In recent years, Alasdair MacIntyre has supplemented his longstanding critique of the liberal nation-state with a defense, grounded largely in an interpretation of the writings of Aquinas, of the politics of the common good as embodied exclusively in local communities. Even after MacIntyre's account of local politics has been clarified and distinguished from the distortions of some of his critics, there remain weaknesses, chief among which are that the local communities he promotes are pre- or subpolitical and that his hasty dismissal of modern politics involves the sort of caricature of existing political realities alien to Aquinas's prudential assessment of regimes.

This essay begins with the assumption that Richard Rorty means everything he says; its question, however, is ultimately why he says everything he means. Politically speaking, for someone who is unconstrained by metaphysical concerns about the “right” or the “good,” what counts is not being right, but being successful. Hence my question for Rorty is simply this: why be honest when deception might be more effective? I contend that in the context of American political culture that his honest practice of his philosophy undermines his politics. Unlike other critical accounts, mine focuses on his tactics and Rorty's own failure to accept the burdens and possibilities of his own theoretical work. I then offer Rorty a model of deception for his consideration from Miguel de Unamuno's short story “St. Emmanuel the Good, Martyr,” that he might have made use of had he been more interested in political results than in being thought honest.

Eric Voegelin's genius shines in his insight that the crisis of Modernity sprang less from naturalistic relativism than from unrestrained religious absolutism. Voegelin saw two sides to this genesis: first, the growing millennial speculation fueled in the late medieval period engendered apocalyptic claims by political leaders; second, the civilizational instability in the West tempted political followers to grasp the straws of apocalyptic claims. Yet Voegelin made two questionable claims here: that the “Gnosticism” of the Modern age had its roots in the Christian experience, and that the Protestant Reformation most explicitly nourished its growth. While the Christian faith appears to present a temptation to millennial claims, Voegelin's argument regarding the required civilizational accommodation of the church and the prior “spiritual stamina” of the faithful is problematic. Moreover, Voegelin's characterizing John Calvin's project in particular as Gnostic anti-intellectualism manifesting an obvious will to power has no sound basis in Calvin's writings.

F. A. Hayek's theory of spontaneous order applies to more than the market. One implication is that different systems of rules generating different spontaneous orders are biased in favor of different values. Markets serve the values of consumers; democracies serve the values of citizens. No spontaneous order perfectly reflects human values because they simplify the context of choice in favor of core systemic values. This insight enables us to distinguish between systemic and individual resources, and tensions between them. It also enables us to develop models of systemic conflict. Of particular interest are interactions between democracies and markets whose rules reflect different values but influence one another. The increasing commodification of the press shifts this institution from reflecting both democratic and economic values more and more to purely economic values, undermining its capacity to serve citizens. Examples illustrating this argument are explored.

Scholars have long been under the impression that the doctrines enunciated in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799 and the Virginia Report of 1800 originated with the authors of those documents, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Yet this article demonstrates that it was not either of those two future presidents who concocted what Andrew Jackson would dub “the Virginia Doctrine.” That distinction belongs to Governor Edmund Randolph, a non-signer of the Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention who became a leading voice for ratification in the Virginia Ratification Convention of 1788. The trajectory of Randolph's thinking regarding federalism and the story of his doctrine's effect in 1788 are recounted here. Ironically, the reading of the Constitution that would underpin various outbreaks of sectionalism in the antebellum period and later originated with a Federalist of 1788, not with an opponent of ratification.