Enemies Of Liberty Research Articles

First and Always: A New Portrait of George Washington by Peter R. Henriques

Reviewed by: First and Always: A New Portrait of George Washington by Peter R. Henriques David Head (bio) Keywords George Washington, Leadership, Mary Ball Washington, Slavery First and Always: A New Portrait of George Washington. By Peter R. Henriques. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2020. Pp. 240. Cloth, $27.95.) Who was George Washington on the inside? That’s the question Peter R. Henriques investigates in his new book about the father of his country. It’s a kind of sequel to his previous book, Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington, and like the earlier work, it features a series of thematic essays.1 Henriques does not try to tell Washington’s life story in full. Rather, he reveals Washington’s inner life through stories about his leadership, character, and relationships. It’s a difficult task, despite the mountain of paper documenting Washington. Two centuries of myth-making is one obstacle, but an even larger hindrance is Washington himself. “George Washington wanted very much to be famous,” Henriques writes, “but he had no wish to be truly known” (xiii). Nevertheless, Henriques’s frequently [End Page 671] wise insights go as far as anyone has in peeking behind Washington’s mask. Henriques’s choice of topics is eclectic. He discusses the factors that fostered Washington’s success as a leader; plumbs Washington’s relationship with his mother, Mary Ball Washington; busts common myths about Washington; examines the mistakes Washington made in ordering the execution of a British prisoner of war in what is known as the Asgill Affair; looks at why Washington fell out with five Virginia politician neighbors; tells the stories of several people enslaved by Washington; describes Washington’s attempted return to command the army during the Quasi-War with France; and, finally, delves into Washington’s psyche. On the whole, Henriques’s sketches are thoughtful, sensitive to both external context and the interiority of people as individuals. Washington longed for “secular immortality” or “fame across the ages” (146). But he also wanted to bask in immediate praise. Living in an eighteenth-century world suspicious of ambition as the enemy of liberty, however, Washington could not admit his desires, not even to himself. “At an unstated but deep level,” Henriques writes, “he craved the ego-based gratification that came from public affirmation of the notion that he was special and it was his uniqueness that was needed to birth the nation” (146). To calm the inner conflict, Washington crafted a more publicly acceptable persona: the virtuous, self-sacrificing Cincinnatus. Washington got the praise he desired by playing the role masterfully. He won fame by giving up power. Henriques also excels at exploring Washington’s relationships, especially with his mother. Following Martha Saxton, Henriques rejects the image of Mary Ball Washington as an illiterate shrew advanced by biographers such as James Thomas Flexner and Ron Chernow.2 Yes, Mary Ball Washington liked to complain, but she had a difficult life marked by family instability. While a child she lost her mother, father, stepfather, and stepbrother, and when her husband, Augustine Washington, George’s father, died, she was left to raise five children on her own. Relationships between mothers and sons are complex, and it seems that although the two did care for each other, they never could quite fully comprehend what the other needed. Mary couldn’t understand why she didn’t come [End Page 672] first for her son. George never grasped why, when he’d become world famous, she was still so stingy with praise and so lavish with demands. It’s a sensitive portrait, deftly crafted. Throughout, Henriques has a sharp eye for Washington as a flesh-and-blood person. He cites “physicality” as one secret to Washington’s success (3). Again and again, his looks reveal how he saw himself and how people related to him. His powerful body, his handsome face, the military yet graceful way he stood, moved, and carried himself, all drew people to him. Washington looked the part of a leader, which played no small role in convincing people to be led by him. Henriques admires his subject. In the introduction he mentions that he wears a gold coin medallion...

Democracy on the Five Star Movement’s Rousseau platform

ABSTRACT The Five Star Movement, or M5S, is a popular anti-establishment, populist political party in Italy. One of its key features is the Rousseau platform, an online space designed to enable direct democracy. Named after the eighteenth century thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it banks on the idea that the traditional state is corrupt, while the people’s will can be more directly polled and executed as a governing force. However, Rousseau has also been critiqued for defending despotism and characterised as the enemy of liberty. This paper takes a closer look at Rousseau’s ‘Emile’ and ‘The Social Contract’, and points out how a critical reading could raise questions about the platform’s true meaning. The analysis focuses specifically on the illusion of autonomous choice and covert authoritarianism. The platform becomes a powerful tool of both preventive as well as repressive social control. As an anti-modern public sphere, it holds inherent threats to democracy itself.

Enemies of liberty? Nationalism, immigration, and the framing of terrorism in the agenda of the Front National

AbstractThis paper systematises the framing of the terrorism issue in the programmatic agenda of the Front national (FN) by focusing on nationalism. We argue that the FN's position on terrorism constitutes part of its strategy to justify its anti‐immigrant agenda by offering ideological rather than biological rationalisations for national belonging. To test our argument empirically, we operationalise four categories of nationalism, including ethno‐racial, cultural, political‐civic, and economic, and code official FN materials published in reaction to seven terrorist attacks on French soil during the period 1986–2015. We find that whilst older documents draw on all four categories, Marine Le Pen documents draw almost exclusively on the cultural and political‐civic categories, confirming our argument. Building on the “normalisation” or “de‐demonisation” approach, our nationalism framework presents a distinct theoretical advantage by allowing us to conceptualise the shift in the party's programmatic agenda.

Abuse of Human Rights

When a collection of essays by Joseph Goebbels was published in the mid 1930ies, the introduction to the chapter on democracy infamously stated that: “[f]orever it will be among the best jokes about democracy that it provided the means to its own destruction to its mortal enemies.” Against the backdrop of this sardonic conclusion, modern human rights law seemed unwilling to accept the joke any longer. Based on conceptions of “militant democracy” developed by Karl Loewenstein, “Abuse-Clauses” like Art 5 ICCPR and Art 17 ECHR ensure that “nothing in [a human rights] Covenant may be interpreted as implying for any […] group or person any right to engage in any activity or perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms recognized herein or at their limitation to a greater extent than is provided for”. The ECtHR, in particular, has created a comprehensive (even if diverse) body of case law denying protection to those who want to overcome the reinforcements of democracy by (ab)using liberty as a Trojan Horse. Sometimes, however, as critics argue, the Court may push beyond “the general purpose of Article 17 […] to prevent totalitarian groups from exploiting in their own interests the principles enunciated by the Convention”; refusing from the outset to grant human rights protection to phenomena which rather are to be considered disturbing, foolish or simply wrong than abusive. This paper intends to take a closer look at the slippery slope of how much liberty is to be granted to the enemies of liberty by analyzing the structure of abuse clauses, examining their application and assessing the danger attached to their frequent invocation.

Imperium: A Fiction of the South Seas by Christian Kracht

as the ending of the fox and raven fable, in which an ant with a violin teams up with an opera-singing human shark and they play havoc together. The author is both an award-winning painter and poet. The vivid details, poetic touches, and allusions in these stories attest to that: Kandinsky, Ensor, Munch, Hoffmann , Goethe, Grimm, Pushkin, Doctor Zhivago, and others. He is currently under nomination for the 2015 Gysbert Japicx Prize for fiction. Henry J. Baron Calvin College Amitav Ghosh. Flood of Fire. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2015. isbn 9780374174248 Throughout his work, Amitav Ghosh considers the ramifications of commercial, political, historical, and personal networks that span the globe. In the final novel of his Ibis trilogy , Ghosh interweaves the storylines of the preceding novels in a manner that underscores the plot-driven quality of these novels and Ghosh’s penchant for thinking in global terms. In Flood of Fire, Ghosh reacquaints readers with several characters introduced in Sea of Poppies, including Neel Rattan Halder, Zachary Reid, Paulette Lambert, and Baboo Nob Kissin. Amid romance plots and battle scenes on land and water, Ghosh continues to probe the historical implications of a messianic free-trade doctrine in language that applies to contemporary critiques of capitalism’s excesses. As the back matter in the Ibis novels indicates, Ghosh has profound respect for archival sources. At times Ghosh’s love of detail gets the better of his storytelling acumen and mundane information bogs down the narrative. Fortunately , more frequently, Ghosh imbues his descriptive passages with a brio that entertains and intrigues: “Few were the tamashas that could compare with the spectacle of the Bengal Native Infantry on the march. Every member of the paltan was aware of this—dandia-wallahs, naach-girls, bangyburdars, syces, mess-consummers, berry-wallahs, bhisties—but none more so than Havildar Kesri Singh, whose face served as the battalion’s figurehead when he rode at the head of the column.” Among the new characters introduced in Flood of Fire, Kesri Singh is the most compelling. Kesri, Deeti’s older brother, leaves his village to join a regiment in the East India Company, serving with honor in what Kesri increasingly realizes is a dishonorable enterprise. Not only does Kesri recognize that “in a lifetime of soldiering he had never known what it was to fight . . . for something that tied you to your fathers and mothers,” he also realizes that “doing his job” in the service of the East India Company makes him little different from “hired murderers.” Kesri’s eventual disenchantment with the system he serves is contrasted with the development of Zachary Reid from “an ingenuous, good-natured boy” into what Baboo Nob Kissin considers “a perfect embodiment of the Kali-yuga,” the age of vice in Hindu cosmology. While Ghosh often treats his characters with generosity and empathy, the portrayal of Zachary steadily turns unsympathetic: “I have become . . . a man of the times . . . a man who wants more and more and more; a man who does not know the meaning of ‘enough.’ Anyone who tries to thwart my desires is the enemy of liberty.” In the Ibis trilogy, Ghosh shows us a different kind of liberty built upon a love of language, an unflinching appraisal of human folly, and the hope that telling stories can bring us a better, perhaps more benevolent , future. Jim Hannan Le Moyne College Christian Kracht. Imperium: A Fiction of the South Seas. Daniel Bowles, tr. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2015. isbn 9780374175245 The “imperium” of the title refers, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, to Germany at the “global zenith of [its] influence” around the beginning of the last century when it actually boasted colonies, including this one in the South Seas. It also suggests the heavenly utopia Kracht’s hero aspires to create here. The story is that of an overzealous pursuit of an idealism so ludicrous that it could come only from actual history—typical of that era of fads and fanaticisms. It is an idealism whose extremism Kracht admits has undeniable parallels to that of another “romantic vegetarian” whose dystopia became tragic historical reality all too soon after this one. This is the story of August...

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.

Religion and Ecomodernity

Religion has long stood at the center of debates on the environmental crisis of late modernity. Some have portrayed it as a malade imaginaire, providing divine legitimation for human domination and predatory exploitation of natural resources; others have looked up to it as an inspirational force that is the essential condition of planetary revival. There is an ongoing battle of the books on the salience of religion in the modern world. Some trendy volumes declare that God Is Back (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2009). Others advert to The End of Faith (Harris 2004, harp the theme of The God Delusion (Dawkins 2006), or claim that God Is Not Great (Hitchens 2007). Both sides provide ample evidence to support their adversarial claims. In much of Canada and Western Europe, where religious establishments have courted or colluded with the state, religion has come to be viewed as the enemy of liberty and modernity. Not so in the United States, where the Jeffersonian separation of religion from politics forced religious leaders to compete for the souls of the faithful—and thus to make Christianity more reconcilable with the agenda of modernity,individualism and capitalist enterprise.

Reflections on Albion Tourgee's 1896 View of the Supreme Court a Consistent Enemy of Personal Liberty and Equal Right

In an 1896 Memorial Day lecture shortly after his loss in Plessy v. Ferguson, Albion Tourgee argued that the Supreme Court had “always been the consistent enemy of personal liberty and equal right.” Was Tourgee merely ventilating after a frustrating defeat, or did his thesis accurately represent the Supreme Court’s performance over time? In this article I will briefly introduce Tourgee, explain how he might have come to his bleak view of the Court, and finally consider his views of Reconstruction and of its failure — and the failure (in his time) of his constitutional vision.The Supreme Court was not a consistent enemy of personal liberty and equal right in Tourgee’s lifetime. It was just usually an enemy of liberty and equality. (Naturally, Tourgee’s Plessy brief cited some favorable precedents.) A review of relevant Supreme Court cases will show this qualified version of Tourgee’s thesis to be historically accurate. While it is true that Reconstruction-era Court decisions did not foreclose protection of blacks against private violence motivated purely by race, Cruikshank and subsequent cases required a racial motive for such prosecutions. As a result, white and black Republicans were effectively abandoned to politically motivated Klan violence at a time when the national government grew weary of protecting Reconstruction state governments through military force. Were Tourgee to return, he would be greatly impressed by what progress has been made since his death in 1905, but he would also be distressed by modern legal and economic threats to the more egalitarian democracy he envisioned.Note: This article grew out of an invitation to participate in a conference on the life of Albion Tourgee held in Raleigh, North Carolina. The conference was co-sponsored by the UNC Center for the Study of the American South. This and other papers from the conference will be published in the Elon Law Review.

Modern Theorist of Tyranny? Lessons from Rousseau's System of Checks and Balances

From the public burnings of the Social Contract occurring immediately following its publication, to Isaiah Berlin's condemnation of Rousseau as “the most sinister and most formidable enemy of liberty in the whole history of modern thought,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau has rarely held universal favor among his commentators. The most common charge against him was, and remains, that he provided the essential philosophic tools for the modern tyrant. While this position has numerous and illustrious advocates, I argue that it fails to take into account the whole of Rousseau's thought. Specifically, it ignores his extensive attention to the problem of political power and his attempts to control it with checks and balances. In focusing on Rousseau's specific proposals in his Government of Poland, it is evident that the purpose of his system is to prevent tyranny, rather than to promote it.

The new freedom: individualism and collectivism in the social lives of Americans

root cause of contemporary American psychological and social disorders, argues William Donohue in this major new book, is the dominant culture's embracement of a fraudulent conception of freedom. In fact, the tension between an individual liberty without limits and the social need for civility and community has created havoc in the lives of many Americans. Conventional wisdom about the nature of freedom is characterized by both the uncoupling of a concept of rights from a concept of responsibilities and by an overweening doctrine of moral neutrality. This preoccupation with individual liberty, to the neglect of other competing values, has left a trail of social discord that be difficult to redress. Constraint of any kind is now seen as the enemy of liberty, and all that limits or burdens the individual in any way is seen as anathema to freedom. The New Freedom critically examines how this new concept of freedom developed historically and why it exploded on the American scene in the 1960s. Its impact on the deepest recesses of American society, including marriage, the family, sexuality, the schools, the churches, and the criminal justice system, are fully explored. costs have been high. Information on the psychological and social health of Americans suggests that all is not well. But the ultimate cost, says Qonohue, may be the ultimate failure of liberty, as the fraudulent new freedom collides with the human need for community. Sure to be controversial, The New Freedom will provide policymakers, social scientists, and specialists in the family, education, and religion a compelling new perspective on old questions. book also appeal to general readers who seek to understand the root causes of the nation's unprecedented volume of social and psychological problems.