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Liberty Matters: Tocqueville’s New Science of Politics Revisited (May 2014)

Aurelian Craiutu argues that Tocqueville was not just an observer of democracy in America but also a theorist of democracy who wanted to create “a new science of politics” suitable to the new world which was beginning to take shape at that time. Craiutu points out four dimensions of Tocqueville’s new science of politics that might help us better understand his thinking. The first is that Tocqueville’s new science of politics is fundamentally cross-disciplinary, at the intersection of political science, sociology, anthropology, history, and philosophy. He then goes on to discuss the other dimensions such as its comparative, normative, and political dimensions. He concludes that his works must therefore be seen as belonging to a larger French tradition of political engagement and political rhetoric in which the writer enters into a subtle and complex pedagogical relationship with his audience, seeking to convince and inspire his readers to political action. This thesis is discussed by Daniel J. Mahoney of Assumption College, Filippo Sabetti of McGill University, and Jeremy R. Jennings of King’s College London.

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Liberty Matters: Ludwig von Mises’s The Theory of Money and Credit at 101 (January, 2014)

This online discussion is part of the series “Liberty Matters: A Forum for the Discussion of Matters pertaining to Liberty.” Lawrence H. White revisits Mises' pathbreaking 1912 book on Mises’ book The Theory of Money and Credit. The soundness of his theory of money is tested against the recent emergence of a new form of currency known as Bitcoin. Responding to his essay are Jörg Guido Hülsmann, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, and George Selgin.

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BOLL 64: James Mill, “Liberty of the Press” (1825)

This is part of “The Best of the Online Library of Liberty” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. A thematic list with links to HTML versions of the texts is available here. This extract comes from a collection of supplementary articles written for the 1825 edition of the *Encyclopedia Britannica". It is a concise and influential statement of the utilitarian defence of freedom of speech.

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BOLL 63: John Milton, “For the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing” (1664)

This is part of “The Best of the Online Library of Liberty” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. A thematic list with links to HTML versions of the texts is available here. This extract comes from John Milton’s defence of the freedom of publishing, Areopagitica (1644) written to persuade Parliament to lift the requirement for government licenses to be issued before anything could be printed.

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