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The United States is suffering its greatest upheaval since the Civil War-politically, economically, socially, religiously. With elegant, sweeping vision, Gus diZerega explores the complex causes leading us to this point, comparing them to giant fault lines that, when they erupt, create enormous disturbance and in time new landscapes. He traces the disruption, first, to America's first countercultural movement originating in the antebellum South and coming into later conflict with the ""counterculture"" of the 60s that continues now in phenomena like Burning Man; and second, to the crumbling of

In this article, I argue that spontaneous orders are natural outgrowths of liberal principles and that a better understanding of them sheds light on a fateful split between nineteenth-century American and European liberal traditions that remains relevant today. Adapted from the source document.

A comment on Timothy Sandefur's (2009) critique of F. A. Hayek's social thought asserts that his work falters given his misunderstanding of what constitutes a spontaneous order.

How the Cows Turned Mad describes the centuries-long search for the cause of obscure and always fatal diseases that first apparently afflicted sheep and later were found to attack people as well. This search led to the discovery of prions, the paradoxical proteins that scientists now believe are the cause of mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD), kuru, and scrapie. Along the way, researchers earned two Nobel Prizes. Author Maxime Schwartz is a molecular biologist, former head of the Institut Pasteur, and director of laboratories for the French agency for food safety, among his other scientific achievements. He is also an exceptionally clear writer.

F. A. Hayek's theory of spontaneous order applies to more than the market. One implication is that different systems of rules generating different spontaneous orders are biased in favor of different values. Markets serve the values of consumers; democracies serve the values of citizens. No spontaneous order perfectly reflects human values because they simplify the context of choice in favor of core systemic values. This insight enables us to distinguish between systemic and individual resources, and tensions between them. It also enables us to develop models of systemic conflict. Of particular interest are interactions between democracies and markets whose rules reflect different values but influence one another. The increasing commodification of the press shifts this institution from reflecting both democratic and economic values more and more to purely economic values, undermining its capacity to serve citizens. Examples illustrating this argument are explored.

Thomas Spragens attempts to rebuild liberal theory by arguing that realist, libertarian, egalitarian, & identity liberals all have valid insights, but develop them one-sidedly. Re-examining the work of 16th- & 17th-century liberals leads, he contends, to a more balanced liberalism. Spragens's often-impressive effort to reconstruct liberalism is undermined by insufficient appreciation of the role of the scale of the polity & by confusions about civic friendship. Appreciation of Hayekian insights about spontaneous order, & of the limits of citizen knowledge in large polities, would help him solve the first problem. Distinguishing between friendship, friendliness, & social capital would help resolve the second. 19 References. Adapted from the source document.

Liberal political thought has fractured into "classical" and "modern" camps. This division is rooted in differing reactions to the rise of capitalism and democracy, which are institutional outgrowths of liberal principles, unanticipated by its seminal thinkers. Both "classical" and "modern" liberalism are led astray by classifying liberal democracy as a kind of state. But democracies are not states; they are selforganizing systems. When the nature of this error is grasped, a more coherent liberal vision emerges, where the key tension in liberal society is between selforganizing systems and instrumental organizations. Possibilities in public policy take on new dimensions as well.The world we know is largely the institutional outcome of liberalism's political triumph, first in the West and increasingly worldwide. Yet today liberal thought is deeply divided against itself and, in this division, often unable to comprehend a world in many ways its product. This division grows primarily from tensions between two liberal institutions: liberal, or representative, democracy and the market, and also from the near universal failure of liberals to grasp democratic government's unusual systemic character. Tensions between liberal democracy and the market are central issues, whereas the character of democratic government receives far less attention. Yet how the first issue is evaluated depends in part on understanding the last. Liberalism has strengthened the intellectual, legal, economic and political status of individuals within society, emphasizing equality of status for all people.