In The Limits of Liberalism, Mark T. Mitchell argues that a rejection of tradition is both philosophically incoherent and politically harmful. This false conception of tradition helps to facilitate both liberal cosmopolitanism and identity politics. The incoherencies are revealed through an investigation of the works of Michael Oakeshott, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Michael Polanyi. Mitchell demonstrates that the rejection of tradition as an epistemic necessity has produced a false conception of the human person―the liberal self―which in turn has produced a false conception of freedom. This book identifies why most modern thinkers have denied the essential role of tradition and explains how tradition can be restored to its proper place. Oakeshott, MacIntyre, and Polanyi all, in various ways, emphasize the necessity of tradition, and although these thinkers approach tradition in different ways, Mitchell finds useful elements within each to build an argument for a reconstructed view of tradition and, as a result, a reconstructed view of freedom. Mitchell argues that only by finding an alternative to the liberal self can we escape the incoherencies and pathologies inherent therein. This book will appeal to undergraduates, graduate students, professional scholars, and educated laypersons in the history of ideas and late modern culture.

The Limits of Liberalism: Tradition, Individualism, and the Crisis of Freedom

Politics & Social Sciences

Mitchell, Mark T.

Philosophy

University of Notre Dame Press

In the United States the conventional left/right distinction has become increasingly irrelevant, if not harmful. The reigning political, cultural, and economic visions of both the Democrats and the Republicans have reached obvious dead ends. Liberalism, with its hostility to any limits, is collapsing. So-called Conservatism has abandoned all pretense of conserving anything at all. Both dominant parties seem fundamentally incapable of offering coherent solutions for the problems that beset us. In light of this intellectual, cultural, and political stalemate, there is a need for a new vision. Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto assembles thirty-one essays by a variety of scholars and practitioners--associated with Front Porch Republic--seeking to articulate a new vision for a better future. The writers are convinced that human apprehension of the true, the good, and the beautiful is best realized within a dense web of meaningful family, neighborhood, and community relationships. These writers seek to advance human flourishing through the promotion of political decentralism, economic localism, and cultural regionalism. In short, Front Porch Republic is dedicated to renewing American culture by fostering the ideals necessary for strong communities.

Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto

Peters, Jason

Social Sciences

Front Porch Republic

Many Americans are longing for an alternative politics that is rooted in strong communities, a recognition of limits, and respect for the natural world. These issues are not the possession of one political party. Rather, they refer to ideas rooted deeply in the best aspects of our common tradition, and they represent yearnings that many, regardless of political affiliation, share. This book articulates a cultural and political vision that leads off the couch and into the garden, out of the shopping mall and into the farmer’s market, away from Washington and in the direction of home. In this postpartisan call to action, Mitchell develops the concept of the “politics of gratitude,” which is centered around four ideas: creatureliness, gratitude, human scale, and place, culminating in a distinctive, fruitful view of human nature and community at odds with the prevailing norms of individualism (and, not so paradoxically, statism), giantism, and hypermobility. Going beyond the liberal-conservative factionalism that has reduced our political and cultural discourse to clichés and vitriol, he urges us to become responsible stewards of the earth who are committed to family and community and who abide in gratitude, taking nothing for granted.The result is a political and cultural vision that is at once local, limited, modest, republican, green―and grateful.

The Politics of Gratitude: Scale, Place & Community in a Global Age

Politics & Government

POTOMAC BOOKS

Plutocratic Socialism

Review\n“Our republic is faltering. The left pushes us into the dystopia of identity politics; the right talks incessantly of free markets and of tradition. Missing in the discussion is the one thing necessary to stabilize the American commercial republic: private property. No private property, no middle-class republic. Mark Mitchell has done us the invaluable service of reintroducing this crucial consideration into our debates about why America has lost her way and how to correct her course.” 
—Joshua Mitchell, Georgetown University\n“With clarity, grace, and erudition lightly worn, Mitchell takes aim at the mutually reinforcing pathologies, plutocracy and socialism, that are undermining the theory and practice of the middle-class republic. Mitchell demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that only a middle-class, multiracial republic of civic-minded property owners can save us from the unholy alliance of plutocratic masters and despotic woke ideologues. Bracing wisdom for our time.” 
—Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption University, emeritus\n“Hilaire Belloc called it ‘the servile state.’ Mark Mitchell offers the contemporary label ‘plutocratic socialism,’ meaning the union of big government and big business, now amplified by the corrupt ideology of ‘wokism.’ With fresh insight and power, Mitchell rehabilitates the case for building a middle-class democracy resting on property rights and self-imposed moral limits as the only way to build a truly free and progressive society. This is political philosophy at its urgent best.” 
—Allan Carlson, author of The New Agrarian Mind\nA proletarianized citizenry ruled by a class of insolent plutocrats is incompatible with the republican form of government established by the US Constitution. Without an effective majority of citizens who own property and whose character has been shaped by property ownership—a vibrant middle class—the Founders’ Constitution will not survive. Our current age of Plutocratic Socialism is a specific manifestation of a pathology the Founders feared. Recovery must begin with a simple, yet profound, axiom: private property and political freedom stand or fall together.

Plutocratic Socialism: The Future of Private Property and the Fate of the Middle Class

Front Porch Republic Books

A proletarianized citizenry ruled by a class of insolent plutocrats is incompatible with the republican form of government established by the US Constitution. Without an effective majority of citizens who own property and whose character has been shaped by property ownership--a vibrant middle class--the Founders' Constitution will not survive. Our current age of Plutocratic Socialism is a specific manifestation of a pathology the Founders feared. Recovery must begin with a simple, yet profound, axiom: private property and political freedom stand or fall together.

A Marriage Made in Hell Where did they come from, these furiously self-righteous "social justice warriors"? The growing radicalism and intolerance on the American left is the result of the strange union of Nietzsche's "will to power" and a secularized Puritan moralism. In this penetrating study, Mark T. Mitchell explains how this marriage made in hell gave birth to a powerful and destructive political and social movement. Having declared that "God is dead," Friedrich Nietzsche identified the "will to power" as the fundamental force of human life. There is no good or evil in a Nietzschean world--only the interests of the strong. Reason and the common good have no place there. The Puritan, by contrast, is morally rigorous, zealous to promote virtue and punish vice. America's Puritan tradition, now thoroughly de-Christianized, has been reduced to a self-righteous moral absolutism that focuses on the faults of others, intent on avenging the sins of society, institutions, and the past in pursuit of the secularized ideals of equality, diversity, and social justice. As Nietzsche's ideas have permeated our culture, a new generation of radicals has embraced the rhetoric and tactics of the will to power. But the strength of America's residual Puritanism keeps them only half-baked Nietzscheans. More Christian than they care to admit, they cling to a moralism that Nietzsche would despise. The incoherence of their mixed creed dooms social justice warriors to perpetual frustration. Their identity politics generates ever more radical demands that can never be satisfied, further fracturing a society in desperate need of a unifying myth. We seem to be left with only two options, Mitchell concludes--Nietzsche or Christ, the will to power or the will to truth. The choice is bracingly simple.

Power and Purity: The Unholy Marriage That Spawned America's Social Justice Warriors

Regnery/Gateway

Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing (Library of Modern Thinkers)

The polymath Michael Polanyi first made his mark as a physical chemist, but his interests gradually shifted to economics, politics, and philosophy, in which field he would ultimately propose a revolutionary theory of knowledge that grew out of his firsthand experience with both the scientific method and political totalitarianism. In this sixth entry in ISI Books’ Library of Modern Thinkers’ series, Mark T. Mitchell reveals how Polanyi came to recognize that the roots of the modern political and spiritual crisis lay in an errant conception of knowledge that served to foreclose any possibility of making meaningful statements about truth, goodness, or beauty. Polanyi’s theory of knowledge as ineluctably personal but also grounded in reality is not merely of historical interest, writes Mitchell, for it proposes an attractive alternative for anyone who would reject both the hubris of modern rationalism and the ultimately nihilistic implications of academic postmodernism.

Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing (Library Modern Thinkers Series)

Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

ISI Books

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