Person

Samuel Moyn

Bylines

Related Excerpts

Donald Trump.

Why We Can’t Stop Arguing About Whether Trump Is a Fascist

In a new book, “Did it Happen Here?,” scholars debate what the F-word conceals and what it reveals.
A cartoon Trump is shooed away by a hand in a judge's robe

The Case for Disqualification

Three years later, amid another national election, the American public is still slow to understand the enormity of January 6, 2021.
Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin during the Cold War.

The Book of Liberal Maladies

On Samuel Moyn's Cold War liberalism.
Closed fist with faces of Judith Shklar, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Lionel Trilling

Cold War Liberalism Is Still With Us. Is That a Good Thing?

A scholarly roundtable on Samuel Moyn's new book.

Two Cheers for the Cold War Liberals

There are certainly good grounds to criticize Cold War liberalism. But Samuel Moyn's new book, like similar critiques, has a classic baby-bathwater problem.

Dangers and Enemies Everywhere

How Cold War liberalism abandoned the vocabulary of hope—and how we still live with the consequences.
John F. Kennedy shaking hands with Lyndon Johnson and Walter George

Samuel Moyn Can’t Stop Blaming Trumpism on Liberals

"Liberalism Against Itself" makes an incoherent attack on liberalism.
Isaiah Berlin

Cold War Liberalism Returns

A left that is ambivalent about liberalism can still seek to engage it.
Cover of "Liberalism Against Itself"

Memo to Liberals: The Cold War is Over

In “Liberalism Against Itself,” Samuel Moyn stresses the need to resuscitate an earlier and more rousing wave of thinkers.
US military pilots operating Predator drones from the ground control station.

The Forgotten Crime of War Itself

A new book argues that efforts to humanize war with smarter weaponry have obscured the task of making peace the first goal of foreign policy.
Cover of Moyne's book, with the subtitle "How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War," in front of a desert landscape.

Not Humane, Just Invisible

A counter-narrative to Samuel Moyn’s "Humane": drone warfare and the long history of liberal empire blurring the line between policing and endless war.
A drone flying low

Slouching Toward Humanity

Historian Samuel Moyn contends that efforts to conduct war humanely have only perpetuated it. But the solution must lie in politics, not a sacrifice of human rights.

The Case Against Humane War

How the turn toward “precision” combat promoted endless war.
The First Hague Conference in 1899: A meeting in the Orange Hall of Huis ten Bosch palace – collections of the Imperial War Museums.

Oh, the Humanity

Yale's John Fabian Witt pens a review of Samuel Moyn's new book, Humane.
Plane with an eye in it and a bird's silhouette around.

Did Making the Rules of War Better Make the World Worse?

Why efforts to curb the cruelty of military force may have backfired.

Beyond the End of History

Historians' prohibition on 'presentism' crumbles under the weight of events.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Progressives and the Court

A response to Samuel Moyn’s “Resisting the Juristocracy.”

Human Rights and Neoliberalism

How is it that the era of neoliberalism coincides almost perfectly with the triumphant rise of a discourse of human rights?

To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice

What if we use the history of slavery as a standpoint from which to rethink our notion of justice today?

Constrain the Court—Without Crippling It

Critics of the Supreme Court think it has lost its claim to legitimacy. But proposals for reforming it must strike a balance with preserving its independence.