Joshua Mitchell

Over the course of the last three hundred years, in broad swaths of the globe where Anglo-American and European thought has prevailed, history has been understood as the story of the advancement of human freedom. When there was debate, it was about what freedom meant and how freedom could be achieved. In the Anglo-American world, the larger concern was coercive power, and freedom was thought to be achievable through limited government and market commerce; elsewhere, the larger concern was scarcity and want, and freedom was thought to be achievable through greater state control of the economy and, sometimes, by harsh restrains on political liberty. Continue Reading »

Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life by Hugh Brogan Yale University Press, 736 pages, $35 Hugh Brogan’s Alexis de Tocqueville is a masterful work, the fruit of nearly a half-century of labor on “an old friend,” as Brogan calls Tocque-ville. Throughout his book, Brogan provides a riveting . . . . Continue Reading »

Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy by Michael Zuckert University Press of Kansas, 392 pages, $29.95 Paraphrasing the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was One. And the Word brought forth a world.” Can the words of man be equally univocal, and . . . . Continue Reading »