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.
Many of our most astute social critics, such as the Harvard progressive communitaran Michael Sandel, have warned us about recent trends that have allowed the pro-choice, “cash nexus” logic of […]
So Dylan was badgered beyond belief to take a stand on behalf of our president. He refused to do it, although the Rolling Stone reporter seemed to regard his evasiveness as the […]
So BIG THINK’S book of the month—Mortalilty by Christopher Hitchens—is a moving account of a singularly personal effort to die as a free man. Hitchens wanted to see death as it […]
Critics both left and right (such as Timothy Noah) are pretty down on the president’s acceptance speech. The consensus is that Obama’s speech was easily the weakest of the convention’s […]
Since 1963 (more or less), the sophisticated wisdom has been on the side of easygoing sexual satisfaction. Sex can and should be for pleasure detached from various repressive relational concerns. […]
One argument against liberal education is that it’s irrelevant. That objection is typically raised by people engaged in careers in business and allied techno-fields. Ask a typical business leader—especially one […]
So I’m not a big fan of convention speeches. I certainly don’t think they make a permanent difference in the campaign. Any “bump” is temporary. Remember, after all, that the […]
There’s been talk in California, Germany, and elsewhere of outlawing circumcision. The only justification, the thinking goes, is religious dogma. And that’s not a good enough reason in a secular […]
The weakness of online education, as far as I can tell, is the evaluation of student performance.
The scary thing for the Democrats is that Ryan might really appeal to the Millennial Generation—also known lately as the Screwed Generation. Older Americans, of course, are worried that some […]
The Ryan pick may have been more bold than, say, the boring Portman or Pawlenty. But Romney had reached the obvious conclusion that the cautious approach isn’t enough. He wasn’t […]
The new CNN poll has Obama leading Romney 52-45. That’s close to the margin separating the two candidates among independents. It’s also close to the distance between them when it […]
One reason I can’t buy the claim that conservative intellectual has become an oxymoron is that on our campuses it’s so often the conservatives who defend “liberal education.” I’m going […]
I’m generally not so big in thinking in terms of decades or generations or centuries or hunks of time in general. Consider the Sixties. Is that decade really characterized by […]
So I’ve gotten some touching emails asking whether I was sick or dead because I hadn’t blogged for almost a whole week. Well, I was sick with an unfashionable or […]
So here’s the transcript of a debate I had with the brilliant and incredibly prolific (and old) bioethicist Daniel Callahan on how to frame end-of-life issues these days. Students at Singularity […]
So everyone’s talking about the article by the intellectual Russell Jacoby on the alleged fact that there are no conservative intellectuals anymore. The article isn’t much good, in fact. One […]
It is true, of course, that exceptional can just mean strikingly different—an exception to the rule.
Charles Rubin is dubious about all the enthusiasm that comes with thinking “exponentially.” Today’s suggestion is that the coming Singularity will remove the limits placed on individual lives by biology, […]
…in reruns, of ourse. So I realize I’ve been pretty short on pop culture commentary lately. It’s not that I haven’t seen the new Wes Anderson movie and don’t have […]
So this astute and classy article by James Patterson explains why so many conservatives wrongly took the side of the Board of Visitors against University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan on […]
One piece of evidence among many that we live in a decadent time (decadence ain’t all bad, but…) is that patriotism has become so controversial. I’m going to avoid the […]
So I go to Panera Bread (a great example of how a well-designed national chain can serve localist ends) yesterday and was confronted by several Floyd County members or fellow […]
So I’ve basically been on vacation during all the commentary on the decision upholding ObamaCare. Still, I’ve found time for two brief observations. First, eight of nine members of the […]
Here’s a distinguished political scientist—Jacqueline Stevens—who agrees with me that the NSF ought to cut the funding for political science. The Republicans in Congress think that these “scientists” are covertly […]
There are so many great articles in the July/August issue of The Atlantic that I could pretty much blog on it alone for the rest of year. But the most […]
Glenn Reynolds, one of America’s leading bloggers at Instapundit, has written a very short and accessible book called The Higher Education Bubble. My review amounts to this: It has all […]
So I’ve been getting a lot of articles and essays and rants emailed to me on higher education. Based on my previous posts, the impression seems to be that I’m […]
Today it’s apparently big news that many Democrats now fear that the president won’t get reelected. I’m staying with my prediction based on common-sense political science that the election will […]
Government—by making loans too easy to get and too cheap—encourages young people who mean well and don’t know better to borrow huge amounts of money to pay the outrageous tuitions and associated college costs.