In Defense of Liberal Democracy

Regnery Gateway, 1984.

In this new book of essays, Walter Berns give shape to the arena of American government and politics. He contends that “free government is an endangered species in our world,” wrought with political passion that at times threaten to overpower our constitutional rules and forms, rendering us unable, or unwilling, to defend liberal democracy in our time.

The author builds his defense with a careful interpretation of liberal democracy’s most basic doctrine, that of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. His startling accounts take us to the theater of semantics in the United Nations to which, he suggests, those who do not believe free democracy is in danger might be sentenced; and to the domestic front, where single-interest groups often fail to distinguish the differences between “wants, rights, and laws of nature,” making representational government increasingly difficult.

Table of Contents

Preface

PART I: THE CONSTITUTION

1. The Constitution as Bill of Rights

2. Judicial Review and the Rights and Laws of Nature

PART II: FOREIGN POLITICS

3. The New Pacifism and World Government

4. Where the Majority Rules: A U.N. Diary

5. How to Talk to the Russians

6. Taking the U.N. Seriously

7. Who’s Afraid of Agee-Wolf?

PART III: DOMESTIC POLITICS