Liberty Law Talk

Award-winning novelist Mark Helprin is also one of the most significant voices writing on American foreign policy. Liberty Law Talk interviews Mr. Helprin about the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and what they mean for France, the European Union, and the United States.

This next edition of Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with the great American Founding historian Gordon Wood on a new two volume collection entitled the American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate that he has edited for Library of America. We discuss these foundational debates between British and colonial statesmen that contested the nature of law, sovereignty, rights, and constitutionalism and would serve as the basis of the revolution and lead to the creation of America.

This next edition of Liberty Law Talk is a discussion with historian Mark Moyar about his new book, Strategic Failure, which critiques the foreign policy pursued by the Obama administration.

This conversation with Professor Barry Shain, editor of Liberty Fund’s new volume, The Declaration of Independence in Historical Context, explores the vigorous debates between the colonists and the British Empire that shaped our country’s charter document of independence.

Is the American Mind–the collective intelligence of what it means to live as independent citizens and individuals in America–increasingly being lost? That is the subject Mark Bauerlein discusses with Richard Reinsch in this Liberty Law Talk. Some have argued that we are Becoming Europe in fiscal and welfare state policies. Others have noted the rise of political correctness as a smothering force in our society. Many have long observed that our education system not only inadequately prepares young Americans in primary schools and colleges and universities for the competitive private sector, but that it is nearly oblivious to the American Founding and the qualities of American citizenship. Mark Bauerlein, in a new volume co-edited with Adam Bellow entitled The State of the American Mind, pulls these critiques together in a powerful, contemporary light with 16 essays by various critics. Our conversation considers these contributions on education, politics, media, and culture.

Frequent Law and Liberty contributor Theodore Dalrymple discusses with Richard Reinsch his latest book, Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality. Dalrymple, a former psychiatrist in the British prison system, diagnoses modern psychology’s tendency to enable its subjects or is it objects to engage in self-absorption not self-examination. The ultimate effect of various psychological schools, Dalrymple observes, is that of an acid eating away the responsibility and freedom of the human person. His solution: a return to literature, and with that, a return to the authenticity and realism of human action and its limitations.

This next edition of Liberty Law Talk is a discussion with Michael S. Paulsen, co-author with his son, Luke Paulsen, of their new book entitled The Constitution: An Introduction. The Paulsens’ book is a thoughtful and probing overview of the foundations and evolution of American constitutionalism. Our discussion focuses on key ideas in the book: What does it mean to be a country that is defined by a written constitution? Is the Founders’s Constitution a pro-slavery document? Has the use of substantive due process in Lochner, Griswold, and Roe corrupted our understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment? Of what worth is the Youngstown decision that importantly limits executive power in the age of a rampant regulatory state? By returning power to the elected branches does the New Deal Court really restore the Constitution to its republican principles?

Brad Birzer comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his upcoming biography of Russell Kirk entitled Russell Kirk: American Conservative. Our discussion focuses on the nature of Kirk’s conservatism and his place on the American Right. For example, many have prominently argued that Kirk’s conservatism is only strangely American. Birzer’s answer to this question will give these critics much to think about. We also discuss the influence of Edmund Burke and T. S. Eliot on Kirk, and we consider just what he meant by his invocation of the terms Moral Imagination and the Permanent Things.

Ilya Somin discusses at Liberty Law Talk his book The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London & the Limits of Eminent Domain. The book provides in part a fascinating account of the plight of the New London homeowners who challenged their city’s attempt to seize through eminent domain their homes for use in private development. In addition, Somin gives us a serious study of the eminent domain power, and he discusses why we need to reclaim a more restricted understanding of its legitimate use as opposed to the private to private takings blessed by the Court in Kelo and in many other cases stretching over several decades.

Roger Scruton discusses with Richard Reinsch in this edition of Liberty Law Talk his newest novel, The Disappeared. The story revolves around sex-trafficking in a northern city in present-day England, similar to the horrific disclosures of the recent Rotherham Report. It is also about the kind of society Britain has become. Interwoven in the novel is the fallout from the enthronement of multiculturalism, the welfare state, the cult of autonomy, and the loss of religious faith, all of which have brought a host of (unintended?) consequences. Many things have disappeared.