Thomas G West

This essay will show that Locke’s teaching on the law of nature is not based on divine revelation, or a juridical doctrine of individual rights, or self-ownership, or self-preservation, or reasoning from premises that are not rooted in the empirical world. I will argue, on the contrary, that the real ground is found in his understanding of the conditions of human happiness. This conclusion is far from evident on the surface of Locke’s writings. Locke draws his reader into an amazingly complex line of reasoning, scattered up and down in several of his books, leading finally to the real basis of his teaching on the law of nature. Locke engages the reader in a dialogue, in which initially plausible arguments are put forward, then implicitly questioned, leading to new arguments, which again are questioned, and so on. Locke says that “long and sometimes intricate deductions of reason” are necessary to discover the law of nature. Locke writes treatises, not Platonic dialogues. Nevertheless, a dialogical thread will take us from one of Locke’s books to another, until we put together all the relevant passages to show the complete picture of his argument.

It is widely believed that there is more freedom of speech in America today than there was at the time of the founding. Indeed, this view is shared by liberal commentators, as one would expect, as well as by leading conservatives, which is more surprising. “The body of law presently defining First Amendment liberties,” writes liberal law professor Archibald Cox, grew out of a “continual expansion of individual freedom of expression.” Conservative constitutional scholar Walter Berns agrees: “Legally we enjoy a greater liberty [of speech] than ever before in our history.” This shared assessment is correct—from the point of view of the political theory of today's liberalism—but it is incorrect from the point of view of the political theory of the American founding.

En dépit de certaines bases communes, la conception globale que Leo Strauss avait de la politique étrangère est très différente de celle de Kristol, Kagan et autres figures de premier plan du néoconservatisme américain, qu'elles soient au gouvernement ou à l'extérieur. Strauss et la politique étrangère. Les principes de Strauss. Les principes fondateurs de l'Amérique. Reproduced by permission of Bibliothèque de Sciences Po

Examines tenets of current neoconservative foreign policy from the perspective of Leo Strauss's political thought. What many critics see as the imperialism of the current American administration with regard to the expansion of a global hegemony is defended by such conservatives on the grounds of both stamping out the threat of terrorism & advancing global evolution toward democracy. These measures are shown to be incongruous with Strauss's assertions that no social change can fully arrest human evils. Several American initiatives, such as nation building & the Iraq war, defer sharply from this belief. Furthermore, these initiatives are demonstrated to be at odds with the founding principles of the US. It is proposed that neoconservatives tend to favor thinkers who themselves advance ideas that are at odds with the positions of America's Founding Fathers. While these conflicts are prime for extensive debate of the neoconservative view, these views were established at a time when the threats cited by today's neoconservatives did not exist in their current form. The implications of this conflict are explored in depth here. 11 References. C. Brunski

When California was admitted to the Union, 150 years ago, America was in the middle of a tremendous quarrel over slavery. Eleven years later, that quarrel became a Civil War. The question America faced then was whether the blessings of liberty, already enjoyed by free Americans, would be permanently denied to slaves and their descendants. Today we face a different challenge, the challenge of modern liberalism. But this time, the line between freedom and slavery is not so easy to see. Both today's liberalism and the older constitutionalism claim to represent the cause of liberty against slavery. But what each side means by "liberty" is not the same. From the point of view of the Founders' understanding, government today is no longer wholly devoted to securing our rights to life and liberty and government by consent. Actions that earlier Americans would have regarded as unquestionably permitted under the ordinary exercise of the right to liberty have been considerably restricted over the past century, especially since the 1960s. In particular, the older presumption that private associations (families, businesses, political parties) would be largely self-governing has been questioned in the name of "social justice" for racial minorities, women, children, the disabled, homosexuals, and other groups. For example, what we call "civil rights laws" have greatly limited the earlier right of any property owner to hire and fire at will. Endangered species laws have greatly limited the earlier right of any property owner to decide whether or not ...