• The current Liberty Law Talk is with Nicholas Johnson on his new book Negroes and the Gun.

• Paul Rahe pens a compelling review essay in our Books section this week on Mark Blitz’s Divine Law and Political Philosophy in Plato’s Laws:

[Blitz] thinks Plato’s Laws may be a better guide to the manner in which reason and revelation can to good effect interact (at least where revelation takes the form of law) than the various works dedicated to that subject by Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, and the leading figures of the 18th century Enlightenment.

• David Henderson and Jeffrey Rogers Hummel: The Inevitability of a U.S. Government Default.

• If Big Philanthropy and Big Government had a baby what should its name be?

• Politics Without the Regime: Harvey Mansfield on Yuval Levin’s The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. Don’t miss Levin’s interview at Liberty Law Talk on his book.

• Walter Lacquer: Will the Bear turn East?