This first systematic analysis of the full range of classical liberal thinking covers the utilitarianism of Hume, Smith and their successors, the Austrian and Chicago schools of political economy, 'contractarian' liberalism and the ethical individualism of Ayn Rand and Robert Nozick. Norman Barry also discusses the hitherto barely understood theory of anarcho-capitalism and throughout his analysis draws attention to the differences in fundamental philosophical outlook that underline superficially similar policy positions.

With the rise of the Tea Party movement, libertarian principles have risen to the forefront of Republican politics. But libertarianism is more than the philosophy of individual freedom and unfettered markets that Republicans have embraced. Brennan offers a nuanced portrait of libertarianism, proceeding through a series of questions to illuminate the essential elements of libertarianism and the problems the philosophy addresses, and overturns numerous misconceptions.

This is a book about modern liberal society and its adversaries. The book rediscovers and rehabilitates much maligned, especially in America, liberalism as the ideal system of liberty in relation to anti-liberalism as one of un-freedom. It rediscovers liberal modernity as a free, equal and just social system and time, thus most compatible with and enhancing of human civilization ushering in the 21st century. It exposes anti-liberal adversaries, especially conservatism, as ideologies and systems most inappropriate with and destructive of civilization. The book rediscovers liberal modernity as the master process and destination of Western civilization, and its anti-liberal adversaries, notably conservatism, as the ghosts of a dead past. The anti-liberal rumors of the 'death' of liberalism are 'greatly exaggerated'.

One of our most important political theorists pulls the philosophical rug out from under modern liberalism, then tries to place it on a more secure footing. We think of modern liberalism as the novel product of a world reinvented on a secular basis after 1945. In The Theology of Liberalism, one of the country’s most important political theorists argues that we could hardly be more wrong. Eric Nelson contends that the tradition of liberal political philosophy founded by John Rawls is, however unwittingly, the product of ancient theological debates about justice and evil. Once we understand this, he suggests, we can recognize the deep incoherence of various forms of liberal political philosophy that have emerged in Rawls’s wake. Nelson starts by noting that today’s liberal political philosophers treat the unequal distribution of social and natural advantages as morally arbitrary. This arbitrariness, they claim, diminishes our moral responsibility for our actions. Some even argue that we are not morally responsible when our own choices and efforts produce inequalities. In defending such views, Nelson writes, modern liberals have implicitly taken up positions in an age-old debate about whether the nature of the created world is consistent with the justice of God. Strikingly, their commitments diverge sharply from those of their proto-liberal predecessors, who rejected the notion of moral arbitrariness in favor of what was called Pelagianism—the view that beings created and judged by a just God must be capable of freedom and merit. Nelson reconstructs this earlier “liberal” position and shows that Rawls’s philosophy derived from his self-conscious repudiation of Pelagianism. In closing, Nelson sketches a way out of the argumentative maze for liberals who wish to emerge with commitments to freedom and equality intact.

This book challenges us to look at liberal political ideas in a fresh way. Colin Bird examines the assumption, held both by liberals and by their strongest critics, that the values and ideals of the liberal political tradition cohere around a distinctively 'individualist' conception of the relation between individuals, society and the state. He concludes that the formula of 'liberal individualism' conceals fundamental conflicts between liberal views of these relations, conflicts that neither liberals nor their critics have adequately recognized. His interesting and provocative study develops a powerful criticism of the libertarian forms of 'liberal individualism' which have risen to prominence, and suggests that by taking this term for granted, theorists have exaggerated the unity and integrity of liberal political ideals and limited our perception of the issues they raise.

An expert survey of liberal approaches and liberal responses to diverse topics and controversies in contemporary political thought and practice.

A former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Kim R. Holmes surveys the state of liberalism in America today and finds that it is becoming its opposite—illiberalism—abandoning the precepts of open-mindedness and respect for individual rights, liberties, and the rule of law upon which the country was founded, and becoming instead an intolerant, rigidly dogmatic ideology that abhors dissent and stifles free speech. Tracing the new illiberalism historically to the radical Enlightenment, a movement that rejected the classic liberal ideas of the moderate Enlightenment that were prominent in the American Founding, Holmes argues that today’s liberalism has forsaken its American roots, incorporating instead the authoritarian, anti-clerical, and anti-capitalist prejudices of the radical and largely European Left. The result is a closing of the American liberal mind. Where once freedom of speech and expression were sacrosanct, today liberalism employs speech codes, trigger warnings, boycotts, and shaming rituals to stifle freedom of thought, expression, and action. It is no longer appropriate to call it liberalism at all, but illiberalism—a set of ideas in politics, government, and popular culture that increasingly reflects authoritarian and even anti-democratic values, and which is devising new strategies of exclusiveness to eliminate certain ideas and people from the political process. Although illiberalism has always been a temptation for American liberals, lurking in the radical fringes of the Left, it is today the dominant ideology of progressive liberal circles. This makes it a new danger not only to the once venerable tradition of liberalism, but to the American nation itself, which needs a viable liberal tradition that pursues social and economic equality while respecting individual liberties.

This is the combined version of the first four volumes of The Moral Libertarian Horizon by TaraElla.

American Conservatism: History, Theory, and Practice from Brian R. Farmer is a history of conservatism in the United States that illuminates the odyssey of American conservatism beginning with the Pilgrims and Puritans of the early colonial period and proceeding through the Revolutionary era, the Antebellum period, the Age of Laissez-Faire, Post-Depression Conservatism, the Reagan Era, and concluding with the ideologies and policies of the George W. Bush Administration, arguably the most ideologically driven conservative administration in American history. Conservatism in general and the multiple facets of conservatism are defined, and the political socialization process that produces and perpetuates political ideologies in general and conservatism in particular are presented, to lay the groundwork for the rich history of American people, policies, and events that have surrounded those conservative ideologies that follows. Farmer provides a tool for those interested in American Politics in general and American conservatism in particular with a tool that helps explain the historical development of American ideological conservatism, both in a theoretical sense, and in a policy sense, and thus draws a connection between the American past and what must be considered an exceptional conservative American administration, even by American standards, under George W. Bush. Farmer illustrates that the basic ideological underpinnings that have driven the Bush administration that have generally been viewed by Europeans as exceptional, have been present in American politics since its earliest colonial beginnings with the Puritans and been carried forward by the ideological descendants of the Puritans from that time through the present. In essence, the form of American conservative exceptionalism exhibited during the Bush administration was present in American politics from the very beginning and has continued through the present, albeit in a more extreme form since the traditional ideological conservatives currently dominate all three branches of the American government and the terror attacks of 9/11 allowed them to garner popular support for their exceptional programs.