As soon as I started asking questions about Locke's legacy in America, however, I discovered something unexpected. The Locke I knew and thought I would find in the historical record was missin. He was nowhere to be found. And the text I thought defined Locke's relevance--his Two Treatises--was conspicuously absent as well. Between 1773 and 1917, it wasn't even published in an American edition.
   Claire Rydell Arcenas, Introduction: America’s Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life

This book is so good it could not have come at a bad time. But, because the Right has adopted, as one of its myriad psychoses, a passionate hatred of John Locke as the architect of America's supposedly godless Enlightenment regime, it could hardly have come at a better time. As Joseph Loconte has explained:

This criticism of Locke’s liberalism as the great solvent of tradition, virtue, and religious belief continues to influence political scientists, educators, and public intellectuals. For the ideological Left, it has nurtured the progressive assumption that liberal values emerged only as societies became more secular and dispensed with religious belief. More recently, Macpherson and Strauss have been enlisted by those among the religious Right who accuse Locke of transforming the classical and Christian conceptions of freedom into a license for personal liberation.

And, James M. Patterson makes the broader point:

In recent decades, however, scholars have reconsidered this view of the American founding. The ground was first laid by the 1984 landmark content analysis of Donald S. Lutz in his American Political Science Review article “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought.” Here Lutz compiled revolutionary and founding literature—while intentionally excluding sermons for obvious reasons—from 1760 until 1805, and searched for references to authorities ancient and modern. He discovered that the so-called Lockean liberal founding was nothing of the sort. Rather, revolutionary literature contained more references to the Bible than to all other thinkers combined, and the most popular book was that of Deuteronomy. Locke appears somewhat often in the earliest years Lutz examined but rapidly tapers off in favor of appeals to Montesquieu, Blackstone, Hume, Pufendorf, Coke, and Cicero. Far from a Lockean liberal founding, Lutz concluded that “the debate surrounding the adoption of the U.S. Constitution reflected different patterns of influence than the debates surrounding the writing and adoption of the state constitutions, or the Revolutionary writing surrounding the Declaration of Independence.” In short, Lutz had proved that reducing the founding to liberalism badly oversimplified a complicated series of events with a wide array of influences and statesmen at work.)

So we ought not be surprised that when Professor Arcenas sought to trace the influence of Locke on American life she had trouble finding evidence that he was the key influence on the Founding:

Conventional readings tend to impose our modern vision of Locke as the founding father of liberalism back onto the eighteenth century. This means that they focus exclusively on the work for which Locke is best known today—his Second Treatise—and the extent to which the Founding Fathers (especially Thomas Jefferson) were influenced by it in the Revolutionary era. As a result, our understanding of Locke’s political influence in early America has been shaped more by twentieth- and twenty-first-century concerns than by the actual experiences of people living in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In contrast, America’s Philosopher seeks to understand Locke through the eyes of its historical subjects. It shows that Locke’s influence on early American political thought was both more complicated and more interesting than we’d previously imagined. Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries absolutely read and engaged with Locke’s political writings, but they didn’t think of Locke primarily as a political philosopher. Nor did they read Locke’s political work in isolation. Nor, after the 1770s and across the nineteenth century, did they understand Locke’s political thought as a positive influence on the development of American intellectual life or political institutions. In fact, in the immediate aftermath of the Revolutionary War, Americans began to reevaluate Locke’s political writings and increasingly interpreted them as incompatible with their “modern” commitments to what was coming to be known as “political science.” The Second Treatise, for example, came under attack for its reliance on thought experiments, such as the state of nature and the social contract. And another work that early Americans attributed to Locke—his plan of government for the Carolina colony in North America in the 1660s—was often held up as an example of how abstract political theorizing was doomed to failure, no matter how wise or virtuous its practitioner.
    -INTERVIEW: How We Read Locke: with Claire Rydell Arcenas (Daniel Kennelly, 11/23/22, City Talk)

Ironically, what Ms Arcenas found was that Locke was monumentally influential on many other facets of life in the Colonial era. Thanks mainly to his Essay Concerning Humane Understanding he was universally hailed as a "guide, model, and moral exemplar--an immediate and pervasive presence in people's daily lives, who taught them how to rear their children, study scripture, and pursue a variety of other activities related to improving both themselves and their communities." His pivotal role in child-rearing owed to his Thoughts Concerning Education and among the self-improvement goads was his New Method of Organizing Common-Place Books. This last was a system for keeping track of what you'd read and proved enormously popular. Paradoxically, for a thinker whom Left and Right both insist was at least secular and likely atheist, Locke was also utilized as a religious authority. Folks would proudly cite their sympathy with his Reasonableness of Christianity, Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul, and Ii>Letter Concerning Toleration Meanwhile, whoever did happen to read the Two Treatises would have found in the First his Biblical refutation of the right of kings. He was an unguent of tradition and religion, not a solvent.

On the other hand, by studying printing history, sales data and citations, the author shows that the Treatises on Government were much less widely read and had only limited currency in Revolutionary thought. It is not that Locke's thought was unknown or un-cited, just that he was merely one among many philosophers whose ideas contributed to the political milieu. Modern critics bizarrely want to both claim both that he was particularly influential on Jefferson, who adopted some of his language, but then ignore that where the Second Treatise locates rights in nature, the Declaration explicitly locates them in the fact of our having been Created. In one final amusing twist, mentioned in the interview above: "Far from establishing Locke as a foundational influence on American political thought, his political writings were relegated by late-eighteenth-century Americans to the realm of the abstract, speculative theory just as those Americans were turning their attention to more practical matters--namely, the formation and proper administration of real government." It was hardly helpful in this regard that his Fundamental Constitution for the Carolina colony had proven so unworkable, such that it "came to be seen as exemplifying what was wrong with politics and statecraft done speculatively and unscientifically." Far from imposing Enlightenment Rationalism on a nascent United States, he was marginalized precisely for the qualities of same that the Right finds so objectionable.

The rest of the book charts the ebbs and flows in Locke's fortunes as a figure in our public debates. Chiefly, the author shows how his false reputation was a rather late creation, really post-WWII. For purposes of their own ideological project, intellectuals of the left sought to make Locke an arch-Rationalist who bequeathed us a Founding denuded of religion. Equally predictably, those on the right--Willmoore Kendall and Leo Strauss, for instance--reacted against Locke, though they were actually taking issue with an imaginary construct. Lost in the tussle, to this day, was the historical Locke who Ms Arcenas has restored to us in this necessary corrective.

(Reviewed:02-Nov-23)

Grade: (A) Orrin C. Judd

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Claire Arcenas Links:

    -FACULTY PAGE: Claire Rydell Arcenas (Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow, Department of History, Stanford University)
    -FACULTY PAGE: CLAIRE RYDELL ARCENAS: Associate Professor of History (University of Montana)
    -PRIZE: 2022 István Hont Book Prize: We are pleased to announce that the 2022 István Hont Book Prize has been awarded to Claire Rydell Arcenas for America’s Philosopher - John Locke in American Intellectual Life (Institute of Intellectual History)
    -BOOK SITE: America’s Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life by Claire Rydell Arcenas (University of Chicago Press)
    -ESSAY: Roundtable: Claire Rydell Arcenas on Andrew Koppelman, Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed (Claire Rydell Arcenas, DECEMBER 19, 2023, Society for US Intellectual History)
    -VIDEO: John Locke: The 17th Century Philosopher who Shaped American Thought (The Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy, 4/19/2023)
    -VIDEO PODCAST: Occasional Dialogues: Claire Rydell Arcenas (Interviewed by Kurt Hofer, The European Conservative)
    -PODCAST: Booknotes+ Podcast: Claire Arcenas, "America's Philosopher" (C-SPAN, Booknotes)
    -VIDEO DISCUSSION: Claire Rydell Arcenas, Peggy Vandenberg, and Judy Whipps: "Progressive/Conservative 2016" (Hauenstein Center)
    -VIDEO: America’s Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life (Washington History Seminar, Apr 5, 2023)
    -VIDEO: John Locke: The 17th Century Philosopher who Shaped American Thought: The Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy presents a Civics for Life Conversation with author and historian Claire Rydell Arcenas (Civics for Life)
    -PODCAST: America’s Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life (New Work in Intellectual History, 2/17/2023)
    -VIDEO: Claire Rydell Arcenas, Peggy Vandenberg, and Judy Whipps: "Progressive/Conservative 2016" (Hauenstein Center, 4/20/16)
    -
    -INTERVIEW: How We Read Locke: with Claire Rydell Arcenas (Daniel Kennelly, 11/23/22, City Talk)
    -INTERVIEW: What is Reception History? And Other Questions for Glory Liu and Claire Rydell Arcenas (REBECCA BRENNER GRAHAM, JUNE 24, 2019, Society for US Intellectual History)
    -RECAP: “John Locke in America,” 10/20 Colloquium w/ University of Montana Prof. Claire Rydell Arcenas (Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, University of Missouri)
    -INTERVIEW: American Historian Claire Arcenas on John Locke, Teaching, and More (Erik Moshe, 10/20/19, HNN)
    -INTERVIEW: The Author’s Corner with Claire Arcenas (Rachel Petroziello, August 1, 2022, Current)
    -ESSAY: The Appropriation of Locke (Joseph Loconte, Sep 16, 2021, Heritage Foundation)
    -VIDEO LECTURE: America’s Machiavellian Moment [Or, Where Did the Founders Get Their Ideas?]: In this lecture, FPRI’s Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter McDougall delves deeply into the origins of the American political tradition by exploring the legacies of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, and the transmission of these ideas across time and space. (Foreign Policy Research Institute, 5/21/2018)
    -ESSAY: The Great Mr. Locke: America's Philospher, 1783-1861 (Merle Curti, Apr., 1937, The Huntington Library Bulletin)
    -ESSAY: CLASSICAL REPUBLICANISM, LOCKEAN LIBERALISM, AND THE CREATION OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC (Gregory Spindler, 4/14/23, Starting Points)
    -ESSAY: Beyond John Locke: Reality and Experience (Richard Cocks, 6/16/23, Voegelin View)
    -ESSAY: John Locke: The Harmony of Liberty & Virtue (Donald Devine, August 28th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: John Locke: Physician, Philosopher, and Defender of Freedom (Richard Gunderman, 12/04/23, EconLib)
    -ESSAY: Locke, Virtue, and a Liberal Education (Joseph Loconte, Spring 2024, National Affairs)
    -ESSAY: The relationship between religion and rights in the writings of John Locke (Brian Watkyns, University of Cape Town)
    -ESSAY: John Locke Foments Revolution in the Name of “The Rights of Man” (Walter Donway, April 26, 2023, Online Library of Liberty)
    -ESSAY: “John Locke, Heir of Puritan political theorists” (Winthrop S. Hudson)
    -ESSAY: John Locke and the New Course of Enlightenment Reason: Empiricism (Walter Donway. April 19, 2023, Online Library of Liberty)
    -ESSAY: LOCKE, CHRISTIANITY, AND AMERICA (Peter Lawler, 7 . 8 . 11, First Things)
    -ESSAY: John Locke’s Method of Organizing Common Place Books (Farnham Street)
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    -VIDEO ARCHIVES: Claire Rydell Arcenas (YouTube)
    -REVIEW: of America’s Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life by Claire Rydell Arcenas (The Critic)
    -REVIEW: of America's Philosopher (Barry Alan Shain, Chronicles)
    -REVIEW: of America’s Philosopher (Colin Kidd, London Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of America’s Philosopher (Geoff White, Montana: The Magazine of Western History)
    -REVIEW: of America's Philosopher (Caleb Henry, Catholic Social Science Review)
    -REVIEW: of America's Philosopher (Larry Arnhart, Law & Liberty)
    -REVIEW: of America's Philosopher (Mario I. Juarez-Garcia, Independent Institute)
    -REVIEW: of America's Philosopher (Modern Intellectual History)
    -REVIEW: of America's Philosopher (Elias Neibart, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy)[PDF]
    -REVIEW: of America's Philosopher (Barton Swaim, WSJ)
    -REVIEW: of America's Philosopher (Michael Zuckert, American Political Thought)
    -REVIEW: of America's Philosopher (David Azerrad, Claremont Review of Books)

Book-related and General Links:


LIBERALISM:

    -JOURNAL: Liberal Currents
    -JOURNAL: Discourse
    -
    -ESSAY: Toward A Conservative Liberalism: John Quincy Adams, Slavery, and the Meaning of Freedom (Jeffery Tyler Syck, Fall 23, Pietas)
    -ESSAY: Liberalism Once Saved The World—It Can Do So Again: A rededication to classical liberalism can beat back toxic polarization (DAVID BOAZ, JUN 02, 2024, UnPopulist)
    -ESSAY: Who Will Lead Us? : America's neglect of civic virtue and rising tribalism have led to fewer and fewer broadly respected figures in public life. (Andy Smarick, 6/03/24, Law & Liberty)
    -ESSAY: The American Founders and Their Relevance Today: (Robert P. Kraynak, June 17, 2015, Modern Age)
    -INTERVIEW: Cultivating Moderation in an Age of Extremism: Aurelian Craiutu joins Ben Klutsey to discuss the state of liberalism today and the neglected virtue of moderation (BEN KLUTSEY, MAY 31, 2024, Discourse)
    -
    -ESSAY: Aristotelian Piety for a Liberal Politics (Mary P. Nichols, May 24, 2024, Church Life journal)
    -ESSAY: Protestantism as Father of “Liberalism” (Mark Tooley, May 16, 2024, Providence)
    -ESSAY: Churchified America and Americanized Churches: Francis Wayland’s “The Recent Revolutions in Europe,” 1848 (Miles Smith, 5/13/24, Ad Fontes)
    -ESSAY: Liberalism Hijacked (Juliana Geran Pilon, Fusion)
    -ESSAY: Coercion, ownership, and the redistributive state: Justificatory liberalism's classical tilt (Gerald Gaus, 2010, Social Philosophy and Policy)
    -ESSAY: Hayek Among the Post-Liberals: The past two decades on the American right have been an extended exercise in mapping out Hayek's road to serfdom. (Rachel Lu, 4/30/24, Law & Liberty)
    -REVIEW: of The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics: Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding by Kody W. Cooper and Justin Buckley Dyer (James M. Patterson, Religion & Liberty)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Classical, New, or Conservative Liberalism?: a review of New Individualist Review, editor Milton Friedman (juliana geran pilon, Imaginative Conservative)
    -REVIEW: of Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism By Alan S. Kahan and Liberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century By Joshua L. Cherniss (Philip D. Bunn, University Bookman)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: No Masters (J. Colin Bradley, Aug. 21st, 2023, Point)
    -ESSAY: Liberal Skepticism and the Gender Identity Culture Wars (Eric Schliesser, June 26, 2023, Liberal Currents)
    -ESSAY: Liberalism in Mourning: Lionel Trilling crystallizes the cynical Cold War liberalism that sacrificed idealism for self-restraint. (Samuel Moyn, 8/30/23, Boston Review)
    -ESSAY: Mark Lilla and the Crisis of Liberalism (Samuel Moyn, 2/27/18, Boston Review)
    -PODCAST: The century-long war for American conservatism, with Matthew Continetti (Geoff Kabaservice, AUGUST 29, 2023, Niskanen Center)
    -ESSAY: Liberalism’s sin was born in the Cold War: Himmelfarb disabused the Right of naive progressivism (SAMUEL MOYN, 8/29/23, UnHerd)
    -ESSAY: Grappling with Liberalism (Seamus Flaherty, 03/21/2024, Merion West)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: An Arrow Against All Illiberals: Ian Dunt's How To Be a Liberal is a history of liberalism's conflicted nature and a call to arms for a dynamic, inclusive liberalism. (Janet Bufton, Alan Elrod, Paul Crider, Apr 8, 2024, Liberal Currents)
    -ESSAY: Classical, New, or Conservative Liberalism?: Before rebooting America's system of natural liberty, we first need to understand what liberalism is. (Juliana Geran Pilon, 4/20/23, Law & Liberty)
    -ESSAY: What Is Liberalism? (Duncan Bell, 6/26/14, Political Theory)
    -ESSAY: JOHN ADAMS AND THE RULE OF LAW (Stuart Hatfield, 5/22, Journal of the American Revolution)
    -ESSAY: Lincoln and the Question of Self-Government (Allen C. Guelzo, 5/10/23, Public Discourse)
    -ESSAY: Individual Autonomy Is Not the Enemy of a Humane Liberalism: A Response to David Brooks (EMILY CHAMLEE-WRIGHT, JUL 25, 2023, The UnPopulist)
    -ESSAY: John Locke & Personal Identity: why, according to John Locke, you continue to be you. (Nurana Rajabova, July 2023, Philosophy Now)
    -ESSAY: Modernity: A Rebellion Against God (George Stanciu, July 31st, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -REVIEW: of The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics by Kody Cooper and Justin Buckley Dyer (Mark David Hall, Law & Liberty)
    -REVIEW: of The Constitution's Penman by Dennis C. Rasmussen (Guy Denton, 7/25/23, Law & Liberty)
    -ESSAY: Why Not Anarchy?: If the only escape from Leviathan is radical decentralization, will conservatives become Tory anarchists? (Daniel McCarthy, August 31, 2020, Modern Age)
    -REVIEW: of A Paleoconservative Anthology by Paul Gottfried (Michael Lucchese. Law & Liberty)
    -ESSAY: From Conservatism to Restoration: The American right isn’t trying to conserve the current state of affairs, but to restore tradition to its rightful place (JON GABRIEL, APR 08, 2024, Discourse)
    -ESSAY: SUICIDE OF THE RADICAL RIGHT? (Matthew Rose, April 2024, First Things)
    -REVIEW: A DEFENSE OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM: The following is a review of Dennis Hale and Marc Landy, Keeping the Republic: A Defense of American Constitutionalism (David Lewis Schaefer, 4/11/24, Starting Points)
    -ESSAY: The Liberalism of Refuge (Bryan Garsten, April 2024, Journal of Democracy)
    -ESSAY: The Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes “Puts the Century on Edge” (Walter Donway, September 13, 2023, Online Library of Liberty)
    -ESSAY: The Eighteenth Century’s Boundless Optimism Collides with David Hume (Walter Donway August 23, 2023, Online Library of Liberty)
    -ESSAY: David Hume: Skepticism, Pessimism, Enlightenment (Walter Donway August 16, 2023, Online Library of Liberty)
    -ESSAY:The Self & Sympathy: David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (John Alcorn, November 5, 2023, Online Library of Liberty)
    -INTERVIEW: Liberalism As a Way of Life: An interview with political theorist Alexandre Lefebvre, whose important new book offers a comprehensive, spiritual defense of liberalism against its enemies and opponents (DAMON LINKER, MAY 22, 2024, Notes from the Middleground)
    -ESSAY: Mark Tushnet's Flight 93 Moment: Strip away Mark Tushnet's dramatism and you are left with the oldest trick in the political demagogue’s book. (Tal Fortgang, 8/28/23, Law & Liberty)
    -ESSAY: The Conservatism of Democracy (Greg Conti, 8/27/23, Compact)
    -ESSAY: Lessons and Challenges in The Limits of Liberty (Pierre Lemieux, 11/05/18, Liberty Fund)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Constitutional Democracy: Is Democracy Limited by Constitutional Rules?: A Liberty Classic Book Review of The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy, by Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan (Pierre Lemieux, 1/02/23, Liberty Fund)
    -ESSAY: The Moral Authority of Original Meaning (J. Joel Alicea, March 3, 2022, Notre Dame Law Review)
    -ESSAY: J.S. Mill vs the Post-Liberals: Why recent attacks on the foundations of liberal thought miss the mark. (RICHARD V REEVES, AUG 30, 2023, Persuasion)
    -ESSAY: Where Identity Politics Actually Comes From: Nationalism, not postmodernism, is the fount of today’s politics of recognition. (Jason Blakely, OCTOBER 3, 2023, The Chronicle Review)
    -ESSAY: The End of Identity Liberalism (Mark Lilla, Nov. 18, 2016, NY Times)
    -ESSAY: The New Right and its 'Masculinity': For Christians, seeking to compel virtue through a top-down centralized scheme of coercive government is not masculine, it's cowardly. (ANDRÉ BÉLIVEAU, SEP 28, 2023, The Free-men Newsletter)
    -ESSAY: LIGHT AMONG THE NATIONS: For Yoram Hazony, the founder of the National Conservative movement, Israel is an illiberal model for the international nationalist brigade. (Suzanne Schneider, 9/28/23, Jewish Currents)
    -SYMPOSIUM: Political Catholicism Reborn?: A Law & Liberty symposium on Kevin Vallier's All The Kingdoms of the World. (Law & Liberty, 9/21/23)
    -ESSAY: Use & Abuse of Classical Liberalism: Neither the founders nor the views they espoused fit nicely into the secularist, libertine individualistic box the neo-reactionaries wish to place them into. (NATHAN BROWN, SEP 21, 2023, Free-men Newsletter)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Faith of the Founders: Analyzing the religious convictions of the Founding Fathers through examination of Steven Waldman's excellent work "Founding Faith." (JUSTIN STAPLEY, SEP 20, 2023, Frere-men Newsletter)
    -REVIEW: In Defense of Cold War Liberalism: A review of Samuel Moyn’s ‘Liberalism Against Itself.’ (Samuel Goldman, The Dispatch)
    -REVIEW: Revolt Against the Masses: Samuel Moyn’s new book explores why liberalism has turned on itself. (David Gordon, June 5, 2024, Modern Age)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Samuel Moyn on the Abandonment of Revolutionary Liberalism: Samuel Moyn argues that Cold War liberals abandoned liberalism's revolutionary promise. (Matthew McManus, Nov 14, 2023, Liberal Currents)
    -REVIEW: Liberalism Against Utopianism: Samuel Moyn’s analysis of what ails liberal societies is fatally compromised by his own socialist commitments. (Alan S. Rome, 24 Oct 2023, Quillette)
    -REVIEW: of Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times By Samuel Moyn (John G. Grove, Religion & Liberty)
    -
    -

ILLIBERALISM:

    -JOURNAL: The UnPopulist
    -ESSAY: The ghost who haunts the MAGA revolt: Christopher Lasch's forgotten book foresaw America's malaise (Geoff Shullenberger MAY 29, 2024, UnHerd)
    -
    -ESSAY: Julius Evola: the far-Right’s favourite philosopher: The 'superfascist' is radicalising a new generation (Christopher Harding, 6/08/24, UnHerd)
    -ESSAY: The Problem with Utopias: The history of utopian fiction proves that we can’t even imagine a better world. (Ewan Morrison, 23 May 2024, Quillette)
    -ESSAY: Liberalism and “Social Justice” Progressivism (Paul Krause, June 4, 2024, Minerva Wisdom)
    -ESSAY: The Right's Reactionary Spirit Predates Trump: It is reflexively opposed to equality and drawn to the rule of "superior persons" and "established hierarchies," as F.A. Hayek observed (MATTHEW MCMANUS, MAY 18, 2024, The Unpopulist)
    -ESSAY: The Absurdity of a "Protestant Franco" (James M. Patterson, 10/24/23, Law & Liberty)
    -ESSAY: Sam Francis: The Dangerous Apostle of Right-Wing Populism: This prescient critic of "the regime" opposed Reaganism and wanted to steer the right toward something resembling Trumpism (DAMON LINKER, MAY 04, 2024, The UnPopulist)
    -ESSAY: The Moral Gulf Between Liberals and Populists: A reply to Matthew Sleat's review of Freedom from Fear. (Alan Kahan, May 22, 2024, Liberal Currents)
    -ESSAY: The ‘New Conservatism’ Is Driven by Bad Economics (Norbert Michel, 10/05/23, Cato)
    -ESSAY: The Right's Infatuation With Fascist Strongmen Is Nothing New: Jacob Heilbrunn's book excavates the authoritarian intellectual roots of Trump's MAGA movement (STEVE CHAPMAN, MAR 26, 2024, The UnPopulist)
    -ESSAY: A Typology of the New Right: The glue that holds together this disparate movement is the hatred of the left (SHIKHA DALMIA, NOV 28, 2022, The UnPopulist)
    -ESSAY: Liberal Ideology is Not Enough to Save the West (Michael Lucchese,n May 15, 2024, Providence)
    -
    -

INTEGRALISM:

    -ESSAY: The Rise and Fall of American Integralism: A look back at a post-liberal moment that was—and what fusionists can learn from it. (Kevin Vallier, 6/12/24, The Dispatch)
    -The Josias
    -ESSAY: The Tower and the Sewer: Catholic postliberal thinkers opposed to modern liberal individualism are less interested in transforming people’s unhappy lives through the power of the gospel than in jockeying for political power as the vanguard of a conservative revolution. (Mark Lilla, June 20, 2024, NY Review of Books)
    -
    -
    -
    -ESSAY: The Integralist Dystopia (John Allen Gay, May 2024, Fusion)
    -ESSAY: After Republican Virtue: Integralism is an internet aesthetic of mostly young men alienated from the public life and consumed with the libido dominandi. (James M. Patterson, 4/22/24, Law & Liberty)
    -ESSAY: What Is Integralism?: The Catholic movement that wants to use government power in the name of public morality. (WILLIAM GALSTON, AUG 28, 2023, Persuasion)
    -PODCAST: Catholic Integralism's Project of Replacing Liberalism Is Doomed: A Conversation with Kevin Vallier: This radical ideology is theoretically incoherent and practically unworkable (AARON ROSS POWELL, SEP 10, 2023, The UnPopulist)
    -ESSAY: Lessons from the Ayatollah : When a special class of moral guardians is permitted to be above the rule of law, there is no check on their own corruptibility. (Max J. Prowant, 9/19/23, Law & Liberty)
    -REVIEW: of War on the American Republic by Kevin Slack (James Bruce, Law & Liberty)
    -ESSAY: Pro-Fascist, Anti-Nazi: Austrian Catholics weaponized religion against Hitler but for fascism (Eric Grube, October 10, 2023, Commonweal)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Liberalism’s Forever Crisis (JAN-WERNER MUELLER, 1/05/24, Project Syndicate)
    -REVIEW: of The Struggle for Decent Politics (Peter C. Meilaender, Public Discourse)
    -ESSAY: Greatness Without Cruelty: Young Nietzscheans should look to Tocqueville as a more politically responsible source for a new politics. (Daniel J. Mahoney, 11/30/23, American Mind)

Patrick Deneen

    -REVIEW: of Regime Change: Towards a Postliberal Future by Patrick Deneen (Garion Frankel, Vital Center)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Patrick Deneen’s Otherworldly Regime (JONAH GOLDBERG • JUNE 19, 2023, Religion & Liberty)
    -REVIEW: of Regime Change (Jeffrey C. Isaac, LA Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Regime Change (John G. Grove, University Bookman)
    -
    -REVIEW: of Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future By Patrick J. Deneen (JC Scharl, Modern Age)

Sohrab Ahmari:

    -
    -
    -ESSAY: The new racist right are uniquely dangerous: Online, they openly espouse a politics utterly at odds with basic notions of equal human worth and dignity. Yet the mainstream seems oblivious. (Sohrab Ahmari, 4/10/24, New Statesman)
    -ESSAY: Sohrab Ahmari vs. Capitalism: His nostalgia for the New Deal clashes with the history of feminism in America. (Allan C. Carlson, April 1, 2024, Modern Age)
    -ESSAY:
    -REVIEW: of Tyranny, Inc. by Sohrab Ahmari (Matthew Duss, Democracy)
    -REVIEW: of Tyranny, Inc. by Sohrab Ahmari (Mark Pulliam, Law & Liberty)
    -PODCAST: Sohrab Ahmari on Post-Liberalism: Yascha Mounk and Sohrab Ahmari debate whether there is a viable alternative to philosophical liberalism. (Persuasion, 8/11/23)
    -REVIEW: of Tyranny, Inc (Dominic Pino, National Review)
    -REVIEW: of Tyranny, Inc (Jodi Dean, LA Review of Books)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Should Progressives See Sohrab Ahmari as Friend or Foe?: In his new book, the alum of The Wall Street Journal and New York Post editorial and editor of Compact magazine condemns unfettered corporate power and embraces the New Deal. (Anita Jain, September 15, 2023, Washington Monthly)
    -PROFILE: The anti-democratic thinker inspiring America's Conservative elites (Hugo Drochon, 4/21/18, The Guardian)
    -
    -
    -
    -ESSAY: The Three Ahmaris and the UAW: Sohrab Ahmari flits between three different positions on labor, but none of them throws light on the real challenges at hand. (Michael Pakaluk, 10/11/23, Law & Liberty)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Inconsistent Populists: Sohrab Ahmari and the Anti-Neoliberal Right: Tyranny, Inc. aims to build a working-class coalition between the left and right. But Ahmari cannot get around the GOP populists’ dismal record on labor. (Hannah Gurman ? September 28, 2023, Dissent)

ADRIAN VERMEULE

    -
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    -
    -SYMPOSIUM: Symposium on Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule’s “Law and Leviathan: Redeeming the Administrative State” (Yale Journal on Regulation)
    -LECTURE: Law’s Attrition, Virtue’s Abnegation (Adam J. White, September 21, 2018, Villanova Law School, Yale Journal on Regulation)
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    -