Peter Lawler
Professor of Government, Berry College
Peter Lawler is Dana Professor of Government and former chair of the department of Government and International Studies at Berry College. He serves as executive editor of the journal Perspectives on Political Science, and has been chair of the politics and literature section of the American Political Science Association. He also served on the editorial board of the new bilingual critical edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and serves on the editorial boards of several journals. He has written or edited fifteen books and over 200 articles and chapters in a wide variety of venues. He was the 2007 winner of the Weaver Prize in Scholarly Letters.rnrnLawler served on President Bush's Council on Bioethics from 2004 – 09. His most recent book, Modern and American Dignity, is available from ISI Books.rnrnFollow him on Twitter @peteralawler.
BIG THINKER Steven Mazie does well to criticize the complacency of Stephen Asma. Asma, citing obvious facts of evolutionary psychology, observes that our natural powers of knowing and loving are limited. […]
I’m taking a break from talking about conservative diversity to think more about justifying the content of liberal education these days. So here’s an account of chairs of departments of history […]
Ross Douthat—the only really conservative columnist for the NYT—has been endlessly patient in trying to explain to his basically hostile audience that conservative opinion is both reasonable and diverse. The […]
So I’ve gotten several emails asking what I think about the idea talked up by the devoted Democratic professor Jonathan Zimmerman in the semi-iconoclastic Christian Science Monitor: affirmative action for conservatives […]
As some more traditionalist and religious conservatives have noted with disgust, that’s the advice of Ayn Rand: The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: […]
Nathan Harden writes with his characteristic techno-confidence that most higher education will be online soon enough. That means that most non-elite private colleges and many mediocre public institutions will soon […]
So you really have to hand it to The Atlantic. It’s the magazine that’s “thinking outside the box” (I actually hate that phrase; anyone who uses it can be found […]
Here’s the abstract of a study that conservatives such as Charles Murray and magazines such as The Atlantic are having fun with: Previous research suggests that benevolent sexism is an ideology […]
So I hope I didn’t offend either American Conservatives or crunchy conservatives in my previous post. I was trying to burst stereotypes about conservatives in general for an audience unfamiliar […]
So here’s an article (really blog) from the interesting journal The American Conservative. The AC has two themes: America ought to be a republic, and not an empire. And America […]
The Democrats, at their convention, stood so stridently for the rights of the liberated single woman that they offered the Republicans the opportunity to counter with a defense of the […]
This is my second installment in a series on excellent TV shows and the 2012 election. I’m skipping over Girls for now and turning to the HBO series Big Love. […]
We’re having a conference—sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute—at Berry College next Friday and Saturday on POP CULTURE and REAL CULTURE. All the details can be found here. YOU are […]
Well, you can’t miss the new film Lincoln. Here’s the big reason: Daniel Day-Lewis’ Lincoln is pretty much WHO we will think of when imagining the person “Father Abraham” from now […]
Here’s a thought of the novelist Walker Percy’s searching character Will Barrett in The Last Gentleman: For until this moment he had lived in a state of pure possibility, not […]
It’s been fashionable for a long time now to deny all evidence for human uniqueness, for the singular greatness of members of our species. So it’s refreshing to read Michael […]
For a couple of days, I was inclined to buy the theory that Obama won the election because his campaign was so “metric driven.” Metric driven in this case seems […]
The president’s decisive 60+% electoral college victory can be contrasted, of course, with his very narrow popular vote margin. Our Constitution has the effect of magnifying his win, giving it […]
A good thing about ELECTIONS is that they remind us we have a CONSTITUTION. They especially remind us that we’re a really, really constitutional people. Lots of Americans really hate […]
So one reason for LIBERAL EDUCATION is to give students some sense of the genealogy of our ideas. It seems as if everyone believes in free persons these days. Not […]
James Ceaser, perhaps our most distinguished student of American politics on the conservative side, isn’t about predicting the outcome of elections. That’s actually hard to do. And those political scientists […]
So the best reason to read a “great book” is that you might learn a lot from it about who you are and what you’re supposed to do. In that […]
So I’ve gotten a lot (meaning several) emails complaining that I haven’t gotten around to keeping my promise of talking about Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind. Well, sorry. […]
Here are the most sensible thoughts about the election that have come to my attention: 1. Romney has had considerable momentum since the first debate. It’s come to an end, not […]
So Scott Jaschik explains—in Inside Higher Ed—that parents and students still want the prestigious brand of the liberal arts college. Lots of leaders, after all, have been educated at such schools, […]
Sure he is, according to Walter Russell Mead. Mead’s Meadea, of course, is one of the most savvy and erudite blogs around. One reason, it appears, that Mead is voting […]
Well, if all you had to go by is tonight’s debate, you’d have to say yes. Romney’s presentations were clearer, tighter, more incisive, more eloquent, more factually detailed, and more […]
So says an outstanding young conservative public intellectual—Helen Rittelmeyer. It’s true enough that conservatives still do accuse the Democrats—or, more precisely, the liberals—of being moral relativists. Rittelmeyer quotes Paul Ryan […]
So, a few of you have asked, why have you stopped talking about movies? It’s not that I’ve stopped seeing them. The truth is that movies have gotten so much […]
So Romney is taking a big and deserved hit for his stupid and arrogant remark that 47% of Americans won’t vote for him because they don’t pay income taxes and, […]