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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.


So we read in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and elsewhere that one in four divorces now separate people over fifty.  The divorce rate as a whole has plateaued or has […]
So here’s another perspective on the HHS mandate that all employer-based policies provide free oral contraceptives: Oral contraceptives are really cheap.  A one-month supply of Sprintec is $9 at Walmart.  […]
Respected Republican leaders—such as Tom Coburn and Eric Cantor—are rallying around Romney now.  They don’t see a viable alternative, and they see that prolonging “the process” isn’t going to benefit […]
I suggested, although not as insistently as I should have, that February would be the month of Santorum. Well, it was. Santorum was so impressive that he was the non-Romney who came closest to winning.    
Brooks offends our pride by reminding us that the American level of social spending is the same as Europe’s.  The difference is the method.  The Europeans use taxes to fund public […]
Our BIG THINKING friend Robert de Neufville is right to notice public opinion trending in favor of same-sex marriage.  And so it seems reasonable for him to predict that it […]
The GRAMMYS turned out to be one of the classiest and most entertaining award shows ever.  Certainly the show blew away the Super Bowl on both fronts.  Even the commercials […]
So I’ve gotten too many enthusiastic and too many critical emails about my recent “Liberal Education” post for the wrong reasons. It was critical, of course, with the general approach […]
So, as I predicted, Romney is now 1-2.  And he’s gone from overwhelming favorite to a probable underdog.  Mitt is collapsing across the nation.  It’s easy to predict that Gingrich will […]
Each of the below deserves all kinds of links.  But I only have a moment, and I dislike links for the same reason I dislike footnotes. 1.  It turns out […]
The controversial social analyst Charles Murray has written an important book on the unprecedented class divide in America today.  The link is to an article summarizing the book’s key arguments. […]
Here’s a fine think-piece by Susan Cain that praises some introversion as indispensable for creativity.  To some great extent, Socrates and Jesus were solitary men.  And the wisdom they shared with us couldn’t […]
The Wall Street Journal has a generally positive view of Santorum’s pro-growth policies.  But here’s a tough criticism: Most disappointing is the Pennsylvanian’s proposal to triple the tax credit for […]
So the Iowa outcome, with some perversity, made it more likely than ever that Romney would be the Republican nominee.  That’s true although most Republicans have made it clear they […]
David Brooks has a generous and eloquent column on the decision of “crunchy conservative” Rod Dreher to move back to his hometown of St. Francisville, LA.  Dreher is embracing the […]
To be human is to wonder and wander. The being who wonders can’t be fully at home in the cosmos the scientists can otherwise, perhaps, perfectly describe.
Jay Cost, one of our best politcal bloggers, told us at Berry College a few weeks ago that what’s wrong with the current system used by our political parties to […]