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June 17, 2019|Almost Nothing, Congress for Cultural Freedom, Eric Karpeles, Impressionism, Józef Czapski, Lost Time, Marcel Proust, Totalitarianism

Józef Czapski: A Soldier and Artist Fights for Liberty

by Priscilla M. Jensen|

Held as a POW by the Soviets in 1940, Czapski later worked to bring to light their murder of 22,000 of his fellow Polish officers in the Katyn Forest.

January 24, 2019|"The Economic Conditions of Interstate Federalism", balance of power, Edwin van de Haar, F.A. Hayek, Lionel Robbins, Nation-State, The Virtue of Nationalism, Totalitarianism, Yoram Hazony

Was Hayek a One-Worlder?

by Garreth Bloor|

Friedrich Hayek in Gothenburg, Sweden 1981 (Roger Tillberg / Alamy Stock Photo).
The nation remains the basic unit of international society in Hayek’s view.

January 14, 2019|Huawei, Totalitarianism, Xi Jinping

China, Model of the Modern Digital Dictatorship

by Louisa Greve|

(image: shutterstock.com)
The Chinese government’s demand for “patriotic” fervor isn’t new, but it is being enforced with new rigor thanks to the latest technology.

August 29, 2018|Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, Robert Conquest, the Holodomor, Totalitarianism

Thinking About the Holodomor: Part I

by Flagg Taylor|

Monument to the Victims of the Holodomor, with the statue "Bitter Memory of Childhood" in foreground, Kiev, Ukraine (DmyTo/Shutterstock.com).
Anne Applebaum continues the work of Robert Conquest, whose “Harvest of Sorrow” first set the record straight about the Soviet-caused famine in Ukraine.

July 13, 2018|China's Cultural Revolution, indoctrination, Jordan Peterson, Mao Zedong, Michael Eric Dyson, Totalitarianism

China’s Cultural Revolution and the Social Justice Left

by Mark Judge|

Poster of Chairman Mao, China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976 (contributed to alamy.com by Shawshots)
At what point will the Left have gone too far?

June 18, 2018|communism, The Long Night of the Watchman, Totalitarianism, Václav Benda

An Unsung Opponent of Totalitarian Power

by Joshua Dill|

Even as he resisted evil, the Charter 77 spokesman Václav Benda kept the oppressors in his prayers.

May 11, 2018|Armando Ianucci, Central Committee of the Communist Party, Josef Stalin, Lavrenti Beria, Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Union, The Death of Stalin, Totalitarianism

A Grimly Effective Death of Stalin

by Kenneth D.M. Jensen|

Steve Buscemi, Sylvestra Le Touzel, and Gerald Lepkowski in The Death of Stalin
There’s a lesson here for those who imagine one-party states, ideologues, and power-hungry tyrants are not really so different from you and me.

March 1, 2018|Arthur Ponsonby, George Orwell, Thomas E. Ricks, Totalitarianism, Winston Churchill

Churchill, Orwell, and Why We Admire Them

by Barton Swaim|

George Orwell and Winston Churchill (Images: J. Russell and Sons/BBC via Wikimedia Commons).
In an age of postmodern hyper-individualism, Churchill and Orwell’s advocacy of individual liberty isn’t what is most interesting about them.

February 14, 2017|Charter 77, Helsinki Accords, Jan Patocka, Martin Palous, Montesquieu, Oswaldo Paya, Totalitarianism, Vaclav Havel

Building the “Parallel Polis”

by Flagg Taylor|

Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright and leading member of the Czechoslovak opposition Civic Forum, who drafted large parts of Charter 77, the declaration which helped attract international attention to the civil rights abuses in Czechoslovakia, waves 10 December 1989 to the crowd of thousands of demonstrators gathered on Prague's Wenceslas Square, celebrating the communist capitulation and nomination of the new government formed by Marian Calfa from Slovak dissident movement the Public Against Violence. At the end of 1989, Havel was elected first president of the then Czechoslovakia when the state-communist system crumbled in the Velvet Revolution. AFP PHOTO LUBOMIR KOTEK (Photo credit should read LUBOMIR KOTEK/AFP/Getty Images)

Charter 77, the human rights group in the former Czechoslovakia dedicated to recognizing and protesting the lawlessness and abuses of the communist regime, turned 40 last month, and the milestone was marked by a panel discussion in Washington sponsored by the Czech Embassy and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

“The Enduring Significance of Charter 77” featured leading scholars and also Martin Palouš, one of the original 241 signatories of the Charter, who became his country’s ambassador to the United States a decade after the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Palouš called the Charter movement “a candle in the middle of the night”—the night having fallen over Czechoslovakia with the thunderous Soviet invasion of 1968. The movement emerged quietly during the dark days of what the communists called “normalization”—the restoration of “really existing socialism” after the 1968 invasion quashed the experiment in liberalization known as the Prague Spring.

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February 1, 2017|Moral Relativism, Totalitarianism, William Hogarth

Beer Street, Gin Lane, and Blurred (Moral) Vision

by Theodore Dalrymple|

We like to consider totalitarianism a thing of the past, at least in Western countries, but its temptations are permanent and its justifications never very far away. Since no man is an island, no human action concerns only the actor himself. John Stuart Mill’s famous principle in On Liberty (1859) that the only good reason to interfere with someone’s freedom is to prevent him from doing harm to others is therefore as effective a barrier against totalitarianism as tissue paper against a tsunami. Potential harm to others can be alleged in practically any human action.

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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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