Liberty Vs Power

Author : James H. Read
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0813919126

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Power Versus Liberty by James H. Read Pdf

Does every increase in the power of government entail a loss of liberty for the people? James H. Read examines how four key Founders--James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson--wrestled with this question during the first two decades of the American Republic. Power versus Liberty reconstructs a four-way conversation--sometimes respectful, sometimes shrill--that touched on the most important issues facing the new nation: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, federal authority versus states' rights, freedom of the press, the controversial Bank of the United States, the relation between nationalism and democracy, and the elusive meaning of "the consent of the governed." Each of the men whose thought Read considers differed on these key questions. Jefferson believed that every increase in the power of government came at the expense of liberty: energetic governments, he insisted, are always oppressive. Madison believed that this view was too simple, that liberty can be threatened either by too much or too little governmental power. Hamilton and Wilson likewise rejected the Jeffersonian view of power and liberty but disagreed with Madison and with each other. The question of how to reconcile energetic government with the liberty of citizens is as timely today as it was in the first decades of the Republic. It pervades our political discourse and colors our readings of events from the confrontation at Waco to the Oklahoma City bombing to Congressional debate over how to spend the government surplus. While the rhetoric of both major political parties seems to posit a direct relationship between the size of our government and the scope of our political freedoms, the debates of Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, and Jefferson confound such simple dichotomies. As Read concludes, the relation between power and liberty is inherently complex.

Author : Gordon S. Wood
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2021
Category : History
ISBN : 9780197546918

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Power and Liberty by Gordon S. Wood Pdf

Written by one of early America's most eminent historians, this book masterfully discusses the debates over constitutionalism that took place in the Revolutionary era.

Author : John Stuart Mill
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 1895
Category : Liberty
ISBN : HARVARD:32044024786071

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On Liberty by John Stuart Mill Pdf

Author : Timothy D. Johnson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 80 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2010-07-21
Category : Founding Fathers of the United States
ISBN : 1450727611

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Liberty Vs. Power by Timothy D. Johnson Pdf

Author : Daron Acemoglu,James A. Robinson
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 576 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2019-09-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780735224391

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The Narrow Corridor by Daron Acemoglu,James A. Robinson Pdf

"Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy? The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor, they have answered this question with great insight." -Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post From the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, a crucial new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy in others--and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new threats. In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that countries rise and fall based not on culture, geography, or chance, but on the power of their institutions. In their new book, they build a new theory about liberty and how to achieve it, drawing a wealth of evidence from both current affairs and disparate threads of world history. Liberty is hardly the "natural" order of things. In most places and at most times, the strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak to protect individuals from these threats, or states have been too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck between state and society. There is a Western myth that political liberty is a durable construct, arrived at by a process of "enlightenment." This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue. In reality, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society: The authors look to the American Civil Rights Movement, Europe’s early and recent history, the Zapotec civilization circa 500 BCE, and Lagos’s efforts to uproot corruption and institute government accountability to illustrate what it takes to get and stay in the corridor. But they also examine Chinese imperial history, colonialism in the Pacific, India’s caste system, Saudi Arabia’s suffocating cage of norms, and the “Paper Leviathan” of many Latin American and African nations to show how countries can drift away from it, and explain the feedback loops that make liberty harder to achieve. Today we are in the midst of a time of wrenching destabilization. We need liberty more than ever, and yet the corridor to liberty is becoming narrower and more treacherous. The danger on the horizon is not "just" the loss of our political freedom, however grim that is in itself; it is also the disintegration of the prosperity and safety that critically depend on liberty. The opposite of the corridor of liberty is the road to ruin.

Author : Randall G. Holcombe
Publisher : Independent Institute
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2019-09-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781598133349

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Liberty in Peril by Randall G. Holcombe Pdf

When the United States was born in the revolutionary acts of 1776, Americans viewed the role of government as the protector of their individual rights. Thus, the fundamental principle underlying the new American government was liberty. Over time, the ideology of political "democracy"—the idea that the role of government is to carry out the "will of the people," as revealed through majority rule—has displaced the ethics of liberty. This displacement has eroded individual rights systematically and that history is examined in Liberty in Peril by Randall Holcombe in language accessible to anyone. The Founders intended to design a government that would preclude tyranny and protect those individual rights, and the Bill of Rights was a clear statement of those rights. They well understood that the most serious threat to human rights and liberty is government. So, the Constitution clearly outlined a limited scope for government and set forth a form of governance that would preserve individual rights. The federal government's activities during two world wars and the Great Depression greatly increased government's involvement in people's lives. By the time of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society," the depletion of rights and the growth of the activities of political democracy was complete. By the end of the 20th Century the fundamental principle underlying the U.S. government was now political power and not liberty. Public policy was oriented toward fulfilling the majority rule with the subsequent increase in government power and scope. Holcombe argues that economic and political systems are not separate entities but are intimately intertwined. The result is a set of tensions between democracy, liberty, a market economy, and the institutions of a free society. All those interested in the evolution of American government, including historians, political scientists, economists, and legal experts, will find this book compelling and informative.

Author : Roy A. Childs
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : Individualism
ISBN : 0930073126

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Liberty Against Power by Roy A. Childs Pdf

Author : Barry C. Lynn
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2020-09-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781250240637

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Liberty from All Masters by Barry C. Lynn Pdf

Barry C. Lynn, one of America's preeminent thinkers, provides the clearest statement yet on the nature and magnitude of the political and economic dangers posed by America’s new monopolies in Liberty from All Masters. "Very few thinkers in recent years have done more to shift the debate in Washington than Barry Lynn." —Franklin Foer Americans are obsessed with liberty, mad about liberty. On any day, we can tune into arguments about how much liberty we need to buy a gun or get an abortion, to marry who we want or adopt the gender we feel. We argue endlessly about liberty from regulation and observation by the state, and proudly rebel against the tyranny of course syllabi and Pandora playlists. Redesign the penny today and the motto would read “You ain’t the boss of me.” Yet Americans are only now awakening to what is perhaps the gravest domestic threat to our liberties in a century—in the form of an extreme and fast-growing concentration of economic power. Monopolists today control almost every corner of the American economy. The result is not only lower wages and higher prices, hence a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. The result is also a stripping away of our liberty to work how and where we want, to launch and grow the businesses we want, to create the communities and families and lives we want. The rise of online monopolists such as Google and Amazon—designed to gather our most intimate secrets and use them to manipulate our personal and group actions—is making the problem only far worse fast. Not only have these giant corporations captured the ability to manage how we share news and ideas with one another, they increasingly enjoy the power to shape how we move and play and speak and think.

Author : Gary Gerstle
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 470 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2017-10-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9780691178219

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Liberty and Coercion by Gary Gerstle Pdf

How the conflict between federal and state power has shaped American history American governance is burdened by a paradox. On the one hand, Americans don't want "big government" meddling in their lives; on the other hand, they have repeatedly enlisted governmental help to impose their views regarding marriage, abortion, religion, and schooling on their neighbors. These contradictory stances on the role of public power have paralyzed policymaking and generated rancorous disputes about government’s legitimate scope. How did we reach this political impasse? Historian Gary Gerstle, looking at two hundred years of U.S. history, argues that the roots of the current crisis lie in two contrasting theories of power that the Framers inscribed in the Constitution. One theory shaped the federal government, setting limits on its power in order to protect personal liberty. Another theory molded the states, authorizing them to go to extraordinary lengths, even to the point of violating individual rights, to advance the "good and welfare of the commonwealth." The Framers believed these theories could coexist comfortably, but conflict between the two has largely defined American history. Gerstle shows how national political leaders improvised brilliantly to stretch the power of the federal government beyond where it was meant to go—but at the cost of giving private interests and state governments too much sway over public policy. The states could be innovative, too. More impressive was their staying power. Only in the 1960s did the federal government, impelled by the Cold War and civil rights movement, definitively assert its primacy. But as the power of the central state expanded, its constitutional authority did not keep pace. Conservatives rebelled, making the battle over government’s proper dominion the defining issue of our time. From the Revolution to the Tea Party, and the Bill of Rights to the national security state, Liberty and Coercion is a revelatory account of the making and unmaking of government in America.

Author : Tyler Cowen
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2009-11-10
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780472024124

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Markets and Cultural Voices by Tyler Cowen Pdf

This intriguing work explores the world of three amate artists. A native tradition, all of their painting is done in Mexico, yet, the finished product is sold almost exclusively to wealthy American art buyers. Cowen examines this cultural interaction between Mexico and the United States to see how globalization shapes the lives and the work of the artists and their families. The story of these three artists reveals that this exchange simultaneously creates economic opportunities for the artists, but has detrimental effects on the village. A view of the daily village life of three artists connected to the larger art world, this book should be of particular interest to those in the fields of cultural economics, Latino studies, economic anthropology and globalization.

Author : John Caldwell Calhoun
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 664 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : History
ISBN : STANFORD:36105000086392

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Union and Liberty by John Caldwell Calhoun Pdf

"A Liberty Classics edition"--T.p. verso.Selected speeches: p. [401]-601. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Author : Lawrence Hamilton
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Liberty
ISBN : 1316011534

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Freedom is Power by Lawrence Hamilton Pdf

Proposes a novel, sophisticated and realistic account of freedom as power through political representation.

Author : Harry L. Watson
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2006-05-02
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0809065479

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Liberty and Power by Harry L. Watson Pdf

As an engaging and persuasive survey of American public life from 1816 to 1848, this work remains a landmark achievement. Now updated to address twenty-five years of new scholarship, the book interprets the exciting political landscape that was the age of Jackson, a time that saw the rise of strong political parties and an increased popular involvement in national politics. In this work, the author examines the tension between liberty and power that both characterized the period and formed part of its historical legacy.

Author : Raven Walker
Publisher : iUniverse
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2004-04-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780595766307

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Human Liberty and American Democracy by Raven Walker Pdf

The Myth of America is more powerful than its historical reality. From the Myth come political democracy, democratic capitalism, and the culture of freedom. If you are buying lottery tickets and did not vote in the last election, you need to read Human Liberty and American Democracy.

Author : Benjamin Constant
Publisher : Good Press
Page : 30 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2020-12-08
Category : Fiction
ISBN : EAN:4064066437855

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The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns by Benjamin Constant Pdf

This is an essay by Benjamin Constant. In this essay, Constant contrasted two views on freedom: one held by "the Ancients," particularly those in Classical Greece, and the other by members of modern societies. He investigates the dangers of attempting to impose ancient liberty in a modern context, as well as the risks associated with each type of liberty. The danger of ancient liberty was that men, preoccupied with securing their share of social power, might place too little value on individual rights and pleasures. The danger of modern liberty is that we will give up our right to participate in political power too easily, absorbed in the enjoyment of our independence and the pursuit of our particular interests." Constant believes that the two types of liberty must eventually be combined.