This thesis places pressure on common distinctions between rhetoric and ideology, ideas and arguments, semantics and form, by examining the use of freedom rhetoric in political speech and propaganda in post-war Britain. To do so it combines a sophisticated statistical analysis o…
Liberal thinkers have suggested different theories that legitimise the state's various processes, institutions, and use of coercive power. However, their theories cannot account for those motivations that cause men to put their lives in danger when standing against political opp…
The war on terror, like many other historical American wars, has brought about various policy changes. Particularly, foreign policy measures, homeland security, personal liberty issues and treatment of aliens have all experienced transformations. This research examines such tran…
In a twenty-year prose career championing liberty, John Milton wrote works about the most important issues of his day, including religious liberty, freedom of publication, and freedom from tyranny. In addition, he wrote several tracts advocating for marriage reform. Throughout t…
This dissertation addresses inter alia the problem of certain intertextual discontinuities across Thomas Hobbes’s oeuvre regarding the issue of ecclesiology. I find that these disparities did not result from a change in Hobbes’s private opinions, but from the regicide of 1649 as…
John Emerich Edward Dahlberg-Acton (1834–1902), “Lord Acton,” is a much-praised figure within the American conservative movement, and among free-market or “classical” liberals. His attempts to reconcile his devout Roman Catholicism with a love of of freedom have inspired many co…