Download or read book The Freedoms We Lost written by Barbara Clark Smith and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2010-11-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant and original examination of American freedom as it existed before the Revolution, from the Smithsonian’s curator of social history. The American Revolution is widely understood—by schoolchildren and citizens alike—as having ushered in “freedom” as we know it, a freedom that places voting at the center of American democracy. In a sharp break from this view, historian Barbara Clark Smith charts the largely unknown territory of the unique freedoms enjoyed by colonial American subjects of the British king—that is, American freedom before the Revolution. The Freedoms We Lost recovers a world of common people regularly serving on juries, joining crowds that enforced (or opposed) the king’s edicts, and supplying community enforcement of laws in an era when there were no professional police. The Freedoms We Lost challenges the unquestioned assumption that the American patriots simply introduced freedom where the king had once reigned. Rather, Smith shows that they relied on colonial-era traditions of political participation to drive the Revolution forward—and eventually, betrayed these same traditions as leading patriots gravitated toward “monied men” and elites who would limit the role of common men in the new democracy. By the end of the 1780s, she shows, Americans discovered that forms of participation once proper to subjects of Britain were inappropriate—even impermissible—to citizens of the United States. In a narrative that counters nearly every textbook account of America’s founding era, The Freedoms We Lost challenges us to think about what it means to be free.
Download or read book The Freedoms We Lost written by Barbara Clark Smith and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Freedoms We Lost is an ambitious historical analysis of the American revolution that reinterprets the gains and losses experienced by ordinary Americans and challenges the easy narrative that subsumes the growth of "freedom" into the story of the American nation. Esteemed historian Barbara Clark Smith proposes that many ordinary Americans were in fact more free on the eve of Revolution than they were two decades later.
Download or read book What We ve Lost written by Graydon Carter and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2004 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Vanity Fair" editor Carter addresses the fragile state of U.S. democracy with a critical review of the Bush administration in regard to the invasion of Iraq, personal rights, women's rights, the economy, and the environment.
Download or read book Freedom written by Nathan Law and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Nathan Law's agonising account of China's ruthless takeover of Hong Kong provides a terrible insight into Beijing's ambitions - the world needs to read this.' - Jon Snow 'In Freedom, Nathan Law paints a deeply personal portrait of sheer courage... An essential and timely read.' - Speaker Nancy Pelosi What does it mean to be truly free? And can any of us be free until all of us are? Nobel Peace Prize nominee Nathan Law has experienced first-hand the shocking speed with which our freedom can be taken away from us, as an elected politician arrested simply for speaking his mind. He remembers what it is like to lack freedom - and his father's precarious three-day escape from China in a small rowing boat. When authoritarianism makes gains around the world, demanding our silence as the price of doing business, it poses a challenge to democracy everywhere. In this passionate rallying cry, Law argues that we must defend our freedom now or face losing it for ever. 'Now we all need to stand firm to defend our freedoms, to ensure truth is not determined by dictators. We are born free and as equals. As long as we believe in that, no one can take it away from us.'
Download or read book Lost Rights written by David Howard and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2010-06-29 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Near the close of the Civil War, as General Sherman blazed his path to the sea, an unknown infantryman rifled through the North Carolina state house.The soldier was hunting for simple Confederate mementos—maps, flags, official correspondence—but he wound up discovering something far more valuable. He headed home to Ohio with one of the touchstones of our republic: one of the fourteen original copies of the Bill of Rights. Lost Rights follows that document’s singular passage over the course of 138 years, beginning with the Indiana businessman who purchased the looted parchment for five dollars, then wending its way through the exclusive and shadowy world of high-end antiquities—a world populated by obsessive archivists, oddball collectors, forgers, and thieves— and ending dramatically with the FBI sting that brought the parchment back into the hands of the government. For fans of The Billionaire’s Vinegar and The Lost Painting, Lost Rights is “a tour de force of antiquarian sleuthing” (Hampton Sides).
Download or read book Restoring the Lost Constitution written by Randy E. Barnett and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-24 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Constitution found in school textbooks and under glass in Washington is not the one enforced today by the Supreme Court. In Restoring the Lost Constitution, Randy Barnett argues that since the nation's founding, but especially since the 1930s, the courts have been cutting holes in the original Constitution and its amendments to eliminate the parts that protect liberty from the power of government. From the Commerce Clause, to the Necessary and Proper Clause, to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, to the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court has rendered each of these provisions toothless. In the process, the written Constitution has been lost. Barnett establishes the original meaning of these lost clauses and offers a practical way to restore them to their central role in constraining government: adopting a "presumption of liberty" to give the benefit of the doubt to citizens when laws restrict their rightful exercises of liberty. He also provides a new, realistic and philosophically rigorous theory of constitutional legitimacy that justifies both interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning and, where that meaning is vague or open-ended, construing it so as to better protect the rights retained by the people. As clearly argued as it is insightful and provocative, Restoring the Lost Constitution forcefully disputes the conventional wisdom, posing a powerful challenge to which others must now respond. This updated edition features an afterword with further reflections on individual popular sovereignty, originalist interpretation, judicial engagement, and the gravitational force that original meaning has exerted on the Supreme Court in several recent cases.
Download or read book Freedom for the Thought That We Hate written by Anthony Lewis and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than any other people on earth, we Americans are free to say and write what we think. The press can air the secrets of government, the corporate boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. This extraordinary freedom results not from America’s culture of tolerance, but from fourteen words in the constitution: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment.InFreedom for the Thought That We Hate, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Lewis describes how our free-speech rights were created in five distinct areas—political speech, artistic expression, libel, commercial speech, and unusual forms of expression such as T-shirts and campaign spending. It is a story of hard choices, heroic judges, and the fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face to face with one of America’s great founding ideas.
Download or read book What Price Liberty written by Ben Wilson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takes us through four centuries of British, American and European history, elaborating not just how civil liberties were constructed in the past, but how they were continually rethought - and re-fought - in response to modernity and puts into context the controversies of the past decade or so.
Download or read book The Fight for the Four Freedoms written by Harvey J. Kaye and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspiring call to redeem the progressive legacy of the greatest generation, now under threat as never before. On January 6, 1941, the Greatest Generation gave voice to its founding principles, the Four Freedoms: Freedom from want and from fear. Freedom of speech and religion. In the name of the Four Freedoms they fought the Great Depression. In the name of the Four Freedoms they defeated the Axis powers. In the process they made the United States the richest and most powerful country on Earth. And, despite a powerful, reactionary opposition, the men and women of the Greatest Generation made America freer, more equal, and more democratic than ever before. Now, when all they fought for is under siege, we need to remember their full achievement, and, so armed, take up again the fight for the Four Freedoms.
Download or read book What the Hell Do You Have to Lose written by Juan Williams and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author, political analyst, and civil rights expert delivers a forceful critique of the Trump administration's ignorant and unprecedented rollback of the civil rights movement. In this powerful and timely book, civil rights historian and political analyst Juan Williams denounces Donald Trump for intentionally twisting history to fuel racial tensions for his political advantage. In Williams's lifetime, crusaders for civil rights have braved hatred, violence, and imprisonment, and in so doing made life immeasurably better for African Americans and other marginalized groups. Remarkably, all this progress suddenly seems to have been forgotten -- or worse, undone. The stirring history of hard-fought and heroic battles for voting rights, integrated schools, and more is under direct threat from an administration dedicated to restricting these basic freedoms. Williams pulls the fire alarm on the Trump administration's policies, which pose a threat to civil rights without precedent in modern America. What the Hell Do You Have to Lose? makes a searing case for the enduring value of our historic accomplishments and what happens if they are lost.
Download or read book The Rights of the People written by David K. Shipler and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An impassioned, incisive look at the violations of civil liberties in the United States that have accelerated over the past decade—and their direct impact on our lives. How have our rights to privacy and justice been undermined? What exactly have we lost? Pulitzer Prize–winner David K. Shipler searches for the answers to these questions by traveling the midnight streets of dangerous neighborhoods with police, listening to traumatized victims of secret surveillance, and digging into dubious terrorism prosecutions. The law comes to life in these pages, where the compelling stories of individual men and women illuminate the broad array of government’s powers to intrude into personal lives. Examining the historical expansion and contraction of fundamental liberties in America, this is the account of what has been taken—and of how much we stand to regain by protesting the departures from the Bill of Rights. And, in Shipler’s hands, each person’s experience serves as a powerful incitement for a retrieval of these precious rights.
Download or read book Lost Liberties written by Cynthia Brown and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects critiques of the Justice Department's handling of American civil liberties under John Ashcroft, offering a series of essays categorized according to the specific issues on which they focus.
Download or read book Losing Freedom written by Linden Blue and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-21 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Losing Freedom explores the myths of socialism while providing a wealth of diversely-sourced information showing that free enterprise and the free markets are the best answers to poverty and social injustice.
Download or read book Independence Lost written by Kathleen DuVal and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rising-star historian offers a significant new global perspective on the Revolutionary War with the story of the conflict as seen through the eyes of the outsiders of colonial society Winner of the Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year Award • Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey History Prize • Finalist for the George Washington Book Prize Over the last decade, award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal has revitalized the study of early America’s marginalized voices. Now, in Independence Lost, she recounts an untold story as rich and significant as that of the Founding Fathers: the history of the Revolutionary Era as experienced by slaves, American Indians, women, and British loyalists living on Florida’s Gulf Coast. While citizens of the thirteen rebelling colonies came to blows with the British Empire over tariffs and parliamentary representation, the situation on the rest of the continent was even more fraught. In the Gulf of Mexico, Spanish forces clashed with Britain’s strained army to carve up the Gulf Coast, as both sides competed for allegiances with the powerful Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek nations who inhabited the region. Meanwhile, African American slaves had little control over their own lives, but some individuals found opportunities to expand their freedoms during the war. Independence Lost reveals that individual motives counted as much as the ideals of liberty and freedom the Founders espoused: Independence had a personal as well as national meaning, and the choices made by people living outside the colonies were of critical importance to the war’s outcome. DuVal introduces us to the Mobile slave Petit Jean, who organized militias to fight the British at sea; the Chickasaw diplomat Payamataha, who worked to keep his people out of war; New Orleans merchant Oliver Pollock and his wife, Margaret O’Brien Pollock, who risked their own wealth to organize funds and garner Spanish support for the American Revolution; the half-Scottish-Creek leader Alexander McGillivray, who fought to protect indigenous interests from European imperial encroachment; the Cajun refugee Amand Broussard, who spent a lifetime in conflict with the British; and Scottish loyalists James and Isabella Bruce, whose work on behalf of the British Empire placed them in grave danger. Their lives illuminate the fateful events that took place along the Gulf of Mexico and, in the process, changed the history of North America itself. Adding new depth and moral complexity, Kathleen DuVal reinvigorates the story of the American Revolution. Independence Lost is a bold work that fully establishes the reputation of a historian who is already regarded as one of her generation’s best. Praise for Independence Lost “[An] astonishing story . . . Independence Lost will knock your socks off. To read [this book] is to see that the task of recovering the entire American Revolution has barely begun.”—The New York Times Book Review “A richly documented and compelling account.”—The Wall Street Journal “A remarkable, necessary—and entirely new—book about the American Revolution.”—The Daily Beast “A completely new take on the American Revolution, rife with pathos, double-dealing, and intrigue.”—Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World
Download or read book Fed Up written by Rick Perry and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now, do not misunderstand me, America is great. But we are fed up with being over-taxed and over-regulated. We are tired of being told how much salt to put on our food, what kind of cars we can drive, what kinds of guns we can own, what kind of prayers we are allowed to say and where we can say them, what we are allowed to do to elect political candidates, what kind of energy we can use, what doctor we can see. What kind of nation are we becoming? I fear it's the very kind the Colonists fought against. But perhaps most of all, we are fed up because deep down we know how great America has always been, how many great things the people do in spite of their government, and how great the nation can be in the future if government will just get out of the way. Our fight is clear. We must step up and retake the reins of our government from a Washington establishment that has abused our trust. We must empower states to fight for our beliefs, elect only leaders who are on our team, set out to remind our fellow Americans why liberty is guaranteed in the Constitution, and take concrete steps to take back our country. The American people have never sat idle when liberty's trumpet sounds the call to battle -- and today that battle is for the soul of America.
Download or read book The Boston Massacre written by Serena R. Zabin and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2020 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prologue: March, 1770 -- Families of Empire -- Inseparable Interests, 1766-1767 -- Seasons of Discontent, 1766-1767 -- Under One Roof -- Love Your Neighbor, 1768-1770 -- Absent Without Leave 1768-1770 -- A Deadly Riot -- Gathering Up, 1770-1772 -- Epilogue: Civil War, 1772-1775.
Download or read book Thirteen Clocks written by Robert G. Parkinson and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his celebrated account of the origins of American unity, John Adams described July 1776 as the moment when thirteen clocks managed to strike at the same time. So how did these American colonies overcome long odds to create a durable union capable of declaring independence from Britain? In this powerful new history of the fifteen tense months that culminated in the Declaration of Independence, Robert G. Parkinson provides a troubling answer: racial fear. Tracing the circulation of information in the colonial news systems that linked patriot leaders and average colonists, Parkinson reveals how the system's participants constructed a compelling drama featuring virtuous men who suddenly found themselves threatened by ruthless Indians and defiant slaves acting on behalf of the king. Parkinson argues that patriot leaders used racial prejudices to persuade Americans to declare independence. Between the Revolutionary War's start at Lexington and the Declaration, they broadcast any news they could find about Native Americans, enslaved Blacks, and Hessian mercenaries working with their British enemies. American independence thus owed less to the love of liberty than to the exploitation of colonial fears about race. Thirteen Clocks offers an accessible history of the Revolution that uncovers the uncomfortable origins of the republic even as it speaks to our own moment.
