federal Reserve, Keith Hennessey, Lord Acton, Machiavelli, Matthew Franck, Obamacare, PovertyCure

Friday Roundup, February 7th

by Richard M. Reinsch II|

February's Liberty Law Forum engages the questions of what is American liberty and what is required to support it. Lead essay by Ted McAllister with responses from Bradley Thompson, (and upcoming) Steven Grosby, Bill Dennis, and Hans Eicholz. Getting from aid to enterprise: The next Liberty Law Talk discusses with Michael Miller, director of the Acton Institute's PovertyCure documentary, the conditions that should guide any approach to assist human flourishing in the poor regions of the world. Frequently missing, Miller highlights, in current interventions is an understanding of how crucial the rule of law, property rights, and markets are in the…

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February 2, 2014|History of Liberty, Lord Acton, Political liberty

The Arc of Western Political Liberty

by Gerald M. Mara|

Characterizing the work and the significance of John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton (1834-1902), continues to be a complex project ( see, for example, John T. Noonan, Jr., “The Last Victorian," The New York Times on the Web, October 22, 2000). He is, of course, the “famous English historian Lord Acton,” as one respected textbook on the history of Western Civilization puts it. He held the Regius Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge, was the founding editor of the Cambridge Modern History, and produced a substantial body of work on the history of the West, particularly Western modernity. He intended…

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December 20, 2013|Congress, Dodd-Frank, Friedrich Hayek, inequality, Lord Acton, Nassim Taleb, Obamacare

Friday Roundup, December 20th

by Richard M. Reinsch II|

The current Liberty Law Talk is with author Christopher Lazarski on his new book, Power Tends to Corrupt: Lord Acton's Study of Liberty. Our Books essay this week is by Todd Zywicki on Nassim Taleb's Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder. Zywicki applies Taleb's insight that an antifragile "system . . . gains from disorder and volatility—i.e., exposure to stresses improves the operation of the system and makes it stronger," to financial regulation, arguing this approach would lead to better results than the regulatory philosophy of Dodd-Frank. Alberto Mingardi @Econ Lib on Chris DeMuth, Hayek, and Obamacare. George Will: Can the passive Congress…

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December 15, 2013|John Stuart Mill, Liberty, Lord Acton, Natural Law, Spontaneous Order

Power Tends to Corrupt

by Christopher Lazarski|

Christopher Lazarski comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his deep inquiry into Lord Acton's attempt to understand the dimensions and nature of liberty as it unfolded in Western history. In this podcast, Lazarski underscores Lord Acton's historical quest to find the conditions of liberty, as well as his formal understanding of what constituted liberty. The conditions of Acton's ordered liberty we can describe as "arbitrary law," national history, and a bottom-up development of positive law. Arbitrary law was Acton's way of describing divine and natural law, which he believed a pillar in support of political liberty because it was law…

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February 12, 2013|Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Albert Gallatin, Alexander Hamilton, Edmund Burke's A Vindication of Natural Society, Lord Acton, The Founders and Finance

Alexander Hamilton and the Politics of Impatience: Part I

by Hans Eicholz|

Editor’s note: Occasioned by Thomas McCraw’s The Founders and Finance: How Hamilton, Gallatin, and Other Immigrants Forged a New Economy, this is the first post in a series by Liberty Fund Senior Fellow Hans Eicholz that will explore the contrasting visions for the early American republic in the financial, economic, and foreign policy thinking of Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin. Stay tuned for further developments.

The Founders and FinanceThomas McCraw has given us a compelling portrait of two major figures at the outset of American financial and economic history in The Founders and Finance.  His primary aim is to draw out their similarities—their foreign origins, their experiences in commerce, their capacity to see the big picture of American nationhood—but I was struck more by their striking dissimilarities.

Where Albert Gallatin aspired initially to commercial success; Hamilton very early determined on a political career. Where Gallatin felt somewhat awkward on the political stage, Hamilton thrilled at the prospects of a public career and a public reputation. Where Gallatin learned to roll with the political punches of a diverse and rollicking republic (adapting policies to commercial and political realities), Hamilton formulated a clear, even unitary conception of where America needed to go and what he needed to do to get it there.

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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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