WHEN THE rIGHT DENIES IT'S A REPUBLIC:

In 2014, the late Peter Lawler delivered a talk at an ISI honors conference with the title "The Future (and Past) of Liberty is Confusing." In his inimitable, superficially rambling fashion Lawler observed that "liberty" doesn't mean just one thing. He counted at least six historical conceptions of liberty, including the intellectual freedom of Socratic philosophy, the civic freedom of classical city-states, the moral freedom of the Stoics, the freedom from revealed law asserted by Christian theologians, the freedom to engage in commerce, and the radical autonomy that emerged from the sexual revolution.

The past of liberty hasn't gotten any less confusing--at least for scholars. Academics tend to be "splitters" rather than "lumpers." In other words, we delight in ever making more refined distinctions. In just the last few years, scholars have published important works comparing pluralist and rationalist liberty, ancient and modern liberty, and American and French liberty. By the time I read them all, others will have taken their place.

The past of liberty remains a muddle, then. Its future is also becoming more obscure. Freedom was the central theme of the grand struggles of the previous century. It may not be immediately applicable to the concerns of our own. Is freedom the solution to economic dislocation, ideological polarization, institutional corruption, or falling birthrates? Is it even relevant? The answers are not obvious.

The questionable relevance of freedom is one cause of its embattled status in American conservatism. 

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