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September 25, 2018|Christine Brasley Ford, Constitutional Law, Egalitarianism, gender, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Progressives, Whittaker Chambers

For Judge Kavanaugh, It Must Be V For Victory

by Richard M. Reinsch II|

WASHINGTON, DC: Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
If Kavanaugh’s nomination fails, then we enter the process of interminable regime decay.

June 27, 2018|David Brooks, Education, I.Q. in the Meritocracy, Jacksonian democracy, Libertarians, licensing, Progressives, Special Interests, whigs

Why the American Whig Party Cannot Be Revived

by John O. McGinnis|

Kalafoto/Adobe Stock Images
David Brooks calls himself an American Whig, but there are good reasons a Whig restoration is impossible.

January 17, 2018|Conservatives, Gordon Wood, John Adams, John Locke, natural equality, natural inequality, Progressives, Thomas Jefferson

The Divide Between Jefferson and Adams on Human Nature Is Ours Too

by John O. McGinnis|

Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson review a draft of the Declaration of Independence, by J.L.G. Ferris. From a 1909 lithograph by Wolf & Co.
Why has Thomas Jefferson become the progressives' favorite founder?

August 26, 2017|Arnold kling, Conservatives, Libertarians, Progressives, The Languages of Politics

The Three Languages of Politics

by Mike Rappaport|

This is the title of an e book by Arnold Kling, who used to blog at our sister site and now blogs at Askblog.  The book, which is well worth reading, argues that conservatives, libertarians, and progressives each have a different language that they use to analyze politics. According to Kling, conservatives view political issues as involving those who favor the institutions of civilization and those who seek to tear them down.  Libertarians view political issues as a conflict between those who favor liberty and those who seek to impose coercion.  And progressives view political issues as involving a situation where…

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February 20, 2017|Bob Jones, Donald Trump, Donald Verrilli, Free Speech, Higher Education, Progressives

Why Berkeley and BYU Should be Loud and Proud about It

by Richard M. Reinsch II|

Brigham Young statue at BYU

The University of California, Berkeley emerged again as a bastion of protest against perceived fascism. Alt-Right leader Milo Yiannopoulos was invited by the Berkeley College Republicans to speak on the campus, only to be blocked by protestors and violent rioters. President Trump, in true late-night form, tweeted: No free speech, ‘NO FEDERAL FUNDS?’

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October 4, 2016|Adam Smith, American Founding, French Revolution, inequality, John Locke, Progressives, Rousseau, Thomas Piketty, Tocqueville

Rebuilding the Liberty Narrative: A Conversation with Gordon Lloyd

by Gordon Lloyd|

There is nothing more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty, Tocqueville informs. While equality in modern democratic society is a natural tendency—one that grows without much effort—it is liberty that requires a new defense in each generation. In this spirit the next edition of Liberty Law Talk discusses with Gordon Lloyd the Liberty Narrative and its unending contest with the Equality Narrative.

October 20, 2015|Freedom Caucus, House of Representatives, Joseph Cannon, Newt Gingrich, Progressives, Thomas Reed

The Case for the Unitary Speaker

by Joseph Postell|

Speaker Joseph G. Cannon swatted Progressive reforms from 1903-1911.

The debate over who will be the next Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is really a debate about the structure of power in our political system. Members of the House’s Freedom Caucus argue that power has become too centralized and reforms must open up the legislative process to more members. They allege that the Speaker has become too powerful and that the House is being run as a top-down institution. 

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June 7, 2015|American Exceptionalism, Aziz Rana, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, Insular Cases, John Locke, Populists, Progressives, Randolph Bourne, Two Faces of American Freedom

The Democratic Socialist’s Usable Past

by Will Morrisey|

American freedom has two faces, Aziz Rana maintains: political liberty or self-rule for citizens; subordination (at times going so far as extermination or enslavement) for non-citizens. He wants to show that these faces appear on opposite sides of the same coin, and that the coin needs recasting if we want our freedom universalized. Although Rana, associate professor of law at the Cornell University Law School, has earned his degrees in political science and law, here he writes as a historian. The Two Faces of American Freedom demonstrates once again that what used to be called “the New Left,” which gathered academic…

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August 3, 2014|Administrative Power, Extralegal Power, Progressives, Racism, Woodrow Wilson

Extralegal Power

by Philip Hamburger|

Wilson IIIn 1887, when Woodrow Wilson was still a mere academic, he wrote an essay that served as a clarion call for administrative power. Revealingly, one of his themes was that reformers faced greater difficulties in modern democracies than they had in the monarchies of the past:

Once the advantage of the reformer was that the sovereign’s mind had a definite locality, that it was contained in one man’s head, and that consequently it could be gotten at. . . . Now, on the contrary, the reformer is bewildered by the fact the sovereign’s mind has no definite locality, but is contained in a voting majority of several million heads; and embarrassed by the fact that the mind of this sovereign is also under the influence of . . . preconceived opinions; i.e., prejudices which are not to be reasoned with because they are not the children of reason.

Exacerbating this problem was the diversity of the nation, which meant that the reformer needed to influence “the mind, not of Americans of the older stocks only, but also of Irishmen, of Germans, of negroes.”

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February 4, 2014|Conservatives, George Lakoff, Progressives, Reason

‘Behind Metaphor, More Metaphor’

by Theodore Dalrymple|

Every intellectual likes to believe that he is struggling manfully against the hostile zeitgeist, or else what would be the need for intellectuals? His belief that he is not only in the minority but currently losing the battle against the opposing forces of obscurantism and wrongheadedness allows him the pleasures both of self-pity and self-congratulation. He likes to believe that he has suffered for his views (for can there be better evidence of holding the correct opinions than having suffered for them?), while at the same time making a comfortable living from them.

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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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