Brian C. Anderson

The Internet is a platform of ceaseless innovation that has transformed our lives in a remarkably short time. And the United States has led that revolution: of the 15 largest websites in the world, 10 are American. But all that is now under threat. In February 2015, the Federal Communications Commission imposed extensive regulatory controls on this vibrant digital universe in an effort to mandate "network neutrality." In this Broadside, Brian C. Anderson explains how the FCC's power grab for "neutrality" could be devastating for the most dynamic sector of the U.S. economy. Network neutrality is at odds with everything that made today's Internet the market cornucopia that it is, and we must protect it from the encroach--ments of Washington in order to foster its further growth.

The rise of alternative media over the last 20 years has broken the liberal stranglehold over news and opinion outlets. The Left blames much of the Democratic Party's electoral woes on the influence of the new media's many vigorous conservative voices. Yet, instead of fighting back with ideas, today's liberals quietly and relentlessly work to smother this political discourse under a tangle of campaign-finance and media regulations.

Few writers have covered the intellectual terrain traversed by Michael Novak, who has written on theology, philosophy, political economy, and business theory. This book brings together many of Novak's crucial essays on "moral ecology": the ethos that must be cultivated and preserved if liberal democratic societies are to survive. Novak argues in defense of the free and virtuous society by examining the family, welfare reform, free markets, self-government, and the American founding. A series of remarkable intellectual studies on figures such as Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas, and John Courtney Murray, along with an autobiographical essay by Novak and an introduction by Brian C. Anderson, complete On Cultivating Liberty, an indispensable book for anyone concerned about the future of the democratic project as we enter the third millennium.

This concise and penetrating analysis introduces students to the life and thought of one of the giants of twentieth- century French intellectual life. Portraying Raymond Aron as a great defender of reason, moderation, and political sobriety in an era dominated by ideological fervor and philosophical fashion, Brian Anderson demonstrates the centrality of political reason to Aron's philosophy of history, his critique of ideological thinking, his meditations on the perennial problems of peace and war, and the nature of conservative liberalism. This accessible study of Aron's thought and the thought of his contemporaries will enhance any syllabus for classes on modern and contemporary political thought.