Speaking very broadly, there are two basic ways we can understand liberalism. The first, andolder, emphasizes the protection and empowerment of individuals and institutions over against encroachment and invasion by the sovereign political power. In that sense, it should be seen as a healthy response to the threat of absolutism. It is a modern view, coeval with the emergence of ideas of constitutionally limited government, natural rights, a free-market economy, private property, civil liberties, and, above all, with a robust sense of individualism, in both its political and metaphysical meanings.

Liberalism in this sense is above all a doctrine upholding the independence and supreme value of the individual person as a free agent who bears fundamental rights that exist prior to and independently of government. Hence it regards the ultimate source of authority for all legitimate forms of government as the consent of the governed, as expressed in and through representative institutions. For what other source could possibly be compatible with the equality and free agency attributed to each individual person?

This understanding of liberalism may also extend to encompass a high degree of social tolerance, religious disestablishment, pluralism, individualism, and the like, along with an Enlightenment optimism about the possibility of steady and certain progress in the world, given the proven capacity of human ingenuity to ameliorate the hard conditions of life. This is the liberalism we associate with John Locke, the American Founders, and the John Stuart Mill of On Liberty (1859). It well reflects the concept of “negative” liberty made famous by Isaiah Berlin—a form of liberty that seeks above all else to protect the individual from coercion and to minimize the incursion of others into the zone of individual privacy.

That first kind of liberalism proved insufficient in the eyes of visionary and committed social reformers, who proposed to replace it with a far more sweeping and ambitious formulation. They offered a new liberalism that saw the achievement of a high degree of equality as the essential precondition for the exercise of any meaningful political liberty and that was severely critical of individualism as an atomizing force that underwrites social selfishness, wasteful inefficiency, and inattention to the common good. The older liberalism’s commitment to the primacy of formal rights rendered it blind to the substantive difficulty faced by those who had to exercise their rights under conditions of persistent social and economic disadvantage. They did not intend to be bound by any such formalism.

The goal of liberalism, they believed, was still ultimately about the establishment of a society of free and equal citizens. But the means of achieving that goal were changing dramatically. Thus began the transformation of what had been a philosophy of limited government into a philosophy of expansive and activist government, though undertaken still in the name of liberalism, still with the same intention of preserving the same goods.

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The Department of Political Science of the University of Alaska Fairbanks invites applications for a tenure-track position in Political Theory at the Assistant Professor level to begin late August 2012. Applicants should be trained in the history of political ideas and contemporary political philosophy. We are looking for candidates with a strong commitment to undergraduate education, an active research agenda and the ability to contribute to the department’s research and teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Teaching responsibilities will include, on a rotating basis: Classical and Modern Political Theory; Ethics and Society; American Political Thought; and Political Ideologies. Consideration will also be given to applicants’ expertise in subfields consistent with the department’s ongoing needs, such as in environmental political theory, constitutional and public law, American institutions, and certain regional or thematic specializations. A completed PhD or equivalent in Political Science or an appropriate, related field is preferred. Particularly well-qualified ABDs within a year of completion may also be considered.

UAF is the flagship campus of the University of Alaska system with a diverse student body and favorable faculty-student ratios. For information on faculty, programs, and life in Alaska visit www.uaf.edu/polisci. Only electronic applications can be accepted. Submit a CV, letter of application (including a brief statement on philosophy of teaching and agenda for future research), one sample of scholarly writing (a recent peer reviewed publication or dissertation chapter), three letters of reference, and graduate transcripts. Visit www.uakjobs.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=77082 to begin the application process.

The University of Alaska is an equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer and educational institution. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. Applicants needing reasonable accommodation to participate in the application and screening process should contact the local Human Resources office.

Review of applications begins June 8. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

By PETER BERKOWITZ

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of The Federalist for understanding theprinciples of American government and the challenges that liberal democracies confront early in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet despite the lip service they pay to liberal education, our leading universities can’t be bothered to require students to study The Federalist—or, worse, they oppose such requirements on moral, political or pedagogical grounds. Small wonder it took so long for progressives to realize that arguments about the constitutionality of ObamaCare are indeed serious.

The masterpiece of American political thought originated as a series of newspaper articles published under the pseudonym Publius in New York between October 1787 and August 1788 by framers Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. The aim was to make the case for ratification of the new constitution, which had been agreed to in September 1787 by delegates to the federal convention meeting in Philadelphia over four months of remarkable discussion, debate and deliberation about self-government.

By the end of 1788, a total of 85 essays had been gathered in two volumes under the title The Federalist. Written at a brisk clip and with the crucial vote in New York hanging in the balance, the essays formed a treatise on constitutional self-government for the ages.

The Federalist deals with the reasons for preserving the union, the inefficacy of the existing federal government under the Articles of Confederation, and the conformity of the new constitution to the principles of liberty and consent. It covers war and peace, foreign affairs, commerce, taxation, federalism and the separation of powers. It provides a detailed examination of the chief features of the legislative, executive and judicial branches. It advances its case by restatement and refutation of the leading criticisms of the new constitution. It displays a level of learning, political acumen and public-spiritedness to which contemporary scholars, journalists and politicians can but aspire. And to this day it stands as an unsurpassed source of insight into the Constitution’s text, structure and purposes.

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Jefferson's Federalist Papers

Listen to a sample here.

In addition to the Federalist Papers, Americana Phonic.com has recordings of the U.S. Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and more.

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From americanaphonic.com:

The year is 1787. America is a fledgling confederation of 13 colonies. A new Constitution has been written in Philadelphia, to replace the Articles of Confederation. Do you think that this new constitution should become the supreme law of the land? Vote: YES or NO The Federalists want you to vote yes. As America roils with intense debate on this fateful issue, a series of essays begin to appear in three New York newspapers, written by the mysterious persona Publius. These essays urge the American people to ratify the constitution, explaining and defending it in detail. After their debut in New York, the essays subsequently appeared in newspapers across the nation. We know today that Publius was actually three different people: Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. Their painstaking efforts to explain and promote the United States Constitution have become a primary source for the interpretation and understanding of the highest law of the United States of America. Thomas Jefferson called the Federalist Papers the “best commentary on the principles of government which ever was written.” They are available in their entirety on this site, as 85 separate audio narrations.

See the complete Federalist Papers Audio.

Read Article and Responses HERE

Edited and with an Introduction by Steven B. Smith, with essays by Danilo Petranovich, Ralph Lerner, Benjamin Kleinerman, Steven B. Smith

Abraham Lincoln never wrote a book: his ideas are contained in speeches, letters, and occasional writings. By bringing these works together into a single anthology, this book shows that Lincoln deserves to be counted among the great political philosophers.

In addition to many examples of Lincoln’s writings, this volume includes four interpretive essays that will provide an intellectual feast for any reader exploring his complex legacy. Danilo Petranovich looks at Lincoln’s conception of the Union and its radically new focus on purging the nation of the problem of slavery. Ralph Lerner reconsiders Lincoln’s relation to the American framers and in particular his effort to put the Declaration of Independence on a new foundation. Benjamin Kleinerman examines Lincoln’s always controversial views on the scope of executive power during war. And Steven Smith considers the place of religion in Lincoln’s political thought through a close reading of his Second Inaugural Address.

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Praise for The Writings of Abraham Lincoln:

“Lincoln is our most unsettling president. This selection invites us to wrestle with him—and with our own, and God’s actions in the world.”—Richard Brookhiser, author of James Madison

“A handsome collection of Lincoln’s finest utterances.  The appended essays are broadly critical, but they rightly conclude that Lincoln’s thought is more than a match for ours.”—Harvey Mansfield, Professor at Harvard University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, author of Manliness

“The selection of Lincoln writings is first-rate, and the secondary essays are original and thought-provoking. Citizens and students will long note what is published here, and will be grateful to Yale University Press, the editors—and to Lincoln!—for this volume.”—William Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard

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Cropsey, Joseph

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The essays and lectures first collected here span a period of over 25 years and cover the greater part of Joseph Cropsey’s illustrious career of scholarship and teaching at the University of Chicago. They are presented in the order in which he wrote them. The central problem of human thought and existence, according to Cropsey, is that it is absolutely impossible for a human being to understand his human condition without understanding his position within the whole of which the human is only a part. Our imperfect knowledge of the whole therefore places limits on our knowledge of ourselves, for we do not know where we stand in relation to the whole that conditions us, and therewith our own condition. What then should we do in the face of our irremediable ignorance and uncertainty?

Cropsey argues that the difficulties currently faced by liberalism arise from the efforts of later thinkers to elevate it beyond its Hobbesian origins in self-preservation and natural necessity. As a result of their flights from nature to morality, the sovereignty that for Hobbes protected natural rights decayed into a mere legalism that undermines liberalism’s ability to defend itself. Cropsey explores the tendencies within liberalism toward both self-abnegation and self-assertion as well as the resources in the Western tradition that can help fortify contemporary liberalism. Both Scripture and Plato, for example, insist that our “flights from nature” remain cognizant of human limitation. And the robust strands of modernity, found in the works of Locke and Smith as well as of Hobbes, demonstrate the benefits of a freedom within the limits of nature. In contrasting liberal democracy and Marxism – the version of modern politics that best exemplifies the flight from nature – Cropsey finds that liberal democracy manifests a spirited animus against being ruled by others, and celebrates individual choice, whereas Marxism allows a freedom to will only the rational, as it emerges in history, and aspires to replace the competitiveness of bourgeois life with an affectionate sociability. Cropsey also shows how liberalism’s separation of church and state, which replaces Hobbes’ teaching on sovereignty, serves in fact to protect civil supremacy by limiting religious authority to the private sphere at the same time that it moderates the state by depriving it of any claim to divine support. But he warns against the complacency implied in the thesis that liberal democracy represents the end or culmination of history.

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Looking further at the resources within the tradition that might strengthen contemporary liberalism, Cropsey challenges not merely orthodoxies of Platonic scholarship, but the very distinction between ancients and moderns, the identification of philosophy with reason, and ultimately the dichotomy between reason and revelation. Cropsey’s equating the meaning of an open society with openness to the activity of philosophy within it might appear to be in tension with Plato’s famous description in the Republic of a closed society ruled by philosopher-kings. But Cropsey shows that in the Timaeus, which provides a cosmological setting for the activity of the Republic’s city, Plato himself questions the intelligibility of the whole. In his analysis of Plato’s Philebus Cropsey emphasizes the disjunction between the finite, intelligible and infinite, unintelligible elements..

The inscrutability of the whole connects philosophy to revelation as well as philosophy’s political activity to an open or liberal society. Crospey’s essays represent experiments in philosophic interpretations of our world, which draw on the political and philosophical thought that has helped to form that world and that help us to evaluate our strengths and weaknesses in light of our essential humanity.

Joseph Cropsey is Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science emeritus at the University of Chicago. His books include Plato’s World: Man’s Place in the Cosmos, Political Philosophy and the Issue of Politics, and Polity and Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam Smith. He also edited Hobbes’s A Dialogue Between A Philosopher and A Student of the Common Laws of England, Ancients and Moderns, and theHistory of Political Philosophy (with Leo Strauss).

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“No They Can’t: Why Government Fails – But Individuals Succeed.”

John Stossel

Free Public Lecture:

John Stossel hosts Stossel on Fox Business News and is Fox News Contributor. He is a New York Times bestselling author.

Where: Eccles Conference Center Auditorium.

When: 10.30-11.20.  Book signing to follow.

This lecture is sponsored by The Project on Liberty and American Constitutionalism at Utah State University and the Jon M. Hunstman School of Business.