{"id":9695,"date":"2007-12-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-18T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/thenewatlantis.com\/authors\/peter-lawler"},"modified":"2020-09-16T18:33:16","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T22:33:16","slug":"peter-lawler","status":"publish","type":"contributor","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/authors\/peter-lawler","title":{"rendered":"Peter Lawler"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Peter Augustine Lawler was a New Atlantis<\/em> contributing editor and Dana Professor of Government at Berry College. He was the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Allergic to Crazy: Quick Thoughts on Politics, Education, and Culture, Rightly Understood<\/em><\/a> (St. Augustine, 2014) and Modern and American Dignity: Who We Are as Persons, and What That Means for Our Future<\/a><\/em> (ISI, 2010).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Lawler was a regular contributor to the Postmodern Conservative<\/a> blog. He blogged for First Things<\/em> and the Ashbrook Center\u2019s No Left Turns<\/a>, and wrote a column called Rightly Understood<\/a> on BigThink.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was also the editor of the journal Perspectives on Political Science<\/a><\/em> and the co-director of the Stuck with Virtue<\/a> conference series. He served on the President\u2019s Council on Bioethics from 2004 to 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a remembrace, New Atlantis<\/em> senior editor Yuval Levin wrote<\/a> that Lawler \u201cshaped generations of students to take their country seriously, but to take their souls even more seriously.\u201d Describing Lawler\u2019s view, Levin wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[A]ctual human beings can never really be quite happy while playing the role that modern free societies assign them. That means they will be restless, and eager for a different role. That restlessness is a source of endless anxiety, but also of hope \u2014 because it sends us searching for a way of life better suited to who we really are. It means modernity will always be producing its own critics and always live in a kind of creative tension with itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n