shutterstock.com (Photo by AumCreatephoto)The “American Rule”: The Rise of the Lawyer Class: Part II
Is “Loser Pays” a Vestige of Oppression? Part I
Constitutional Amendment as a Path to Avoiding Robed Masters
The Bill of Rights (Jack R. Perry Photography/Shutterstock.com)The Violent Bear It Away
The Holy Martyrs of Compiègne of the French Revolution.What Are They Thinking?
Recently, I raised the issue of the worldview of the Resistance to President Trump (“Resistance, in the Light of 1776”). I would like to delve further into the matter. It will take a few installments. Basically, what I hope to do is to put order in some readings, observations, impressions, and overhearings (I live in a university neighborhood, and one establishment I regularly eat at is the aptly named “One World Café”). This effort is neither scientific nor conclusive. Call it “political” in the sense Pierre Manent employs when he says les choses politiques arrivent en gros (“political things first come to sight in rough outline”).
Capitalism According to Michael Novak
I met the late Michael Novak as the lone Protestant attending the first Tertio Millennio Seminar. The first year it was a month-long seminar held in Liechtenstein. The basic form continues today, with around ten U.S. students joining around twenty European students. The European students that first year were mainly eastern Europeans; it was just a few years after the wall fell. Joining Novak in organizing the first seminar were George Weigel, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Rocco Buttiglione, and Fr. Maciej Zieba, OP.
The centerpiece of the seminar was focused study of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, Centesimus Annus and, more broadly, Catholic social doctrine and teaching. Several American works were included at the time as well, including a couple of essays from The Federalist and a few selections from Novak’s book, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.
Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois: A Conversation with Steven Smith
This discussion with Steven Smith, author of Modernity and Its Discontents, explores what it means to be modern and why an age that has produced so many gains and advances has also produced so many counter-enlightenments and apocalyptic responses. To love the modern age well, do we need to love it moderately?
Rebuilding the Liberty Narrative: A Conversation with 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.
The Spirit of Christmas Presents Meets the Spirit of Capitalism
What Miracle on 34th Street Teaches Us About the Virtues of Capitalism.
Earlier this week I found myself watching Miracle on 34th Street. I never before noticed what a fine job it does explaining the connection between the market economy and virtue. If I taught economics rather than history I might use a few clips from the movie in class.
