Democracy Conference Schedule

Tyler Syck (University of Pikeville)
“A Tragic Liberalism: Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the Future of American Democracy”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan is routinely dismissed as an inconsistent opportunist. This paper recovers him as a philosophically serious alternative to both interest group liberalism and its post-liberal critics. Grounding his thought in epistemic humility, Catholic subsidiarity, and suspicion of concentrated power in all its forms, Moynihan articulated a pluralist liberalism that sought to deploy state resources in ways that strengthened rather than displaced the intermediary institutions where democratic life is actually lived.
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Lynn Uzzel (Bethel University)
“Rights Endowed by the Creator”

This paper has two broad purposes: First, to show that the meaning of the word rights has evolved along a continuum over the centuries, with John Locke and Thomas Jefferson representing a similar but not identical understanding of natural rights. Second, to establish that it is philosophically impossible to arrive at the position of natural rights without presupposing a transcendent being that imposes a moral order on nature.
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Dan Young (Northwestern College-IA)
“Rereading Bernard Crick’s In Defence of Politics in 21st Century America”

Bernard Crick defined politics as a means of conciliating diverse interests in society. However, today American politics seems more of a friend/enemy contest. I use Samuel Huntington’s claim that every few decades America experiences a “creedal passion period” where discontent with American political realities as measured against its core political values is expressed with greater intensity. I speculate that such periods give rise to friend/enemy politics rather than Crick-style politics of conciliation of diverse interests. 
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DISCUSSANT
Paul Brink (Gordon College, Political Science)