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.

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.

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.

Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson PDF Author: Sean Wilentz
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429900989
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The towering figure who remade American politics—the champion of the ordinary citizen and the scourge of entrenched privilege "It is rare that historians manage both Wilentz's deep interpretation and lively narrative." - Publishers Weekly The Founding Fathers espoused a republican government, but they were distrustful of the common people, having designed a constitutional system that would temper popular passions. But as the revolutionary generation passed from the scene in the 1820s, a new movement, based on the principle of broader democracy, gathered force and united behind Andrew Jackson, the charismatic general who had defeated the British at New Orleans and who embodied the hopes of ordinary Americans. Raising his voice against the artificial inequalities fostered by birth, station, monied power, and political privilege, Jackson brought American politics into a new age. Sean Wilentz, one of America's leading historians of the nineteenth century, recounts the fiery career of this larger-than-life figure, a man whose high ideals were matched in equal measure by his failures and moral blind spots, a man who is remembered for the accomplishments of his eight years in office and for the bitter enemies he made. It was in Jackson's time that the great conflicts of American politics—urban versus rural, federal versus state, free versus slave—crystallized, and Jackson was not shy about taking a vigorous stand. It was under Jackson that modern American politics began, and his legacy continues to inform our debates to the present day.

Who are We?

Who are We? PDF Author: Samuel P. Huntington
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780684866697
Category : Americanization
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
America was founded by settlers who brought with them a distinct culture including the English language, Protestant values, individualism, religious commitment, and respect for law. The waves of later immigrants came gradually accepted these values and assimilated into America's Anglo-Protestant culture. More recently, however, national identity has been eroded by the problems of assimilating massive numbers of immigrants, bilingualism, multiculturalism, the devaluation of citizenship, and the "denationalization" of American élites. September 11 brought a revival of American patriotism, but already there are signs that this is fading. This book shows the need for us to reassert the core values that make us Americans.--From publisher description.

A Fatal Friendship

A Fatal Friendship PDF Author: Arnold Rogow
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0809016214
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
For almost two centuries, historians have struggled to explain the extraordinary duel that killed Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, and ended Vice President Aaron Burr's political career. In A Fatal Friendship, the distinguished political scientist and writer Arnold Rogow argues that the roots of the fatal encounter lay not in Burr's (admittedly flawed) political and private conduct hut, rather, in Hamilton's conflicted history and character. Rogow's brilliant analysis changes and deepens our understanding of honor, politics, and friendship in the early American Republic. - Publisher.