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March 10, 2020|Christian Humanism, Daniel Okrent, Eugenics, Immigration, Racism

The Need For a Humane Immigration Debate

by Luma Simms|

Newly-arrived immigrants at Ellis Island in 1921 (shutterstock.com)
It is wrong to think of immigration primarily as a problem to solve—as an “it” when it is really a “he,” “she,” and “they.”

April 11, 2019|implicit bias, Racism, resentment, Social Desirability Bias

‘Implicit Bias’ Is Real, But Racism Doesn’t Cause It

by James R. Rogers|

Image: tsyhun/shutterstock.com
The irony is that the problem is actually more mundane than the continuing existence of racial animus, and the fixes aren’t really all that complicated.

January 29, 2019|George Orwell, Godwin's law, Immigration, MAGA caps, Racism, Thucydides

Why Some Progressives Make Unjustified Accusations of Racism

by John O. McGinnis|

Image: John M. Chase/Shutterstock.com
As Orwell saw, politics is a battle of language, not least because most people think reflexively and not deeply about public policy.

August 3, 2018|alt right, left wing racism, New York Times, Racism

The Racism of New York Times Reporter Sarah Jeong

by Mike Rappaport|

Headquarters of The New York Times (Osugi/Shutterstock.com).
Why is Sarah Jeong's racism acceptable to the Times?

January 12, 2016|

Richard Epstein’s Imperfect Understanding of Antidiscrimination Law

by Andrew Koppelman|

In response to: Freedom of Association and Antidiscrimination Law: An Imperfect Reconciliation

Richard Epstein is right about how to think about antidiscrimination law. The general principle governing transactions between private parties should be freedom of association, for reasons of both liberty and efficiency. Any departure from that rule, such as a prohibition of discrimination, has the burden of proof. Epstein, however, can’t let go of that general rule when he should. He is strangely myopic about the cultural forces that prevent free markets from delivering the goods. Antidiscrimination law has important economic and noneconomic goals. The economic one is simplest: It remedies the chronic subordination of some groups, thereby creating a society with broader…

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More Responses

Classical Liberalism: Teaching Its Own Undoing

by Marc DeGirolami

Professor Richard Epstein has performed a welcome service in reminding us of the classical liberal case for the freedom of association. The classical liberal champions the primacy of rights as guarantors of the individual’s sovereignty to make free dealings with other sovereigns. He values rights as safeguards of the freedom to make moral and economic…

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Government Intervention Springs Eternal for Antidiscrimination Laws

by Paul Moreno

In his Liberty Forum essay, Professor Richard Epstein makes a persuasive case that antidiscrimination laws are “a great mistake outside of monopolies.” But advocates of “antidiscrimination” laws have a view of monopoly—or of “coercion” and “force”—that is much more expansive than Professor Epstein’s. The Progressive or modern liberal advocates of antidiscrimination laws advance a concept…

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How Classical Liberal Principles Address Cultural, Social, and Economic Issues: Richard Epstein’s Reply

by Richard Epstein

My Liberty Forum essay, Freedom of Association and Antidiscrimination Law: An Imperfect Reconciliation has provoked three thoughtful responses. Those by Marc DeGirolami and Paul Moreno are supportive of my approach and may be best described as intramural disputes among individuals who agree on the relationship between freedom of association and basic antidiscrimination laws. Andrew Koppelman’s…

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November 15, 2015|Diversity, George Mason University, Racism

Competence, Cultural and Other

by Michael S. Greve|

Last Friday, the following missive (sent, I believe, to the entire George Mason University “community”) landed in my inbox:

Dear Patriots,

Racism has no place at George Mason University.

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September 9, 2015|Alison Parker, Racism, Vester Lee Flanagan

Paranoia and a Society of Victims

by Theodore Dalrymple|

Nothing is more tempting, or intellectually hazardous, than to draw broad conclusions from a single isolated case. Indeed, whole clusters of unusual incidents may mislead people into thinking that they represent a serious trend, when in fact they represent nothing more than the operation of chance in human affairs. I was once asked to take part in an official inquiry into several untoward incidents (murders, actually) that took place in what seemed to be an unusually short period of time in an unusually small geographically area. A statistician subsequently proved that the assumption behind the inquiry, namely that there was an anomaly to be explained, was false.

Nevertheless, it is only natural that we should see signs of the times in very unusual incidents and try to derive wider meaning from them. So it is with the case of Vester Lee Flanagan, the former television journalist who broadcast under the name of Bryce Williams, and who shot two erstwhile colleagues dead and injured another while they were broadcasting, then committing suicide by shooting himself. We feel instinctively that such extraordinary conduct must be symbolic of somethings: not merely an event, but a signal.

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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 24, 2014|Anti-Semitism, Racial Preferences, Racism

Group Preferences: Opiate of the Intellectuals

by Theodore Dalrymple|

Lord Norman Tebbit

Twenty years ago I published a novella in which a purported serial killer, using all the arguments of liberal or radical criminology, proved to his own satisfaction that not only that he was as good as the average citizen, but better. To my surprise an eminent critic thought that my character expressed my own views, which he then criticized as if they had been meant seriously. Was the fault mine for not having made myself clear enough, or his for having been so obtuse?

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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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