Abraham Lincoln | Online Library of Law & Liberty

January 26, 2015|Abraham Lincoln, Equality, Harry Jaffa, M.E. Bradford, The Declaration of Independence

How Jaffa’s Critics Remember Him

by H. Lee Cheek, Jr., Sean Busick|2 Comments

American political science has lost a significant contributor with the demise of Harry V. Jaffa (1918-2015). We mourn the death of Professor Jaffa, and acknowledge that there will be many celebrations of his life and scholarly achievements to appear, especially from his epigones. Important contributions from Ken Masugi and Peter Lawler have already appeared in this space. As a mentor, Jaffa inspired a large number of graduate students who have assumed posts in the academy and government. We call many of these scholars our friends, and continue to appreciate their interpretative approaches and defense of the American political tradition.

He should also be remembered by those of us who disagreed with him.

January 21, 2015|Abraham Lincoln, Allan Bloom, Aristotle, Calvinism, Carey McWilliams, Harry Jaffa, Leo Strauss, Positivism, St. Thomas, Stephen Douglas, Thomas Pangle, Walter Berns

Jaffa As Neo-Puritan

by Peter Lawler|38 Comments

In the days since Harry Jaffa and Walter Berns passed away, the former’s angry disputes with his fellow Straussians have received a lot of commentary. There are those who say it was all quite childish. And you know, a lot of it was, precisely because the differences so often seemed small or, when examined closely, not really differences at all. Still, some of the differences are real enough to merit our close attention.

On the more general issue of which student of Strauss is more faithful to the true and complete teaching of Leo Strauss, the most obvious response is that the capable students of any great teacher always grab on to part of what he (or she) taught and confuse it with the whole. Marx and Hegel. Alexandre Kojève and Hegel. Maybe even Aristotle and Plato.

January 15, 2015|Abraham Lincoln, American Conservatism, Aristotle, Barry Goldwater, Crisis of the House Divided, Declaration of Independence, Equality, Harry Jaffa, Leo Strauss

Harry V. Jaffa: An Inconvenient Thinker

by Ken Masugi|97 Comments

Harry V. Jaffa, who died January 10, at 96, may well be American conservatism’s most consequential thinker, for having attempted to re-found conservatism on the basis of its most philosophic principles and most revered figures. He was also one of the most dismissed, berated, and scorned of scholars, earning derision from former friends and those who knew him only from his writing, much of which had become acerbic.

October 30, 2014|Abraham Lincoln, assimilation, Declaration of Independence, Eric Muller, Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, Immigration, John Adams

We Are All Dangerous and We All Have Rights

by Ken Masugi, John Zvesper|6 Comments

In his sane and thought-provoking Liberty Forum essay about immigration, Richard Samuelson argues that “America’s very essence” may well be “at risk” because of “two challenges to our status as a nation of immigrants.” They are “the rise of the mega-state” favored by Progressives, and “the rise of a post-national ideal” that “threatens to undermine the understandings that have made assimilation a duty and an obligation.”

September 25, 2014|Abraham Lincoln, David Brooks, Declaration of Independence

David Brooks, Lincoln, and the Ties that Bind

by Ken Masugi, John Zvesper|7 Comments

David Brooks’ recent column on the relative friendlessness of Americans’ lives captures something of the way we live now. But his idea of establishing summer camp-like meetings of diverse people to plant the seeds of friendship seems clumsy. Abraham Lincoln had civil society thoughts, too; Brooks quotes philosophers but misses out by not referencing Lincoln, who saw the potential in such get-togethers as county fairs, lyceums, and Fourth of July gatherings. Whereas Brooks focuses on the here and now, Lincoln thought of this socializing as rooted in a past that deserves veneration.

September 18, 2014|Abraham Lincoln, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Scottish National Party

Will the Secret Weapon Be Enough?: Brown’s Barnstorming to Make “No” as Inspiring as “Yes”

by Charlie Laderman|Leave a Comment

Three hundred and seven years ago, Englishmen and Scotsmen brought forth, upon the British Isles, a new Union, conceived in English insecurity and Scottish impecuniosity, and dedicated to the proposition that the two peoples, if not equal, at least had more in common than either did with the French.

The original Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707 was a “political necessity for England, a commercial necessity for Scotland,” as one historian put it. For contemporary champions of Union, the necessities that were the mother of its invention are as pressing as ever.

July 2, 2014|13th Amendment, Abraham Lincoln, Declaration of Independence

“If Slavery Is Not Wrong, Nothing Is Wrong”

by Ken Masugi|10 Comments

Could anything be clearer than the Thirteenth Amendment? A model of succinctness, it reads in full:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

From its modest yet revolutionary text some contemporary legal commentators have derived governmental power to address every category or practice that involves a form of discrimination or inequality: racial profiling, poverty, migrant workers, pregnant women (for abortion rights), and more.[1] Such a Thirteenth Amendment might devour the rest of the Constitution, marking the demise of constitutional government that protects individual rights, as any means would be justified to attack every ill that might have some relationship to freedom. The fight to end slavery would have become the fight to end freedom.

January 3, 2014|Abraham Lincoln, Conservatism, Gay Rights, Pat Buchanan, Plato, Putin, Raskolnikov, Russian Orthodoxy, Solzhenitsyn

Is Putin a New Hero of the Right?

by Ken Masugi|1 Comment

Silvio Berlusconi Meets With Vladimir Putin Which President advocated the following conservative notions in his State of the Union Address? Restoring local government, reviving charities, freeing business from regulation, denouncing the education bureaucracy, tightening the borders, and strengthening “the values of traditional families.”

Contrast this with a more progressive President whose State of the Union Address emphasized raising the salaries of academics and doctors; calling for frank discussion of race relations, declaring a “year of culture,” and increasing trust in the government—while never mentioning God.

November 19, 2013|Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Gettysburg Address, King James Bible

The Sacred Sounds of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

by Daniel Dreisbach|14 Comments

On the afternoon of November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a brief address at the dedication of a national cemetery on Gettysburg’s battlefield. The solemn ceremony took place four and a half months after Union forces turned back the army of the Confederate States on July 1-3 in the bloodiest engagement of the Civil War. The battle claimed the lives of nearly eight thousand soldiers. Lincoln’s carefully crafted address was barely 272 words in length and required approximately two minutes to deliver. It is widely acclaimed as one of the most poignant and eloquent speeches in American letters.

October 21, 2013|Abraham Lincoln, American Exceptionalism, Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, Progressivism

Twilight of the American Republic

by Justin B. Litke|Leave a Comment

This next Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Justin Litke on his new book, Twilight of the Republic. Our conversation focuses on the book's attempt to situate twentieth century claims of American Exceptionalism within the context of the political symbols and public meanings that are revealed in significant political documents stretching back to the Mayflower Compact and forward to Albert Beveridge's 1900 Senate speech "In Support of American Empire." Along the way, we discuss the Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, the Constitution, and the presidency of Abraham Lincoln in order to better understand Litke's powerfully argued claim that the…

Flipping Hollywood's Blacklist Narrative

by Ron Capshaw
Once on a British talk show in the early 1970s, anticommunist actor John Wayne startled the host by acknowledging that there was indeed a Hollywood blacklist. Wayne's follow-up, however, made…

The Meteoric Rise of ISIS

by David Conway
The last page of this brief but powerful book displays a portrait of its author, Patrick Cockburn. His world-weary demeanor speaks volumes about the gravity of the subject—the unexpectedly sudden,…