It is not well known that classical liberal thought has had a strong tradition within it of thinking about “class”, namely the idea that one group of people live off the labor and taxes of another group of people. In this discussion…
John Trenchard (1662-1723) was a radical Whig and Commonwealthman who, along with his collaborator Thomas Gordon (1692-1750), were important voices defending constitutionalism and individual liberty in the 1720s in England.…
To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) the discussion this month will focus on “The Corrupting Influence of Power in Shakespeare’s Plays". Lord Acton famously maintained that “power tends…
Jacob T. Levy, the Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University, argues in his recent book, Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom (OUP 2014), that there is a deep and recurring tension within liberal theories of…
The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) developed the theory of "interventionism" during the 1920s to describe the hybrid economic system which had emerged after World War 1 which was neither fully free nor fully…
In this month’s Liberty Matters online discussion Randy Barnett, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, explores the political thought and constitutional theories of the 19th century…
