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America is a nation that celebrates diversity and freedom of conscience. Yet, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed, democratic times often demand conformity. Nowadays, conformity might be enforced in the name of diversity itself, and go so far as to infringe on the rights of conscience, expression, association, and religious freedom. Americans have recently been confronted by this paradox in various ways, from federal health care mandates, to campus speech codes, to consumer boycotts, to public intimidation, to vexatious litigation, to private corporations dismissing employees for expressing certain political views. In this book, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together leading thinkers from a variety of disciplines to examine the manner and extent to which conformity is demanded by contemporary American law and social practice. Contributors also consider the long-term results of such demands for conformity for the health—and even survival—of a constitutional republic.

In this volume, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together the leading scholars who have sparked one of the most important intellectual and political movements of our times: the criticism of the progressive intellectual synthesis that has dominated American thought and politics over much of the last century, and has provided the framework in which the administrative state has expanded and flourished. The contributors address the most important questions raised by this movement: what is the meaning of progressivism? What is the nature of the Founders'Constitution and the progressive challenges to it? What is the significance of recent scholarship and public opinion that have arisen in opposition to the progressive vision? What are the implications of American progressivism for twenty-first century politics and policy? Progressive Challenges to the American Constitution addresses the growing doubt about the scope and sustainability of expanded government power.

This volume brings together leading thinkers who offer reflections on the place of Western civilization in the academy, at a time when there is indifference or even antipathy toward the study of the West at most institutions of higher learning. Alternative narratives—including multiculturalism, diversity, and sustainability—have come to the fore in the stead of Western civilization. The present volume is designed to explore the roots, extent, and long-term consequences of this educational climate: How and why did undergraduate education turn its back on what was once an important component of its mission? To what extent has such change affected the experience of undergraduates and the ability of colleges to educate citizens of a constitutional republic? What are the likely individual and social outcomes of such a shift in educational priorities? The volume's theme is, and will continue to be, the subject of national scholarly and media attention.

The recent economic crisis in the United States has highlighted a crisis of understanding. In this volume, Bradley C. S. Watson and Joseph Postell bring together some of America's most eminent thinkers on political economy—an increasingly overlooked field wherein political ideas and economic theories mutually inform each other. Only through a restoration of political economy can we reconnect economics to the human good. Economics as a discipline deals with the production and distribution of goods and services. Yet the study of economics can-indeed must—be employed in our striving for the best possible political order and way of life. Economic thinkers and political actors need once again to consider how the Constitution and basic principles of our government might give direction and discipline to our thinking about economic theories, and to the economic policies we choose to implement. The contributors are experts in economic history, and the history of economic ideas. They address basic themes of political economy, theoretical and practical: from the relationship between natural law and economics, to how our Founding Fathers approached economics, to questions of banking and monetary policy. Their insights will serve as trusty guides to future generations, as well as to our own.

Arguments over constitutional interpretation increasingly highlight the full range of political, moral, and cultural fault lines in American society. Yet all the contending parties claim fealty to the Constitution. This volume brings together some of America's leading scholars of constitutional originalism to reflect on the nature and significance of various approaches to constitutional interpretation and controversies. Throughout the book, the contributors highlight the moral and political dimensions of constitutional interpretation. In doing so, they bring constitutional interpretation and its attendant disputes down from the clouds, showing their relationship to the concerns of the citizen. In addition to matters of interpretation, the book deals with the proper role of the judiciary in a free society, the relationship of law to politics, and the relationship of constitutional originalism to the deepest concerns of political thought and philosophy.

In The West at War, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together renowned scholars and public policy experts to reflect on perhaps the most pressing problem of our time—the West's increasingly bloody conflict with forces that seek nothing less than its destruction. In eleven provocative chapters, contributors deal with the internal challenges and external conflicts facing Western civilization in the context of the'war on terror.'Ranging from the nature of Islam and the West, to ethics and terror, to the western way of warfare, the volume deals thematically with major issues raised by this conflict in a way that no other single-volume does. Contributors bring to bear arguments on the philosophic, political, religious, ethical, and policy dimensions of the war. As the title of the book suggests, this conflict implicates all of Western civilization, demonstrating that this not merely an'American'concern.

In Civil Rights and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy, Bradley Watson demonstrates the paradox of liberal democracy: that its cornerstone principles of equality and freedom are principles inherently directed toward undermining it. Modernity, beyond bringing definition to political equality, unleashed a whirlwind of individualism, which feeds the soul's basic impulse to rule without limitation including the limitation of consent. Here Watson begins his analysis of the foundations of liberalism, looking carefully and critically at the moral and political philosophies that justify modern civil rights litigation. He goes on to examine the judicial manifestations of the paradox of liberal democracy, seeking to bring a broad philosophical coherence to legal decision making in the United States and Canada. Finally, Watson illuminates the extent to which this decision making is in tension with liberal democracy, and outlines proposals for reform.