Vindicating the Founders

Vindicating the Founders PDF Author: Thomas G. West
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442210273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
This controversial, convincing, and highly original book is important reading for everyone concerned about the origins, present, and future of the American experiment in self-government.

Vindicating the Founders

Vindicating the Founders PDF Author: Thomas G. West
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442210273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
This controversial, convincing, and highly original book is important reading for everyone concerned about the origins, present, and future of the American experiment in self-government.

Vindicating the Founders

Vindicating the Founders PDF Author: Thomas G. West
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0847685160
Category : Citizenship
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Compelling, accurate, closely reasoned, and entirely convincing.-- Forrest McDonald, University of Alabama

Vindicating the Founders

Vindicating the Founders PDF Author: Thomas G. West
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847685172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
It is commonly, but incorrectly, asserted that because Washington and Jefferson owned slaves, because women, even after the American Revolution, enjoyed virtually no rights, and because the poor and those without property were denied the basic tenets of democratic participation, the Founders were frauds who never really believed that "all men were created equal." West demonstrates why such politically correct interpretations are not only dead wrong, but dangerous. Because our understanding of the Founders so profoundly influences our opinion of contemporary America, this book explains why their views, and particularly the constitutional order they created, are still worthy of our highest respect. West proves that the Founders were indeed sincere in their belief of universal human rights and in their commitment to democracy. By contrasting the Founders' ideas of liberty and equality with today's, West persuasively concludes that contemporary notions bear almost no resemblance to the concepts originally articulated by the Founders.

The Political Theory of the American Founding

The Political Theory of the American Founding PDF Author: Thomas G. West
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110714048X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
This book provides a complete overview of the Founders' natural rights theory and its policy implications.

The Shoemaker and the Tea Party

The Shoemaker and the Tea Party PDF Author: Alfred F. Young
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807071420
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
George Robert Twelves Hewes, a Boston shoemaker who participated in such key events of the American Revolution as the Boston Massacre and the Tea Party, might have been lost to history if not for his longevity and the historical mood of the 1830's. When the Tea Party became a leading symbol of the Revolutionary ear fifty years after the actual event, this 'common man' in his nineties was 'discovered' and celebrated in Boston as a national hero. Young pieces together this extraordinary tale, adding new insights about the role that individual and collective memory play in shaping our understanding of history.

Vindicating Lincoln

Vindicating Lincoln PDF Author: Thomas L. Krannawitter
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442200642
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Was Abraham Lincoln a racist, as some critics would have us believe? Was he the father of big government, as some others maintain? Was the sixteenth president a traitor to the cause of free society and constitutional government? Are the political principles that guided him relevant today? In this provocative and timely book, Thomas L. Krannawitter sets out to defend the man many consider to be our greatest president from critics on both the left and the right. For although public opinion polls tend to rank Lincoln among the country's most venerated presidents, he is also, paradoxically, the president who is least understood. While Lincoln's name is frequently invoked in contemporary American politics, few Americans understand or agree with the moral and political principles for which Lincoln gave his last full measure of devotion. Many influential authors view Lincoln as an antiquated monument, a man of his age who knew only nineteenth-century prejudices and lacked twenty-first-century enlightenment. Other writers denounce Lincoln as a tyrant who trampled upon the Constitution and states' rights, and thereby inaugurated big government and the kind of politics feared by the Founding Fathers. Krannawitter argues that both views spring from a misunderstanding of Lincoln. Today, at precisely the moment when America is most in need of his moral and political understanding, we are more removed from Lincoln's thought than ever before. Vindicating Lincoln reintroduces us to Lincoln the statesman, the man who defended our greatest ideals of freedom and equality at the darkest moment in American history. Krannawitter shows us why it is in our interest not only to learn about Abraham Lincoln, but to learn from him—to understand that Lincoln's guiding principles were true not only for his time, but that they remain true for ours as well. On the eve of the bicentennial of his birth in 2009, Lincoln can offer moral and political guidance to us all.

A Nation Under God?

A Nation Under God? PDF Author: Thomas L. Krannawitter
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1461609941
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
A Nation Under God? raises the question of why the ACLU relentlessly attacks public expressions of mainstream religious faith. The answer, according to the book's argument, is that the work of the ACLU is informed by a larger political project-modern liberalism-to transform American government and society into an administrative-welfare state. Modern liberalism requires two decisive changes in American politics if it is to be successful: First, the government of limited powers mandated by the Constitution must become a government of unlimited powers and scope. Second, free, self-reliant, and independent citizens must become dependent on and understand themselves as subservient to government. The ACLU's drive to remove religion and morality from the public square advances both goals. Limited, constitutional government rests on the idea that rights come from God; the power of government should be limited commensurate to the limited purpose of legitimate government: to protect our natural, God-given rights. With God removed from the public square, it becomes much easier politically to argue that government is the source of rights, and that every expansion of government power is tantamount to an expansion of rights. Further, self-reliant citizens are not in need of and are unlikely to support large government welfare programs. But self-reliancy is largely a function of self-control and moral responsibility. Immoral and irresponsible citizens are incapable of providing for themselves and their families. Driving God and morality out of the public square serves to break down public morality, which in turn creates classes of citizens who are dependent on government assistance and regulation. Through endless litigation against public expressions of religion and morality and its distorted interpretations of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, the ACLU reveals its real agenda and its real allegiance, which is not to the Constitution or Bill of Rights, but to a radical liberal ideology that seeks

Affairs of Honor

Affairs of Honor PDF Author: Joanne B. Freeman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300097559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Offering a reassessment of the tumultuous culture of politics on the national stage during America's early years, when Jefferson, Burr, and Hamilton were among the national leaders, Freeman shows how the rituals and rhetoric of honor provides ground rules for political combat. Illustrations.

The Founding Fathers

The Founding Fathers PDF Author: Richard B. Bernstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190273518
Category : Founding Fathers of the United States
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This is a concise contribution to the 'Very Short Introductions' series which reintroduces the history that shaped the founding fathers, the history that they made, and what history has made of them.

All Souls

All Souls PDF Author: Michael Patrick MacDonald
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807071986
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
A breakaway bestseller since its first printing, All Souls takes us deep into Michael Patrick MacDonald's Southie, the proudly insular neighborhood with the highest concentration of white poverty in America. Rocked by Whitey Bulger's crime schemes and busing riots, MacDonald's Southie is populated by sharply hewn characters like his Ma, a miniskirted, accordion-playing single mother who endures the deaths of four of her eleven children. Nearly suffocated by his grief and his community's code of silence, MacDonald tells his family story here with gritty but moving honesty.