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2 weeks ago | 
lawliberty.org | Charles T. Rubin |John O. McGinnis |John C. Pinheiro |Reuven Brenner
Talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and governance at this particular moment is a daunting task. The capacities of AI are changing rapidly. While it is very likely we are in the midst of a hype cycle with respect to how reliable and useful AI can be today, the current large language models still have some impressive capacities. Everyone seems to expect more and better to come rapidly, either on the basis of those models or some other paradigm of AI.
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2 weeks ago | 
lawliberty.org | Richard Alan Ryerson |John O. McGinnis |John C. Pinheiro |Daniel Mahoney
Four spirited responses to my short essay in Liberty & Law on the battles at Lexington and Concord at their 250th anniversary prove that no significant historical event, no matter how limited in time and space—in this case, to a single day, in a single Massachusetts county—can ever be fully explained or appreciated in ten pages, or in a hundred pages, by a single historian. If it could be, history would be a much simpler and much duller enterprise than it is.
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2 weeks ago | 
lawliberty.org | Kevin E. Schmiesing |John O. McGinnis |John C. Pinheiro |Daniel Mahoney
Our conception of the past is littered with expressions that are often poorly defined or understood: ancient, barbarian, empire, liberal, progress, capitalism. The distinguished historian J. C. D. Clark wishes to draw our attention to the equivocal character of another widely used term: Enlightenment. To be precise, the more problematic formulation is “the Enlightenment,” not “enlightenment” per se.
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2 weeks ago | 
lawliberty.org | Richard Samuelson |Richard Alan Ryerson |John O. McGinnis |John C. Pinheiro
Richard Ryerson’s essay on the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord ends extremely provocatively. Ryerson quotes “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “published,” he notes, “on the eve of the Civil War,” commenting on the poem’s “lesson, always timely in any free republic, has never been more urgently needed than in 2025.”But what was this lesson? Given when he published, and the actual events of Lexington and Concord, the answer seems obvious.
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3 weeks ago | 
lawliberty.org | Michael Auslin |Richard Alan Ryerson |John O. McGinnis |John C. Pinheiro
While the combatants’ blood surely boiled when the first shot rang out in the misty dawn on Lexington Green, almost exactly 250 years ago, many also likely felt a disbelief, if not horror, that things had come to this pass. It must have seemed to most on both sides that, in ways large and small, the descent into what was a civil war was not foreordained and could have been avoided with but some luck and wisdom.
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Dec 16, 2024 | 
rlo.acton.org | John C. Pinheiro
Dr. Lee Edwards, historian of the American conservative movement and self-professed “admirer of the Acton Institute and its important work,” passed away last week at the age of 92. Edwards was more than a scholar of the conservative movement: He was a pivotal person in it. He was present in Sharon, Connecticut, in 1960 for the writing of the Sharon Statement and helped to found Young Americans for Freedom.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
lawliberty.org | John C. Pinheiro |John O. McGinnis |Titus Techera |Auguste Meyrat
It is hard to think of a less conservative approach to cultural continuity and civilizational inheritance than Thomas Jefferson’s claim: “The earth belongs always to the living generation. … Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.” Such claims are characteristic of Jefferson; a cursory reading of his correspondence indicates that he found little value in the past.
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Oct 15, 2024 | 
rlo.acton.org | John C. Pinheiro
John Pinheiro: You are the Hungarian ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta. When ambassadors write books, we expect them to be about diplomacy, international law, cultural exchange among nations. What we don’t expect is a personal, Catholic defense of marriage. What led you to write Building a Wholesome Marriage in a Broken World? Eduard Habsburg: I would say two main reasons.
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Oct 3, 2024 | 
rlo.acton.org | John C. Pinheiro
As we approach the 250th anniversary of American independence in 2026, what exactly will Americans be celebrating? The 1619 Project rejects 1776 as an important moment in the history of liberty. Instead, it calls the year 1619 America’s “true founding,” arguing that American history has been marked not by the growth of liberty but rather by oppression. Self-styled “post-liberal” conservatives see the American founding as the flawed product of the radical, secular Enlightenment.
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Jun 27, 2024 | 
rlo.acton.org | John C. Pinheiro
There is an insightful exchange in the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World between Capt. Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and his friend Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany). Aubrey is all about discipline and order, while the doctor’s inclination is toward mercy and liberty.
