Bøger i American Political Thought serien

Since the early days of the republic, Americans have recognized Thomas Jefferson''s distinctive role in helping to shape the American national character. As Founder and statesman, Jefferson thought broadly about the virtues Americans would need to cultivate in order to preserve and perfect their experiment in republican self-government. Now in an age preoccupied with rights and divided over questons of character in public and private life, Jefferson can help us to think more clearly about our most urgent concerns.American Virtues is the first comprehensive analysis of Jefferson''s moral and political philosophy in over twenty years and the first ever to focus exclusively on the full range of moral, civic, and intellectual virtues that together form the American character. It asks what kind of character Americans as a people must cultivate to ensure their freedom and happiness and how we as a free society can nurture moral and intellectual excellence in our citizens and statesmen.Beginning with the Declaration of Independence, Jean Yarbrough explores how Jefferson''s conception of rights helps to form the American character. In subsequent chapters, she examines the moral sense virtues of justice and benevolence; the "agrarian" virtues of industry, moderation, patience, self-reliance, and independence; patriotism and modern republicanism; slavery and agrarian vice; the effect of commerce on character; the virtues connected with private property; the civic virtues of vigilance and spirited participation; the meaning of virtue and happiness for women; the virtues of republican statesmen; the place of the Epicurean virtues of wisdom and friendship in liberal republicanism; and piety and the secularized virtues of charity, toleration, and hope.In broadening the examination of virtue to include not only civic or republican virtue but the whole range of moral and intellectual excellences that perfect the individual character, American Virtues moves beyond the liberal-republican debates and makes a fresh contribution to the Jeffersonian literature.

Keeping the Republic is an eloquent defense of the American constitutional order and a response to its critics, including those who are estranged from the very idea of a fixed constitution in which "the living are governed by the dead." Dennis Hale and Marc Landy take seriously the criticisms of the United States Constitution. Before mounting their argument, they present an intellectual history of the key critics, including Thomas Paine, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry David Thoreau, Woodrow Wilson, Robert Dahl, Sanford Levinson, and the authors of The 1619 Project. Why, they ask, if the constitutional order is so well-designed, do so many American citizens have a negative view of the American political order? To address that question, they examine the most crucial episodes in American political development from the Founding to the present.Hale and Landy frame their defense of the Constitution by understanding America in terms of modernity, where small republics are no longer possible and there is a need to protect the citizens of a massive modern state while still preserving liberty. The Constitution makes large, popular government possible by placing effective limits on the exercise of power. The Constitution forces the people to be governed by the dead, both to pay the debt we owe to those who came before us and to preserve society for generations yet unborn.The central argument of Keeping the Republic is that the Constitution provides for a free government because it places effective limits on the exercise of power--an essential ingredient of any good government, even one that aims to be a popular government. That the people should rule is a given among republicans; that the people can do anything they want is a proposition that no one could accept with their eyes wide open. Thus, the limits that the Constitution place on American political life are not a problem, but a solution to a problem.Hale and Landy offer both a survey of American anti-constitutionalism and a powerful argument for maintaining the constitutional order of the nation's Framers.

An examination of the political thought of John Adams. The author seeks to reconstruct the contours and influences of Adams's mental universe, the ideas he challenged, the problems he considered central to constitution-making, and the methods of his reasoning.

A biography of the life and work of Louis Brandeis who became the first Jewish justice on his appointment to the US Supreme Court in 1916. A crusader for progressive causes, he helped draft social-welfare and labour legislation.

Because most Americans believe that government requires the consent of the governed, the idea of the social contract may come as close to a public philosophy as we've ever had. This book examines the role of the social contract across the entire sweep of American history, well beyond the Revolution and Founding periods.

The first edition of Alan Gibson's Understanding the Founding is widely regarded as an invaluable guide to the last century's key debates surrounding America's founding. This new edition retains all of the strengths of the original while adding a substantial new section addressing a major but previously unaddressed issue and significantly revising Gibson's invaluable conclusion and bibliography.

The decline of social mobility and the rise of income inequality - to say nothing of the extraordinary social, political, and economic developments of the Bush and Obama presidencies - have convinced many that the American Dream is no more. This is the concern that Cal Jillson addresses in The American Dream: In History, Politics, and Fiction.

This is the first book on the political thought and activism of the controversial colonial era Boston minister, Dr. Jonathan Mayhew.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) may be best known as a statesman. He served in the administrations of presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford; was ambassador to India and the United Nations; and represented New York in the U.S. Senate for four terms. But he was also an intellectual of the first order, whose books and papers on topics ranging from welfare policy and ethnicity in American society to international law stirred debate and steered policy. Moynihan was, journalist Michael Barone remarked, "e;the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson."e; He was, Greg Weiner argues, America's answer to the 18th-century Anglo-Irish scholar-statesman Edmund Burke. Both stood at the intersection of thought and action, denouncing tyranny, defending the family, championing reform. Yet while Burke is typically claimed by conservatives, Weiner calls Moynihan a "e;Burkean liberal"e; who respected both the indispensability of government and the complexity of society. And a reclamation of Moynihan's Burkean liberalism, Weiner suggests, could do wonders for the polarized politics of our day. In its incisive analysis of Moynihan's political thought, American Burke lays out the terms for such a recovery. The book traces Moynihan's development through the broad sweep of his writings and career. "e;The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society,"e; Moynihan once wrote. "e;The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself."e; In his ability to embrace both of these truths, this "e;American Burke"e; makes it bracingly clear that a wise political thinker can also be an effective political actor, and that commitments to both liberal and conservative values can coexist peaceably and productively. Weiner's work is not only a thorough and thoroughly engaging intellectual exploration of one of the most important politicians of the twentieth century; it is also a timely prescription for the healing of our broken system.

Arguments over what democracy actually meant in practice and how it should be implemented raged throughout the early American republic. This exploration of the Pennsylvania experience reveals how democracy arose in America and how it came to accommodate capitalism.

As recently as 2008, when Presidents Bush and Obama acted to bail out the nation's crashing banks and failing auto companies, the perennial objection erupted anew: government has no business in . . . business. Mike O'Connor argues in this book that those who cite history to decry government economic intervention are invoking a tradition that simply does not exist. In a cogent and timely take on this ongoing and increasingly contentious debate, O'Connor uses deftly drawn historical analyses of major political and economic developments to puncture the abiding myth that business once operated apart from government. From its founding to the present day, our commercial republic has always mixed--and battled over the proper balance of--politics and economics. Contesting the claim that the modern-day libertarian conception of U.S. political economy represents the "natural" American economic philosophy, O'Connor demonstrates that this perspective has served historically as only one among many. Beginning with the early national debate over the economic plans proposed by Alexander Hamilton, continuing through the legal construction of the corporation in the Gilded Age and the New Deal commitment to full employment, and concluding with contemporary concerns over lowering taxes, this book demonstrates how the debate over government intervention in the economy has illuminated the possibilities and limits of American democratic capitalism.

From his Kentucky farm, Wendell Berry preaches and practices stewardship of the land as he seeks to defend the value and traditions of farm life in an industrial capitalist society. This book explores key aspects of Berry's thought, as well as his overall contribution to environmental theory.

For Frederick Douglass, the iconic 19th-century slave and abolitionist, the foundations for his arguments in support of racial equality rested on natural rights and natural law. This title examines the philosophic core of Douglass' political thought, offering an understanding of its depth and coherence.

This text explores the shifting reputation of this controversial founding father. It surveys the Hamilton image in the minds of American statesmen, scholars, literary figures and media, explaining why Americans are content to live in a Hamiltonian nation, but reluctant to embrace the man himself.

Offers an understanding of George Washington and the history and government he helped to make. Phelps makes the case for the President's decisive importance to the development of American constitutional republicanism, emphasising the strength and coherence of his political philosophy.

A conversation about war and freedom between founder Alexander Hamilton and the Loyalists, Anti-Federalists, Jeffersonians and other Federalists. Instead of pitting Hamilton's virtues against his opponents' vices, it pits his virtue of responsibility against the revolutionary virtue of vigilance.

This work provides a fresh interpretation of James Madison and a critique of Madisonian politics. Neither civic humanist nor democrat, Madison has been described as a ""distrusting, calculating, and pragmatic Machiavellian Prince"".

Surveys more than 100 theories of community, taken from political, sociological, philosophical and theological thought, and backed by a bibliography of over 300 entries. Fowler proposes the idea of existential community as an alternative to liberalism and the standard communitarian ideal.

In ""A Preface to American Political Theory"" the author sets out to emancipate American political theorists from empiricism and inappropriate European theories and methodologies. He argues for clarification of the core of American political theory and its attendant methodologies.

From the Revolution to the Age of Jackson, John Marshall played a crucial role in defining the ""province of the judiciary"" and the constitutional limits of legislative action. This book clarifies the coherence of Marshall's jurisprudence, while keeping in sight the man as well as the jurist.

Examines the Republicans' ideological struggle, focusing on how party thought - particularly concerning the concept of republicanism - determined the contours of their efforts and was in turn shaped by it. This book focuses on what they thought about their actions, particularly their beliefs about the meaning and nature of the American Republic.

Reveals the Benjamin Franklin behind the many masks and shows that the real Franklin was far more remarkable than anyone has yet discovered. The author shows us a powerful intellect lurking behind the leather-apron countenance. This lively, witty, and revelatory book is written for readers who want to delve into the mind of this great man.

Much of the world today views America as an imperialist nation bent on global military, economic, and cultural domination. At home few share this negative view. Bob Pepperman Taylor, however, argues that US moral self-righteousness may potentially imperil democratic ideals and threaten democracy.

John C Calhoun may be best known for his stature in the US Senate and his controversial defense of slavery, but he is also a key figure in American political thought. This book sheds light on the crisis leading up to the Civil War by exploring Calhoun's conviction that his uncompromising defense of slavery would help preserve the Union.