Which story we tell about liberalism is a fraught and consequential choice. A common version, peddled by liberals and postliberals alike, is the Whiggish one: During the Enlightenment, Western man awoke from his dogmatic slumber to realize that the religious ideas of the Middle Ages were backwards and destructive. The rediscovery of the classical world in the Renaissance and ascent...

　　On a chilly Thursday evening last December, citizens in Dorr, Michigan, a small community about a half-hour south of Grand Rapids, attended a town hall meeting to discuss the possible construction of a data center on the north end of town. Some of the attendees came from families who had lived in Dorr for generations and, worried about the disruptions...

　　Gregory Conti, in his introduction to a new edition of John Stuart Mill’s Writings on Representative Government and Parliamentary Reform, writes, “Mill is best known as the embodiment of liberalism.” We may think that we know what this means, but do we? As Conti argues, “Thinkers of [Mill’s] stature need periodically to be reintroduced, lest familiarity breed, if not exactly...

　　Perhaps it is a reflection on the narrowness of my acquaintanceship that I know no one who fails to understand that government hyper-indebtedness is a dangerous thing—even those who hardly give a moment’s thought to economic questions. I do not, for example, know personally any Modern Monetary Theorists (who seem to have gone up and come down like a rocket),...

　　The Fourteenth Amendment is at the heart of many of the most controversial issues that will land before the Supreme Court today. In his new book, David Upham argues that many of the legal theories about it are not deeply rooted enough in the history or text of the amendment itself. He joins the Law Liberty Podcast to discuss. 　　Related...

　　More than a year ago, I observed that “many Americans subscribe to the belief that certain actions are unimpeachable as long as they have an expressive element to them.” The phenomenon appears to grow by the day. The latest installment in this pattern—what I called “free speech supramaximalism”—comes in the form of a New York Times op-ed critiquing, of all...

　　“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” So declaimed John Milton in Areopagitica, his celebrated 1644 tract against prepublication licensing, which has long been hailed as a milestone in the history of freedom of speech and of the press as well as the history of liberalism more generally. The...

　　Can a party that claims the mantle of conservatism be an unconstitutional party? This appears to be a contradiction, even a paradox, yet it is one that Daniel Pitt’s The Conservative Party and the Constitution: Policies, Paradigms, and Silence confronts directly. Originating in Pitt’s PhD research at the University of Hull, the book provides a much-needed analysis of how Britain’s...

　　Rereading the 9/11 Commission Report triggers a flood of memories for anyone over 30. The “just-the-facts” description of the attacks brings back the agony and heartbreak of that terrible day and the days following as we searched desperately for the victims and then laid them to rest. 　　Looking back, the Report’s recommendations seem a bit underwhelming and even naïve (for...

　　I’ve always had great respect for the people who signed on for military service after September 11, 2001. They don’t get many accolades, because America is in the midst of an identity crisis, feels little pleasure in memories of Iraq or Afghanistan, and is even inclined to wonder whether we brought that pain on ourselves with all that incomprehensible meddling...

　　Everyone with a plan to fix Congress wants to help it legislate again by making it easier for lawmakers to compromise. Some call for electing more moderates to serve in the House and Senate. And others want to empower party leaders to impose deadlines, block amendments, and limit debate. But they all share the same underlying goal: produce consensus before...

　　Daron Acemoglu won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2024 and is the third most cited economist of all time. Thus, the paradox of his new book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy?, is that its most serious analytic failures are economic. He provides a sincere and serious consideration of modern liberalism’s estrangement from the working class. But when he moves...