Download or read book The Utopian Conceit and the War on Freedom written by Juliana Geran Pilon and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In The Utopian Conceit and the War on Freedom, noted political philosopher Juliana Geran Pilon explores the roots of this malevolent ideology as the common ancestor of both anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism in the contemporary world, where political and religious freedom is increasingly under assault"--

Download or read book Dreams of Peace and Freedom written by J. M. Winter and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of the monstrous projects of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others in the twentieth century, the idea of utopia has been discredited. Yet, historian Jay Winter suggests, alongside the ?major utopians” who murdered millions in their attempts to transform the world were disparate groups of people trying in their own separate ways to imagine a radically better world. This original book focuses on some of the twentieth-century's ?minor utopias” whose stories, overshadowed by the horrors of the Holocaust and the Gulag, suggest that the future need not be as catastrophic as the past. The book is organized around six key moments when utopian ideas and projects flourished in Europe: 1900 (the Paris World's Fair), 1919 (the Paris Peace Conference), 1937 (the Paris exhibition celebrating science and light), 1948 (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), 1968 (moral indictments and student revolt), and 1992 (the emergence of visions of global citizenship). Winter considers the dreamers and the nature of their dreams as well as their connections to one another and to the history of utopian thought. By restoring minor utopias to their rightful place in the recent past, Winter fills an important gap in the history of social thought and action in the twentieth century.

Download or read book Utopian Road to Hell written by William J. Murray and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2021-03-26 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "William Murray provides a unique perspective that should be read, particularly by America's youth, at a time central planners are once again promising utopian dreams at a cost to the most productive among us.” ―Governor Mike Huckabee Utopian dreamers are deceived and deceiving. Their “fight for the people” rhetoric may sound good at first, but history proves egalitarian governments and the cultures they try to create destroy freedom, destroy creativity, destroy human lives, create poverty and misery, and often spread beyond their borders to bring others under slavery. Utopians believe that through their own personal brilliance a better society can be created on earth. When the belief in man as a creation in the image of God is completely rejected, the use of slavery and mass execution can be justified in the name of the creation of a utopian state for the masses. Pol Pot, Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung―together these so-called visionaries through their fanciful policies are responsible for the deaths of millions of people. In Utopian Road to Hell William J. Murray, son of atheist apologist Madelyn Murray O’Hair, describes the totalitarians throughout history and the current utopians who are determined to engage in social engineering to control the lives of every person on earth. From Marx to Hitler, Murray explains the progression of socialist engineering from its occultist roots to the extreme madness of the Nazis’ nationalistic racism. From Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood and Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the rebellious desire to be free from morality drives the “at-any-cost” campaigns such as abortion on demand, no-fault divorce, same-sex marriage, and overreaching government provisions. From Woodrow Wilson’s “living document” distortion of the Constitution and his income tax to FDR’s New Deal to Obama’s executive orders, those who seek centralized power typically do so by proclaiming some utopian scheme that they claim will perfect mankind and eliminate competition, greed, poverty, and war. William J. Murray masterfully educates us on the utopians’ swath of destruction throughout history and warns us of the dangers of present-day utopians fighting to hold power. We must heed the warning of George Washington when he said in his 1796 Farewell Address that it is important for those entrusted with the administration of this great and free nation, “to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another.” We must reclaim the freedom of the individual to avoid the continued path down the utopian road to hell.

Download or read book An Idea Betrayed written by Juliana Geran Pilon and published by . This book was released on 2023-03-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In calling America "the almost chosen nation," Abraham Lincoln invoked at once the Old Testament and the Founders' belief in the two covenantal communities' common ideal: equal liberty. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that ideal. Our Constitution instituted it. Although it took the Civil War to abolish the original sin of slavery, equal freedom defined the nation's philosophical foundation. Beginning late in the nineteenth century, however, that vision of liberty under constitutionally limited government mutated into progressivism. An aggressive mix of collectivism and scientism, fueled by Marxism and other toxic European ideologies, its early expression was eugenics, its later ambitious central planning. Meanwhile, an influx of immigrants during times of economic displacement would kindle widespread xenophobia, while populist distrust of financial profit, often associated with Jews, would stoke anti-Semitism. Over time, equal freedom fell into disrepute. Among the idea-elites, "right-wing" and "conservative" became pejoratives. But the rise of the Soviet Union and the aftermath of World War II proved a watershed for Americans, especially for American Jews, for those developments placed the liberal idea in a clarifying geopolitical context. Today, with equality and equity often used synonymously, a conflation of anti-capitalism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Zionism has gained prominence while Islamists make common cause with the enemies of freedom from within. Given the stakes, Jews must reassert the basic principles of their ancient tradition, which are also America's.

Download or read book Utopia written by Thomas More and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-12-03 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.

Download or read book When All Else Fails written by Jason Brennan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economist Albert O. Hirschman famously argued that citizens of democracies have only three possible responses to injustice or wrongdoing by their government: we may leave, complain, or comply. But in When All Else Fails, Jason Brennan argues that there is fourth option. When governments violate our rights, we may resist. We may even have a moral duty to do so. For centuries, almost everyone has believed that we must allow the government and its representatives to act without interference, no matter how they behave. We may complain, protest, sue, or vote officials out, but we can't fight back. But Brennan makes the case that we have no duty to allow the state or its agents to commit injustice. We have every right to react with acts of "uncivil disobedience." We may resist arrest for violation of unjust laws. We may disobey orders, sabotage government property, or reveal classified information. We may deceive ignorant, irrational, or malicious voters. We may even use force in self-defense or to defend others. The result is a provocative challenge to long-held beliefs about how citizens may respond when government officials behave unjustly or abuse their power

Download or read book The Great Utopian Delusion written by Paul Cleveland and published by . This book was released on 2015-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Individual freedom and liberty are fundamental principles upon which a good society is based. Regrettably, those principles have been under attack for over one hundred years around the globe. The notion that paradise on earth can be achieved by coercive means has led to the spread of tyranny and despotism. Dr. Clarence B. Carson originally explained this truth in his 1978 book, The World in the Grip of an Idea.Proponents of the idea often argue that freedom promotes the worst kind of human behavior and, therefore, must be rejected if moral human action is to prevail. They argue that liberty in general and free enterprise in particular promote jealousy, envy, and greed. In their opinion, life on this planet would be better served if we substituted government control over individual human action. The assumption is that such a collectivization of life would promote the highest level of virtuous living amongst us. But, this assessment is simply wrong. In a 1996 article reflecting on his book, Carson observed:The notion that government is responsible for the material and intellectual well-­?being of populaces has great appeal, especially when it is accompanied by actual payments and subsidies from government. Many people become dependent upon government handouts, and even those who are not particularly dependent may lose confidence in their ability to provide for themselves. These feelings, attitudes, and practices are residues from the better part of a century of socialism in its several varieties. They have produced vastly overgrown governments and the politicalization of life. Governments and politicians are the problem, not the solution.Sturdy individuals, stable families, vital communities, limited government, and faith in a transcendent God who provides for us through the natural order and the bounties of nature-these alone can break the grip of the idea. -- Clarence B. Carson, "The World in the Grip of an Idea Revisited," The Freeman, May, 1996.

Download or read book In Search of the Utopian States of America written by Verena Adamik and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book endeavours to understand the seemingly direct link between utopianism and the USA, discussing novels that have never been brought together in this combination before, even though they all revolve around intentional communities: Imlay’s The Emigrants (1793), Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852), Howland’s Papas Own Girl (1874), Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio (1899), and Du Bois’s The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911). They relate nation and utopia not by describing perfect societies, but by writing about attempts to immediately live radically different lives. Signposting the respective communal history, the readings provide a literary perspective to communal studies, and add to a deeply necessary historicization for strictly literary approaches to US utopianism, and for studies that focus on Pilgrims/Puritans/Founding Fathers as utopian practitioners. This book therefore highlights how the authors evaluated the USA’s utopian potential and traces the nineteenth-century development of the utopian imagination from various perspectives.

Download or read book Utopia written by Thomas More and published by . This book was released on 2023-01-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas More imagines a beautiful island community where multitudes live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and all property is common in his most well-known and contentious book, Utopia. More explores the theories underlying war, political disputes, social conflicts, and wealth distribution through dialogue and correspondence between the main character Raphael Hythloday and his friends and contemporaries. More also imagines the day-to-day lives of those citizens enjoying freedom from fear, oppression, violence, and suffering. This utopian vision, which was originally written in Latin, is also a biting satire of Europe in the sixteenth century, and it has had a significant impact on utopian fiction even today.

Download or read book Freedom From the Market written by Mike Konczal and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The progressive economics writer redefines the national conversation about American freedom “Mike Konczal [is] one of our most powerful advocates of financial reform‚ [a] heroic critic of austerity‚ and a huge resource for progressives.”—Paul Krugman Health insurance, student loan debt, retirement security, child care, work-life balance, access to home ownership—these are the issues driving America’s current political debates. And they are all linked, as this brilliant and timely book reveals, by a single question: should we allow the free market to determine our lives? In the tradition of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, noted economic commentator Mike Konczal answers this question with a resounding no. Freedom from the Market blends passionate political argument and a bold new take on American history to reveal that, from the earliest days of the republic, Americans have defined freedom as what we keep free from the control of the market. With chapters on the history of the Homestead Act and land ownership, the eight-hour work day and free time, social insurance and Social Security, World War II day cares, Medicare and desegregation, free public colleges, intellectual property, and the public corporation, Konczal shows how citizens have fought to ensure that everyone has access to the conditions that make us free. At a time when millions of Americans—and more and more politicians—are questioning the unregulated free market, Freedom from the Market offers a new narrative, and new intellectual ammunition, for the fight that lies ahead.

Download or read book Notes from the Other Side of Night written by Albert Mehrabian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notes from the Other Side of Night is a diary-memoir written upon Juliana Geran Pilon's return to her native Romania in 1975, which she had left along with her family when she was just fourteen. Poetically weaving together modern insight and realities with childhood perceptions, Pilon tells the haunting stories of her parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends. Although the scenery of her native home had remained essentially unchanged since her childhood, Pilon recalls streets that are no more, homes and churches that have been demolished. Yet, the hills and forests, the flowers and mountains, the heat of old Bucharest, remained the same. The scenes and characters described in this book are simply unforgettable. Despite the many tragedies it describes—anti-semitism, political imprisonment, and judicial execution were ruthless realities under communism—Notes from the Other Side of Night is not a depressing book. Pilon writes with a detached melancholy about events and characters that illustrate Hannah Arendt's terrifying "banality of evil." But she remembers, as well, those few who managed to remain human beings until the end. Ultimately, hope triumphs in this memoir. This edition includes a new foreword, which discusses the initial writing and publication of this and previous editions.

Download or read book Freedom and Liberty in Book II of Thomas More s Utopia written by Gábor Rados and published by VDM Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas More finished writing his Utopia originally in Latin in 1516. This scholarly masterpiece describes an imaginary society in two separate books, together with its various social-political institutions and everyday customs. Through the words of the experienced and over-intelligent sailor, Raphael Hythloday, we have the opportunity to get a profound insight into the mechanisms of the lives of the Utopians in a way that, even from the remoteness of almost five hundred years, it tells us something immensely fundamental about the constantly changing nature of human affairs. In the present book we endeavor to have a closer look upon the characteristics of political freedom in the Utopian society, besides continually being aware of the fact that this very concept has undergone the most influential and diverse interpretations ever since More's own time. Bearing this in mind, our ultimate aim with the book is to continue More's own belief to go on with the neverending struggle to find the optimal condition of man.

Download or read book Free as a Jew written by Ruth R. Wisse and published by Wicked Son. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First came parents with the good sense to flee Europe in 1940 and the good fortune to reach the land of freedom. Their daughter, Ruth, grew up in the shadow of genocide—but in tandem with the birth of Israel, which remained her lodestar. She learned that although Jewishness is biologically transmitted, democracy is not, and both require intensive, intelligent transmission through education in each and every generation. They need adults with the confidence to teach their importance. Ruth tried to take on that challenge as dangers to freedom mounted and shifted sides on the political spectrum. At the high point of her teaching at Harvard University, she witnessed the unraveling of standards of honesty and truth until the academy she left was no longer the one she had entered.

Download or read book The Ecology of Freedom written by Murray Bookchin and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ecology of Freedom, his most exciting and far-reaching work yet. This engaging and extremely readable book's scope is downright breathtaking. Using an inspired synthesis of ecology, anthropology, philosophy and political theory, it traces our society's conflicting legacies of freedom and domination, from the first emergence of human culture to today's global capitalism. The theme of Bookchin's grand historical narrative is straightforward: environmental, economic and political devastation are born at the moment that human societies begin to organize themselves hierarchically. And, despite the nuance and detail of his arguments, the lesson to be learned is just as basic: our nightmare will continue until hierarchy is dissolved and human beings develop more sane, sustainable and egalitarian social structures. The Ecology of Freedom is indispensable reading for anyone who's tired of living in a world where everything, and everyone, is an exploitable resource. It includes a brand new preface by the author. Book jacket.

Download or read book The Feminist Utopia Project written by Alexandra Brodsky and published by The Feminist Press at CUNY. This book was released on 2015-09-21 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “incredible addition to the feminist canon” brings together the most inspiring, creative, and courageous voices concerning modern women’s issues (Jessica Valenti, editor of Yes Means Yes). In this groundbreaking collection, more than fifty cutting-edge feminist writers—including Melissa Harris-Perry, Janet Mock, Sheila Heti, and Mia McKenzie—invite us to imagine a world of freedom and equality in which: An abortion provider reinvents birth control . . . The economy values domestic work . . . A teenage rock band dreams up a new way to make music . . . The Constitution is re-written with women’s rights at the fore . . . The standard for good sex is raised with a woman’s pleasure in mind . . . The Feminist Utopia Project challenges the status quo that accepts inequality and violence as a given, “offering playful, earnest, challenging, and hopeful versions of our collective future in the form of creative nonfiction, fiction, visual art, poetry, and more” (Library Journal).

Download or read book Zombie Economics written by John Quiggin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the graveyard of economic ideology, dead ideas still stalk the land. The recent financial crisis laid bare many of the assumptions behind market liberalism—the theory that market-based solutions are always best, regardless of the problem. For decades, their advocates dominated mainstream economics, and their influence created a system where an unthinking faith in markets led many to view speculative investments as fundamentally safe. The crisis seemed to have killed off these ideas, but they still live on in the minds of many—members of the public, commentators, politicians, economists, and even those charged with cleaning up the mess. In Zombie Economics, John Quiggin explains how these dead ideas still walk among us—and why we must find a way to kill them once and for all if we are to avoid an even bigger financial crisis in the future. Zombie Economics takes the reader through the origins, consequences, and implosion of a system of ideas whose time has come and gone. These beliefs—that deregulation had conquered the financial cycle, that markets were always the best judge of value, that policies designed to benefit the rich made everyone better off—brought us to the brink of disaster once before, and their persistent hold on many threatens to do so again. Because these ideas will never die unless there is an alternative, Zombie Economics also looks ahead at what could replace market liberalism, arguing that a simple return to traditional Keynesian economics and the politics of the welfare state will not be enough—either to kill dead ideas, or prevent future crises. In a new chapter, Quiggin brings the book up to date with a discussion of the re-emergence of pre-Keynesian ideas about austerity and balanced budgets as a response to recession.

Download or read book If I Am Not For Myself written by Ruth R. Wisse and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1992 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a century, Jews have been identified with liberalism. Not only have they been a driving force behind the spread of liberal politics; they have also been steadfastly loyal to a doctrine that promised them both safety and political acceptance. Recent evidence suggests that their commitment has not waned. But while Jews continue to stand up for other groups and "vote their conscience", contends Ruth Wisse, the liberal commitment to the Jews is not nearly so strong. Whenever Jews have been attacked - from the trial of Captain Dreyfus to the sustained military and political war against Israel - liberals have been slow to defend Jewish rights and have preferred instead to hold the Jews responsible for the persistence of their enemies. The explanation for this liberal default, Wisse argues, is the survival and success of anti-Semitism. This irrational idea continues to flourish throughout the world, despite the destruction of the fascist and communist regimes that were its deadliest twentieth-century allies. Wisse points out that anti-Semitism's astonishing resilience has put liberals - including liberal Jews - in an impossible position. The only reasonable response to such a doctrine, Wisse insists, is not appeasement or avoidance, but steadfast confrontation and rejection. Yet such opposition is alien to liberal ideas of open-mindedness and strikes many as intolerant. Unwilling to suspend their optimistic view of man as a benevolent and rational being in order to combat a mortal enemy, most liberals - including many Jews - conclude that Jews themselves must be responsible for the continuing wars against them - thus implicitly condoning their sacrifice. Wisse's book, inspired by afriend's emigration to Israel, traces the Jewish romance with liberalism from its discovery by Jewish integrationists and Zionists to the acceptance today by many Jews of a moral equivalence between Zionism and the war against it. She also explores, among the many contradictions of modern Jewish politics, the ambiguous question of Jewish "chosenness", and the Jewish longing for acceptance in a larger human family; the successful Arab war of ideas against Israel; and the dilemma of Jewish writers and intellectuals who wish to transcend their parochializing siege. Above all, she shows how and why anti-Semitism became the twentieth century's most successful ideology and reveals what people in liberal democracies would have to do to prevent it from once again achieving its goal.