Champion Of Liberty Research Articles

“Health Dictatorship” and “Civil Disobedience”: Political Extremists and French Debates on Democracy during Covid-19

This paper explores a polemical debate that took place in France during the Covid-19 crisis, around two formulas: “health dictatorship” (dictature sanitaire) and “civil disobedience.” It first analyses the arguments that justify their use; it then explores the verbal confrontation where Proponents and Opponents attack each other’s stance, thus shedding light on important issues that underlie the discussion on the anti-Corona health measures: the nature and limits of democracy, the question of authority and obedience in a democratic regime. In the third step, the paper examines the actors behind the roles of Proponent and Opponent, namely, political figures and movements. A difference is drawn between the extremists and the candidates for the 2022 Presidential elections who supported the protest but did not adopt the formulas for fear of compromising themselves. However, the fact that the extremist voices and the voices of ordinary citizens merged in the same protest threatens to whitewash trends that used to be outside the Republican consensus and to bring the French closer to them. This risk calls for a better training in rhetorical analysis allowing the citizens to protect themselves from the manipulation of the authoritarian politicians who pose as the champions of Liberty.

Jacobin Allegory in Thelwall's The Rock of Modrec

This essay seeks to show that The Rock of Modrec occupies an important place in Thelwall's oeuvre and in the early development of Jacobin ‘seditious allegory’. While scholarship has thus far ignored The Rock of Modrec on account of its apparent juvenilia and ostensible apoliticism, I argue that Thelwall's chivalric romance allegorizes the British spirit as a champion of liberty and universal emancipation, and that it does so for a popular audience. Furthermore, its protagonist serves as a model for Jacobin allegorical reading practices: Sir Eltram begins as a passive receiver of ‘politico-sentimental’ appeals but eventually becomes an active allegorical interpreter, capable of reading into texts the universal truth of democratic liberty for which the British Jacobins strove. The Rock of Modrec thus serves as both an early example of Thelwall's use of ‘seditious allegory’ and a meta-textual commentary on the importance of allegorical reading as Jacobin radical praxis.

Percy Byssey Shelleyand Mir Gul Khan Naseer's Socialist Creed: A Comparative Study of the Champions of Human Liberation

History is the witness of the immense influence literature exercises upon the nations. Percy Byssey Shelley and Mir Gul Khan Naseer, the two great names in the history of English and Balochi literature simultaneously, played an important role in the emancipation of society. Both the poets were against the bogus system of caste, color and creed, suppressing the masses. They were highly against social stratification and feudalism and raised their voice dauntlessly against the prevalent injustice. They are termed as poets of resistance who expressed repulsion against the corrupt social, political and religious scenario. Both the poets were termed as champions of liberty and had the creed to promote social, political and religious reforms. Anon they realized the ineffectiveness of their efforts. Finally, they strove to transform the individuals through their incredible poetry where a profusion of gorgeous verse along with brilliant imagery enchants the readers.

Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty by Jon Kukla

Reviewed by: Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty by Jon Kukla R. B. Bernstein (bio) Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty. By Jon Kukla. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017. Pp. xiv, 541. $35.00 cloth; $18.00 paper; $13.99 ebook) In the realm of legend, Patrick Henry roars, bellows, and erupts; by contrast, this thoroughly documented, beautifully written, and carefully argued biography presents a measured and quiet account of Henry's life and career. Jon Kukla, a leading scholar of Virginia history and of Patrick Henry, stirs our emotions but also makes us think. He [End Page 101] has written an exemplary biography, demonstrating why Henry was a key leader of the American Revolution. This fine book situates Henry to the center of events, enabling us to know him on his own terms and not through the perspective of legend—and legendary enmities. Kukla establishes the facts of Henry's life—no easy feat, given the occasionally patchy historical record. Unlike such historical and biographical packrats as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, Henry was not given to saving private papers, legal papers, or drafts of public papers. Kukla displays considerable resourcefulness in reconstructing Henry's context, to suggest by means of that context the man who operated in it. Kukla does a superb job of giving us a sense of how Henry saw and thought about politics, both in general and concerning such issues as the rights of the American colonies in the British Empire; the need to achieve independence; and the relations between church and state needed to preserve liberty and republican government. Kukla's absorbing, illuminating account also gives us an enlightening perspective on colonial and revolutionary Virginia. His portrait of Henry's state differs significantly from that we get from studies of his fellow Virginians Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington because Henry's origins and early life unfolded on a different social plane and in different economic and political circumstances from those shaping the colony's (and state's) elite politicians. Kukla helps us push past the clichés and distortions of Henry's remembered life. Tracing those distortions to assiduous mythmaking by Jefferson, Kukla also deconstructs and explains that mythmaking. Wanting to both present history for posterity's edification and to shape history for his own benefit, Jefferson distorted Henry's early life, political views, and political actions. This led to the mistaken but firm insistence that Henry began as a bartender and to equally determined efforts to portray Henry's oratory and style of argument as emotional without a trace of logic or reason. What prompted Jefferson's animus against Henry? Kukla identifies Jefferson's desire to get his own back against what he saw as Henry's animus against [End Page 102] him, dating to Jefferson's controversial governorship of the state (1779–1781) and Henry's willingness to support a state legislative investigation into Jefferson's governorship. The most valuable feature of Kukla's biography is his penetrating analysis of Henry's role in controversial episodes of Virginia's history including Virginia's struggles over relations between church and state in the 1780s; Henry's refusal to attend the Federal Convention of 1787 even though the Virginia legislature named him a delegate; Henry's leadership of Virginians opposing the Constitution's ratification in 1787–1788; and his movement from opposition to the Constitution to allying himself with George Washington, John Adams, and the Federalists by the mid-1790s. In each case, Kukla tells us not only what Henry did but why he did it. For example, Kukla shows that Henry rejected a strict separationist understanding of relations between church and state because he believed that an accomodationist relationship between religion and government was necessary to uphold the citizenry's virtue as essential to maintaining republican government and preserving human liberty. So, too, Henry opposed the proposed U.S. Constitution because he saw the Constitution as threatening Virginia's liberty and sovereignty. Kukla's interpretative approach to Henry is calm and even-handed. His biography wears no campaign buttons or bumper stickers; it does not seek to recruit us to Henry's cause but rather aspires to enrich our understanding of why Henry...

Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty by Jon Kukla

Reviewed by: Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty by Jon Kukla Daniel L. Dreisbach Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty. By Jon Kukla. (New York and other cities: Simon and Schuster, 2017. Pp. xiv, 541. $35.00, ISBN 978-1-4391-9081-4.) Near Patrick Henry's last will and testament, his executors found a small envelope sealed with wax containing a message intended to be read after his death. On a single sheet of paper, Henry had copied his 1765 resolutions opposing the Stamp Act. On the reverse side was a brief history of the resolutions, with these words: "'Whether [independence] will prove a Blessing or a Curse,' he wrote, 'will depend on the Use our people make of the Blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us.'" If the American people are wise, "'they will be great and happy.'" If they are of a contrary character, "'they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can exalt them as a Nation.'" He concluded, "'Reader! whoever thou art, remember this, and in thy Sphere, practice Virtue thyself, and encourage it in others. P. HENRY'" (p. 3). This document touched on or alluded to several recurring themes in Henry's life and thought: the blessings of political liberty, the call to resist tyranny, and the necessity for civic virtue informed by religion in a system that aspires to self-government. Historians of Virginia and the American founding have long lamented that, notwithstanding the numerous biographies, there is still much to be written about Patrick Henry's life. Most Americans, even schoolchildren, recall Henry as the great orator of the Revolution and can recite his most famous line of revolutionary rhetoric, but few can elaborate on the substance of his contributions to the Patriots' cause. Much of Henry's life has been obscured by popular myths. Biographers have also been hampered by the fact that many of his papers have been destroyed or lost and that many of his most important expressions of ideas were spoken and not written down and, unfortunately, have now been lost to posterity. Moreover, some biographers have lacked the detailed knowledge of Virginia's social and political life required to provide essential contexts for Henry's life, thoughts, and deeds. Such invaluable details and contexts, however, are not lacking in Jon Kukla's masterful biography Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty. Indeed, it is a model of biography writing at its finest, and students of biography and history will want to study it for this reason alone. Kukla is a first-rate historian and an engaging writer who ably marshals his encyclopedic knowledge of Virginia social, political, legal, economic, and religious cultures in recounting Henry's life. Nearly every paragraph brims with pertinent factual nuggets and insights that add color and texture to the narrative. This tome is much more than a biography; it is a richly textured and documented chronicle of Henry's tumultuous times and, in particular, the birth of a new nation. It is replete with insights that will excite experts and novices alike. For the most part, the biography follows Henry's life chronologically, delving into the momentous events that shaped his life and legacy, such as the Parsons' Cause case, the "liberty or death" speech delivered at the Second Virginia Convention in March 1775, the Fifth Virginia Convention's resolution to declare independence in May 1776, the battles to redefine church-state relationships and secure religious liberty in Revolutionary Virginia, and the debate in Virginia over ratification of the national Constitution. [End Page 965] Kukla is attentive to recurring themes in Henry's public life. These include Henry's belief that political leaders must constantly gauge the opinions of and speak for ordinary citizens; that Virginians must act in concert with compatriots in the other colonies to protect liberty; and that religion, morality, and civic virtue are the indispensable pillars that buttress social order and give citizens the capacity for republican self-government committed to liberty under law. Henry fretted about a perceived decline in public morality in postwar Virginia, and he advocated policies that he believed would foster a public religion that would, in turn, inform civic virtue and morality. As the subtitle indicates, Kukla...

Jonathan Swift, "Master of Controversy"

Jonathan Swift, "Master of Controversy" Ashley Marshall (bio) John Stubbs Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel New York: W. W. Norton, 2017 752 pages; isbn: 9780393239423 john stubbs's subtitle eloquently captures a fundamental truth about Jonathan Swift, in many ways a deeply conservative man who was compelled by circumstances to take up his pen in bitter opposition to the establishment. Swift's halcyon years were 1710–14, when he served as leading propagandist for Queen Anne's last ministry and fancied himself a ministerial insider, a role that suited his ideological disposition far better than that of oppositional gadfly. F. P. Lock's conclusion rings true: "By temperament and conviction he was conservative and authoritarian; an accident of history made him a patron and champion of liberty" in the last quarter century of his active life.1 Swift is best known now as the trenchant author of Gulliver's Travels (1726) and A Modest Proposal (1729), as well as the Drapier who wrote so boldly against English exploitation and abuse of Ireland. In popular imagination, Swift is all rebel with little reluctance, a fearless advocate of liberty against tyranny; in reality, he more often expressed anxiety about populism than about absolutism, sounding warnings about the dangers of overmuch freedom and defending the prerogatives of the monarch and the Church of England. Stubbs mostly seems to appreciate this inner conflict, as his titular epithet suggests, though he highlights it surprisingly little in his actual coverage of Swift's life and ideas. The reversal in Swift's political fortunes and political outlook after Anne's death and his exile to Ireland in 1714 is explained but not particularly emphasized—perhaps regrettable, given the centrality of that reversal to Swift's entire sense [End Page 157] of the world and his place within it. In his final paragraph, Stubbs at last alludes to his chosen epithet, pointing out that, though Swift became a "fighter and an avenger," it never theless "took a lot to make him turn on England, the kingdom he always claimed as his rightful home" (639). Swift's rebellion, then, is in Stubbs's telling a matter of his position vis-à-vis the country into which he wished he had been born, and in which he had hoped to find a permanent home. Stubbs's account has comparatively little to say about the partisan battle between Whig and Tory, about Swift's devastating sense of loss when the Tories failed to consolidate their power in the wake of Anne's death, or about his frustrated response to Whig ascendancy in the early years of George I's reign. This is not, of course, a political biography, but understanding the true nature of Swift's "reluctant rebellion" requires serious engagement with those evolving political circumstances and his attempts—as late as Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift—to reckon with them. That said, Stubbs's Jonathan Swift is an impressive piece of work. Swift has had more than his fair share of biographers, from Orrery (1751) to Irvin Ehrenpreis (1962–83) and, most recently, Leo Damrosch (2013) and Eugene Hammond (2016). Few fundamentals have gone uncontested. He has been described as a charitable benefactor and an egotist, as a conjured spirit and a hypocrite reversed; he is portrayed sometimes as a ruthless conqueror of the adoring Esther Johnson ("Stella") and Esther Vanhomrigh ("Vanessa"), and sometimes as a beleaguered but well-intentioned member of a love triangle only barely of his making. Biographers have disagreed about, among many other things, his relations with women, his religious convictions, his politics, and his mental health. The challenges for the biographer do not stop there. Swift was notoriously slippery and ironic, and even in that most intimate source, the so-called Journal to Stella, he is evasive. His own accounts of his life are many, and each is in its way untrustworthy. And because his vast canon comprises works that are highly topical, making his life and output comprehensible requires substantial explication of contextual circumstances—often political circumstances that are complex enough to leave even the best historians of the period a bit daunted. Stubbs has managed to offer a relatively full picture of...

Confederate visions: nationalism, symbolism, and the imagined South in the Civil War

Nationalism in nineteenth-century America operated through a collection of symbols, signifiers citizens could invest with meaning and understanding. In Confederate Visions, Ian Binnington examines the roots of Confederate nationalism by analysing some of its most important symbols: Confederate constitutions, treasury notes, wartime literature, and the role of the military in symbolising the Confederate nation. Nationalisms tend to construct a glorified past, an idyllic picture of national strength, honor, and unity, with a past often based on a vision of what should be true rather than what actually was. Binnington considers here the ways in which the Confederacy was imagined by antebellum Southerners through a group of intertwined mythic concepts--the the Yankee, the and a sense of shared history deemed Confederate Americanism. These symbols were repeatedly invoked and entwined by the producers of Confederate nationalism. The Worthy Southron, the constructed Confederate self, was imagined as a champion of liberty, counterposed to the Demon Yankee other, a fanatical abolitionist and enemy of Liberty. The Silent Slave, meanwhile, was a companion to the vocal Confederate self, loyal and trusting, reliable and honest. The road to the creation of an American identity was fraught with struggle, political conflict, and ultimately bloody Civil War. Confederate Visions examines literature, newspapers and periodicals, visual imagery, and formal state documents to explore the origins and development of these symbols of wartime Confederate nationalism.

Byron's Romantic Calvinism

This essay asks why in the work of the most famous Romantic libertarian do so few characters achieve any kind of freedom? It considers nineteenth-century readings of Byron as either a champion of liberty or the epitome of Weltschmerz, but suggests that these contradictory readings of Byron both respond to a single thread in Byron's writing that leads directly back to the poet's early Calvinistic education: Byron's fascination with the paradoxical idea that damnation is both predestined by the will of God and brought about by man exercising his own free will. The essay shows Byron over and over again thinking about freedom through this Calvinistic lens in, for example, Childe Harold, Manfred and Cain, and argues that in such works human attempts to win and exercise freedom are understood in fundamentally Calvinistic terms: as the means by which the damned discover - by wilfully bringing about - their own predestined damnation. The essay then turns to Pushkin's Eugene Onegin in order, on the one hand, to sh...

Champion of Liberty: John Taylor

Champion of Liberty: John Taylor

“Who Are We?” Woodrow Wilson, the First World War and the Reshaping of America's National Identity

在美国崛起为世界大国的新形势下，威尔逊借助美国卷入大战和实施战争动员这一难得的时机，通过重新阐释美国的传统与特性以及利用德国作为“他者”与美国相对照，成功地使美国的自我形象与国际角色从19世纪的“共和榜样”和“自由典范”转换为“自由卫士”和“世界领袖”。威尔逊对国家身份的重塑不仅有助于当时的战争动员，而且解决了美国踏上世界舞台后的角色困惑与身份危机，为崛起的美国确立了长远的国家政策走向。他对美国理想、角色和命运的创造性阐释主导了美国人对自己国家存在意义以及美国与世界关系的理解，成为20世纪美国最有影响力的外交政策话语，对美国外交产生深远的影响。 关键词: 伍德罗·威尔逊国家身份国际角色自由卫士美国外交 In the new context of the rise of United States as a world power, Woodrow Wilson seized the exceptional opportunity offered by American involvement in the First World War and wartime mobilization to reinterpret America's traditions and characteristics, contrasting the US with Germany, the “other.” He successfully transformed America's self‐image and international role from the “model republic” and “example of freedom” of the nineteenth century to “champion of liberty” and “world leader.” Wilson's reshaping of the national identity not only facilitated wartime mobilization but also resolved America's identity crisis and its confusion about the role it was to play after it came on the world stage. In so doing, he identified the long‐term direction of national policy for an America that had risen to be a world power. His creative interpretation of America's ideals, role and destiny guided his countrymen in their understanding of the meaning of their country's existence and its relations with the world and became the most influential foreign policy discourse of twentieth century America. This had a far‐reaching influence on American foreign policy.

Locke's Political Liberty: Readings and Misreadings

As the title of this volume of SVEC indicates, many of the ten articles it contains address the historically varying levels of John Locke's influence not only though the ways in which he was widely read and interpreted, but also through the various ways in which his complex works have been misinterpreted. As John Dunn puts it in his Postface (which could additionally function as a more extensive review of this book), Locke's intellectual legacy, while clearly durable and widespread, has also come to ‘embody large elements of myth’ (p. 210), which cast the seventeenth-century author alternately as the inventor of the values of toleration and of political liberty that would shape the Enlightenment or as a racist apologist for slavery and for an expanding colonial empire. Several of the authors provide accounts of how successive myths or misreadings of the Lockean corpus developed, and offer more nuanced interpretations through recontextualization or through contrasting investigations of Locke's texts and of those who later praised or criticized him. Jean Terrel's analysis of the Two Treatises of Government highlights the context of the 1688–89 Revolution, ‘which was absolutely decisive when the book was finally published’ (p. 27), and finds serious flaws in Locke's attempts to conceptualize a foundation for constituent power, flaws that limited his degree of influence on later thinkers. Unsurprisingly, some of the articles are devoted to re-evaluations of how Locke's work was appropriated and adapted for new polemical uses by eighteenth-century French authors (Voltaire, Rousseau, and Sieyès). Less predictably, Jørn Schøsler provides a historical overview of the reception of Locke's political philosophy in Denmark, concluding with the recent revival of interest in his writings, partly due to the context of conflicts over religious sensitivities and freedom of speech (the 2005–06 ‘crisis of the caricatures’ of the prophet Mohammed): ‘This famous crisis in Denmark — which saw the two Lockean principles, tolerance and freedom of expression, collide with each other — continued to enliven the polemic between the adherents of those principles’ (p. 162). James Farr's article on natural law addresses the twin issues of how Locke provided limited justification for slavery (the ‘just-war’ theory) and of his recently reassessed role within the administration of British colonialism. By examining how some Southern apologists for slavery reacted to Locke's theories, Farr provides a generally unflattering portrait of an author enmeshed in contradictory ways of thinking, an author still often regarded not only as an innovative theoretician of liberalism but also as a champion of liberty, even though he was, through his professional activities, unmistakeably linked to slavery in the New World: ‘he was strangely indifferent to contradiction on so grave a matter and, worse, to the lives and liberties of the persons made slaves in the New World’ (p. 188). While most of the articles in Locke's Political Liberty will tend to appeal more exclusively to historians and political scientists, some (such as those by Schøsler and by Farr) will be of interest to broader groups of scholars, including practitioners of cultural studies.

MILTON, LOCKE AND THE NEW HISTORY OF TOLERATION

For three centuries now, John Milton and John Locke have been hailed as heroic advocates of religious freedom. Securely ensconced in the pantheon of liberal icons, they continue to be enlisted in the cause of liberty. In the wake of 9/11, a number of writers have retold the tale of how enlightened progressives rescued the West from the forces of theocratic repression. Milton and Locke loom large in that story. They have starring roles in Perez Zagorin's study ofHow the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West(2003), and they feature prominently as “two champions of liberty” in the philosopher A. C. Grayling's bookTowards the Light: The Story of the Struggles for Liberty and Rights that Made the Modern West(2007). Whig history is not dead yet. Indeed, Grayling is refreshingly honest about his old-fashioned liberalism—in the British edition, his book's dust jacket is laid out like the title page of a nineteenth-century pamphlet: “By Mr. A. C. Grayling. London. Printed in the Year 2007”.

Locke, Natural Law, and New World Slavery

This essay systematically reformulates an earlier argument about Locke and new world slavery, adding attention to Indians, natural law, and Locke's reception. Locke followed Grotian natural law in constructing a just-war theory of slavery. Unlike Grotius, though, he severely restricted the theory, making it inapplicable to America. It only fit resistance to “absolute power” in Stuart England. Locke was nonetheless an agent of British colonialism who issued instructions governing slavery. Yet they do not inform his theory—or vice versa. This creates hermeneutical problems and raises charges of racism. If Locke deserves the epithet “racist,” it is not for his having a racial doctrine justifying slavery. None of this makes for a flattering portrait. Locke's reputation as the champion of liberty would not survive the contradictions in which new world slavery ensnared him. Evidence for this may be found in Locke's reception, including by Southern apologists for slavery.

America's first dynasty: the Adamses, 1735-1918

Richard Brookhiser has won a wide and loyal following for his stylish, pointed, and elegant biographies of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. In First Dynasty, Brookhiser tells the story of America's longest and still greatest dynasty -- the Adamses, the only family in our history to play a leading role in American affairs for nearly two centuries. From John, the self-made, tough-minded lawyer who rose to the highest office in the government he helped create; to John Quincy, the child prodigy who grew up amid foreign royalty, followed his father to the White House, and later reinvented himself as a champion of liberty in Congress; to politician and writer Charles Francis, the only well-balanced Adams; to Henry, brilliant scholar and journalist -- the Adamses achieved longer-lasting greatness than any other American family. Brookhiser's canvass starts in colonial America, when John Adams had to teach himself the law and ride on horseback for miles to find clients. It does not end until after the Titanic sinks -- Henry had booked a room but changed his plans -- and World War I begins, with Henry near the action in France. The story of this single family offers a short course in the nation's history, because for nearly two hundred years Adams history was American history. The Adamses were accompanied by an impressive cast of characters, from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, to Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant, to Teddy Roosevelt. First Dynasty offers telling portraits of the great men of our past, and many of the women around them. John and Abigail's great love affair was destined to be repeated by their offspring and offspring's offspring. As with any family, there was a darker side to the Adams story: many of its members were abject failures. Alcoholism was a familiar specter, and suicide was not unknown. Only one of the four great Adamses was a kind man and father; the others set standards so impossibly high that few of their children could meet them. Yet despite more than a century of difference from John to Henry, certain Adams traits remained the same. In the story of our first and still-greatest family, we can all see something of our own struggles with family, fate, and history.

The academic and the practitioner

The Old Hall is full tonight. Those outside who turn and see the line of festal light will not know that the windows are illumined by the brilliance of the company within. This audience is indeed most intimidatingly distinguished. These facts do proper honour to the memory of Francis Mann. He would have welcomed too the happy coincidence, given that Lady Fox is in the chair, that we also have the opportunity to celebrate the appointment of one of this century's greatest judges to the Order of Merit. Three such appointments were announced today. I hope we are allowed to think that Lord Denning has succeeded to the place of Sir Isaiah Berlin, one champion of liberty and human dignity following another.

Tacite en France de Montesquieu a Chateaubriand

Misunderstood and misappreciated until the middle of the eighteenth century, Tacitus becomes a first rate-author, owing to the enlightenment. The number and quality of his works greatly increase from 1750 onwards, thanks to the initiative of d'Alembert; the first years of the nineteenth century confirm this trend which reveals the new prestige of the writer. First, Tacitus is considered as a thoroughly reliable source : scholars and philosophy-minded historians (except Voltaire) use his statements and analyses both as models and to supply information. He is also an inspiration for political reflection : Germanie is the stock reference in the controversy about the origines of the monarchy and contributes to create a myth of the German, which goes and feeds the romantic imagination. But above all, thanks to Montesquieu, Tacitus stands out as the accuser of tyranny. The philosophes make him their hero, the forerunner of the enlightenment. From Diderot to Marat and Desmoulins, and even after French revolution, he is the the champion of liberty, moreover empowering Chateaubriand to express his own obsession of death.

"With the Hammer of Truth": James Thomson Callender and America's Early National Heroes.

James Thomson Callender earned an infamous reputation as one of the first muckraking journalists in America, resulting largely from his character assassinations of George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson. As the journalist who broke the story of Jefferson's suppossed affair with his slave Sally Hemmings, Callender has become a fixture in Jeffferson studies. Yet Callender always considered himself a champion of liberty. Until now, no historian has fully examined the life of this man whose impact remains a source of controversy.Through uncovered correspondence, public records, and published writings by and about Callender, Durey traces Callender's early years in Scotland, showing the strong influence of his early Calvinist education and his admiration for Swift. He demonstrates how these experiences affected his career as a journalist in the United States. His research places Callender in a new perspective as one of the leaders, with Bache, Duane, Beckley, and Dr. Reynolds, of a team of hired pens who helped stem the Federalist tide in Philadelphia in the 1790s.

In Search of “That Semi-Mythical Waif: Hungarian Liberalism”: The Culture of Political Radicalism in 1918–1919

In contemporary discussions of the new, post-Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, Hungary is often given pride of place as the most “liberalized” society in the region. Although this perception is based on undeniable political and economic facts, it is also nourished by long-established historical traditions and myths. During the revolutions of 1848–49, Hungarians were also hailed by European opinion as the champions of liberty and heroic resistance to oppression. Over half a century later, in the wake of the political and military collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, Hungary once again staged a series of dramatic revolutions which earned it the reputation of being part of a political avant-garde. And in 1956, Hungarians yet again assumed the mantle of political idealism and revolutionary self-sacrifice in the face of foreign despotism.

Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty: A Centenary Anthology

Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty: A Centenary Anthology

Archbishop John Stratford: Political Revolutionary and Champion of Liberties of the English Church, ca. 1275/80-1348. Roy Martin Haines

<i>Archbishop John Stratford: Political Revolutionary and Champion of Liberties of the English Church, ca. 1275/80-1348</i>. Roy Martin Haines