Download or read book Power Versus Liberty written by James H. Read and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does every increase in the power of government entail a loss of liberty for the people? James H. Read examines how four key Founders--James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson--wrestled with this question during the first two decades of the American Republic. Power versus Liberty reconstructs a four-way conversation--sometimes respectful, sometimes shrill--that touched on the most important issues facing the new nation: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, federal authority versus states' rights, freedom of the press, the controversial Bank of the United States, the relation between nationalism and democracy, and the elusive meaning of "the consent of the governed." Each of the men whose thought Read considers differed on these key questions. Jefferson believed that every increase in the power of government came at the expense of liberty: energetic governments, he insisted, are always oppressive. Madison believed that this view was too simple, that liberty can be threatened either by too much or too little governmental power. Hamilton and Wilson likewise rejected the Jeffersonian view of power and liberty but disagreed with Madison and with each other. The question of how to reconcile energetic government with the liberty of citizens is as timely today as it was in the first decades of the Republic. It pervades our political discourse and colors our readings of events from the confrontation at Waco to the Oklahoma City bombing to Congressional debate over how to spend the government surplus. While the rhetoric of both major political parties seems to posit a direct relationship between the size of our government and the scope of our political freedoms, the debates of Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, and Jefferson confound such simple dichotomies. As Read concludes, the relation between power and liberty is inherently complex.
Download or read book Power and Liberty written by Gordon S. Wood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by one of early America's most eminent historians, this book masterfully discusses the debates over constitutionalism that took place in the Revolutionary era.
Download or read book Between Authority and Liberty written by Marc W. Kruman and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014-03-24 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a major reinterpretation of American political thought in the revolutionary era, Marc Kruman explores the process of constitution making in each of the thirteen original states and shows that the framers created a distinctively American science of politics well before the end of the Confederation era. Suspicious of all government power, state constitution makers greatly feared arbitrary power and mistrusted legislators' ability to represent the people's interests. For these reasons, they broadened the suffrage and introduced frequent elections as a check against legislative self-interest. This analysis challenges Gordon Wood's now-classic argument that, at the beginning of the Revolution, the founders placed great faith in legislators as representatives of the people. According to Kruman, revolutionaries entrusted state constitution making only to members of temporary provincial congresses or constitutional conventions whose task it was to restrict legislative power. At the same time, Americans maintained a belief in the existence of a public good that legislators and magistrates, when properly curbed by one another and by a politically active citizenry, might pursue.
Download or read book The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture written by Paul Arthur Cantor and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular culture often champions freedom as the fundamentally American way of life and celebrates the virtues of independence and self-reliance. But film and television have also explored the tension between freedom and other core values, such as order and political stability. What may look like healthy, productive, and creative freedom from one point of view may look like chaos, anarchy, and a source of destructive conflict from another. Film and television continually pose the question: Can Americans deal with their problems on their own, or must they rely on political elites to manage their lives? In this groundbreaking work, Paul A. Cantor explores the ways in which television shows such as Star Trek, The X-Files, South Park, and Deadwood and films such as The Aviator and Mars Attacks! have portrayed both top-down and bottom-up models of order. Drawing on the works of John Locke, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, and other proponents of freedom, Cantor contrasts the classical liberal vision of America -- particularly its emphasis on the virtues of spontaneous order -- with the Marxist understanding of the "culture industry" and the Hobbesian model of absolute state control. The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture concludes with a discussion of the impact of 9/11 on film and television, and the new anxieties emerging in contemporary alien-invasion narratives: the fear of a global technocracy that seeks to destroy the nuclear family, religious faith, local government, and other traditional bulwarks against the absolute state.
Download or read book No Treason Volume 1 written by Lysander Spooner and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1870, this essay by the American anarchist and political philosopher Lysander Spooner is here reproduced. Described by Murray Rothbard as "the greatest case for anarchist political philosophy ever written", Spooner's lengthy essay is still referenced by anarchists and philosophers today. In it, he argues that the American Civil War violated the US Constitution, thus rendering it null and void. An indispensable read for political historians both amateur and professional alike. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Download or read book Liberty and Coercion written by Gary Gerstle and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the conflict between federal and state power has shaped American history American governance is burdened by a paradox. On the one hand, Americans don't want "big government" meddling in their lives; on the other hand, they have repeatedly enlisted governmental help to impose their views regarding marriage, abortion, religion, and schooling on their neighbors. These contradictory stances on the role of public power have paralyzed policymaking and generated rancorous disputes about government’s legitimate scope. How did we reach this political impasse? Historian Gary Gerstle, looking at two hundred years of U.S. history, argues that the roots of the current crisis lie in two contrasting theories of power that the Framers inscribed in the Constitution. One theory shaped the federal government, setting limits on its power in order to protect personal liberty. Another theory molded the states, authorizing them to go to extraordinary lengths, even to the point of violating individual rights, to advance the "good and welfare of the commonwealth." The Framers believed these theories could coexist comfortably, but conflict between the two has largely defined American history. Gerstle shows how national political leaders improvised brilliantly to stretch the power of the federal government beyond where it was meant to go—but at the cost of giving private interests and state governments too much sway over public policy. The states could be innovative, too. More impressive was their staying power. Only in the 1960s did the federal government, impelled by the Cold War and civil rights movement, definitively assert its primacy. But as the power of the central state expanded, its constitutional authority did not keep pace. Conservatives rebelled, making the battle over government’s proper dominion the defining issue of our time. From the Revolution to the Tea Party, and the Bill of Rights to the national security state, Liberty and Coercion is a revelatory account of the making and unmaking of government in America.
Download or read book Active Liberty written by Stephen Breyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant new approach to the Constitution and courts of the United States by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.For Justice Breyer, the Constitution’s primary role is to preserve and encourage what he calls “active liberty”: citizen participation in shaping government and its laws. As this book argues, promoting active liberty requires judicial modesty and deference to Congress; it also means recognizing the changing needs and demands of the populace. Indeed, the Constitution’s lasting brilliance is that its principles may be adapted to cope with unanticipated situations, and Breyer makes a powerful case against treating it as a static guide intended for a world that is dead and gone. Using contemporary examples from federalism to privacy to affirmative action, this is a vital contribution to the ongoing debate over the role and power of our courts.
Download or read book On Liberty written by John Stuart Mill and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-08-05 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his much quoted, seminal work, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill attempts to establish standards for the relationship between authority and liberty. He emphasizes the importance of individuality which he conceived as a prerequisite to the higher pleasures-the summum bonum of Utilitarianism. Published in 1859, On Liberty presents one of the most eloquent defenses of individual freedom and is perhaps the most widely-read liberal argument in support of the value of liberty.
Download or read book Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty written by Richard Price and published by . This book was released on 1776 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Authority Liberty and Function in the Light of the War written by Ramiro De Maeztu and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-11-25 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Authority, Liberty and Function in the Light of the War: A Critique of Authority and Liberty as the Foundations of the Modern State and an Attempt to Base Societies on the Principle of Function The contents of this book have appeared between March 1915 and June 1916 in'the New Age. But the volume is not merely a collection of articles, for most of them were Written with a View to the place they would occupy in the completed work, and every chapter has been revised. I owe to the: newi Age and its editor, Mr. A. R. Orage, the idea of the Guilds; to M. Leon Duguit that of objective rights; to Mr. G. E. Moore that of objective good; to Herr Edmond Husserl that Of Objective logic; and to Mr. T. E. Hulme the acknow1eclg=ment of the political and social trans 'cendencyyof the doctrine of original sm. I wish to express my thanks to all, and also 'to Mr. J. M. Kennedy, who has shared with me the labour of giving my thoughts this English setting, and to fmessr's. A. R. Orage and Rowland Kenney for M, their numerous corrections. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Download or read book The NSA Report written by President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, The and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The official report that has shaped the international debate about NSA surveillance "We cannot discount the risk, in light of the lessons of our own history, that at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking. Americans must never make the mistake of wholly 'trusting' our public officials."—The NSA Report This is the official report that is helping shape the international debate about the unprecedented surveillance activities of the National Security Agency. Commissioned by President Obama following disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden, and written by a preeminent group of intelligence and legal experts, the report examines the extent of NSA programs and calls for dozens of urgent and practical reforms. The result is a blueprint showing how the government can reaffirm its commitment to privacy and civil liberties—without compromising national security.
Download or read book Authority Liberty and Function in the Light of the War a Critique of Authority and Liberty As the Foundations of the Modern State and an Attempt To written by Ramiro De Maeztu and published by Theclassics.Us. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... AUTHORITY, LIBERTY & FUNCTION IN THE LIGHT OF THE WAR THE GERMAN HERESY The Man Of The Renaissance It has been said that the central ideas of the Middle Ages consisted in looking upon the world as a vale of tears, and upon man as " I, a sinner." That is why the Middle Ages have been accused of darkening the world and diminishing man, as if their judgments of both were not recognitions of two facts, but the expressions of a malignant and anti-human will. But that the world is a vale of tears, and that man is "I, a sinner," are not judgments characteristic of a given period of humanity. They must have been thought by men of all ages in consequence of that which really distinguishes man from all other beings on earth: the ideal of perfection in his soul. When this ideal of perfection is applied to the region of the senses, the world must appear to us as a vale of tears; when it is applied to the moral plane man has to be depicted as "I, a sinner." Desire has nothing to do with these judgments. They are the judgments of experience. They are facts. There may come a day when God will deprive man--to give it to other animals; perhaps to the frogs--of this privilege, at once his glory and his tragedy, of being the only living thing which can conceive perfection; but so long as he does conceive it he is bound to say, when he looks outward with impartial eyes: "This world is a vale of tears," and when he looks inwards: "I am a sinner." The characteristic of the Middle Ages is not the acknowledgment of these two eternal and inevitable facts; but the imaginative way in which they reacted against them. The men who lived in Europe between the eighth and the twelfth centuries may be compared to those lonely children who create a playmate with their...
Download or read book The Development of the Relation Between Authority and Freedom in the Political Philosophy of Yves R Simon written by Patricia Pallasch Radzin and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book THE MAN VERSUS THE STATE written by Herbert Spencer and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution written by John Phillip Reid and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Liberty was the most cherished right possessed by English-speaking people in the eighteenth century. It was both an ideal for the guidance of governors and a standard with which to measure the constitutionality of government; both a cause of the American Revolution and a purpose for drafting the United States Constitution; both an inheritance from Great Britain and a reason republican common lawyers continued to study the law of England." As John Philip Reid goes on to make clear, "liberty" did not mean to the eighteenth-century mind what it means today. In the twentieth century, we take for granted certain rights—such as freedom of speech and freedom of the press—with which the state is forbidden to interfere. To the revolutionary generation, liberty was preserved by curbing its excesses. The concept of liberty taught not what the individual was free to do but what the rule of law permitted. Ultimately, liberty was law—the rule of law and the legalism of custom. The British constitution was the charter of liberty because it provided for the rule of law. Drawing on an impressive command of the original materials, Reid traces the eighteenth-century notion of liberty to its source in the English common law. He goes on to show how previously problematic arguments involving the related concepts of licentiousness, slavery, arbitrary power, and property can also be fit into the common-law tradition. Throughout, he focuses on what liberty meant to the people who commented on and attempted to influence public affairs on both sides of the Atlantic. He shows the depth of pride in liberty—English liberty—that pervaded the age, and he also shows the extent—unmatched in any other era or among any other people—to which liberty both guided and motivated political and constitutional action.
Download or read book Power versus Liberty written by James H. Read and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2000-01-29 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does every increase in the power of government entail a loss of liberty for the people? James H. Read examines how four key Founders--James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson--wrestled with this question during the first two decades of the American Republic. Power versus Liberty reconstructs a four-way conversation--sometimes respectful, sometimes shrill--that touched on the most important issues facing the new nation: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, federal authority versus states' rights, freedom of the press, the controversial Bank of the United States, the relation between nationalism and democracy, and the elusive meaning of "the consent of the governed." Each of the men whose thought Read considers differed on these key questions. Jefferson believed that every increase in the power of government came at the expense of liberty: energetic governments, he insisted, are always oppressive. Madison believed that this view was too simple, that liberty can be threatened either by too much or too little governmental power. Hamilton and Wilson likewise rejected the Jeffersonian view of power and liberty but disagreed with Madison and with each other. The question of how to reconcile energetic government with the liberty of citizens is as timely today as it was in the first decades of the Republic. It pervades our political discourse and colors our readings of events from the confrontation at Waco to the Oklahoma City bombing to Congressional debate over how to spend the government surplus. While the rhetoric of both major political parties seems to posit a direct relationship between the size of our government and the scope of our political freedoms, the debates of Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, and Jefferson confound such simple dichotomies. As Read concludes, the relation between power and liberty is inherently complex.
Download or read book On Liberty written by John Stuart Mill and published by . This book was released on 1882 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
