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September 5, 2016|Betty Friedan, Cosmopolitan, Feminism, Roe v. Wade, Sexual Revolution, Subverted, Sue Ellen Browder

A Freelancer’s Tale

by Charlotte Allen|

Subverted is an engagingly written memoir by a successful freelance journalist who spent two rookie years working as an underpaid staff writer for Cosmopolitan magazine in New York during the early 1970s and contributed articles off and on to Cosmo until the mid-1990s, when, having discovered that editor Helen Gurley Brown was still systematically underpaying her, she got into a compensation snit with Brown’s myrmidons, and effectively ended her relationship with the sex tell-all women’s magazine. What Subverted is not, however, is a demonstration of (in the words of its subtitle) How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement.…

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July 15, 2014|Egalitarianism, Religion, Sexual Revolution

Religion and Sexual Freedom

by Steven D. Smith|

We have actually contrived to invent a new kind of hypocrite. The old hypocrite, Tartuffe or Pecksniff, was a man whose aims were really worldly and practical, while he pretended that they were religious. The new hypocrite is one whose aims are really religious, while he pretends that they are worldly and practical.

G. K. Chesterton

A somewhat quixotic friend whom I’ll call Gus dropped by the other day to reprove me for recurring error. “Don’t take this wrong, Steve,” Gus said. “You know that you and I agree on a quite a few things. But I’m concerned. I have to object.”

“Object to what?” I asked.

“In your last book,” Gus explained, “and in a number of recent articles, and in a blog post just a day or so ago, you describe the current cultural conflict that is tearing up America as one between traditional ‘religion’ and a conflicting movement that you describe as ‘secular.’ ‘Secular egalitarianism,’ you sometimes call it.”

“Okay. And the problem is. . . ?”

“The problem is that this is a fundamental misdescription.”

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February 13, 2013|Historicism, Natural Rights, Progressivism, Sexual Revolution

The Journey of Indefinite Government

by David Upham|

So what is “liberalism” today?  Is it a mere grab-bag of miscellaneous policy preferences, or some coherent thing, with an intelligible cause and purpose?

In an ambitious project, historians Donald T. Critchlow and W.J. Rorabaugh aim to answer these questions.  In their book, Takeover: How the Left’s Quest for Social Justice Corrupted Liberalism, the authors argue that contemporary liberalism represents an coherent political project that was launched in the 1960s by the “New Progressives.”  These reformers rejected the modest aims of the old liberals, who, according to the Critchlow and Rorabaugh, had sought merely to mitigate the evils of industrial capitalism.  Instead, the New Progressives aimed for a comprehensive transformation of the American economy and even the whole society, by means of a massive expansion in the size and scope of the government.  Consequently, today’s liberal agenda “is much more radical and encompassing.”

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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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