Tag: Liberal Democracy

Topics

Books

Professors and Politics

– Cornell Daily Sun, May 4, 1962.
Excerpt: The purpose of the university places it in a position of uneasy tension with the community, and the tension is likely to increase with the extent to which this purpose is… More

The New Left and Liberal Democracy

– How Democratic is America?: Responses to the New Left Challenge, Robert A. Goldwin, ed. (Skokie, IL: Rand McNally, 1971).
Outgrowth of a conference held under the auspices of the Public Affairs Conference Center of Kenyon College.

Two Mills and Liberty

– Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1975.
Excerpt: “On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill” tells the astonishing story of John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” which is a story about the book (one of the… More

Religion and the Founding Principle

– The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, Robert H. Horwitz, ed. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1977, 1986).

The Need for Public Authority

– Modern Age 24:1 (Winter 1980); reprinted in Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative and Libertarian Debate, George W. Carey, ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984; reprinted, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2004).
Excerpt: Some ten years ago, I resigned from Cornel1 University; at that time the university had just been taken over by students carrying guns, and first the administration and then the… More

Taking Rights Frivolously

– Liberalism Reconsidered, Douglas MacLean and Claudia Mills, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983).

The American Presidency: Statesmanship and Constitutionalism in Balance

– Imprimis, Hillsdale College, January 1983. Reprinted in Educating for Liberty: The Best of Imprimis, 1972–2002, Douglas A. Jeffrey, ed. (Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale College Press, 2002).
Excerpt: America today is in need of leadership of the sort provided in the past by our greatest presidents, presidents whom we mean to honor and praise when we denominate them… More

In Defense of Political Philosophy: Two Letters to Walter Berns

– In Harry Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984)
Excerpt: IN HIS ‘REPLY TO Harry Jaffa” (National Review, January 22, 1982), Walter Berns writes: There is no substance to Harry Jaffa’s criticism of me. In 1972, he wrote that the… More

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,”… More

Equally Endowed With Rights

– Justice and Equality Here and Now, Frank Lucash, ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 151–71.

Re-evaluating the Open Society

– Order, Freedom, and the Polity: Critical Essays on the Open Society, George W. Carey, ed. (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute and University Press of America, 1986).
Abstract: A series of essays which critically examine the concept of the open society as ‘the crowning achievement of Western civilization.’ Analyzes the open society theory… More

The New Pursuit of Happiness

– Public Interest 86 (Winter 1987), 65–76.
Excerpt: Landing in New York in May 1831, Gustave de Beaumont was struck by the “busyness” of the place. “It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” he wrote his father, “a great people… More

Taking the Framers Seriously

– William Michael Treanor, The University of Chicago Law Review 55:3 (Summer, 1988), pp. 1016–40.
Abstract: This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution… More

What Does the Constitution Expect of Jews?

– The Judeo-Christian Tradition and the U.S. Constitution: Proceedings of a Conference at the Annenberg Research Institute, November 16–17, 1987, David M. Goldenberg, ed. (Philadelphia: Annenberg Research Institute, 1989), 21–27; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: The short answer to this question is that the Constitution expects of Jews what it expects of everybody. George Washington expressed this perfectly in his famous (and very… More

Blacks, Women & Jews & the Constitution

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, April 19, 1990.
A panel discusses Robert Goldwin’s new book, Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views.

Review Essay: Locke and the Legislative Principle

– Public Interest 100 (Summer 1990), 147–56.
Excerpt: What is the role of Congress in our system of constitutional government and how well does it perform that role? To begin with, Congress is not Parliament, which means that ours is… More

Taking the Constitution Seriously

– Simon and Schuster, 1987; reprinted, Madison Books, 1992.
Walter Berns’s book is must reading for every judge, law student, or member of the general public who wants to know more about our Federal Constitution. Berns concisely and clearly… More

Natural Law, Natural Rights

– Washington Times, September 9, 1991. University of Cincinnati Law Review 61:1 (1992–93).
Excerpt: “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty,” said Abraham Lincoln, “and the American people, just now, are much in need of one.” That… More

On Hamilton and Popular Government

– Public Interest 109 (Fall 1992), 109–13.
Excerpt: Alexander Hamilton has never been a popular hero among his fellow citizens. When visiting the capital city, they mount the tour buses that take them to the Capitol, the White… More

Solving the Problem of Democracy

– South Africa's Crisis of Constitutional Democracy: Can the U.S. Constitution Help?, Robert A. Licht and Bertus de Villiers, eds. (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1994), 180–200; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Some years ago, before an audience of federal judges and law professors, I said that there probably was not a law school in the United States that did not offer a course in… More

We Are the World?

– National Review, February 26, 1996.
Excerpt: One would never know from the list of celebrities attending the recent “State of the World Forum,” sponsored by the Gorbachev Foundation U.S.A., that there was a time… More

Taking Virtue Seriously

– Public Interest 128 (Summer 1997), 122–26.
Excerpt: In 1790-91, Supreme Court Justice James Wilson delivered a series of lectures on the law at what was to become the University of Pennsylvania and before an audience that included… More

Constitutionalism and Multiculturalism

– Multiculturalism and American Democracy, Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman, eds. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 91–111; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, very much feared that liberty and equality would be at war with each other; today there is a tendency among some intellectuals to think… More

Alexis de Tocqueville

– The American Enterprise (November/December 1999).
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in France in 1805, the son of aristocrats. During the French Revolution, his parents had been imprisoned, and his mother’s father and grandfather had… More

Constitutionalism: Old and New

– The Liberal Tradition in Focus: Problems and New Perspectives, João Carlos Espada, Marc F. Plattner, and Adam Wolfson, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000), 17–26.
The Liberal Tradition in Focus is a collection of essays by prominent scholars in their fields on the nature of liberalism at the close of the twentieth century. Using a variety of… More

The Cultivation of Citizenship

– Public Morality, Civic Virtue, and the Problem of Modern Liberalism, T. William Boxx and Gary M. Quinlivan, eds. (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), reprinted in Citizens and Statesmen: An Annual Review of Political Theory and Public Life, James R. Harrigan, ed. (2006).
Liberalism, the central political philosophy of American and Western society, is a philosophy based on human freedom, equality, and the natural rights of individuals. Yet liberalism needs… More

Making Patriots

– University of Chicago Press, 2001; paperback edition, 2002.
Although Samuel Johnson once remarked that “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels,” over the course of the history of the United States we have seen our share of heroes:… More

America—Idea or Nation?

– Wilfred M. McClay, Public Interest (Fall 2001).
Excerpt: At first glance, American patriotism seems a simple matter. But it is simple only until one actually starts to think about it, inquire after its sources, and investigate its… More

Imperishable Insights by Bill Buckley

– William F. Buckley, New Criterion (September 2001).
Excerpt: This (too) short book grew out of an essay written by the distinguished political philosopher Walter Berns for The Public Interest. What it does is to probe into American… More

Ancients and Moderns: The Emergence of Modern Constitutionalism

– Institute for the Study of the Americas, March 2002; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Walter Berns, John M. Olin University Professor emeritus at Georgetown University, investigates the history of modern constitutionalism or limited government. Particularly interested in the… More

The Perennial Trashing of Bourgeois Democracy

– Academic Questions 15:4 (September 1, 2002), 23–26; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: What began in nineteenth-century Britain as a serious critique of the new liberal democracy became, in twentieth-century America, a contemptuous “bourgeois bashing,”… More

Can Patriotism Survive Democracy?

– Jeremy Rabkin, Azure 5763:15 (Summer 2003).
Excerpt: The title is misleading. If you are seeking instruction on how to make people patriots, you will find Walter Berns’ Making Patriots disappointing. What it presents, rather, is a… More

The Libertarian Dodge

– Claremont Review of Books, September 2003; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: There is a question as to why the Beacon Press would choose to publish this collection of Wendy Kaminer’s essays. It is not enough to say, as she does in a prefatory note,… More

Sticks and Stones?

– Commentary, June 2005.
Excerpt: In 1925, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, and in some circles became famous for saying, “if, in the long run, the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to… More

Democracy and the Constitution: Essays by Walter Berns

– Audio, book forum, American Enterprise Institute, September 29, 2006.
AEI scholar and historian Walter Berns has spent his academic career defending the United States Constitution. In his latest collection of essays, Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press,… More

Patriotism and Multiculturalism

– The Many Faces of Patriotism, Philip Abbott, ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 3–14.
In the decades following the end of the Cold War, scholars turned their attention to reevaluating patriotism. Many saw both its ability to serve as a cohesive force and its desirability as… More

On George Kateb’s Patriotism

– Cato Unbound, March 12, 2008.
Excerpt: Professor Kateb begins by defining patriotism as love of country; fair enough. He then distinguishes this love from that of a child’s for his parents, pointing out that,… More

Patriots

– Audio, "Dialogue," Woodrow Wilson Center.
In ancient Sparta patriotism meant a commitment to warfare and a view of the state as divine. For modern Americans patriotism is set on a much different and abstract basis. Walter Berns… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

Essays

Professors and Politics

– Cornell Daily Sun, May 4, 1962.
Excerpt: The purpose of the university places it in a position of uneasy tension with the community, and the tension is likely to increase with the extent to which this purpose is… More

The New Left and Liberal Democracy

– How Democratic is America?: Responses to the New Left Challenge, Robert A. Goldwin, ed. (Skokie, IL: Rand McNally, 1971).
Outgrowth of a conference held under the auspices of the Public Affairs Conference Center of Kenyon College.

Two Mills and Liberty

– Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1975.
Excerpt: “On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill” tells the astonishing story of John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” which is a story about the book (one of the… More

Religion and the Founding Principle

– The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, Robert H. Horwitz, ed. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1977, 1986).

The Need for Public Authority

– Modern Age 24:1 (Winter 1980); reprinted in Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative and Libertarian Debate, George W. Carey, ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984; reprinted, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2004).
Excerpt: Some ten years ago, I resigned from Cornel1 University; at that time the university had just been taken over by students carrying guns, and first the administration and then the… More

Taking Rights Frivolously

– Liberalism Reconsidered, Douglas MacLean and Claudia Mills, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983).

The American Presidency: Statesmanship and Constitutionalism in Balance

– Imprimis, Hillsdale College, January 1983. Reprinted in Educating for Liberty: The Best of Imprimis, 1972–2002, Douglas A. Jeffrey, ed. (Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale College Press, 2002).
Excerpt: America today is in need of leadership of the sort provided in the past by our greatest presidents, presidents whom we mean to honor and praise when we denominate them… More

In Defense of Political Philosophy: Two Letters to Walter Berns

– In Harry Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984)
Excerpt: IN HIS ‘REPLY TO Harry Jaffa” (National Review, January 22, 1982), Walter Berns writes: There is no substance to Harry Jaffa’s criticism of me. In 1972, he wrote that the… More

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,”… More

Equally Endowed With Rights

– Justice and Equality Here and Now, Frank Lucash, ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 151–71.

Re-evaluating the Open Society

– Order, Freedom, and the Polity: Critical Essays on the Open Society, George W. Carey, ed. (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute and University Press of America, 1986).
Abstract: A series of essays which critically examine the concept of the open society as ‘the crowning achievement of Western civilization.’ Analyzes the open society theory… More

The New Pursuit of Happiness

– Public Interest 86 (Winter 1987), 65–76.
Excerpt: Landing in New York in May 1831, Gustave de Beaumont was struck by the “busyness” of the place. “It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” he wrote his father, “a great people… More

Taking the Framers Seriously

– William Michael Treanor, The University of Chicago Law Review 55:3 (Summer, 1988), pp. 1016–40.
Abstract: This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution… More

What Does the Constitution Expect of Jews?

– The Judeo-Christian Tradition and the U.S. Constitution: Proceedings of a Conference at the Annenberg Research Institute, November 16–17, 1987, David M. Goldenberg, ed. (Philadelphia: Annenberg Research Institute, 1989), 21–27; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: The short answer to this question is that the Constitution expects of Jews what it expects of everybody. George Washington expressed this perfectly in his famous (and very… More

Blacks, Women & Jews & the Constitution

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, April 19, 1990.
A panel discusses Robert Goldwin’s new book, Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views.

Review Essay: Locke and the Legislative Principle

– Public Interest 100 (Summer 1990), 147–56.
Excerpt: What is the role of Congress in our system of constitutional government and how well does it perform that role? To begin with, Congress is not Parliament, which means that ours is… More

Taking the Constitution Seriously

– Simon and Schuster, 1987; reprinted, Madison Books, 1992.
Walter Berns’s book is must reading for every judge, law student, or member of the general public who wants to know more about our Federal Constitution. Berns concisely and clearly… More

Natural Law, Natural Rights

– Washington Times, September 9, 1991. University of Cincinnati Law Review 61:1 (1992–93).
Excerpt: “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty,” said Abraham Lincoln, “and the American people, just now, are much in need of one.” That… More

On Hamilton and Popular Government

– Public Interest 109 (Fall 1992), 109–13.
Excerpt: Alexander Hamilton has never been a popular hero among his fellow citizens. When visiting the capital city, they mount the tour buses that take them to the Capitol, the White… More

Solving the Problem of Democracy

– South Africa's Crisis of Constitutional Democracy: Can the U.S. Constitution Help?, Robert A. Licht and Bertus de Villiers, eds. (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1994), 180–200; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Some years ago, before an audience of federal judges and law professors, I said that there probably was not a law school in the United States that did not offer a course in… More

We Are the World?

– National Review, February 26, 1996.
Excerpt: One would never know from the list of celebrities attending the recent “State of the World Forum,” sponsored by the Gorbachev Foundation U.S.A., that there was a time… More

Taking Virtue Seriously

– Public Interest 128 (Summer 1997), 122–26.
Excerpt: In 1790-91, Supreme Court Justice James Wilson delivered a series of lectures on the law at what was to become the University of Pennsylvania and before an audience that included… More

Constitutionalism and Multiculturalism

– Multiculturalism and American Democracy, Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman, eds. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 91–111; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, very much feared that liberty and equality would be at war with each other; today there is a tendency among some intellectuals to think… More

Alexis de Tocqueville

– The American Enterprise (November/December 1999).
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in France in 1805, the son of aristocrats. During the French Revolution, his parents had been imprisoned, and his mother’s father and grandfather had… More

Constitutionalism: Old and New

– The Liberal Tradition in Focus: Problems and New Perspectives, João Carlos Espada, Marc F. Plattner, and Adam Wolfson, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000), 17–26.
The Liberal Tradition in Focus is a collection of essays by prominent scholars in their fields on the nature of liberalism at the close of the twentieth century. Using a variety of… More

The Cultivation of Citizenship

– Public Morality, Civic Virtue, and the Problem of Modern Liberalism, T. William Boxx and Gary M. Quinlivan, eds. (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), reprinted in Citizens and Statesmen: An Annual Review of Political Theory and Public Life, James R. Harrigan, ed. (2006).
Liberalism, the central political philosophy of American and Western society, is a philosophy based on human freedom, equality, and the natural rights of individuals. Yet liberalism needs… More

Making Patriots

– University of Chicago Press, 2001; paperback edition, 2002.
Although Samuel Johnson once remarked that “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels,” over the course of the history of the United States we have seen our share of heroes:… More

America—Idea or Nation?

– Wilfred M. McClay, Public Interest (Fall 2001).
Excerpt: At first glance, American patriotism seems a simple matter. But it is simple only until one actually starts to think about it, inquire after its sources, and investigate its… More

Imperishable Insights by Bill Buckley

– William F. Buckley, New Criterion (September 2001).
Excerpt: This (too) short book grew out of an essay written by the distinguished political philosopher Walter Berns for The Public Interest. What it does is to probe into American… More

Ancients and Moderns: The Emergence of Modern Constitutionalism

– Institute for the Study of the Americas, March 2002; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Walter Berns, John M. Olin University Professor emeritus at Georgetown University, investigates the history of modern constitutionalism or limited government. Particularly interested in the… More

The Perennial Trashing of Bourgeois Democracy

– Academic Questions 15:4 (September 1, 2002), 23–26; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: What began in nineteenth-century Britain as a serious critique of the new liberal democracy became, in twentieth-century America, a contemptuous “bourgeois bashing,”… More

Can Patriotism Survive Democracy?

– Jeremy Rabkin, Azure 5763:15 (Summer 2003).
Excerpt: The title is misleading. If you are seeking instruction on how to make people patriots, you will find Walter Berns’ Making Patriots disappointing. What it presents, rather, is a… More

The Libertarian Dodge

– Claremont Review of Books, September 2003; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: There is a question as to why the Beacon Press would choose to publish this collection of Wendy Kaminer’s essays. It is not enough to say, as she does in a prefatory note,… More

Sticks and Stones?

– Commentary, June 2005.
Excerpt: In 1925, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, and in some circles became famous for saying, “if, in the long run, the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to… More

Democracy and the Constitution: Essays by Walter Berns

– Audio, book forum, American Enterprise Institute, September 29, 2006.
AEI scholar and historian Walter Berns has spent his academic career defending the United States Constitution. In his latest collection of essays, Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press,… More

Patriotism and Multiculturalism

– The Many Faces of Patriotism, Philip Abbott, ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 3–14.
In the decades following the end of the Cold War, scholars turned their attention to reevaluating patriotism. Many saw both its ability to serve as a cohesive force and its desirability as… More

On George Kateb’s Patriotism

– Cato Unbound, March 12, 2008.
Excerpt: Professor Kateb begins by defining patriotism as love of country; fair enough. He then distinguishes this love from that of a child’s for his parents, pointing out that,… More

Patriots

– Audio, "Dialogue," Woodrow Wilson Center.
In ancient Sparta patriotism meant a commitment to warfare and a view of the state as divine. For modern Americans patriotism is set on a much different and abstract basis. Walter Berns… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

Commentary

Professors and Politics

– Cornell Daily Sun, May 4, 1962.
Excerpt: The purpose of the university places it in a position of uneasy tension with the community, and the tension is likely to increase with the extent to which this purpose is… More

The New Left and Liberal Democracy

– How Democratic is America?: Responses to the New Left Challenge, Robert A. Goldwin, ed. (Skokie, IL: Rand McNally, 1971).
Outgrowth of a conference held under the auspices of the Public Affairs Conference Center of Kenyon College.

Two Mills and Liberty

– Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1975.
Excerpt: “On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill” tells the astonishing story of John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” which is a story about the book (one of the… More

Religion and the Founding Principle

– The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, Robert H. Horwitz, ed. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1977, 1986).

The Need for Public Authority

– Modern Age 24:1 (Winter 1980); reprinted in Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative and Libertarian Debate, George W. Carey, ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984; reprinted, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2004).
Excerpt: Some ten years ago, I resigned from Cornel1 University; at that time the university had just been taken over by students carrying guns, and first the administration and then the… More

Taking Rights Frivolously

– Liberalism Reconsidered, Douglas MacLean and Claudia Mills, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983).

The American Presidency: Statesmanship and Constitutionalism in Balance

– Imprimis, Hillsdale College, January 1983. Reprinted in Educating for Liberty: The Best of Imprimis, 1972–2002, Douglas A. Jeffrey, ed. (Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale College Press, 2002).
Excerpt: America today is in need of leadership of the sort provided in the past by our greatest presidents, presidents whom we mean to honor and praise when we denominate them… More

In Defense of Political Philosophy: Two Letters to Walter Berns

– In Harry Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984)
Excerpt: IN HIS ‘REPLY TO Harry Jaffa” (National Review, January 22, 1982), Walter Berns writes: There is no substance to Harry Jaffa’s criticism of me. In 1972, he wrote that the… More

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,”… More

Equally Endowed With Rights

– Justice and Equality Here and Now, Frank Lucash, ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 151–71.

Re-evaluating the Open Society

– Order, Freedom, and the Polity: Critical Essays on the Open Society, George W. Carey, ed. (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute and University Press of America, 1986).
Abstract: A series of essays which critically examine the concept of the open society as ‘the crowning achievement of Western civilization.’ Analyzes the open society theory… More

The New Pursuit of Happiness

– Public Interest 86 (Winter 1987), 65–76.
Excerpt: Landing in New York in May 1831, Gustave de Beaumont was struck by the “busyness” of the place. “It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” he wrote his father, “a great people… More

Taking the Framers Seriously

– William Michael Treanor, The University of Chicago Law Review 55:3 (Summer, 1988), pp. 1016–40.
Abstract: This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution… More

What Does the Constitution Expect of Jews?

– The Judeo-Christian Tradition and the U.S. Constitution: Proceedings of a Conference at the Annenberg Research Institute, November 16–17, 1987, David M. Goldenberg, ed. (Philadelphia: Annenberg Research Institute, 1989), 21–27; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: The short answer to this question is that the Constitution expects of Jews what it expects of everybody. George Washington expressed this perfectly in his famous (and very… More

Blacks, Women & Jews & the Constitution

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, April 19, 1990.
A panel discusses Robert Goldwin’s new book, Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views.

Review Essay: Locke and the Legislative Principle

– Public Interest 100 (Summer 1990), 147–56.
Excerpt: What is the role of Congress in our system of constitutional government and how well does it perform that role? To begin with, Congress is not Parliament, which means that ours is… More

Taking the Constitution Seriously

– Simon and Schuster, 1987; reprinted, Madison Books, 1992.
Walter Berns’s book is must reading for every judge, law student, or member of the general public who wants to know more about our Federal Constitution. Berns concisely and clearly… More

Natural Law, Natural Rights

– Washington Times, September 9, 1991. University of Cincinnati Law Review 61:1 (1992–93).
Excerpt: “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty,” said Abraham Lincoln, “and the American people, just now, are much in need of one.” That… More

On Hamilton and Popular Government

– Public Interest 109 (Fall 1992), 109–13.
Excerpt: Alexander Hamilton has never been a popular hero among his fellow citizens. When visiting the capital city, they mount the tour buses that take them to the Capitol, the White… More

Solving the Problem of Democracy

– South Africa's Crisis of Constitutional Democracy: Can the U.S. Constitution Help?, Robert A. Licht and Bertus de Villiers, eds. (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1994), 180–200; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Some years ago, before an audience of federal judges and law professors, I said that there probably was not a law school in the United States that did not offer a course in… More

We Are the World?

– National Review, February 26, 1996.
Excerpt: One would never know from the list of celebrities attending the recent “State of the World Forum,” sponsored by the Gorbachev Foundation U.S.A., that there was a time… More

Taking Virtue Seriously

– Public Interest 128 (Summer 1997), 122–26.
Excerpt: In 1790-91, Supreme Court Justice James Wilson delivered a series of lectures on the law at what was to become the University of Pennsylvania and before an audience that included… More

Constitutionalism and Multiculturalism

– Multiculturalism and American Democracy, Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman, eds. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 91–111; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, very much feared that liberty and equality would be at war with each other; today there is a tendency among some intellectuals to think… More

Alexis de Tocqueville

– The American Enterprise (November/December 1999).
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in France in 1805, the son of aristocrats. During the French Revolution, his parents had been imprisoned, and his mother’s father and grandfather had… More

Constitutionalism: Old and New

– The Liberal Tradition in Focus: Problems and New Perspectives, João Carlos Espada, Marc F. Plattner, and Adam Wolfson, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000), 17–26.
The Liberal Tradition in Focus is a collection of essays by prominent scholars in their fields on the nature of liberalism at the close of the twentieth century. Using a variety of… More

The Cultivation of Citizenship

– Public Morality, Civic Virtue, and the Problem of Modern Liberalism, T. William Boxx and Gary M. Quinlivan, eds. (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), reprinted in Citizens and Statesmen: An Annual Review of Political Theory and Public Life, James R. Harrigan, ed. (2006).
Liberalism, the central political philosophy of American and Western society, is a philosophy based on human freedom, equality, and the natural rights of individuals. Yet liberalism needs… More

Making Patriots

– University of Chicago Press, 2001; paperback edition, 2002.
Although Samuel Johnson once remarked that “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels,” over the course of the history of the United States we have seen our share of heroes:… More

America—Idea or Nation?

– Wilfred M. McClay, Public Interest (Fall 2001).
Excerpt: At first glance, American patriotism seems a simple matter. But it is simple only until one actually starts to think about it, inquire after its sources, and investigate its… More

Imperishable Insights by Bill Buckley

– William F. Buckley, New Criterion (September 2001).
Excerpt: This (too) short book grew out of an essay written by the distinguished political philosopher Walter Berns for The Public Interest. What it does is to probe into American… More

Ancients and Moderns: The Emergence of Modern Constitutionalism

– Institute for the Study of the Americas, March 2002; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Walter Berns, John M. Olin University Professor emeritus at Georgetown University, investigates the history of modern constitutionalism or limited government. Particularly interested in the… More

The Perennial Trashing of Bourgeois Democracy

– Academic Questions 15:4 (September 1, 2002), 23–26; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: What began in nineteenth-century Britain as a serious critique of the new liberal democracy became, in twentieth-century America, a contemptuous “bourgeois bashing,”… More

Can Patriotism Survive Democracy?

– Jeremy Rabkin, Azure 5763:15 (Summer 2003).
Excerpt: The title is misleading. If you are seeking instruction on how to make people patriots, you will find Walter Berns’ Making Patriots disappointing. What it presents, rather, is a… More

The Libertarian Dodge

– Claremont Review of Books, September 2003; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: There is a question as to why the Beacon Press would choose to publish this collection of Wendy Kaminer’s essays. It is not enough to say, as she does in a prefatory note,… More

Sticks and Stones?

– Commentary, June 2005.
Excerpt: In 1925, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, and in some circles became famous for saying, “if, in the long run, the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to… More

Democracy and the Constitution: Essays by Walter Berns

– Audio, book forum, American Enterprise Institute, September 29, 2006.
AEI scholar and historian Walter Berns has spent his academic career defending the United States Constitution. In his latest collection of essays, Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press,… More

Patriotism and Multiculturalism

– The Many Faces of Patriotism, Philip Abbott, ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 3–14.
In the decades following the end of the Cold War, scholars turned their attention to reevaluating patriotism. Many saw both its ability to serve as a cohesive force and its desirability as… More

On George Kateb’s Patriotism

– Cato Unbound, March 12, 2008.
Excerpt: Professor Kateb begins by defining patriotism as love of country; fair enough. He then distinguishes this love from that of a child’s for his parents, pointing out that,… More

Patriots

– Audio, "Dialogue," Woodrow Wilson Center.
In ancient Sparta patriotism meant a commitment to warfare and a view of the state as divine. For modern Americans patriotism is set on a much different and abstract basis. Walter Berns… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

Multimedia

Professors and Politics

– Cornell Daily Sun, May 4, 1962.
Excerpt: The purpose of the university places it in a position of uneasy tension with the community, and the tension is likely to increase with the extent to which this purpose is… More

The New Left and Liberal Democracy

– How Democratic is America?: Responses to the New Left Challenge, Robert A. Goldwin, ed. (Skokie, IL: Rand McNally, 1971).
Outgrowth of a conference held under the auspices of the Public Affairs Conference Center of Kenyon College.

Two Mills and Liberty

– Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1975.
Excerpt: “On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill” tells the astonishing story of John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” which is a story about the book (one of the… More

Religion and the Founding Principle

– The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, Robert H. Horwitz, ed. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1977, 1986).

The Need for Public Authority

– Modern Age 24:1 (Winter 1980); reprinted in Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative and Libertarian Debate, George W. Carey, ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984; reprinted, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2004).
Excerpt: Some ten years ago, I resigned from Cornel1 University; at that time the university had just been taken over by students carrying guns, and first the administration and then the… More

Taking Rights Frivolously

– Liberalism Reconsidered, Douglas MacLean and Claudia Mills, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983).

The American Presidency: Statesmanship and Constitutionalism in Balance

– Imprimis, Hillsdale College, January 1983. Reprinted in Educating for Liberty: The Best of Imprimis, 1972–2002, Douglas A. Jeffrey, ed. (Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale College Press, 2002).
Excerpt: America today is in need of leadership of the sort provided in the past by our greatest presidents, presidents whom we mean to honor and praise when we denominate them… More

In Defense of Political Philosophy: Two Letters to Walter Berns

– In Harry Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984)
Excerpt: IN HIS ‘REPLY TO Harry Jaffa” (National Review, January 22, 1982), Walter Berns writes: There is no substance to Harry Jaffa’s criticism of me. In 1972, he wrote that the… More

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,”… More

Equally Endowed With Rights

– Justice and Equality Here and Now, Frank Lucash, ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 151–71.

Re-evaluating the Open Society

– Order, Freedom, and the Polity: Critical Essays on the Open Society, George W. Carey, ed. (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute and University Press of America, 1986).
Abstract: A series of essays which critically examine the concept of the open society as ‘the crowning achievement of Western civilization.’ Analyzes the open society theory… More

The New Pursuit of Happiness

– Public Interest 86 (Winter 1987), 65–76.
Excerpt: Landing in New York in May 1831, Gustave de Beaumont was struck by the “busyness” of the place. “It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” he wrote his father, “a great people… More

Taking the Framers Seriously

– William Michael Treanor, The University of Chicago Law Review 55:3 (Summer, 1988), pp. 1016–40.
Abstract: This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution… More

What Does the Constitution Expect of Jews?

– The Judeo-Christian Tradition and the U.S. Constitution: Proceedings of a Conference at the Annenberg Research Institute, November 16–17, 1987, David M. Goldenberg, ed. (Philadelphia: Annenberg Research Institute, 1989), 21–27; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: The short answer to this question is that the Constitution expects of Jews what it expects of everybody. George Washington expressed this perfectly in his famous (and very… More

Blacks, Women & Jews & the Constitution

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, April 19, 1990.
A panel discusses Robert Goldwin’s new book, Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views.

Review Essay: Locke and the Legislative Principle

– Public Interest 100 (Summer 1990), 147–56.
Excerpt: What is the role of Congress in our system of constitutional government and how well does it perform that role? To begin with, Congress is not Parliament, which means that ours is… More

Taking the Constitution Seriously

– Simon and Schuster, 1987; reprinted, Madison Books, 1992.
Walter Berns’s book is must reading for every judge, law student, or member of the general public who wants to know more about our Federal Constitution. Berns concisely and clearly… More

Natural Law, Natural Rights

– Washington Times, September 9, 1991. University of Cincinnati Law Review 61:1 (1992–93).
Excerpt: “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty,” said Abraham Lincoln, “and the American people, just now, are much in need of one.” That… More

On Hamilton and Popular Government

– Public Interest 109 (Fall 1992), 109–13.
Excerpt: Alexander Hamilton has never been a popular hero among his fellow citizens. When visiting the capital city, they mount the tour buses that take them to the Capitol, the White… More

Solving the Problem of Democracy

– South Africa's Crisis of Constitutional Democracy: Can the U.S. Constitution Help?, Robert A. Licht and Bertus de Villiers, eds. (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1994), 180–200; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Some years ago, before an audience of federal judges and law professors, I said that there probably was not a law school in the United States that did not offer a course in… More

We Are the World?

– National Review, February 26, 1996.
Excerpt: One would never know from the list of celebrities attending the recent “State of the World Forum,” sponsored by the Gorbachev Foundation U.S.A., that there was a time… More

Taking Virtue Seriously

– Public Interest 128 (Summer 1997), 122–26.
Excerpt: In 1790-91, Supreme Court Justice James Wilson delivered a series of lectures on the law at what was to become the University of Pennsylvania and before an audience that included… More

Constitutionalism and Multiculturalism

– Multiculturalism and American Democracy, Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman, eds. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 91–111; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, very much feared that liberty and equality would be at war with each other; today there is a tendency among some intellectuals to think… More

Alexis de Tocqueville

– The American Enterprise (November/December 1999).
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in France in 1805, the son of aristocrats. During the French Revolution, his parents had been imprisoned, and his mother’s father and grandfather had… More

Constitutionalism: Old and New

– The Liberal Tradition in Focus: Problems and New Perspectives, João Carlos Espada, Marc F. Plattner, and Adam Wolfson, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000), 17–26.
The Liberal Tradition in Focus is a collection of essays by prominent scholars in their fields on the nature of liberalism at the close of the twentieth century. Using a variety of… More

The Cultivation of Citizenship

– Public Morality, Civic Virtue, and the Problem of Modern Liberalism, T. William Boxx and Gary M. Quinlivan, eds. (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), reprinted in Citizens and Statesmen: An Annual Review of Political Theory and Public Life, James R. Harrigan, ed. (2006).
Liberalism, the central political philosophy of American and Western society, is a philosophy based on human freedom, equality, and the natural rights of individuals. Yet liberalism needs… More

Making Patriots

– University of Chicago Press, 2001; paperback edition, 2002.
Although Samuel Johnson once remarked that “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels,” over the course of the history of the United States we have seen our share of heroes:… More

America—Idea or Nation?

– Wilfred M. McClay, Public Interest (Fall 2001).
Excerpt: At first glance, American patriotism seems a simple matter. But it is simple only until one actually starts to think about it, inquire after its sources, and investigate its… More

Imperishable Insights by Bill Buckley

– William F. Buckley, New Criterion (September 2001).
Excerpt: This (too) short book grew out of an essay written by the distinguished political philosopher Walter Berns for The Public Interest. What it does is to probe into American… More

Ancients and Moderns: The Emergence of Modern Constitutionalism

– Institute for the Study of the Americas, March 2002; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Walter Berns, John M. Olin University Professor emeritus at Georgetown University, investigates the history of modern constitutionalism or limited government. Particularly interested in the… More

The Perennial Trashing of Bourgeois Democracy

– Academic Questions 15:4 (September 1, 2002), 23–26; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: What began in nineteenth-century Britain as a serious critique of the new liberal democracy became, in twentieth-century America, a contemptuous “bourgeois bashing,”… More

Can Patriotism Survive Democracy?

– Jeremy Rabkin, Azure 5763:15 (Summer 2003).
Excerpt: The title is misleading. If you are seeking instruction on how to make people patriots, you will find Walter Berns’ Making Patriots disappointing. What it presents, rather, is a… More

The Libertarian Dodge

– Claremont Review of Books, September 2003; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: There is a question as to why the Beacon Press would choose to publish this collection of Wendy Kaminer’s essays. It is not enough to say, as she does in a prefatory note,… More

Sticks and Stones?

– Commentary, June 2005.
Excerpt: In 1925, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, and in some circles became famous for saying, “if, in the long run, the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to… More

Democracy and the Constitution: Essays by Walter Berns

– Audio, book forum, American Enterprise Institute, September 29, 2006.
AEI scholar and historian Walter Berns has spent his academic career defending the United States Constitution. In his latest collection of essays, Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press,… More

Patriotism and Multiculturalism

– The Many Faces of Patriotism, Philip Abbott, ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 3–14.
In the decades following the end of the Cold War, scholars turned their attention to reevaluating patriotism. Many saw both its ability to serve as a cohesive force and its desirability as… More

On George Kateb’s Patriotism

– Cato Unbound, March 12, 2008.
Excerpt: Professor Kateb begins by defining patriotism as love of country; fair enough. He then distinguishes this love from that of a child’s for his parents, pointing out that,… More

Patriots

– Audio, "Dialogue," Woodrow Wilson Center.
In ancient Sparta patriotism meant a commitment to warfare and a view of the state as divine. For modern Americans patriotism is set on a much different and abstract basis. Walter Berns… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

Teaching

Professors and Politics

– Cornell Daily Sun, May 4, 1962.
Excerpt: The purpose of the university places it in a position of uneasy tension with the community, and the tension is likely to increase with the extent to which this purpose is… More

The New Left and Liberal Democracy

– How Democratic is America?: Responses to the New Left Challenge, Robert A. Goldwin, ed. (Skokie, IL: Rand McNally, 1971).
Outgrowth of a conference held under the auspices of the Public Affairs Conference Center of Kenyon College.

Two Mills and Liberty

– Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1975.
Excerpt: “On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill” tells the astonishing story of John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” which is a story about the book (one of the… More

Religion and the Founding Principle

– The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, Robert H. Horwitz, ed. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1977, 1986).

The Need for Public Authority

– Modern Age 24:1 (Winter 1980); reprinted in Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative and Libertarian Debate, George W. Carey, ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984; reprinted, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2004).
Excerpt: Some ten years ago, I resigned from Cornel1 University; at that time the university had just been taken over by students carrying guns, and first the administration and then the… More

Taking Rights Frivolously

– Liberalism Reconsidered, Douglas MacLean and Claudia Mills, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983).

The American Presidency: Statesmanship and Constitutionalism in Balance

– Imprimis, Hillsdale College, January 1983. Reprinted in Educating for Liberty: The Best of Imprimis, 1972–2002, Douglas A. Jeffrey, ed. (Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale College Press, 2002).
Excerpt: America today is in need of leadership of the sort provided in the past by our greatest presidents, presidents whom we mean to honor and praise when we denominate them… More

In Defense of Political Philosophy: Two Letters to Walter Berns

– In Harry Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984)
Excerpt: IN HIS ‘REPLY TO Harry Jaffa” (National Review, January 22, 1982), Walter Berns writes: There is no substance to Harry Jaffa’s criticism of me. In 1972, he wrote that the… More

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,”… More

Equally Endowed With Rights

– Justice and Equality Here and Now, Frank Lucash, ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 151–71.

Re-evaluating the Open Society

– Order, Freedom, and the Polity: Critical Essays on the Open Society, George W. Carey, ed. (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute and University Press of America, 1986).
Abstract: A series of essays which critically examine the concept of the open society as ‘the crowning achievement of Western civilization.’ Analyzes the open society theory… More

The New Pursuit of Happiness

– Public Interest 86 (Winter 1987), 65–76.
Excerpt: Landing in New York in May 1831, Gustave de Beaumont was struck by the “busyness” of the place. “It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” he wrote his father, “a great people… More

Taking the Framers Seriously

– William Michael Treanor, The University of Chicago Law Review 55:3 (Summer, 1988), pp. 1016–40.
Abstract: This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution… More

What Does the Constitution Expect of Jews?

– The Judeo-Christian Tradition and the U.S. Constitution: Proceedings of a Conference at the Annenberg Research Institute, November 16–17, 1987, David M. Goldenberg, ed. (Philadelphia: Annenberg Research Institute, 1989), 21–27; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: The short answer to this question is that the Constitution expects of Jews what it expects of everybody. George Washington expressed this perfectly in his famous (and very… More

Blacks, Women & Jews & the Constitution

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, April 19, 1990.
A panel discusses Robert Goldwin’s new book, Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views.

Review Essay: Locke and the Legislative Principle

– Public Interest 100 (Summer 1990), 147–56.
Excerpt: What is the role of Congress in our system of constitutional government and how well does it perform that role? To begin with, Congress is not Parliament, which means that ours is… More

Taking the Constitution Seriously

– Simon and Schuster, 1987; reprinted, Madison Books, 1992.
Walter Berns’s book is must reading for every judge, law student, or member of the general public who wants to know more about our Federal Constitution. Berns concisely and clearly… More

Natural Law, Natural Rights

– Washington Times, September 9, 1991. University of Cincinnati Law Review 61:1 (1992–93).
Excerpt: “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty,” said Abraham Lincoln, “and the American people, just now, are much in need of one.” That… More

On Hamilton and Popular Government

– Public Interest 109 (Fall 1992), 109–13.
Excerpt: Alexander Hamilton has never been a popular hero among his fellow citizens. When visiting the capital city, they mount the tour buses that take them to the Capitol, the White… More

Solving the Problem of Democracy

– South Africa's Crisis of Constitutional Democracy: Can the U.S. Constitution Help?, Robert A. Licht and Bertus de Villiers, eds. (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1994), 180–200; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Some years ago, before an audience of federal judges and law professors, I said that there probably was not a law school in the United States that did not offer a course in… More

We Are the World?

– National Review, February 26, 1996.
Excerpt: One would never know from the list of celebrities attending the recent “State of the World Forum,” sponsored by the Gorbachev Foundation U.S.A., that there was a time… More

Taking Virtue Seriously

– Public Interest 128 (Summer 1997), 122–26.
Excerpt: In 1790-91, Supreme Court Justice James Wilson delivered a series of lectures on the law at what was to become the University of Pennsylvania and before an audience that included… More

Constitutionalism and Multiculturalism

– Multiculturalism and American Democracy, Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman, eds. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 91–111; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, very much feared that liberty and equality would be at war with each other; today there is a tendency among some intellectuals to think… More

Alexis de Tocqueville

– The American Enterprise (November/December 1999).
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in France in 1805, the son of aristocrats. During the French Revolution, his parents had been imprisoned, and his mother’s father and grandfather had… More

Constitutionalism: Old and New

– The Liberal Tradition in Focus: Problems and New Perspectives, João Carlos Espada, Marc F. Plattner, and Adam Wolfson, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000), 17–26.
The Liberal Tradition in Focus is a collection of essays by prominent scholars in their fields on the nature of liberalism at the close of the twentieth century. Using a variety of… More

The Cultivation of Citizenship

– Public Morality, Civic Virtue, and the Problem of Modern Liberalism, T. William Boxx and Gary M. Quinlivan, eds. (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), reprinted in Citizens and Statesmen: An Annual Review of Political Theory and Public Life, James R. Harrigan, ed. (2006).
Liberalism, the central political philosophy of American and Western society, is a philosophy based on human freedom, equality, and the natural rights of individuals. Yet liberalism needs… More

Making Patriots

– University of Chicago Press, 2001; paperback edition, 2002.
Although Samuel Johnson once remarked that “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels,” over the course of the history of the United States we have seen our share of heroes:… More

America—Idea or Nation?

– Wilfred M. McClay, Public Interest (Fall 2001).
Excerpt: At first glance, American patriotism seems a simple matter. But it is simple only until one actually starts to think about it, inquire after its sources, and investigate its… More

Imperishable Insights by Bill Buckley

– William F. Buckley, New Criterion (September 2001).
Excerpt: This (too) short book grew out of an essay written by the distinguished political philosopher Walter Berns for The Public Interest. What it does is to probe into American… More

Ancients and Moderns: The Emergence of Modern Constitutionalism

– Institute for the Study of the Americas, March 2002; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Walter Berns, John M. Olin University Professor emeritus at Georgetown University, investigates the history of modern constitutionalism or limited government. Particularly interested in the… More

The Perennial Trashing of Bourgeois Democracy

– Academic Questions 15:4 (September 1, 2002), 23–26; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: What began in nineteenth-century Britain as a serious critique of the new liberal democracy became, in twentieth-century America, a contemptuous “bourgeois bashing,”… More

Can Patriotism Survive Democracy?

– Jeremy Rabkin, Azure 5763:15 (Summer 2003).
Excerpt: The title is misleading. If you are seeking instruction on how to make people patriots, you will find Walter Berns’ Making Patriots disappointing. What it presents, rather, is a… More

The Libertarian Dodge

– Claremont Review of Books, September 2003; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: There is a question as to why the Beacon Press would choose to publish this collection of Wendy Kaminer’s essays. It is not enough to say, as she does in a prefatory note,… More

Sticks and Stones?

– Commentary, June 2005.
Excerpt: In 1925, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, and in some circles became famous for saying, “if, in the long run, the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to… More

Democracy and the Constitution: Essays by Walter Berns

– Audio, book forum, American Enterprise Institute, September 29, 2006.
AEI scholar and historian Walter Berns has spent his academic career defending the United States Constitution. In his latest collection of essays, Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press,… More

Patriotism and Multiculturalism

– The Many Faces of Patriotism, Philip Abbott, ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 3–14.
In the decades following the end of the Cold War, scholars turned their attention to reevaluating patriotism. Many saw both its ability to serve as a cohesive force and its desirability as… More

On George Kateb’s Patriotism

– Cato Unbound, March 12, 2008.
Excerpt: Professor Kateb begins by defining patriotism as love of country; fair enough. He then distinguishes this love from that of a child’s for his parents, pointing out that,… More

Patriots

– Audio, "Dialogue," Woodrow Wilson Center.
In ancient Sparta patriotism meant a commitment to warfare and a view of the state as divine. For modern Americans patriotism is set on a much different and abstract basis. Walter Berns… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More