Peter Lawler

Peter Lawler

Professor of Government, Berry College

Peter Lawler is Dana Professor of Government and former chair of the department of Government and International Studies at Berry College. He serves as executive editor of the journal Perspectives on Political Science, and has been chair of the politics and literature section of the American Political Science Association. He also served on the editorial board of the new bilingual critical edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and serves on the editorial boards of several journals. He has written or edited fifteen books and over 200 articles and chapters in a wide variety of venues. He was the 2007 winner of the Weaver Prize in Scholarly Letters.rnrnLawler served on President Bush's Council on Bioethics from 2004 – 09. His most recent book, Modern and American Dignity, is available from ISI Books.rnrnFollow him on Twitter @peteralawler.

The most powerful, courageous, penetrating, and eloquent dissident opponents of Communist tyranny were Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the Czech philosopher-playright-president Vaclav Havel (1936-December 18, 2011).  We forget that their criticism was […]
The Descendants is the most critically acclaimed film in the theatres right now.  I’m not sure I know quite why. Well, one reason is the excellent track record of its […]
As the astute Ross Douthat points out, the race in Iowa is now between Gingrich and Paul Right now, the polls show Paul to be in second place, with Romney still fading […]
I’m finally getting around to talking about recent films.  Two that had great promise but ultimately disappoint are J. Edgar and The Descendants. They both address the questions of virtue—particularly manliness […]
So a professor of philosophy—Gary Gutting—opinionating for the NYT invites us to think about the relationship between politicians and intellectuals.  He says that politicians, to be credible, don’t have to […]
So I promised I would do a post based on what we can learn about courage from the philosopher of manliness Harvey Mansfield. But it turns out that there’s a […]
One virtue BIG THINK has not been big on is COURAGE.  That might be a problem.  According Aristotle, courage is not only the first of the virtues, but all the […]