Peter Lawler
Professor of Government, Berry College
Peter Lawler is Dana Professor of Government and former chair of the department of Government and International Studies at Berry College. He serves as executive editor of the journal Perspectives on Political Science, and has been chair of the politics and literature section of the American Political Science Association. He also served on the editorial board of the new bilingual critical edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and serves on the editorial boards of several journals. He has written or edited fifteen books and over 200 articles and chapters in a wide variety of venues. He was the 2007 winner of the Weaver Prize in Scholarly Letters.rnrnLawler served on President Bush's Council on Bioethics from 2004 – 09. His most recent book, Modern and American Dignity, is available from ISI Books.rnrnFollow him on Twitter @peteralawler.
From a certain view, the most probing question Alexis de Tocqueville had to answer in Democracy inAmerica is “Why are the Americans so restless in the midst of prosperity?” Why […]
As I’ve said before, my home away from home is Panera Bread. It has a fireplace with real gas logs, couches, and a leisurely and rather personal environment. It’s a […]
Ross Douthat has written on the revival of Marxism as a seductive theory in the wake of burgeoning economic inequality and the withering away of the middle class. He might […]
A regional division of the NLRB has ruled that Northwestern’s football players are more like employees of the university than students. So they are entitled to unionize and bargain collectively […]
We’re told that our high-tech meritocracy based on productivity is the source of our enlightenment when it comes to our resolute opposition to racism, sexism, and heterosexism. Certainly the demands […]
So here’s an absolutely humorless article from the somewhat humorless liberal Salon that accuses the seemingly philosophic filmmaker Harold Ramis of having been a semi-closeted (well he’s loud and proud in Ghostbusters) […]
Our opinion leaders and policy makers seem to have been genuinely surprised that Putin has invaded a part of Ukraine (mostly but not only Crimea) and will likely invade more. […]
So Professor Jacob Stoll defends the study of the humanities with the thought that all the great economic thinkers from Aristotle to Locke to Adam Smith to Karl Marx to […]
So I rarely share my opinions on contemporary international relations. Let me throw caution to wind and say something about the significance about what’s going on in Ukraine. The real […]
Her is quite the meticulous and creepily seductive criticism of our techno-orientation toward transhumanism. It is the dystopian film of our time, a haunting glimpse at the near future. The transhumanist theory is […]
Miya Tokumitsu writes with incisive elegance about our altogether elitist and self-indulgent view that our experts have these days about the relationship between love and work. That view, of course, […]
So I differ from many other non-libertarian conservatives by appreciating many of America’s huge national and multinational chain institutions, such as Walmart and Waffle House. I was glad to discover […]
Well, I realize I’ve been failing you by not sharing my views on the top films. My remedial effort will begin with three I saw in the last couple of […]
The Merriam-Webster people have named SCIENCE the word of the year. Why? It had “the greatest increase in look-ups” in the online version of their dictionary. This data might be […]
Several people have asked me what I thought about David’s column about the moral message we send people by completely legalizing marijuana. The price would drop rapidly. It would be […]
So Hanna Rosin is getting some attention by playing with the big idea that “men are finished.” That doesn’t mean they will literally disappear. It’s just women don’t need them […]
So now that he’s been named Time‘s man of the year and all, it might be safe to say something good about Pope Francis on BIG THINK. Liberals like the […]
My Christmas gift to you is this version of the African-American spiritual “Go Tell on the Mountain,” sung by the Blind Boys of Alabama (with Stephen) on the Colbert Show. […]
Let me remind you of why I think all the Singularity talk about making what used to be called personal immortality possible by turning each of us into conscious machines is ridiculous. […]
The “visionary” and “philosopher” Zoltan Istvan says that, as an atheist, he must be a transhumanist. You probably think I’m going to start mocking transhumanism again. Once again, you’ve misjudged […]
So the excellent editor of The New Atlantis, maybe our best journal on technology and society, reflects on the HBO series Stay of Play. It’s all about the parents finding too […]
#14. The greatness of Thanksgiving is that it doesn’t aspire to greatness, but only to the shared experiences that make living worth living for each one of us.
I’ve just gotten around to reading closely Marilynne Robinson’s most recent collection of essays—When I Was a Child I Read Books. Robinson, maybe our best novelist, is a challenging writer. […]
Conservative NYT columnist Ross Douthat explores the next stage of creeping—and sometimes creepy—American libertarianism. We Americans are still becoming less Puritanical, if by Puritanical we remain a combination of religious […]
So Republicans are starting to compare the signature lies of President Clinton and President Obama. Here they are: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” “No […]
Most of the highly industrious, post-industrial, and prosperous parts of the world have a “birth dearth,” a birth rate significantly below the rate of replacement. Japan, of course, has one […]
Judging from their mid-term essays, I would say that among the many and diverse books and essays we’ve read so far in my course in technology, the one that has impressed the […]
Don’t worry. Be happy. Live in the present. The philosopher Rousseau said that was the natural condition of man, before he was screwed up by self-consciousness, time, awareness of death, […]
So here’s some savvy conservative commentary on Saturday Night Live’s hilarious fake promo for the new season of the HBO hit Girls. Introducing a needed note of realism into the show is the new […]
There’s a new columnist out there writing for The American Conservative. You may or may not regard him as conservative. Patrick Deneen reflects on a semi-depressing book written by my favorite […]