The Liberal Line

Freedom Is a Problem

There is a new breed of political scientists abroad in the land, as different from the old breed as chalk from cheese. The old breed has its roots, at best, in Madison and Hamilton and Jefferson and Wilson and the late great Charles A. Beard, and at worst in Harold Lasswell and those of his adepts who have encouraged the idea that we improve our understanding of politics through statistical analysis of the phenomena of political “behavior.” The new breed has its roots, by sharp contrast, in Plato and Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. The old breed, officially at least, are cultists of “scientific” “impartiality”; the new make no secret of the fact that they take sides. The old breed never touch the English language except to slaughter it; the new tend to a high degree of literacy: they can write, and their products show that they can read, and even like to read. The old breed has given us a professional political science literature projected on a level of intellectual difficulty more appropriate to a Chinese laundry than to a scholarly discipline, and dull beyond belief; the new thinks both before it writes and while it is writing, works its readers hard, and even tickles their fancy now and then with a chuckle or a witticism.

WK

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Willmoore Kendall

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Freedom Is a Problem

There is a new breed of political scientists abroad in the land, as different from the old breed as chalk from cheese. The old breed has its roots, at best, in Madison and Hamilton and Jefferson and Wilson and the late great Charles A. Beard, and at worst in Harold Lasswell and those of his adepts who have encouraged the idea that we improve our understanding of politics through statistical analysis of the phenomena of political “behavior.” The new breed has its roots, by sharp contrast, in Plato and Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. The old breed, officially at least, are cultists of “scientific” “impartiality”; the new make no secret of the fact that they take sides. The old breed never touch the English language except to slaughter it; the new tend to a high degree of literacy: they can write, and their products show that they can read, and even like to read. The old breed has given us a professional political science literature projected on a level of intellectual difficulty more appropriate to a Chinese laundry than to a scholarly discipline, and dull beyond belief; the new thinks both before it writes and while it is writing, works its readers hard, and even tickles their fancy now and then with a chuckle or a witticism.