The freedom of association is surely the humblest and least-touted First Amendment right, and yet, as Luke Sheahan explains in this keynote lecture, it is crucial for preserving our liberty and rejuvenating our culture. Natural and freely-chosen human associations are our best defense against a political clerisy that often feels entitled to social engineer American life. Free citizens should be...

　　The current United States–Israeli war with Iran is intended, in part, to prevent that nation from acquiring a nuclear weapon. For Israel, a nuclear-armed Iran—sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state—is an existential threat. For the United States and its regional and European allies, an Iranian regime capable of launching intermediate-range ballistic missiles is untenable. 　　This war, however, should...

　　John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration is widely regarded as a foundational text of religious liberty. For centuries, thinkers have praised its clarity, moral confidence, and rejection of the coercive religious politics that prevailed in early modern Europe. On the surface, Locke offers a simple and powerful claim: the state has no authority over the salvation of souls, and therefore...

　　Niall Ferguson received Liberty Fund’s George F. Will Award for advancing our understanding of the wellsprings of Western prosperity on April 13, 2026, in Washington, DC. The award recognizes individuals who, like George F. Will, have made significant contributions to our understanding of the free society, individual liberty, and the human condition. 　　Niall Ferguson’s work takes liberty seriously—not as an inevitability,...

　　On March 19, 1776—two days after America’s Continental Army forced the British Army to evacuate Boston—John Adams, attending Congress in Philadelphia, wrote to his wife Abigail, at home in Massachusetts, in reply to her inquiry about the public reception of America’s first “best seller,” Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. That anonymous author’s “Sentiments of the Abilities of America, and of the...

　　The pope and the president are at odds with each other, and Sohrab Ahmari isn’t happy about it. In an April 15, 2026, essay for UnHerd, he lamented the president and vice president’s intemperate words about Pope Leo, and suggested a diagnosis some might find startling. This friction, Ahmari thinks, is the bad fruit of Catholic neo-conservatives like Fr. John...

　　California may put an extraordinary wealth tax before voters this fall. Under the proposal, anyone worth more than a billion dollars would see 5 percent of their wealth taken next year. Supporters cast it as a one-time measure targeting only the super-wealthy, yet that reassuring description may mislead voters. A state that enacts such a tax to fill its empty...

　　April 23 may not be the “perfect date” (a title reserved for the 25th), but it comes close to fans of literature and flowers. April 23 marks St. George’s Day, the patron saint of a surprising number of countries, including England, Catalonia (in Spain), Portugal, Georgia, and Ethiopia. It is also recognized as World Book Day, an extension of its...

　　When Donald Trump first suggested that the United States should purchase Greenland, the reaction in Washington was disbelief mixed with ridicule. The United States, it had seemed, long ago settled its borders. Territorial expansion belonged to a different era. 　　Yet in the longer arc of American history, expansion has been quite normal. For much of the nation’s first century and...

　　The state of Colorado has made a habit of losing decisively at the Supreme Court of the United States. This term marks the state’s third loss in less than a decade. In all three cases, the Court has held unconstitutional Colorado’s attempts either to compel its citizens to express approval of certain orthodoxies about human identity and sexuality or to...

　　July 4, 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the colonists’ claim to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The year 1776 also recalls a quieter but significant anniversary. Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, giving the modern world a language for thinking about markets, productivity,...

　　Even before 1776, American liberty and equality were expressed in church and civil covenants and compacts, like the 1620 Mayflower Compact. Alexis de Tocqueville makes much of such covenants and compacts in Democracy in America, arguing that religion lies at the core of American character and sustains the American experiment in democracy. Christianity, in his view, is especially well-suited to...