Different Types of Equality

It occurred to me the other day that we might be referring to any number of different reams or spheres when we speak of “equality”. This is not really a novel insight as we often qualify ourselves by saying such things as “equality under the law” or “equality in fact” and so on. But I …

The Libertarian (Minarchist) Saint Augustine

What if I said that St. Augustine was a libertarian? This is not mere provocation. Aside from the obvious anachronism of applying a modern term to the late Roman period this statement is probably true. Of course there are some caveats. Augustine was a theologian and political theory was only of marginal interest. He did …

Toward an Augustinian Evangelicalism, Part 3

From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism. By D.G. Hart. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Grand Rapids, MI, Cambridge, UK. 2011. Given evangelicalism’s historical discontinuity with conservatism (discussed here and here), what hope is there for a fusion? Or is there no hope? Hart argues that while certain features …

Classical Liberalism is Political, Conservatism is Not (Part Three)

There are a few caveats which I should mention before ending this quick and dirty introduction to my take on conservatism. The first is that while conservatism itself raises some red flags conservatives as people are not an issue. Ron Paul is as close as we have come to having a well known libertarian politician …

Classical Liberalism is Political, Conservatism is Not (Part Two)

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” The problem with any society is that there will always be disagreement between its members and these conflicts may or may not be political in form (politics again defined as the legal structure and power structures). Perhaps the fundamental question is how to structure society. Such …

Classical Liberalism is Political, Conservatism is Not (Part One)

I believe the conservatives (I imagine those conservatives who visit this site) and classical liberals are natural allies. I also believe that the problems they have with each other are not the result of any natural incompatability but rather arise as a result of speaking at cross purposes.   Truth be told it seems to …

“Beyond the GOP” in 2014

Dear readers of Beyond the GOP, Ever since the first conception of this blog, the administrators of Beyond the GOP have experimented with many different approaches in an effort to find a distinctive voice. The process has been one of continued gradual refinement of the blog’s original purpose as the editorial staff has continually attempted to find a …

November 22, 1963: JFK, CS Lewis, and Aldous Huxley, Rest in Peace

John F. Kennedy, CS Lewis, and Aldous Huxley all died on November 22, 1963, fifty years ago yesterday. The Federalist has a nice article on the juxtaposition of the first two luminaries. Naturally, the assassination of a president received much more attention than the death of an admittedly quite famous Cambridge academic. He had graced …

Conservatives in 2014!!

In yet another example of the decay of time-tested social and cultural institutions as a consequence of conservatives dropping the ball, now that Syria is put on the backburner, we get an opportunity to tackle the President’s domestic agenda. But, it is a domestic agenda that has been eclipsed by foreign policy maneuvers. Although the …

Syria and the Bankruptcy of Liberal Universalism

President Obama and his cabinet officers are campaigning to secure support for a military strike against Syria. If he succeeds he will overturn precedent and make sovereignty obsolete in a perversion of America’s political system through an “inevitable mess” which at best weakens our national security, while at worst risks spiraling us into an epic …

Guardians of the Word: Conservatism and Academic Freedom

Check out this journal article, “Guardians of the Word: Kirk, Buckley, and the Conservative Struggle with Academic Freedom,” in the new issue of Humanitas. I take a look at the views on academic freedom from two of the most prominent conservative intellectuals of the last century, William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk, and compare them, …

“When You’re Here, You’re . . . . Here”

Apparently I am about ten years behind the times, and Olive Garden seems to have recently made the same realization that I did.  In my last post I commented on the growing trend in America of fast-food chains, corporate restaurants, and the frozen food section replacing the age-old tradition of families enjoying home-cooked meals together.  However, …

“When You’re Here, You’re Family”

There once was a time in America when the frozen food section didn’t supply the average shopper with all three meals—and everything in between.  There was a time before fast food “restaurants” and corporate chains bombarded us at every turn with catchy, sensory, and sentimental advertisements convincing us that their food is a taste of …

Like Harlots on a Piano

Today we are featuring a guest post from Wm. Samuel Bradford, who runs The Method Reader, where he examines the line between reality and fiction. Disclaimer: What follows is a critique of feminism. I’m aware that getting a white guy to maneuver the intricacies of oppression is like one of those blind cave newts trying …

The IRS Makes a Star Trek Parody

The result? Exactly what you’d expect. Nick Gillespie at Reason excoriates the waste of taxpayer money. As for me, I’d rather see tax money going here—where we can all get a laugh at the IRS’s expense—than see it spent on bombs or drones.

A Little Supreme Court Skepticism?

Today, my Facebook feed is all gay marriage, all the time. But while college kids sanctify their progressiveness by uploading pictures of equal signs, it looks like the Supreme Court is treating the issue with a little more skepticism. Justice Alito (“the Burkean justice“) asks, “You want us to step in and render a decision based on …

The Rise of the “Post-Movement Conservatives”

At the The American Conservative, Maisie Allison profiles a number of conservative public intellectuals who defy not only the Republican Party, but also the all-too-stale “conservative movement.” This loosely related group of individuals is dubbed “post-movement conservatives.” She opens up her piece with a reference to Peter Viereck. His thought weighs down heavily throughout the …

Northerners Against the Civil War

As a libertarian from Massachusetts—an opponent of aggressive war and a supporter of peaceful secession—I take a kind of ambivalent view of my state’s history. I certainly support the South’s right to secede from the Union and condemn the brutality that northern troops inflicted . . . but it’s still hard to side with people who …

Libertarian Blind Spots on Gay Marriage

Some spokesmen for a group called “Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry” have an op-ed in The Daily Caller making the libertarian case for gay marriage. They write: As conservatives and libertarians, the three of us believe that we’d all be better served if government extricated itself from the business of marriage altogether, leaving it …

Nullification Comes to Cornell

I’ve written an article for the Cornell Daily Sun‘s law student column, defending state nullification. I argue that the people of the states—and not the Supreme Court—must to be the final decider of federal law. This is quite the minority position in law school, which, for various reasons, teaches everyone to think of federal litigation as …

Rand Paul on Lochner

During the middle of his epic filibuster last week, Rand Paul made a very unexpected reference to the 1905 Supreme Court case, Lochner v. New York. (Randy Barnett has the full transcript here.) Lochner is a case that all law students are taught to hate. It involved a New York law that limited the amount of …

The Enigma of Rand Paul

Ben hopes that Rand Paul’s filibuster yesterday can turn civil liberties and checks and balances into bipartisan issues. I hope so too—and I think there’s some reason for hope—but I’m still extremely skeptical. While lots of people are “standing with Rand,” the support isn’t nearly as universal as one might hope. Among liberals, the MSNBC …

Donald Livingston at the South Carolina State House

My college honors thesis advisor, Donald Livingston, recently testified at the South Carolina House Judiciary Subcommittee in favor of state nullification. Tom Woods has the full text of his remarks. Dr. Livingston is a brilliant paleo-libertarian philosopher who first got me to realize that decentralism and freedom go together. In college, I profiled him for …

A Conservatism the Cool Kids Will Like

Being a conservative academic can be tough and thankless. On college campuses, all the accolades will go to the Left. When you apply for teaching positions, you have to hide your own convictions just to get the job. If you do get the job (remember that F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize but couldn’t get …

The Gaypocalypse and the Conservative Cause

PRSanco has written a provocative post which gives to the conservative a pragmatic solution to the gay marriage debate that currently divides the country and causes conservatives to break out in cold sweats as they lie awake at night waiting for the gaypocalypse. The problem is that this is not a new solution. Andrew Sullivan …