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January 3, 2020|Clay Risen, militarism, Theodore Roosevelt

A Yellow Journalist’s Tale

by Lance Robinson|

“Colonel Roosevelt and his Rough Riders at the top of the hill which they captured, Battle of San Juan," July 1898, Library of Congress # LC-USZ62-7626
Clay Risen’s attempt at a progressive revisionist interpretation of the Spanish-American War falters on the shoals of actual history.

December 17, 2018|Abraham Lincoln, Civil Religion, Cold War, Foreign Policy, George Washington, Iraq War, Progressivism, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy, Theodore Roosevelt

American Heresies and the Betrayal of the National Interest: A Conversation with Walter McDougall

by Walter A. McDougall|

Walter McDougall discusses how America's civil religion has shaped our foreign policy.

February 1, 2018|Barack Obama, Executive Power, George Washington, Jeffrey Tulis, President Donald Trump, The Federalist, The Rhetorical Presidency, Theodore Roosevelt

Presidential Rhetoric and the Challenge to American Constitutionalism: A Conversation with Jeffrey Tulis

by Jeffrey K. Tulis|

President Theodore Roosevelt
Have changes in the style and manner of presidential rhetoric in the 20th century served us well?

January 23, 2018|American Foreign Policy, containment, Eliot Cohen, Hard Power, Interventionism, Soft Power, Theodore Roosevelt

Overusing The Big Stick

by William Anthony Hay|

Eliot Cohen presents a world full of threats, but not all of them are best addressed with military power.

October 23, 2017|Ben Sasse, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Saint Augustine, The Vanishing American Adult, Theodore Roosevelt

America’s Delayed Adolescence in the Digital Economy

by Ryan Shinkel|

American grit was once thought permanent. With the right stuff, a single person with a few kindred spirits could find salvation, start a business, run for offic

September 4, 2015|Denalie, Executive Power, Mt. McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt

Reducing a Mountain to a Molehill: The Media, Executive Power and Denali

by Greg Weiner|

Let the historians charting the growth of executive power take note of August 30, 2015, which is the day America became a nation in which Presidents could rename mountains and nobody asked how.

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October 27, 2014|Alexis de Tocqueville, George Nash, Herbert Hoover, Molly Melching, The Quiet American, The Ugly American, Theodore Roosevelt, Walter McDougall

The American: Not Ugly, Not Quiet

by Lauren Weiner|

Hoover

George Nash, the dean of Herbert Hoover scholars, wrote about our 31st President most recently in the Wall Street Journal, commemorating the centenary of Hoover’s heroic World War I disaster-relief efforts in Europe. Nash described how, in 1914, a young and successful London-based mining engineer made his move “to ‘get in the big game’ of public life.”

Nash’s words capture a do-gooding impulse, but one that is mixed with personal ambition. This interesting alloy should be familiar. It puts Herbert Hoover in a long line of Americans in whom self-improvement and world-improvement seem inextricably tied—a line stretching back in our history, at least to Benjamin Franklin, and forward into our time.

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September 25, 2014|Lochner, Paul Moreno, Progressivism, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson

Anatomy of a Juggernaut

by Bradley C. S. Watson|

The subtitle of Paul D. Moreno’s new book, “The Twilight of Constitutionalism and the Triumph of Progressivism,” is the thrust of a growing body of revisionist scholarship on the Progressive movement. Moreno adds a valuable historian’s perspective to this scholarship, which is associated largely with the “Claremont school” of political science. He notes the central conceit of 20th century American history: the triumphalist portrayal of an ever-expanding national state, one that would finally offer authentic liberty—freeing individuals not only from inequality, but from the reactionary idea that human nature itself imposes permanent constraints. Moreno suggests that the Obama presidency has brought…

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September 2, 2014|

How to Secure America’s Peace

by Angelo M. Codevilla|

U.S. Soldiers at Camp Bucca in Iraq. Photo Credit: DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images

Our historically literate founding statesmen elaborated a foreign policy to shield Americans’ exceptional way of life in a hostile world through the timeless principles of statecraft. For more than a century, their successors held to the Founders’ purpose and to those principles. America grew great. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, a new generation of statesmen, consciously abandoning the Founders’ way of thinking, has turned U.S. foreign policy from shielding the American people against danger to improving or otherwise leading the rest of mankind. Imagining that everyone, everywhere shares their good intentions, they have conducted America’s international affairs…

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Responses

Finding Fault in Our National Insecurity

by Walter A. McDougall

Angelo Codevilla has been a legend in our house since the 1980s when my wife and I first encountered this Renaissance force of nature radiating virtú. Somehow Angelo manages a vineyard in California, a horse ranch in Wyoming, a large, loving family, a prolific academic career, and world travel without strain, indeed with unfailing ebullience.…

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A Trenchant Yet Flawed Analysis of American Foreign Policy

by Ted Galen Carpenter

Angelo Codevilla’s analysis of the many problems associated with U.S. foreign policy provides an abundance of important insights. He is devastatingly on the mark when he contends that since the beginning of the 20th century, U.S. officials have transformed the Founders’ emphasis on shielding the American people against external dangers into an arrogant, unattainable objective…

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Principle and Prudence in American Foreign Policy

by Mackubin Thomas Owens

There is much with which to agree in Angelo Codevilla’s thoughtful essay. To the extent that he and I differ, it is with regard to means and not ends. We both agree that U.S. foreign policy is in shambles, characterized by drift and incoherence. It is at best a-strategic at worst anti-strategic, lacking any concept…

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Benevolent Hegemon, Illiberal, or Too Far Gone Already?

by Angelo M. Codevilla

Walter McDougall writes: “Congress and the American people…want to believe their ‘indispensable nation’ can be a ‘benevolent hegemon’ doing good on the cheap and doing well by doing good.” As a description of how Americans view our role among nations, this is arguable. But it is a fair summation of our foreign policy establishment‘s view…

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July 28, 2014|George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Neoconservatism, Progressivism, Realism, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson

Achieving America’s Peace: A Conversation with Angelo Codevilla

by Angelo M. Codevilla|

Angelo Codevilla comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his latest book To Make and Keep Peace Among Ourselves and with All Nations. Our conversation focuses on Codevilla’s main argument that American statesmen increasingly fail to understand the nature and purpose of statecraft: the achievement of peace. So what does it mean to achieve America’s peace? To do so, Codevilla insists, requires concrete evaluation of the means and ends necessary to protect American interests. This requires particular judgments about power, interests, and the practial reality we are confronted with. Our practice, for well nigh a century, has been to speak in…

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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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