Love Of Liberty Research Articles

How Icelandic Is French Law? A Few Remarks about the Discovery and Usage of Icelandic Antiquities in French Legal Historiography during the Nineteenth Century

How Icelandic Is French Law? A Few Remarks about the Discovery and Usage of Icelandic Antiquities in French Legal Historiography during the Nineteenth Century

‘“Loving hearts” and “brave ones”: slavery, family, and the problem of freedom in antebellum America’

ABSTRACT This essay argues that formerly enslaved people participated in antebellum conversations about slavery and freedom, defining both in terms of the liberty and integrity of families. While liberal republican ideology insisted that an unquenchable love of liberty would lead worthy men to rise up and claim their freedom, ex-slave narratives insisted that deserving black men and women might sacrifice personal liberty in the name of family values. Nineteenth-century political theory commonly associated freedom with ‘autonomous, self-directed individuals.’ Black Americans, however, suggested a collective, contingent version of liberal republicanism which reflected their own ethics, brought together the intellectual and emotional foundations of anti-slavery thought, and made abolitionism especially meaningful to a growing middle class that increasingly valorized sentimental conceptions of family.

Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom by Graham A. Peck

Reviewed by: Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom by Graham A. Peck Evan C. Rothera (bio) Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom. By Graham A. Peck. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Pp. 280. Cloth, $34.95.) For Graham A. Peck, Abraham Lincoln's election as president in 1860 is "perhaps the single-most vital story about freedom's preservation in America" (2). In order to explain the rise and triumph of the Republican Party and antislavery politics, Peck focuses on antebellum Illinois as a state that offers a unique view of a national conflict between slavery and freedom. In his focus on this single state, Peck claims to offer a sweeping reinterpretation of the rise of antislavery politics in the early United States. Scholars of the subject, however, likely will find Peck's study a well-written account of the triumph of antislavery nationalism if not a cutting-edge monograph that reshapes the field. Peck posits that Illinois "reproduced the nation's problem with slavery in miniature" (17). From the beginning, however, Peck overemphasizes the love of Illinois settlers for liberty. Illinois voters famously defeated a proslavery constitutional convention referendum in 1824. However, despite 57 percent of the voters rejecting the referendum, victory was not easy. One wonders whether Peck allows genuine antislavery reformers like Edward Coles to stand in for the average Illinoisan. Some Illinoisans considered slavery a threat to their freedom and embraced an incipient free-soil critique of slavery. However, antislavery sentiment had shallow roots. A shift of fewer than 850 votes would have returned a proslavery result. This is salient because Peck attributes the victory to a last-minute surge in migration by settlers to Northern Illinois. The "love of liberty" among settlers was, at best, a superficial love, as Elijah P. Lovejoy discovered (18). Moving into the Second Party System, Peck contends that Illinois [End Page 602] Democratic politicians' "ardent advocacy of national expansion helped rekindle the nation's battle over freedom" (54). While Illinois Democrats supported Mr. Polk's War, many resented Polk for compromising on Oregon. Peck utilizes John Wentworth to highlight the growing anti-southern sentiments of northern Illinois Democrats. While this was true, it took Wentworth, and others, a long time to leave the Democratic Party. One famous northern Illinois Democrat, Stephen A. Douglas, never did. Peck makes a particularly problematic assertion that Illinois Democrats shared a "preference for freedom, even if they rarely expressed antislavery sentiment" (69). How he can say this with a straight face is puzzling. In claiming that the Free Soil Party "commenced a struggle over the meaning of freedom in the nation," he undercuts his argument about a lengthier politics of slavery and overlooks the fact that the struggle over the meaning of freedom began long before 1848 (71). Peck also contradicts himself when he argues that Illinois Democrats "had little choice but to challenge the emerging northern understanding of freedom" after the rise of the Free Soil Party (72). In fact, Illinois Democrats had a choice: fusion with Free Soilers. Leading Democrat Martin Van Buren himself chose cooperation. If anything, Illinois Democrats validated the strength of party loyalties and how people thought about other issues besides slavery. Peck concludes that the presidential election of 1848 demonstrated that the Democrats "would have a difficult time resolving the antagonism between slavery and freedom" (95). This difficulty was not great enough to prevent them from winning in 1852. Peck brings Lincoln and Douglas into focus in the final three chapters. In his telling, the crisis of Union in 1850 made Douglas believe expansion was the best issue to unify the Democratic Party. His tolerance of slavery led Douglas to risk the possibility of slavery's expansion and caused him to gamble that antislavery sentiment was superficial. However, the Kansas–Nebraska Act, his signature piece of legislation, destroyed popular sovereignty's free-soil reputation and sparked a fierce backlash among many northerners. The emergence of the Republican Party, in addition, forced Douglas into a defensive position. He had to defend popular sovereignty, which was now irrevocably linked to slavery, and navigate unceasing proslavery demands from the southern wing...

Karl Popper, Winston Churchill, and the Tradition of Liberty among the English-speaking Peoples

AbstractThis paper starts by recalling a conversation of the author, then a young student, with Karl Popper in 1988. Popper argued that there is a ‘British mystery’ among the English-speaking peoples: their deep love of liberty, combined with a deep sense of duty, which was epitomised in the 20th Century by Winston Churchill. This paper argues that Churchill was a representative of an old tradition that goes back to Magna Carta of 1215. At its core is the protection of liberty to enjoy decentralised and peaceful ways of life and the corresponding allergy to revolutions and to schemes of perfection centrally designed.

Antyfederaliści a republikanci

The anti federalists and republikanci (republicans). The American and Polish republican rhetoric at the end of the Eighteenth Century The purpose of the article is to compare the republican rhetoric of the American anti‑federalists and the Polish noble (the szlachta’s) republicans from the turn of the 80’s and 90’s of the Eighteenth Century (the time of the Polish Four Years Seym in 1788‑1792 and the American constitutional debates in 1787‑1790). It turns out that both such wide apart groups, representing different social backgrounds and viewpoints could use surprisingly similar methods of political argumentation. To that end the author cites the voices of numerous American and Polish pamphleteers, such as – above all – “Centinel”, “Philadeplphiensis”, “Farmer”, “Cato”, Patrick Henry and Adam Rzewuski, Wojciech Turski, Seweryn Rzewuski, Leonard Olizar and Dyzma Bończa Tomaszewski. The main resemblance of reasoning may be found in the way they warned against monarchy or despotism. Revealing a typical republican obsession of losing liberty, they were prone to identify those threats in almost every effort to strengthen a central government. Interestingly, both American and Polish critics of the reforms refused to accept that such an “energetic” or “active” government is absolutely necessary in order to avoid anarchy and resist foreign invasions. In that respect they believed (in Poland being even inspired by Rousseau) that the true republic can be only built on the virtues of fellow‑citizens – the love of liberty, civic brotherhood and patriotism. To revive those ideals, they eagerly recalled the legends of the ancient republican heroes. Whereas, to oppose the constitutional values of the reformers they were often (mainly in America) setting the example of contemporary Switzerland. Due to the proposed comparison one can easily come to the conclusion that republicanism was a doctrine of a considerably wide range of application possibilities. It is not surprising that in spite of the fact that the American authors were generally democrats, sometimes even of the most radical provenience, whereas the Polish noble republicans were frequently the opponents of the social reforms (with some exceptions), both of them were truly convinced they are almost the last defenders of the republic, liberty and – symptomatically enough – civic equality.

Luke Savin Herrick Wright Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Anglican ChurchSamuel Taylor Coleridge and the Anglican Church. Luke Savin Herrick Wright. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Pp. viii+295.

<i>Luke Savin Herrick Wright</i> Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Anglican Church<i>Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Anglican Church</i>. Luke Savin Herrick Wright. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Pp. viii+295.

Locke'sThoughtson Reputation

AbstractLocke'sSome Thoughts Concerning Educationis designed to provide the education necessary to produce citizens guided by the obligations of natural law. A careful examination of his recommendations, however, reveals that his education does not in fact teach children to obey the law of nature directly. Instead, it teaches them to obey the law of opinion or reputation. At the same time, he encourages children to see themselves as rational and therefore free. The law of reputation provides the necessary restraint to balance the desire for liberty, and the desire for liberty ensures that citizens must respect others in order to win their esteem. Respect for others' rights, an essential element of Lockean natural law, emerges from this specific combination of the law of reputation and the love of liberty.

Lincoln's Reflective Patriotism

In speech and deed, Lincoln's statesmanship manifests the possibility of an honorable, reasonable, and just love of country—that is, a reflective patriotism imbued by a republican love of liberty under God's Providence. In his speeches and writings, Lincoln consistently underscored that love of country must be governed by “reason,” “wisdom,” and “intelligence.” Thus, in his First Inaugural, March 4, 1861, he characteristically appealed to the combined forces of “Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land.” Lincoln's reflective patriotism was nurtured by his gratitude to the Founders and measured by his fidelity to a national Union dedicated to the universal moral principles of the Declaration under the particular rule of law established by the Constitution. Historically, it was articulated as an alternative to rival forms of allegiance that Lincoln opposed as both unjust and unreasonable during the Civil War era—namely, sectionalism, nativism, and the imperialism of Manifest Destiny. Each of these disordered forms of love threatened the inseparable moral and fraternal bonds of liberty and Union that Lincoln sought to perpetuate through an ordinate love of country guided by wisdom and critical self-awareness. Lincoln's Eulogy to Henry Clay, June 6, 1852 provides the most cogent expression of his reflective patriotism.

Garibaldi: Citizen of the World. A Biography (review)

Reviewed by: Garibaldi: Citizen of the World. A Biography Spencer M. Di Scala Garibaldi: Citizen of the World. A Biography. By Alfonso Scirocco. Translated by Allan Cameron. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 442. $35.00. In his introduction, Alfonso Scirocco states that Giuseppe Garibaldi’s life, “so rich in extraordinary enterprises in the Americas and Europe, reads like an adventure novel with its typical love of the exotic” (p. ix). This characterization, along with his subtitle, permeates the book. Readers associate Garibaldi so closely with Italy and the Risorgimento that they forget his activity, lasting years, outside the country, especially in South America. Scirocco’s book does not add anything appreciably new to what is already known about Garibaldi’s life, but it is notable for its emphasis on parts of his biography that are not generally accented and because it provides the facts of an uncommon life in one convenient source more than do existing, older biographies in English. Garibaldi’s remarkable exploits as a soldier frequently lead observers to overlook his career on the sea and that his first battles as a freedom fighter were fought as a privateer. Scirocco devotes considerable time to Garibaldi’s feats as a sailor and reminds us that his first battle that took place solely on land occurred in 1840. The author zeros in as well on another little-known fact: Garibaldi fought his South American battles with the support and participation of Italian exiles who had fled their native country after the revolutions of 1820–21 and 1831, who established communities in Brazil and Uruguay imbued with the love of liberty, and who followed very closely the events occurring in their homeland. Scirocco shows how Garibaldi successfully honed the fighting (and romantic) skills that he would later employ in Italy in South America and how he created a core following there that fought with him in the Italian wars. He gained his reputation as a freedom fighter there, making him and the cause of Italian freedom popular. Modern revolutionaries need popular support because of the military weakness of the people for whose causes they fight, as was the case with the Italians; Scirocco demonstrates how Garibaldi’s immense popularity, especially in England, was central to the successful outcome of the Risorgimento. Another merit of the book is its description of the military actions for which Garibaldi has remained famous—the defense of the Roman Republic, his participation in the 1859 war, and the expedition of The Thousand to make Southern Italy part of the Italian Kingdom that was formally proclaimed on March 17, 1861. It is difficult to come up with anything substantially new here, but Scirocco describes the military actions in a clear and comprehensive manner and avoids the stereotypes that abound in the writings describing Italian history of the period. He reevaluates the Neapolitan troops even while describing the strategic errors of their commanders and emphasizing Garibaldi’s military skill. He discusses how Garibaldi took Sicily in 1860 but also the little-discussed battles against the Bourbons on the mainland, particularly the “Battle of the Volturno,” and he does it with skill and historical accuracy and with an eye for the international context. While historians pay homage to Garibaldi’s talent as a guerrilla fighter, Scirocco reminds us that Garibaldi distinguished himself in pitched battles as well by calling attention to his successes against larger and better-trained Prussian forces in the Franco-Prussian War, winning the only battle on the French side in the conflict. Indeed, this is an area where something new might be said about this remarkable personage. [End Page 953] Spencer M. Di Scala University of Massachusetts Boston, Massachusetts Copyright © 2008 The Society for Military History

Seeking Liberty through Imprisonment: The Paradox of Prison Reform in the Early Republic

Shortly before their discharge from the penitentiary in Auburn, New York, in 1830, convicts offered brief yet revealing sketches of their lives before imprisonment. Most of them came from impoverished, unstable homes; led hard scrabble, itinerant lives; and drank to excess. W.B., for example, had been rover and intemperate. Convicted of attempted rape against ten-year-old girl, W.B. denied the charge but admitted that he was well soaked with rum when the crime allegedly occurred. L.S., also convicted of attempted rape, admitted that he had been a very wild boy, in loose company great deal, tending billiard tables, [and] nine-pin alleys. He described his education as poor and conceded that he got and usually spent the Sabbath playing sports. Convicted of grand larceny, J.G. noted that both his parents died when he was very young. Left on his own, he soon fell into low vicious company, and became addicted to stealing and excessive drinking. Female convicts at Auburn offered similar portraits of unstable, troubled lives. Doll, young black woman who served threeyear sentence for stealing clothes, recalled that she never knew her father and that her mother put her out to service at young age. Soon, Doll recalled, she went among loose women and became prostitute. She sometimes got drunk and could not read at all.1 Criminals who offered such testimony posed special challenge for lawabiding antebellum Americans. The Revolution eroded the public's commitment to patriarchal authority and created republic dedicated to individual liberty. Yet public safety required that Americans in the early republic devise effective ways to punish and deter criminals. So how to reconcile Americans' love of liberty with their defense of public order and the disciplining of criminals?

Nationalism, Virtue, and the Spirit of Liberty in Rousseau's Government of Poland

According to Rousseau in The Government of Poland, the “love of liberty,” when properly cultivated, engenders the patriotism and virtue of citizens. The citizen's love of liberty, however, is not his enjoyment of liberty; it is his fiery longing or passion for national liberty, which has endured in the hearts of Poles owing to the constant threat posed by Russian imperialism. Unless the Poles continue to believe their liberty is threatened, they will begin to believe they can enjoy the luxury of possessing liberty; and then Poland will start down the familiar path of bourgeois corruption, culminating in despotism. Therefore, Rousseau's proposed “reform” of Polish institutions in fact aims to refine “the advantageous evils” of Poland's weakness and anarchy. His intention is to intensify and to orchestrate the defensiveness of all Polish citizens—against internal as well as external threats to liberty—for Rousseau understands that state of soul to be “the leaven” of the magnificent virtues of the ancients.

Liberty, Nobility, Philanthropy, and Power in Alexander Hamilton's Conception of Human Nature

Alexander Hamilton's conception of human nature grounds his political thought. His predominately and radically liberal conception of human nature is based on Locke's concept of liberty, Hobbes's concept of power, and Machiavelli's concept of the “effectual truth.” It thus stresses the necessary relation between self‐interest and republican government and entails the repudiation of classical republican and Christian political ideals. But Hamilton's love of liberty is nonetheless rooted in a sense of classical nobility and Christian philanthropy that elevates even while contradicting his liberalism. The complex relation between liberty, nobility, philanthropy, and power in Hamilton's conception of human nature, in effect, defines his thought, reveals its assumptions, constitutes its strengths, and poses urgent problems. That complexity forms the spirit of his liberal republicanism.

Eric Eustace Williams: A Select Bibliography

Eric Eustace Williams: A Select Bibliography Deborah Craig Nester (bio) Books and Monographs by Eric Williams Britain and the West Indies. London: Longman’s for the University of Essex, 1969. British Historians and the West Indies. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, 1964; Brooklyn: A & B Books, 1964; London: Deutsch, 1964; New York: Scribner, 1966; New York: Africana Publishing, 1972. The British West Indies at Westminster. Part I: 1789–1823. Port of Spain: Government Printing Office, 1954. Capitalism & Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944; New York: Russell & Russell, 1961; London: Deutsch, 1964; New York: Putnam-Capricorn Books, 1966; New York: Paragon Books, 1966; Paris: Presence Africaine, 1968; Tokyo: Rironsha, 1968; Buenos Aires: Ediciones Siglo Veinte, 1973; London: Andre Deutsch, 1975; New York: Putnam, 1980; Beijing: Pei-ching Shih-fan Ta-hs eh Ch’u-pan-she, 1982; London: Deutsch, 1983; New York: Perigree, 1980; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. The Case for Party Politics in Trinidad and Tobago. Port of Spain: College Press, Teachers Economic and Cultural Association, 1955. Rpt. in Eric E. Williams Speaks: Essays on Colonialism and Independence. Ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley: Calaloux, 1993. 167–205. The Chaguaramas Declaration. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, 1970. Constitution Reform in Trinidad and Tobago. Port of Spain: Teachers Economic and Cultural Association, 1955. Developing Nations in the Modern World. Fredericton, NB: University of New Brunswick, 1965. Economic Aspects of the Abolition of the West Indian Slave Trade and Slavery. PhD Thesis. Oxford University, 1938. Economics of Nationhood. Port of Spain: Government Printing Office, 1959. Economic Problems of Trinidad and Tobago. Port of Spain: Teachers Economic and Cultural Association, 1955. Education in the British West Indies. Port of Spain: Guardian Commercial Printery, 1950; New York: University Place Book Shop, 1968; Brooklyn: A & B Book Publishers, 1994. First of a Series of Reflections on the Industrial Stabilisation Bill. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, 1965. Forged from the Love of Liberty: Selected Speeches of Dr. Eric Williams. Comp. Paul K. Sutton. Port of Spain: Longman Caribbean, 1981. From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 1492–1969. London: Deutsch, 1970; New York: Harper & Row, 1970; Paris: Presence Africaine, 1975; Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 1978; New York: Vintage, 1984; London: Deutsch, 1983. From Slavery to Chaguaramas. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, 1958. Historical Background of Race Relations in the Caribbean. Port of Spain: Teachers Economic and Cultural Association, 1955. History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, 1962; New York: Praeger, 1962; London: Deutsch, 1964; T’ai-pei: Rei-chou Chi La-ting Mei-chou Tzu Liao Chung Hsin, 1969; Brooklyn: A & B Books, 1993. International Perspectives for Trinidad and Tobago. Port of Spain: Government Printing Office, 1964. Inward Hunger: The Education of a Prime Minister. London: Deutsch, 1969; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969, 1971. Making of the Caribbean Man. San Juan, Trinidad: Caribbean Book Distributors, 1994. Massa Day Done: A Masterpiece of Political and Sociological Analysis. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, 1961. Rpt. in Eric E. Williams Speaks: Essays on Colonialism and Independence. Ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley: Calaloux, 1993. 237–64. My Relations with the Caribbean Commission, 1953–1955. Ben Durham Printing Works, 1955. The Negro in the Caribbean. Washington, DC: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1942; Manchester: Panaf Service, 1944; New York: Negro University Press, 1969; New York: Haskell House, 1971; Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976; New York: A & B Books, 1994. Our Fourth Anniversary. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, 1960. People’s National Movement: Major Party Documents. Vol. 1. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, n.d. Perspectives for Our Party. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, 1958. Rpt. in Eric E. Williams Speaks: Essays on Colonialism and Independence. Ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley: Calaloux, 1993. 207–36. Perspectives for the West Indies. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, 1960. Proportional Representation, To Dissolve the Present PNM Majorities: Discussions by Eric Williams, Political Leader, PNM, Against the Inclusion of Proportional Representation in the Revised Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, 1973. Reflections on the Caribbean Economic Community: A Series of Seven Articles. Port of Spain: PNM Publishing, 1965. University in the Caribbean in the Late 20th Century, 1980–1999...

Leadership, Locke, and the Federalist

Theory: The conception of leadership in liberal-democratic thought is inadequately understood but its meaning and evolution may be clarified by examining the ways in which the concept has been used by political agents and theorists. Argument: The classic American work of political thought, the Federalist Papers, is reexamined in light of the implicit and explicit conceptions of leadership embedded therein and in terms of their relation to similar ideas discoverable in John Locke's Second Treatise. Conclusions: A need and demand for a special kind of republican leadership capable of exercising expedient prerogative within a constitutional order is found. That leadership is to emerge from the population as they engage the political process within an intricate constitutional structure. Such leadership is necessary for a liberal republic but not sufficient in itself to assure its success. A mediated civic virtue, exercised as reason based upon a self-interested love of liberty under a well constructed constitution and shared by leaders and some significant portion of the citizenry is both necessary and sufficient to the persistence and well-being of the republican polity. Implications: Contemporary understandings and usages of concepts such as leadership can be improved by examining them as historical and mutable ideas. Stipulative definitions may, as a result, be made more effective and useful. Political theory, perhaps especially that drawing upon the liberal tradition, leadership studies, and political science can benefit from efforts to clarify basic concepts by comprehending their historical evolution.

The struggle for the breeches: gender and the making of the British working class

Linking the personal and the political, Anna Clark depicts the making of the working class in Britain as a 'struggle for the breeches.' The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed significant changes in notions of masculinity and femininity, the sexual division of labor, and sexual mores, changes that were intimately intertwined with class politics. By integrating gender into the analysis of class formation, Clark transforms the traditional narrative of working-class history. Going beyond the sterile debate about whether economics or language determines class consciousness, Clark integrates working people's experience with an analysis of radical rhetoric. Focusing on Lancashire, Glasgow, and London, she contrasts the experience of artisans and textile workers, demonstrating how each created distinctively gendered communities and political strategies. Workers faced a 'sexual crisis,' Clark claims, as men and women competed for jobs and struggled over love and power in the family. While some radicals espoused respectability, others might be homophobes, wife-beaters, and tyrants at home; a radical's love of liberty could be coupled with lust for the life of a libertine. Clark shows that in trying to create a working class these radicals closed off the movement to women, instead adopting a conservative rhetoric of domesticity and narrowing their notion of the working class.

Whose Liberalism? Which Islam? Leonard Binder's “Islamic Liberalism”

For many students of contemporary Arab politics, the most pressing question is whether Islam will become democratic. One need only point to the case of Algeria to find ready evidence that Islamic movements have already become highly democratic, although frustrated in their electoral objective. Leonard Binder (1989), however, asks a far more pressing question: Will Islam become liberal?As Tocqueville shows, democracy or the love of equality comes easily to citizens of modernity. The love of liberty, however, is a far more difficult love to cultivate. Yet, without this love of liberty, modern democracy comes to embody arguably the most oppressive tyranny in the history of the human race, the tyranny of the majority. In the aristocratic past, such an extraordinarily powerful and omnipresent tyranny was not possible. Thus, it becomes apparent just how pressing is Binder's question about the prospects for Islamic liberalism.Although Binder's answer to this question could hardly be characterized as overly optimistic, Binder does harbor some hope for Islamic liberalism. He proposes a synthesis of Fazlur Rahman's Gadamerian version of Islam and the pragmatic liberalism of Richard Rorty. Although it is not difficult to show an affinity between Gadamer and Rorty, it is difficult to show that Islam is tending in the direction of acquiring Rahman's understanding of it. It is even more difficult to show that pragmatism is truly liberal. Although Binder points the way to an “Islamic pragmatism,” I hope to show that he fails to point the way to an “Islamic liberalism.” Binder's pragmatism cannot avoid the tyranny of the majority that Tocqueville warns us can be fought only with the love of liberty.

Whose Liberalism? Which Islam? Leonard Binder's “Islamic Liberalism”

For many students of contemporary Arab politics, the most pressing question is whether Islam will become democratic. One need only point to the case of Algeria to find ready evidence that Islamic movements have already become highly democratic, although frustrated in their electoral objective. Leonard Binder (1989), however, asks a far more pressing question: Will Islam become liberal?As Tocqueville shows, democracy or the love of equality comes easily to citizens of modernity. The love of liberty, however, is a far more difficult love to cultivate. Yet, without this love of liberty, modern democracy comes to embody arguably the most oppressive tyranny in the history of the human race, the tyranny of the majority. In the aristocratic past, such an extraordinarily powerful and omnipresent tyranny was not possible. Thus, it becomes apparent just how pressing is Binder's question about the prospects for Islamic liberalism.Although Binder's answer to this question could hardly be characterized as overly optimistic, Binder does harbor some hope for Islamic liberalism. He proposes a synthesis of Fazlur Rahman's Gadamerian version of Islam and the pragmatic liberalism of Richard Rorty. Although it is not difficult to show an affinity between Gadamer and Rorty, it is difficult to show that Islam is tending in the direction of acquiring Rahman's understanding of it. It is even more difficult to show that pragmatism is truly liberal. Although Binder points the way to an “Islamic pragmatism,” I hope to show that he fails to point the way to an “Islamic liberalism.” Binder's pragmatism cannot avoid the tyranny of the majority that Tocqueville warns us can be fought only with the love of liberty.

"Now Only the Times Is On Our Side": The London Times and America Before the Civil War

"NOW ONLY THE ???? IS ON OUR SIDE": THE LONDON ???£ AND AMERICA BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR Richard D. Fulton Clark College This short paper will attempt to reconcile two seemingly diametrically opposed perceptions: first, that the Times was the United States' chief foreign critic before and during the Civil War (by United States, I mean the Federal Government); second, that to contemporaries like Benjamin Moran, secretary to American ambassador to the Court of St. James, George Dallas, the Times was on "our" (i.e. the Federal Government's) side. Two other issues also will be briefly addressed here: that because of its influence it made a difference what position the Times took, and that although the newspaper was often inconsistent on American issues, on this topic—the being on "our" side—it was the model of consistency. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Times had established itself as the most important newspaper in Great Britain, and perhaps the world. Its contemporary newspapers and periodicals regularly referred to it as "the leading journal." It was courted by anxious politicians; even in the United States, Abraham Lincoln acknowledged it as "one of the greatest powers in the world" (Brogan xiii). Nearly all of the historians of the newspaper emphasize that it both reflected and influenced public opinion. Most would agree with Hugh Brogan, who claims that "to look at history through the Times can ... be to see what political England believed, or what the British government thought that they believed" (Brogan x). J.T. Delane, the great mid-century editor, believed himself to be the voice of Britain. In many ways he was. He had almost unlimited access to Prime Minister Palmerston and a direct line into his cabinet.1 He had correspondents throughout England and all over the globe, and his correspondents were among the leading thinkers of the day. His 60,000 readers included among them virtually the entire English ruling elite. As Colin Bell put it, 'It was the newspaper in which [the ruling class] Victorian Review 16.1 (Summer 1990). Richard D. Fulton49 addressed themselves to their peers on any subject which seemed to them important. They drew their information about the world from the Times" (Bell x). Besides feeding the ruling elite its information, and thus, in a way, leading its opinion, Delane also reflected that class's attitudes.2 He was somewhat conservative, prejudiced toward all things English and against those things foreign, smug, and often outspokenly ignorant. He tended to oversimplify issues, seeing complex problems in simple moral terms of black or white. He was convinced of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, in particular the English branch of it. He was sentimental in his love of liberty, the church, English political customs, and the toughness of the common Englishman. He was hardheaded in his approach to business and the necessity for a ruling class. In other words, he and his newspaper epitomized what Walter Houghton called The Victorian Frame of Mind. From the outset of the Civil War in America, the Times adopted a violently anti-federal stance, the reasons for which have been discussed in any number of works on the war and the newspaper (Stephen, Brogan, Crawford, Crook 'Portents," Times Reports). The fact is, the Times was none too friendly even before the shelling of Fort Sumter. It threatened war several times in 1859 and 1860 over the San Juan Islands; it regularly savaged American politics when it suited the paper's purpose, that is, when the paper needed a convenient target to reinforce attacks on Reformers or supporters of the Six Pound Franchise, or Mr. Bright; it attacked American hypocrisy because of lukewarm Yankee support of the suppression of the slave trade. Yet Benjamin Moran could still say, in July of 1858, that the Times was virtually the only newspaper of influence in England on "our" side (Moran 376). What was "our" side? For Moran, it was the Buchanan administration's position on slavery: that slavery was a states' rights issue, and the Federal government had no legal right or responsibility to declare the practice either lawful or not. Each state, and each territory seeking statehood, had the responsibility...

Transcendentalism and Urbanism: Concord, Boston, and the Wider World

The town of Concord, Massachusetts, is widely celebrated in American culture as a pastoral place. It was the home of the Minutemen, the “embattled farmers” who fought the Redcoats at the Old North Bridge and launched the War for Independence. More than a half-century later, it became the bucolic center of the American Renaissance, where Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau waged their own revolutions of the spirit. In these terms, Concord readily plays its part within the longstanding American opposition between country and city, serving as the timeless small town, the symbolic guardian of that rural simplicity and love of liberty so regularly invoked in times of crisis to recall a complex urban-industrial nation to its roots. Even today, when the town numbers some 16,000 people, Concordians like to picture their community as a “climate for freedom.”

Tradition, Community and Self-Determination

Liberals have regularly associated tradition with constraint. They have spoken of the ‘force’ of tradition or of the ‘despotism’ of custom. Locke drew a contrast between those who let themselves be guided by ‘traditional customs and the fashion of the country’ and those who use their liberty to think for themselves. For John Stuart Mill ‘the love of liberty’ was antagonistic to ‘the sway of Custom’. Tradition and custom are represented by liberals in much the way Machiavelli represented fortuna, as forces which, unless repulsed by independent, free-thinking persons, would inevitably dominate whole societies and epochs. Mill held up China as the warning example. Custom had there become the court of ultimate appeal, the standard of justice, the argument which none could contemplate resisting. Custom had annihilated individuality and with it liberty, along with genuine history. The consequence was ‘stationariness’. Unless the modern pressure of opinion was resisted Europe would become another China. The chief interest of the history of mankind, Mill declared, was the contest between custom and the progressive principle. A free society is in liberal terms an open society.