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October 2, 2019|Catholicism, Civil Rights Movement, Fulton Sheen, Jerry Falwell, Martin Luther King Jr., Religion in the Public Square, Religious Freedom, Religious Right

How Sheen, King, & Falwell Changed American Politics

by James M. Patterson|

James Patterson talks about three legendary clergymen in America and how they shaped our public discourse.

January 16, 2017|" Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Bishop Fulton Sheen, Ella Baker, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Martin Luther King Jr., Rabbi Joshua L. Liebman

The Vanished World of Martin Luther King

by James M. Patterson|

(Photo by © Flip Schulke/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

With today’s honoring of Martin Luther King, Jr. come new skirmishes in the turf war over his legacy.

Tradition holds that radicals on the Left own it. Because the civil rights leader was most radical near the end of his life, that King allegedly proved to be the truest. The King of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign is deemed to be better than the younger, greener, and more obviously Christian King of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. He engaged in acts of civil disobedience, including boycotts, demonstrations, sit-ins. He went to jail to demonstrate the violence at the heart of the white supremacist state. He also vocally opposed the Vietnam War. King sought to relieve the racially and economically dispossessed by way of government programs that would redistribute wealth from the richest Americans.

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July 6, 2016|Bernie Sanders, Christopher Hitchens, Eugene V. Debs, George Orwell, Gun Control, Martin Luther King Jr., Second Amendment

A Brief History of Socialist Support for Gun Rights

by Ron Capshaw|

Flags of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are carried through the crowd during the New York City Women's March, January 20, 2018 (Erin Alexis Randolph/Shutterstock.com)
Amidst the gun debate, we shouldn't forget that socialists feared that a weaponless working class would usher in a dictatorship by capitalists.

October 7, 2014|Civic Education, Martin Luther King Jr., Self-Government, Socrates, Tocqueville

Engaging and Knowing: The Cart and the Horse

by Peter Augustine Lawler|

The thoughtful and meticulous analysis by our friend Joseph Knippenberg got me thinking about civic engagement. Well, that’s not quite true. I was already thinking about it while trying get a book done on the technocratic threat to higher education (which is greater than the politically correct threat to higher education, although the two are not unrelated).

There is an expert-driven trend in higher education–facilitated by foundations, the American Political Science Association, professors of political science and professors of education–to transform the teaching of political science through civic engagement. The literature on this is full of jargon and otherwise depressingly low in its cognitive pay grade. The consensus seems to be the need for a third way of studying politics. One approach, allegedly rigorously scientific, is the nonpartisan detachment of the behaviorist. Another is the textual approach of political philosophers, who talk about what Plato said Socrates said while hanging out in the marketplace but never actually take students to such a public forum. The third way is for students to learn through actually participating in political life.

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September 10, 2013|civil rights, Fannie Lou Hamer, Gun Control, Martin Luther King Jr., Negroes and the Gun

Negroes and the Gun

by Nicholas J. Johnson|

I have been away from this page for several months, working on book that is now nearing completion. Thought I would say hello again and give a preview of the book. You may recall my posts responding to eruptions from Bob Costas, Jason Whitlock and Danny Glover. Those posts tried to retrieve the debate from the swirl of myths, absurdities and glib chatter that often afflict the intersection of race, gun rights and firearms regulation. I have spent a substantial part of my scholarly effort over the years within that intersection. The culmination of that work so far, is my…

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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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