Archive for Joseph R. Stromberg
Joseph Stromberg is an independent historian and writer living in northern Georgia .
Did Locke Really Justify Limited Government?
John Locke (1632–1704) was a physician, statesman, and political philosopher, filling that last office in a dry, “empirical,” and militantly antipoetic English mode. Locke’s stock has risen and fallen over the years. Contemporaries called him a Socinian (a precursor of Unitarianism), a deist, a Muslim, and an opportunist. Later critics have seen Locke as the [...]
24Feb2010 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 11 comments | ContinuedThe Unitary Executive: Presidential Power from Washington to Bush
Steven G. Calabresi and Christopher S. Yoo count as founding fathers of the much-debated unitary executive theory (UET), which they named in 1992. In this large book they argue that every American president has subscribed to the theory, and that along with constitutional text and structure, this continuous presidential practice makes the law.
Briefly, UET asserts [...]
Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin
Antifederalists get no respect. Historian Cecilia Kenyon called them “men of little faith.” Other historians (even Charles Beard) pegged them as rural debtors. In this brief but engaged life of Luther Martin, though, Bill Kauffman enters a plea for “the people who lost”—an un-American enterprise he shares with William Appleman Williams.
Martin, likely the most interesting [...]
The American Land Question
Widespread landownership long supported a kind of liberal-republican independence. Perhaps we should reexamine the nexus and ask ourselves how, in Donald Davidson’s words, we “let the freehold pass,” and whether that was really for the best.
10Jun2009 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 6 comments | ContinuedAlbert Jay Nock and Alternative History
Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) was a leading ideologist of the Old Right, a loose collection of individualist intellectuals, journalists, and a few politicians who opposed the growth of government in the first half of the twentieth century. Nock’s writing appeared in the Nation, the original Freeman (1920–1924), which he founded with Francis Neilson, the American [...]
1Nov2008 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Political Economy of John Taylor of Caroline
Joseph Stromberg is a historian and freelance writer.
As noted in the May Freeman, American revolutionaries mixed classical-republican and liberal political languages somewhat indiscriminately. Republicanism posited a relation between power and property in which independent proprietors were the bulwark of liberty. English critics of post-1688 Whig mercantilism deployed republican ideas, [...]
The Constitutional Republicanism of John Taylor of Caroline
Joseph Stromberg is a historian and freelance writer.
"Great power often corrupts virtue; it invariably renders vice more malignant . . . . In proportion as the powers of government increase, both its own character and that of the people becomes worse.”
—John Taylor of Caroline, 1814
John Taylor of Caroline has a secure place in the [...]
Slick Construction Under the Articles of Confederation
Writing lately on the Fourth Amendment, Professor Thomas Y. Davies decries the “originalism” practiced by certain Supreme Court justices and sundry legal commentators. On historical-hermeneutic grounds, he faults face-value originalism for missing “the shared, implicit assumptions that informed the public meaning” on which a given constitutional provision rested. Underlying the Fourth Amendment were common-law rules [...]
1Apr2008 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Sovereign Presidency: Is This What the Framers Had in Mind?
American government under the Constitution was supposedly meant to work as follows: Congress, staying within delegated powers and the Bill of Rights, passes laws; the president executes the laws; and the courts sort out ensuing wrangles. This plan ran aground rather early—the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, for example—which raises at least two possibilities: 1) [...]
1Jan2007 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 2 comments | ContinuedOn Misplaced Concreteness in Social Theory
The following piece will not be as abstruse as its title suggests. Rather, it results from the simple observation that, time and time again, some harmful outcome or process commonly attributed to the everyday workings of the market economy actually does exist, but it exists in the realm of the government and politics. Politicians and [...]
1May2006 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review ~ When in the Course of Human Events: The Case for Southern Secession by Charles Adams
Rowman & Littlefield · 2000 · 272 pages · $24.95
Reviewed by Joseph R. Stromberg
Some reviewers have had a hard time with the present book. They imagine that there is a single historical thesis therein, one subject to definitive proof or refutation. In this, I believe they are mistaken. Instead, what we [...]
A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government by Garry Wills
Simon & Schuster • 1999 • 365 pages • $25.00
Professor Garry Wills loves government. Perhaps one day he will tell us if he believes in any substantive limitations on government at all. Wills’s long-standing love of government can be seen in “The Convenient State,” an essay he wrote when he was his own brand of [...]
Book Review ~ After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State by Paul Edward Gottfried
Princeton University Press • 1999 • 186 pages • $27.95
Americans have given up freedom and self-government for a mess of pottage. Modern “liberalism,” argues political science professor Paul Gottfried in his insightful new book, rests on a “patricide” of the older liberalism. Whereas liberalism and democracy were once opposed concepts, they are now conflated, [...]
Mere Isolationism: The Foreign Policy of the Old Right
Joseph Stromberg is a part-time college lecturer in history.
One of the “lost causes” to which libertarians are attached—and one of the most important—is that of the “isolationist” Old Right. As used by the late Murray Rothbard, among others, the term “Old Right” refers to a loose coalition opposed to the New Deal in both its [...]
Noah Smithwick: Pioneer Texan and Monetary Critic
The lively and colorful memoirs of Noah Smithwick, nonagenarian, ex-North Carolinian, early Texas pioneer, and eventual Californian, take us back to a time when Americans could grasp essential truths about the nature of money. His book, The Evolution of a State or Recollections of Old Texas Days, reflects the original value system of the mobile and ambitious Americans of the early nineteenth century.
1Jul1999 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Second Amendment in the Light of American Republicanism
The “transforming” ideology of America’s revolutionary period saw the chief conflict in society as one between liberty and power. That ideology synthesized themes from several sources.[1] Given the differing origins and jumping-off points of classical liberalism and classical republicanism (the two most important elements), the American “synthesis” might be expected to undergo some unraveling when up against the harder problems of political life.
1Jun1999 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 0 comments | ContinuedTensions in Early American Political Thought
According to the eminent historian of political thought J.G.A. Pocock, republican theory (or “civic humanism”) was the most significant current of eighteenth-century English and American political philosophy. In the form of “country ideology,” republicanism gave “left” and “right” critics of government policies a framework and believable rhetoric for their arguments.
1May1999 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 0 comments | Continued-
The Latest
The Evil of Government Debt
As we’ve seen in the last two TGIFs, Destutt de Tracy, writing (pdf) in early nineteenth-century France,... Read More
Where There’s a Will There’s a Way?
Many aphorisms and common expressions take on a different meaning when seen through the lens of economics. One... Read More
Will Medical “Reform” Cut Real Costs?
It seems that the so-called health care “reform” bill will become law soon enough. (President Barack... Read More
The Welfare State Kills Children
On February 22 a court in suburban Washington, D.C., passed judgment in one of the most horrendous cases... Read More
Government as Consumer
Destutt de Tracy, as I discussed last week, was a French economist whom Thomas Jefferson did his utmost... Read More
