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.
I thought I’d call attention to one conservative appreciation among many of the President Obama’s speech in Tuscon. From Peter Wehner’s post on the Commentary magazine blog “Contentions”: The president resisted […]
So say some of our leading scientists. Of course, not all experts agree. Carl Sagan, the inspiration behind the films ET and Contact, thought that we should spend big bucks […]
The leading Darwinian conservative has done me the honor of responding to my previous post, including the excellent comment by Brendan Foht. According to Larry, the criticism of him for rejecting the idea of […]
Country Strong hasn’t been taken seriously by film critics. I’m not going to review what they’ve said or speculate on why they said it. I’m just going to explain why […]
There’s a lot of talk on BIG THINK about evolutionary explanations of this or that human behavior. They’re all pretty fascinating, although far from completely convincing. Darwinian explanations, for what […]
1. The study of great books is usually contrasted with the use of textbooks and other technical books. It is contrasted, in other words, with study of the studies that […]
Three books showed up this week with chapters by ME in them. Even without those chapters, each would still be a fabulous (although somewhat diminished) book. So as not to […]
The good news is, of course, is that the old are living longer and healthier than ever. But, as I explained, the news in not all good for us old guys in […]
So it turns out there are actually three outstanding holiday movies–TRUE GRIT, THE KING’S SPEECH, and THE FIGHTER. True Grit is, as I’ve said, very ambitious and philosophically pretentious. It […]
1. The Tea Partiers–and many other conservatives–distinguish between the view of our Founders (good) and that of the Progressives (bad). The Progressives (beginning around the turn of the 20th century) […]
So my “True Grit” post got a lot of response (unfortunately not below) on Facebook and by email and all that–mostly critical. One particularly astute critic–Ken Masugi–accused me of being in […]
Let me recommend to you this fine review of this season’s best movie. Once again, I think the Coen brothers more than flirt with nihilism. The murderous violence of the film […]
1. So this was the first significantly white Christmas in Georgia during my 31 years here. If I were a libertarian “conservative,” I would add: some global warming! But we postmodern conservatives […]
The Christmas season should be a lot less long. We should do more, if not all, of our carol singing, partying, giving, and such between Christmas and Epiphany.
It’s the season for highlighting the best that was written, said, and done in 2010. The consensus is emerging that the most thoughtful TV show (and so the one that […]
Part of being a postmodern conservative is being open to the truth of the distinctively personal LOGOS of Christianity, to the possibility that the Christian understanding of being a person is […]
So this post–like some others–is meant to be diagnostic. It’s a postmodern and conservative observation on who sophisticated Americans think they are these days. As an attempt to be an […]
So I’m a POSTMODERN CONSERVATIVE. I’ll have a lot to say about what that means later. But one of beginning to explain why conservatism needs to be postmodern–or free of […]
So I was a guest on the local Tea Party radio program yesterday. I disagreed with the tea partisans about everything–mainly to provoke discussion but also because I’m not exactly their […]
A shortcoming of Lockean liberalism, the kind of liberty to which the Founders were primarily devoted, is its tendency to undermine the stability of the family over time. As the nation’s […]
So here’s a contribution to a symposium on our president that I wrote in the form of advice. An excerpt follows: Maybe our president can fend off creeping Tea-Partyism only by […]
I have a new book out! It’s Modern and American Dignity: Who We Are as Persons, and What That Means for our Future. Here’s a review/blurb: Peter Lawler is today’s […]
The new eugenic intention seems to be not only pro-life but pro-quality of every life. The choice will be for every person against nature’s randomness and indifference.
Let me open this blog with a realistic statement: It is and will remain the case that the best way to feel good for members of our species is to […]