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Friday Roundup, January 24th

  • How should contemporary defenders of limited government and the rule of law understand and learn from the New Deal’s revolutionary movement? The current Liberty Law Talk with Gordon Lloyd, co-author with David Davenport of The New Deal & Modern American Conservatism, discusses this question.

 In 1879 . . . he published his essay “Cabinet Government in the United States,” in the International Review. Clearly influenced by his reading of Bagehot, he denounced the inefficiency of the present government by “irresponsible committees” from a “legislature which legislates with no real discussion of its business.” As Wilson saw it, the separation of powers was an obstacle to good government, rather than a guarantor of the independence of its various branches: “To the methods of representative government which have sprung from these provisions of the Constitution, by which the Convention thought so carefully to guard and limit the powers of the legislature, “he wrote, “we must look for an explanation, in a large measure, of the evils over which we now find ourselves lamenting.”

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