Yesterday (June 9, 2018) I participated in a program sponsored by a local nonpartisan group, Common Ground for Texans. The topic was “Freedom of Speech, Political Identity, and Political Correctness,” or “Freedom of Speech and the Right Not to be Offended.” The focus was c…
History & Culture
Review of James Fitzjames Stephen’s Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873)
Liberty Fund has an excellent catalog of classic works, the above-referenced title among them. Law and Liberty just launched a new feature, consisting of essays featuring some of the gems from the LF catalog. I wrote the inaugural essay, on James Fitzjames Stephen’s Liberty, Equality, Frate…
Kevin Gutzman’s Illuminating Look at Thomas Jefferson
Historian Kevin Gutzman’s latest book, Thomas Jefferson–Revolutionary: A Radical’s Struggle to Remake America, is a fascinating look at a Founding Father whose role is often relegated to “author of the Declaration of Independence.” Jefferson was much more than…
Darrow’s Dereliction
The reputation of Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) as one of the greatest of American lawyers rests largely on two courtroom performances: in the murder trial of Leopold and Loeb in Chicago in 1924, and the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” which took place in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. Both were extensively…
History’s Fickle Judgment
Why is Herbert Hoover so reviled? How should history rate Herbert Hoover, the nation’s 31st President? By today’s standards, Hoover was an anomaly. He rose, in Horatio Alger fashion, from being orphaned at age nine to the pinnacle of self-made success in business and finance. Although he was …
History versus Ideologies of Oppression
The trip to Hawaii I wrote about in my previous post yielded some interesting Ricardian, Schumpeterian, and Hayekian lessons, as I noted. It was also enlightening in terms of how prevailing conceptions of our 50th state compare to its actual history. The reader of James L. Haley’s excellent 20…
The Fertility God of Conservatism
It is hard to imagine what the world of a conservative intellectual looked like in 1953. In our present age of talk radio (led by Rush Limbaugh), Fox News, national conservative magazines and blogs, and the New York-D.C. axis of Right-leaning think tanks, we regard the conservative movement as ub…
Millennial Country Music Bodes Ill for Civic Virtue
As John McGinnis explained in his recent series of posts regarding the Constitution’s design for creating civic virtue (here, here, and here), a free society depends on a responsible citizenry, strong families, and thriving civic associations that foster social cohesion. According to McGinnis,…