It is a Common heritage of English and American liberals to denounce state absolutism, to deny it as regimentation, paternalism, etc. etc. Indeed, Englishmen and Americans have always been inclined to adopt a condescending attitude towards other traditions which seemed to exalt state power. French and German, Russian and Italian tendencies have in turn been pictured as “naturally” inclined toward state “absolutism,” and when anyone in rebuttal mentioned Hobbes or Bentham or Austin, the “exceptional” position of these thinkers has been emphasized. Still, can there be any question that the idea of the state as an ultimate source of authority has been as strong in Great Britain as anywhere? For reasons which will become plainer in the course of the argument, English-writing thinkers have accordingly been in the vanguard of those who sought to construct the “state” as the “highest” of all human communities, thus following out the Aristotelian heritage. In spite of all the titter-tatter about national character, muddling through and the rest, the fact remains that Britain has provided us with the most radical, deep-laid expositions of an “absolute” state. This much admitted, one might add that the limited state also has found eloquent and epoch-making exponents in English-speaking lands. In short, the whole gamut of modern political philosophy has been most thoroughly expounded in English.

The essay clarifies the relationship between Locke's political and his religious thought. To the extent that Locke's political thought is an outgrowth of a particular strand of Christianity, its claims to universality would be significantly diminished. Several plausible interpretations of his political thought rely on his religiosity. Others maintain that this religiosity was a façade. Close attention to Locke's analysis of the Hebrew text of Gen. 1:28 unambiguously points to a critique of the Bible on semantic grounds. Locke subtly argues that the wording of the Bible makes the interpretation of scripture by scripture alone impossible. The fact that Locke goes out of his way to critique the Bible refutes interpretations of Locke's thought that rely on his religiosity and reestablishes the universalist claims of his political thought.

From earliest apostolic and patristic times, Christian writers have generally been suspicious of the common human desire to improve one's economic status. In Britain, however, by the end of the seventeenth century, this suspicion had all but vanished as most Christians began to accommodate themselves to the exigencies of an increasingly dynamic commercial society. This article takes up the early eighteenth-century controversy over the compatibility of traditional Christian moral virtues with the demands of economic and material progress as reflected in the writings of the two most important antagonists in the controversy, Bernard Mandeville and William Law. Although both Mandeville and Law spoke the language of Christian rigorism and perfectionism, and proclaimed attachment to the full austerity of the Christian Gospels, Mandeville, it is explained, was really a hedonist in disguise who feigned attachment to traditional Christian and Stoic ascetic principles merely to be able to discredit those principles. Law, it is explained, was a man of uncommon piety and devoutness who was shocked by the increasing secularism and materialism of his age, and who sought to recall his contemporaries to a life of true Christian holiness. The article concludes with an evaluation of the relative merits of the positions of each of the two thinkers.

During the Commercial Revolution, as European powers became deeply involved in Atlantic and Indian Ocean trade, there developed a lively debate about whether a country could claim and exercise legal sovereignty over the sea. The great Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), in his work Mare Liberum (1609), argued against such notions. An English lawyer and polymath John Selden (1584–1654), espousing British interests, took the affirmative side of the debate in Mare Clausum (1936). The issues had been discussed long before Grotius and Selden had written their works, but the debate intensified as the competition both for worldwide markets and for access to offshore fishing banks became sharper.

It has become commonplace in the 1960's to talk about the alienated American, the disinherited American, the culturally different American. Most people talk in general terms but they almost always mean the Negro American. For the Negro is an alienated American of the largest minority group in the United States. In its historical quest for a unified society, the nation has called upon the public schools to live up to their traditional socializing responsibilities. At the present time, however, the focus is not upon the European immigrant coming from foreign shores but rather upon the segregated black man living in the most alienated ghettos of America. Martin Luther King spoke about educating the minds and hearts of white Americans in a concerted attempt to usher in the true kingdom of an integrated and just society. And what better place to begin this process than in the schools! Yet many Negroes have begun to lose faith in the schools as they have come to view them as an unreconstructed part of a basically racist society. A few are calling for the total rejection of the white man's society including his inflexible school structure. Others are demanding community — and this often means black — control of the schools in order to make them more responsive to the total needs of their youngsters. They want schools that will nurture the self-identity of the Negro child, deepen his pride in his color and heritage, and develop his capabilities to help create a truly democratic society which is “worthy, lovely, and harmonious.” That grand old lady of the social settlement movement in America, Jane Addams, once stated these desires in another way — indeed quite a contemporary way — when she concluded “that unless all men and all classes contribute to a good, we cannot even be sure that it is worth having.”

Despite the Supreme Court's repeated invocations of America's Founding Fathers for First Amendment religion jurisprudence, George Washington's political thought regarding religious freedom has received almost no scholarly attention. This is unfortunate, for Washington's words and actions speak to contemporary Establishment Clause and Free Exercise issues. Washington, moreover, offers an alternative to Jefferson's and Madison's approach to church-state matters. The scholarly exclusion of Washington thus has led to a narrow view of the Founders' thought on religious liberty. This article sets forth Washington's understanding of the right to religious liberty. It pays particular attention to Washington's disagreement with Madison on the propriety of government support of religion. It also draws attention to the limits Washington placed on an individual's right to religious free exercise by focusing on how Washington dealt with Quaker claims for religious exemptions from military service.

Individuals entering into society, must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest. The magnitude of the sacrifice must depend as well on situation and circumstance, as on the object to be obtained. It is at all times difficult to draw with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered, and those which may be reserved. —G. Washington, Letter submitting the proposed constitution to the President of Congress 17 September 1787

Several significant works on post-1945 American politics have dealt with the career of Henry A. Wallace. These studies have tended to depict Wallace as a one-dimensional character, either a fuzzy-minded idealist influenced and manipulated by Communists and fellow travelers or a wise and dedicated apostle of peace fighting a losing battle to prevent the Cold War. Both views have in common the assumption that Wallace stood for the same thing in foreign policy from the end of World War II through his Progressive Party campaign for the presidency. It is true that there were important continuities; there were also significant transformations in the content and quality of his thinking.

Throughout history, the control of public funds has been considered a cornerstone of political power. If it is true that all societies, from die dawn of civilizations to the present, have been divided into two classes, one that rules and the other that is ruled, it may be expected that the methods of raising and spending government money have been determined by one social group, generally a minority, to the complete or almost complete exclusion of the rest of the population. Such control would be intended to kill two birds with one stone, serving the direct purpose of administering the state and the indirect purpose of strengthening the privileged position of the governing group and thus prolonging their predominance. Yet studies in fiscal sociology are still in tlieir infancy. Because of their casual and hapo hazard character, they are not as yet a match for political sociology. Only during recent decades has a broader and more systematic approach been attempted.

Tocqueville says that the superiority of American women is the chief cause of the power and prosperity of American democracy. That superiority is the result of an education that treats women as capable of freedom, but the use of that freedom is to maintain the bonds that restrict women to the household. The present article examines the role of the family and women in the new political science Tocqueville thought necessary for the defence of democratic liberty. It is argued that as the primary influence of democracy upon the family for Tocqueville has been to eliminate the authority of fathers who were the “arbiters of mores” and thereby the defenders of liberty in aristocracy, so democratic liberty depends for him above all upon the new role of women as the makers of mores. Through the agency of women, otherwise fragile religion constitutes an effective limit to the authority of the majority, but what makes it possible for religion to operate through women is their exclusion from the world of commerce, and what maintains this exclusion is the strict conjugal morality that women themselves defend in America. How far the role of women as guardians of democratic liberty might be justified is shown to depend for Tocqueville upon arguments for it that are other than those commonly accepted by American men.

There is a growing literature on the theological roots of Schmitt's theory, however, such interpretations depart from the same position as Schmitt: from the political into the theological. In this quarrel between politics and theology, there is a less known contender, the theologian Erik Peterson, who developed a theological critique of Schmitt and shows the impossibility of a Christian political theology. In Political Theology II (1970), Schmitt criticizes the apolitical nature of Peterson's theology, but he ignores Peterson's theology of martyrdom. This paper recovers the centrality of martyrdom in Peterson's theology and argues that the martyr represents a counter model to Schmitt's sovereign. For Peterson, martyrdom is not apolitical act, but a public claim in which the martyrs testify in the public sphere that the highest human good is not political but eschatological. By recovering this eschatological dimension, Peterson shows the limits of Schmitt's interpretation of the political.

Although Machiavelli has been widely condemned as a misogynist, his three central political works feature dozens of women who engage in efficacious and often praiseworthy political action. To appreciate fully the character and value of their activity and ultimately Machiavelli's views on women as potential political agents, one must first carefully attend to his conception of animo. Usually translated as “spiritedness,” animo represents the natural assertiveness, energy, and resoluteness that forms the basis of virtù if properly disciplined – usually by a city's modes and orders. By examining the plight of women, however, Machiavelli turns to those persons who stand outside the city's political institutions and thus tend to exercise unbridled animo, for better or for worse. In addition to revealing his deep preoccupation with political outsiders, Machiavelli's appreciation of the political problems associated with womanhood also discloses one of his most radical impieties-the denaturalization of gender norms, an impiety we are only beginning to appreciate today

Scholars of race in antiquity commonly claim that Aristotle holds protoracist views about barbaroi or non-Greeks. But a careful examination of Aristotle's remarks in his Politics about slavery, non-Greek political institutions, and Greek and non-Greek natural qualities calls into question such claims. No doubt, Aristotle held views at odds with modern liberalism, such as his views about gender subordination and the exploitation of slave and nonslave labor. But claims that Aristotle holds protoracist views are regularly but erroneously asserted without careful consideration of relevant textual evidence. I argue that Aristotle neither categorically distinguishes Greeks and non-Greeks nor does he endorse the claim that Greeks are categorically superior to non-Greeks. Indeed, Aristotle regularly draws upon non-Greek political institutions in his own formulation of the best constitution and he praises the non-Greek constitution of Carthage as superior to that of Greek constitutions such as Sparta and Crete.

Machiavelli's Prince has been interpreted and appraised from a wide range of points of view. Attitudes have run all the way from unqualified admiration for the Princes compelling frankness and republican patriotism to shock and hatred for its obvious moral relativism. The Prince has been condemned as a piece of political opportunism, an expression of the philosophy of the antichrist, and a contributing factor to the political morality of both Napoleon and Hitler. On the other hand, it has in modern times been praised as a forthright assessment of the morality of sixteenth-century Italian political life and/or the first manifestation of a new science of politics.

Disorder is a constant theme in John Calvin's political work. Calvin describes politics as a chaotic arena, precariously held together by contending forces. However, few who write on Calvin recognize how disorder shapes his political reflections. Calvin analyzes disorder by tracing it to unfaithfulness, the failure to acknowledge God's goodness. Created in the image of God, human beings reject divine goodness ungratefully, plunging themselves into sin. In leaders, this unfaithfulness produces pride and mistrust which create conflict within and among political communities. In groups, unfaithfulness spawns cruelty, leading violent mobs to kill the innocent and denigrate the image of God. By exploring mob and political violence, Calvin draws attention to those forces sustaining order. Natural sensibilities, conscience, and divine providence restrain the worst excesses in human beings.

When historians come to assess the Eisenhower era they will ponder the fact that for the first time in American history a popular president was faced with an opposition Congress for six out of his eight years in office. Unquestionably, they will attribute part of this phenomenon to the fact that the President was stronger than his party. But they will also have to contend with the lack of divisive issues on Capitol Hill. This juxtaposition which has persisted so long dates from the G.O.P. revival of the later 1930's. This resurgence in turn brought about an alliance between Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats which explains so much about recent American politics. It is the purpose of the present study to investigate the causes of the Republican upsurge which once more made the Party a force of respectable opposition and laid the groundwork for its restoration to full power in 1952.

The need to introduce flexibility and diversity into an increasingly centralized and insensitive system of political and administrative controls is one of the most strongly felt problems in modern democracies. In particular, reforms must be fostered in state governmental and administrative structures to reckon with the evergrowing weight of regional units and metropolitan areas. The debate affects not only the United States but also Western Europe, witness the recent reforms in England, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Italy. Italy, after delaying by some twenty years the application of the 1948 constitution which called for the establishment of regional governments, has taken steps which should transform the political-administrative base of the country and may serve as guidelines for other societies where regional allegiances remain strong and where metropolitan areas outweigh rural ones in terms of financial needs and commitments. The changes, some twenty years in the works, are worthy of attention as they offer an interesting case of intrastate regionalism coupled with successful elements of micro-regionalization.

An historical experiment, begun almost a hundred years ago, is, in various phases and crises of development, emerging from die war. It must be based on its own specific theory, or, to put it more correctly, on its own specific philosophy.

To avoid ambiguity, let us agree to align the historical outlines of Christian Democracy with the two tendencies which developed among European Catholics in die post-Napoleonic period: first, the political tendency in favor of a constitutional system based on political liberty; second, the social tendency toward the moral, economic and political rehabilitation of the working classes.

As the years pass, the Northern Ireland Troubles appear to have become institutionalized at an intolerable but apparently irreducible level of violence. There appears no light at the end of the tunnel, and no firm evidence that the center can hold. The bridges between a divided society have long been reduced to rubble. The Provisional IRA appears capable, even eager, to continue a campaign of guerrilla attrition damned as self-defeating, immoral, and bloody-minded by all concerned including the Official IRA. In return Protestant gunmen have opened the season on Catholics, all guilty of treason in some form, all enemies of British Ulster. And the British Army remains a tempting target even at times to the Protestant militants.

President Woodrow Wilson spent over one-half year in Paris to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles. Upon his return he submitted the Treaty to the Senate for confirmation. A deadlock between the Executive and the Legislature twice prevented passage of the Treaty. The issue extended to the presidential election of 1920 when many voters supported Warren G. Harding convinced that he was more likely to bring about the entry of the United States into the League than his Democratic opponent.

Of course Aquinas uses the term ius in an “objective” sense, to mean “the just,” “the just thing,” or the “just state of affairs” called for by the virtue of justice. But he also uses ius in a “subjective” sense, to refer to a right or rights that someone, the “subject,” has. Brian Tierney fails to see this, for three reasons, I think: though he has been an effective critic of Villey's historical analyses, he now seems gripped by Villey's non sequitur (if objective then not subjective); he looks to Aquinas's “phrases,” “usages,” and “terms,” sometimes neglecting the arguments in which Aquinas uses them; and, at least in this new essay, he employs a simplistic understanding of the modern idea of rights.