Announcements

Reminder: Philosophy MA Fellowship

Georgia State University’s highly ranked terminal MA program in Philosophy offers a graduate “Scholarship in Liberalism.”  This is a competitively awarded scholarship for an outstanding student with a demonstrated interest in the arguments of historical or contemporary philosophical liberals (in the tradition of figures such as Locke, Smith, Hume, and Mill) about issues such as freedom, justice, political authority, social order, toleration and related themes.  The 2017-2018 academic year will be the third year we offer this scholarship; it provides a $15,000 stipend for each year in the two-year program plus a full tuition waiver (the second year, of course, is contingent on satisfactory performance the first year).  Our Department has several funding packages available.) Some further details about funding are located here.  See our excellent faculty here.  Our Department has long had a strength in Social and Political Philosophy and Philosophy of Law and we place many of our graduates into excellent PhD programs.  Take a look at the rest of the Department’s website! and also that of our Ethics Center!

I would love some applications from some BHLs!


Published on: Author: Andrew Cohen
Announcements

Against Greatness

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about making America “great again” – from a man who seems not to care how many people’s liberty he violates in order to pursue his conception of national greatness.

In this context, I’m happy to announce the Molinari Institute’s latest t-shirt, which features a quotation from Jeffersonian political activist Abraham Bishop, one of the most radical of the American founders:

“A nation which makes greatness its polestar can never be free.”

polebish2

Thanks to Sheldon Richman for introducing me to this line, which comes from an 1800 antiwar speech titled Oration on the Extent and Power of Political Delusion; here’s a bit of context:

A nation which makes greatness its polestar can never be free; beneath national greatness sink individual greatness, honor, wealth and freedom. But though history, experience and reasoning confirm these ideas; yet all-powerful delusion has been able to make the people of every nation lend a helping hand in putting on their own fetters and rivetting their own chains, and in this service delusion always employs men too great to speak the truth, and yet too powerful to be doubted. Their statements are believed – their projects adopted – their ends answered and the deluded subjects of all this artifice are left to passive obedience through life, and to entail a condition of unqualified non-resistance to a ruined posterity.

Bishop’s other works include an attack on church-state unions and a defense of the insurgent slaves in the Haitian revolution (showing himself, in that connection, a better Jeffersonian than Jefferson himself, who sided with the slaveowners). Bishop also championed women’s education and was an early critic of the Constitution. So he wasn’t an anarchist? Well, nobody’s perfect.


Published on: Author: Roderick Long
Current Events

What’s So Bad About Flag Burning?

President-elect Donald Trump’s recent call for a year’s prison term or loss of citizenship for those who burn the American flag – incidentally a reversal of Trump’s previous support for flag-burners on the Letterman show two years ago – leaves me with some questions. Four questions, specifically: two for Trump’s conservative supporters, and two for his liberal critics.

trumpflag

My first question for pro-Trump conservatives is this: In the past I seem to recall hearing quite a few of you (though admittedly not Trump himself) speaking pretty loudly in favor of free expression when the issue was laws in Muslim countries criminalizing speech or writings that “disrespect” Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. How exactly do the arguments you gave then, not apply to Trump’s proposal now?

Second, I also recall that you conservatives used to talk a lot about government’s duty to protect people’s private property rights (although admittedly eminent domain poster boy Donald Trump was never really in your camp on that issue either). Well, if I buy an American flag with my own honestly earned money, or make one with my own cloth and thread, it seems like it’s then my property, the product of my labor; and I don’t see why I shouldn’t have the right to burn my own property, if I do it without endangering anyone else. If the government claims that it, rather than myself, is the one who gets to decide what I do with my flag – that it is, in effect, the real owner of the flag I bought or made – doesn’t that sound more like communism than like a free market? Continue Reading


Published on: Author: Roderick Long
Uncategorized

Privilege, Risk, and Harm

Trump’s victory has triggered a spate of post-hoc analysis about what went wrong. One of the major narratives to take root is that Trump’s win was fueled by a rejection of PC culture and identity politics broadly.

I’m agnostic on this point. I see a lot of reasons to think it might be correct in some way, at least from talking to Trump voters themselves, but I also think the narrative is probably a lot more complicated than “liberals hurt my feelings”.

At the same time, having taught hundreds of college students over ten years, I can say that certain aspects of liberal America are grating on the average person, none perhaps more than the concept of privilege. Calls to “check your privilege” are one of the mainstays of left wing politics and one of the most often cited examples of those politics in conservative and libertarian circles.

Privilege as a concept is attractive to liberals because it describes something real about the world. I receive a variety of benefits from being a well-educated white woman that other people do not get. And these benefits are based almost entirely on luck. Of course, I’ve worked hard and I’m not going to undermine the importance of hard work. But there are things I haven’t worked for: I’m less likely to be pulled over by police, I’m less likely to be beaten by police if I am pulled over. I’m less likely to die violently, be incarcerated, live in poverty, miss out on a job or have my apartment application rejected on the basis of my race.

Continue Reading


Published on: Author: Lauren Hall