William B. Allen

William B. Allen

William B. Allen, Emeritus Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Political Science and Emeritus Dean, James Madison College, at Michigan State University. 2008-09: Visiting Senior Scholar in the Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good at Villanova University. He also served previously on the National Council for the Humanities and as Chairman and Member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He was recently the Ann and Herbert W. Vaughan Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program on American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

He has been published extensively. In 2009 appeared Re-Thinking Uncle Tom: The Political Philosophy of H. B. Stowe (Lexington Books). In 2008 George Washington: America’s First Progressive (Peter Lang, Inc.) and The Personal and the Political: Three Fables by Montesquieu (UPA). He has published many other books, journal articles, reviews and encyclopedia entries.
William B. Allen

Iran Terror Plot? NEVER AGAIN!

In autumn 1979 the revolutionary government of Iran waged war against the United States by invading and occupying its embassy in Tehran and holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. That act of war was recognized for what it was but never received a like retort. Nor did Iran ever apologize for the [...]
Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share
William B. Allen

Keynesian No More: The Search For New Economic Rationales

“Everybody knows that Keynesianism does not work.” So reasoned Governor Perry in the presidential debate at the Reagan Foundation. Gov. Perry captured an important dimension of the current debate over the state of the U. S. economy – namely, that different voices express contradictory assumptions regarding the extent to which the government can [...]
Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share
William B. Allen

Qaddafi’s Overthrow In Libya: What Obama Has Really Taught The World’s Tyrants

A lesson for the ages has unfolded in Libya. Moammar Qaddaffi, erstwhile terrorist and dictator, observed the activity of the United States in Iraq post 2003 and decided the time had come for him to be rehabilitated. He came in from the “Mad Dog” cold by agreeing with George Bush’s doctrine that nuclear [...]
Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share
William B. Allen

President Obama Acting Like King George III

When the President publicly ordered the leaders of the House and the Senate to appear at the White House the next day, prepared to answer his demands for a debt ceiling resolution, many observers noted the high-handedness of his way of dealing with the coordinate and equal branches of government. He showed no respect [...]
Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share
William B. Allen

A Reply to Governor Romney: Public Necessity As A Principle Of Constitutional Interpretation Is Unconstitutional!

Governor Romney’s 10th Amendment defense of Massachusetts’s health care reform legislation serves well to clarify the true nature of the fundamental political question that confronts Americans in year 222 under the Constitution. That is a simple question with a profound and somewhat complex answer – namely, does the idea of limited government require acknowledging [...]
Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share
William B. Allen

All In In the Middle East: Obama Has Made Us A Target of Reprisal

The Obama Administration has stumbled into a regional war (and potentially a world war) in the Middle East. Libya is not a case of democratic reform. And the casual language of “reform by protest” and so-called “universal values” has served only to disguise a dangerous reality. The forces in play in the [...]
Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share
William B. Allen

Reagan: A Memoir

Governor Reagan – that’s how we referred to him for the fourteen years before he became President – made us one with him from the beginning. The highest moment of my personal appreciation arrived on election night in 1966. It was not merely personal, however, for in that moment I imbibed confidence in [...]
Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share
William B. Allen

Obama’s Nihilistic State of the Union Address: There’s Nothing There

James Agee’s novel, “A Death in the Family’” has a wonderfully illustrated nihilistic moment in which the father goes into the darkened bedroom of his child to console the child in an episode of fear of bogey monsters in the room. The father methodically peers behind the curtains, inside the closet, and under the [...]
Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share
William B. Allen

America: Unsafe at Home

In the beginning the United States governed its place in the world by the perception of strategic vulnerability to hostile influences from nations in Europe. George Washington played for time for the nation, initially unsafe at home, to recruit its strength and resources to enable it to resist intrusions. In the interim he relied upon [...]
Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share
William B. Allen

What Now, Mr. President? Instead of National Consensus We Have a National Disintegration

January 1, 2011 opens President Obama’s campaign for re-election. Everything he does will be calculated to further the objective of re-election. Accordingly, his goal will be to minimize exposure to negative review and to maximize opportunity to capitalize on any positive developments. The most important of those developments will be economic recovery. [...]
Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share