On Cavanaugh’s Narrative About the State

Frequent TCI contributor Mr. Littlejohn has provided a powerful argument, over at Political Theology, against Dr. William Cavanuagh’s narrative of the modern nation-state’s rise. He concludes:

There is a very important conversation to be had between modernity critics and modernity defenders about whether liberal states really encourage liberty.  Indeed, although Pinker apparently considers the “imposition of absolute control” to be something that persists only in less-developed countries, we might ask to what extent freedom can be repressed under the more subtle thumb of bureaucratic democracies.  But to have an intelligent conversation about this, we should be willing to at least first grant the simple fact that, in the grand scheme of history, the liberal nation-state has played much more the role of the peacemaker than the fomenter of violence.