From 2013

Some interesting thoughts on the Aristotelian polis and its relation to the Greek city-states. POLIS, STATE, AND THE COMMON GOOD by Joseph R. Stromberg

Advice That Should Have Been Given and Heeded in 1776...

Abbeville Institute: How to Run the American Revolution: Belated Advice By Joseph R. Stromberg

Empire for Me, Not for Thee

The North’s Colonial Empire by Joseph R. Stromberg

The Setting Postcolonial studies have been all the rage for many decades. A great number of contributors to the field have come from India and their work wrestles (in part) with the socio-psychological situation of… »

AmConMag: The Federalists’ Revenge by Joseph R. Stromberg
America’s Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, Sheldon Richman, Griffin & Lash, 135 pages

The German Federal System

German Federalism as Punishment or Fiction by Joseph R. Stromberg

Patrick J. Deneen on Liberty

Saving liberty from liberalism

Also from Professor Deneen: A Catholic Showdown Worth Watching

Joseph Stromberg, Land to the People Who Till It

Support C4SS with Joseph R. Stromberg’s “Land to the People Who Till It!”

Stromberg on the "Isolationism" of the Old Right

Mere “Isolationism”: The Foreign Policy of the “Old Right”

Joseph R. Stromberg responds to J.G.A. Pocock

Tensions in Early American Political Thought
Liberalism and Republicanism Together Made for a Stronger Worldview

It seems fairly clear that the two separate doctrines—liberalism and republicanism—were fused together by the English opposition writers and the American revolutionaries because together they made for a stronger, and reasonably coherent, worldview. Liberalism, as such, had no theory of government. The French physiocratic school of laissez-faire liberal economists had no better political theory or plan than simply to get the King to sweep away barriers to trade. Republicanism, as such, had no theory of individual rights. Writers like Rousseau showed how unalloyed republicanism can easily justify militaristic and authoritarian rule on the model of ancient Sparta or the Roman Republic. (The “radical phase” of the French Revolution teaches this lesson very well.) By combining the two ideologies, the Anglo-Americans forged a powerful outlook favorable to liberty and limited government.

Can a republican talk about the limits to human authority without using the notion of "rights" as it is understood by liberals? (Or, is all rights talk inherently liberal? I don't think so, but we also have to look at how it was explained in the past, as opposed to applying our own definitions to historical texts.) And if republicanism is linked to communitarianism, how can it be synthesized with liberalism without internal contradictions? Perhaps the early Americans were influenced by both streams of thought and did not pay much attention to consistency. If so, is it too early to conclude that there efforts were doomed to failure? But I think that one can think and legislate in terms of rights without being a liberal. Can I find evidence that this was true of some early Americans?

Stromberg on Röpke

Some Constructive Heresies of Wilhelm Röpke

More Stromberg on John Taylor of Caroline

Joseph R. Stromberg, The Political Economy of John Taylor of Caroline
Artificial Aristocrats Can Only Sustain Their Projects through Political Despotism
Country Ideology, Republicanism, and Libertarianism
John Taylor of Caroline (1753-1824), Federalism, and Empire

And: Civil War and the American Political Economy and Civil War and the American Political Economy: Response to a Critic

Related:
Slavery in the North - not sure if the author has an agenda other than historical research.
A review of Eugene D. Genovese's The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South.
Daniel MacCarthy's review of Adam Tate's Conservatism and Southern Intellectuals, 1789-1861: Liberty, Tradition, and the Good Society.
A Place for Interposition?
The Constitutional Republicanism of John Taylor of Caroline

Arator: Republicanism and Liberty: The "Patrick Henry"/"Onslow" Debate by H. Lee Cheek, Sean Busick, and Carey Roberts (via The Imaginative Conservative)

More from Arator:
The Origins of Jeffersonian Political Economy
by John Devanny, Jr.

John Taylor of Caroline's Agrarian Republicanism
by Joseph Stromberg

First Principles Journal: A discussion of liberty by Mark T. Mitchell and Joseph Stromberg.

Another Stromberg piece on John Taylor of Caroline

The Constitutional Republicanism of John Taylor of Caroline by Joseph R. Stromberg

Walter Karp: Jeffersonian Republican by Joseph R. Stromberg (via the Western Confucian).

Republicanism and Liberalism

Classical and neo-republican thought spotlights independent proprietors whose courage and dedication secure republican liberty. Civic virtue, a proper balance of property, and a mixed constitution overcome individual and institutional corruption and the vagaries of fortune. Community is prior to individuals and participation in civic life is central to genuine freedom. [7] Here are ideas potentially opposed to liberalism, which (allegedly) grounds politics on individuals and their rights and takes a republic as a mere form of government.

There have been many republics and many versions of republicanism. The primacy of community draws forth complaints that the ideal republic looks narrow, militarist, and closed. Yet a closed republic may not be oppressive and its militarism (if any) might be defensive and consciously intended to avoid the complications of empire. Friendlier-sounding commercial republics may be “republics for increase,” which build mercantilist empires and welcome foreigners, while dominating their homelands. Their oppressions, if any, take place abroad—at least until diminishing imperial returns set in and “blowback” arrives. (Meanwhile, such republics will count as great centers of liberalism.) With many possible shades of republicanism, it would seem that from inside any particular one, other republicanisms will appear as gross distortions.

Many historical actors have seen republicanism and liberalism as reasonably compatible. Historian Ralph Raico comments that “it would indeed be a mistake to hold that they are mutually exclusive in every historical incarnation of liberalism.” American revolutionaries including Jefferson appealed to both sets of ideas, as did nineteenth-century liberals Benjamin Constant in France and Eugen Richter in Germany. Indeed, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European “bourgeois republicans” from proto-liberals. [8] Sticking with the American story, it seems that a broad “liberal republican” consensus long existed within which very bitter and divisive struggles took place. The two traditions—ideally separate or not—seem inextricably mingled in American practice. Arguably, liberalism as such lacked an articulated theory of government; republicanism as such lacked a theory of rights. [9] Hence the attempt on American shores to put (and keep) them together.

FPJ & Modern Age: Felix Morley on Freedom, Liberty, and Power by Joseph R. Stromberg

Louis Bromfield: Northern Agrarian by Joseph Stromberg (via the Western Confucian)

Joseph R. Stromberg on Albert J. Nock

Radical Conservative (via AmCon)

Some reading for the 4th of July

The Old Cause by Joseph R. Stromberg
John Taylor of Caroline (1753-1824), Federalism, and Empire
JEFFERSONIAN THEORIST PAR EXCELLENCE

An Inquiry Into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States by John Taylor

FPJ: Joseph Stromberg, Who Needs One Big Market?

via the Western Confucian