George Will’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Statecraft as Soulcraft</Emphasis>: Selected Passages

I select 46 passages from George Will’s Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does (1983), because they deserve a fresh hearing.     

Court-ordered redistricting and the law of 1/<Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>

This paper examines the effect of redistricting on the law of 1/n, which posits that government spending increases with the number of legislative districts. Our analysis suggests that court-ordered redistricting in the 1960s significantly influenced the 1/n effect, because dividing districts (increasing their number) and merging districts (reducing their number) both reduce public spending. After redistricting, the positive relationship between seats and spending holds for lower chambers in bicameral legislatures. The US experience informs those interested in the design of bicameral institutions about the fiscal implications of legislative apportionment.     

Reflections on Hofstadter’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The American Political Tradition</Emphasis>

Richard Hofstadter’s The American Political Tradition (1948) depends for its reputation on the author’s rich historiographical heritage, including the progressive vision of Charles Beard, a somewhat detached and ironic vision of America also shared with his friend, C. Vann Woodward, and the literary and intellectual traditions of his own time, running from Marx to Mencken. Hofstadter by no means spared American icons such as Jefferson, TR, Wilson and FDR; even Lincoln was treated the gloves off rather than on. Hofstadter was often at his best with marginal and dissenting figures such as Wendell Phillips and John C. Calhoun, but he treated the mixing of religion and politics, along with America's celebration of itself with considerable. Finally, though The American Political Tradition still repays study, including close re-reading, it also demands to be historicized and understood in its own context.     

A Psychological Inquiry into Totalitarianism: Erich Fromm’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Escape from Freedom</Emphasis>

Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom (1941) charts the growth and decline of freedom and selfawareness in the West from the Middle Ages to modern times, when people sought refuge from insecurity and responsibility in totalitarian movements, such as Nazism and Fascism. In contrast to the thesis that Escape from Freedom is evidence of “The Americanization of a European Intellectual,” Fromm wrote it because freedom, or the lack of it, was an acute problem in Nazi Germany, not America. His language and concepts were formed and fused during the crucial ideological and intellectual struggles of a specific, wretched moment in German history, the rise and triumph of Nazism; hence, he waged a Kulturkampf against Nazi barbarism to save Western humanist civilization.     

Reading <Emphasis Type="Italic">The American Political Tradition</Emphasis> in the 21st Century

Brilliantly written, powerfully argued, The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstadter, published in 1948, is flawed for readers today because of serious gaps and omissions, in particular its lack of reference to African American figures and sources. Late in his career, Hofstadter began to broaden his range of reference, calling attention in vivid prose to the horrors of slavery during the long period of American settlement and colonization. This later emphasis exposes all the more the shortcomings of The American Tradition, yet, at the same time, it does not diminish the rhetorical power and insight of this important book. It remains a significant work of American history but, even more, we should read and respond to it now as a major achievement, a distinguished act of writing, in the field of American literature.     

Bradley J. Birzer, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Russell Kirk: American Conservative</Emphasis>

Bradley Birzer’s Russell Kirk: American Conservative is a readable, yet erudite account of a figure all too forgotten today. Tracing his early life and career through its many twists and turns, the reader learns a great deal about the state of letters in the mid-twentieth century.     

Aurelian Craiutu, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes</Emphasis>

Review of Aurelian Craiutu’s work, Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes (2017).     

Roger Scruton’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">On Human Nature</Emphasis> and the Starting Point of Science

This essay examines Roger Scruton’s On Human Nature in relation to the tension between modern science and the ordinary experience science aims to explain. Scruton regards the person as emerging from biological realities and tries to defend the integrity of common sense notions of human distinctiveness against reductive interpretations of evolutionary biology.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Forum Internum</Emphasis> Revisited: Considering the Absolute Core of Freedom of Belief and Opinion in Terms of Negative Liberty,Authenticity, and Capability

Human rights theory generally conceptualizes freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief as well as freedom of opinion and expression, as offering absolute protection in what is called the forum internum. At a minimum, this is taken to mean the right to maintain thoughts in one’s own mind, whatever they may be and independently of how others may feel about them. However, if we adopt this stance, it seems to imply that there exists an absolute right to hold psychotic delusions. This article takes the position that this conclusion is ethically problematic from the perspective of psychiatric treatment and the rights of persons with psychosis. The article reflects on this particular challenge and sets forth an understanding of freedom in the forum internum that might apply to situations where for various reasons it is not, necessarily accurate to maintain that persons have an absolute right to their own thoughts. For the purpose of proposing such an understanding, the article engages with current debates within human rights theory and political philosophy and analyzes discussions about psychotic delusions and the way in which involuntary treatment is justified. Based on this analysis, this article in turn conceptualizes freedom in the forum internum as ‘negative liberty’, ‘authenticity’, and ‘capability’. This article suggests that when forum internum is redefined as encompassing a right to certain internal capabilities, the right remains meaningful for persons with psychotic delusions as well.     

“The Important and Unfamiliar”: Richard Hofstadter’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The American Political Tradition</Emphasis>

This paper addresses the continued association of Richard Hofstadter with consensus history. More specifically, it challenges the view that the origins of this conservative trend in American history can be located within The American Political Tradition. Whilst primarily concerned with reinterpreting Hofstadter’s work within its original context, the paper raises questions regarding author intention and both the reception and shifting perceptions of works of history.     

Politics,Nostalgia, and the Strange Estrangements of <Emphasis Type="Italic">The American Political Tradition</Emphasis>

This essay concerns the writerly features of Richard Hofstadter’s The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It. Of particular interest is how Hofstadter structured his arguments in the book, his modes and methods. There is also speculation as to whether readers today should feel nostalgia for Hofstadter’s verve and wit as a writer when the idea of the political in the book is so narrow, concerned primarily with economic motivations and interests. The two issues—memorable observation and the shrinking of the political—can hardly be disentangled. The “realism” of the historical figures in the book created the space for some of Hofstadter’s more memorable and cutting observations.     

Last Thoughts on <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Last Intellectuals</Emphasis>

Over twenty years ago my book The Last Intellectuals put into circulation the phrase “public intellectual.” The term unexpectedly enjoyed great success. It encapsulated a new division between a professional or academic intellectual focused on his or her specialty and an intellectual orientated to a larger public. The former tend to disappear into the university, while they latter write for the educated public. In the twenty years since its publication, my book has been sharply challenged. Moreover the emergence of African-American and women intellectuals, and well as new developments such as Internet, have possibly undermined my thesis. Yet these phenomena amount to revisions, not refutations, of my thesis. Moreover the role of intellectuals in France and Germany suggest that the same process of academization is taking place in other advanced industrial nations. What is called for is not nostalgia or its opposite, a celebration of everything that happens, but a consideration of the real shifts that affect the lives and work of intellectuals.

Thomas G. West, <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Political Theory of the American Founding: Natural Rights,Public Policy,and the Moral Conditions of Freedom</Emphasis>

Review of Thomas G. West, The Political Theory of the American Founding.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Society’s</Emphasis> Books of Note

Society’s Books of Note

Society’s Books of Note November/December 2009     

Clientelism and Political Participation: Case Study of the Chinese <Emphasis Type="Italic">tongxianghui</Emphasis> in Macao SAR Elections

This paper investigates the close connections between Chinese tongxianghui (Chinese native-place association) and electoral politics in Macao SAR Legislative Assembly’s direct elections. The findings show that the Chinese tongxianghui in Macao SAR adopt clientelist politics based on cultural affinities during the electoral politics in gaining their client-voter supports for the direct elections in 2009 and 2013. The nature of clientelist relationships, such as interest maximizing exchange, reciprocity and iteration, building up long term and stable relationships, are different from the electoral campaigns in Western liberal democracies which are usually center on ideological lines and occasional exchanges which are arguably too random and too anonymous. In essence, this study argues that Chinese tongxianghui in Macao SAR, notably the Fujian Jinjiang tongxianghui and Guangdong Jiangmen tongxianghui, constitute powerful electoral engineering with affiliated interest groups and they have built up stable and long term clientelist relations with their clients, instead of waging electoral battles on ideological lines. Thus, this study contends that Macao’s direct elections represent a unique case study about participation of Chinese tongxianghui in electoral politics which can be characterized as a form of local-level, cumulative and low political-risk clientelism which could be more effective than ideological politics.     

Towards secure quadratic voting

We provide an overview of some of the security issues involved in securely implementing Lalley and Weyl’s “Quadratic Voting” (Lalley and Weyl, Quadratic voting, 2016), and suggest some possible implementation architectures. Our proposals blend end-to-end verifiable voting methods with anonymous payments. We also consider new refund rules for quadratic voting, such as a “lottery” method.     

How Scandalous <Emphasis Type="Italic">Is</Emphasis> Knowledge of Evolutionary Psychology?

Biological science is deepening our understanding of life at a brisk rate, but interdisciplinary discourse is not keeping pace. This essay offers an account of themes from evolutionary biology that can enrich appreciation of the complexities of human behavior. Because this topic touches fields with different and more traditional perspectives, frictions and misunderstandings exist, and I have employed examples from a single source in order to clarify the science. In her critique of evolutionary psychology published in her book Scandalous Knowledge, the social theorist Barbara Herrnstein Smith has set forth views that are not in harmony with either evolutionary biology or cognitive neuroscience. She asserts that specialized features of mental processing postulated by evolutionary psychologists are without empirical justification; further, she dismisses the concept as embracing “non-physical mental organs.” There exist, however, numerous examples of how brains process information in specific, functional ways, frequently characteristic of the species. Furthermore, the charge of “non-physical mental organs” is not only wrong; it reveals a failure to recognize that biology has two complementary modes of explanation. One is historical and addresses cause in terms of the historical course of evolution and the process of natural selection. The other is proximate and includes many levels of analysis from molecular to social. Because brains have evolutionary histories, the ‘function’ of a particular aspect of mental processing can have a hypothetical explanation in terms of adaptive advantage that is independent of any knowledge of the underlying neural circuitry. A computational model of the brain and representational processing of sensory information, however, are both compatible with observed properties of neurons in the retina and visual cortex as well as with evolutionary processes. Finally, study of the mental processes of non-human primates provides insight into the evolution of our own minds.

The Warm Liberalism of Erik Gustaf Geijer

The name Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783–1847) is little known outside of Sweden, but the volume Freedom in Sweden: Selected Works of Erik Gustaf Geijer (Geijer 2017) translates choice works and presents Geijer to modern readers. In this essay we provide an introduction to Geijer (pronounced yay-yer). We raise the question of whether his declaring, in 1838, in dramatic fashion, for liberalism was an ideological migration or a coming out of the closet. We discuss the scope and flavor of his discourse, and suggest that he belongs in the company of moral philosophers and historians of civilization such as David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Alexis de Tocqueville. We highlight his essay “An Economic Dream,” which prefigured Hayek’s likening of the price system to an allegory of society-spanning communication and intelligence.