The Freedoms We Lost

Author : Barbara Clark Smith
Publisher : The New Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2010-11-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781595585974

Get Book

The Freedoms We Lost by Barbara Clark Smith Pdf

A brilliant and original examination of American freedom as it existed before the Revolution, from the Smithsonian’s curator of social history. The American Revolution is widely understood—by schoolchildren and citizens alike—as having ushered in “freedom” as we know it, a freedom that places voting at the center of American democracy. In a sharp break from this view, historian Barbara Clark Smith charts the largely unknown territory of the unique freedoms enjoyed by colonial American subjects of the British king—that is, American freedom before the Revolution. The Freedoms We Lost recovers a world of common people regularly serving on juries, joining crowds that enforced (or opposed) the king’s edicts, and supplying community enforcement of laws in an era when there were no professional police. The Freedoms We Lost challenges the unquestioned assumption that the American patriots simply introduced freedom where the king had once reigned. Rather, Smith shows that they relied on colonial-era traditions of political participation to drive the Revolution forward—and eventually, betrayed these same traditions as leading patriots gravitated toward “monied men” and elites who would limit the role of common men in the new democracy. By the end of the 1780s, she shows, Americans discovered that forms of participation once proper to subjects of Britain were inappropriate—even impermissible—to citizens of the United States. In a narrative that counters nearly every textbook account of America’s founding era, The Freedoms We Lost challenges us to think about what it means to be free.

Author : John Kampfner
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2009-09-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781847378187

Get Book

Freedom For Sale by John Kampfner Pdf

Why is it that so many people around the world appear willing to give up freedoms in return for either security or prosperity? For the past 60 years it had been assumed that capitalism was intertwined with liberal democracy, that the two not just thrived together but needed each other to survive. But what happens when both are undermined? Governments around the world -- whether they fall into the authoritarian or the democratic camp -- have drawn up a new pact with their peoples. These are its terms: repression is selective, confined to those who openly challenge the status quo, who publicly go out of their way to 'cause trouble'. The number of people who fall into that category is actually very few. The rest of the population can enjoy freedom to travel, to live more or less as they wish, and to make and spend their money. This is the difference between public freedoms and privatefreedoms. We choose different freedoms we are prepared to cede. We all do it. Freedom for Sale will set a new agenda. Mixing narrative from different countries around the world, it breaks new ground in revealing the extent to which the old assumptions and securities have died. It will crucially ask why so many intelligent and ambitious citizens around the world, particularly among the young, seemed prepared to sacrifice freedom of the press and freedom of speech in their quest for wealth. A new world order may well be upon us, and in this gripping and devastating book John Kampfner reveals how it may just be too late to stop it.

Author : Nathan Law,Evan Fowler
Publisher : Random House
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2021-11-04
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781473597051

Get Book

Freedom by Nathan Law,Evan Fowler Pdf

'Nathan Law's agonising account of China's ruthless takeover of Hong Kong provides a terrible insight into Beijing's ambitions - the world needs to read this.' - Jon Snow 'In Freedom, Nathan Law paints a deeply personal portrait of sheer courage... An essential and timely read.' - Speaker Nancy Pelosi What does it mean to be truly free? And can any of us be free until all of us are? Nobel Peace Prize nominee Nathan Law has experienced first-hand the shocking speed with which our freedom can be taken away from us, as an elected politician arrested simply for speaking his mind. He remembers what it is like to lack freedom - and his father's precarious three-day escape from China in a small rowing boat. When authoritarianism makes gains around the world, demanding our silence as the price of doing business, it poses a challenge to democracy everywhere. In this passionate rallying cry, Law argues that we must defend our freedom now or face losing it for ever. 'Now we all need to stand firm to defend our freedoms, to ensure truth is not determined by dictators. We are born free and as equals. As long as we believe in that, no one can take it away from us.'

Author : Ben Wilson
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 474 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2009-06-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9780571251773

Get Book

What Price Liberty? by Ben Wilson Pdf

Individual liberty will be the defining issue of the twenty-first century, while fear of terrorism, crime and social chaos has put our ideas of liberty into retreat in recent years. It is clear that there is not just a crisis of liberty, but a crisis in the way people talk about liberty. How do we, as individuals, negotiate the maximum amount of freedom in such a complex world? How can we resist the growth of intrusive authoritarianism without exposing ourselves to crime, terrorism and other risks? Even those who instinctively support social freedoms are losing confidence when confronted with such hard truths. History provides a guide to answering these questions. We have a rich legacy to draw upon to help define our approach to current problems. Yet it is a history which we are in danger of forgetting or misreading. In What Price Liberty? Ben Wilson travels through four centuries of British, American and European history, elaborating not just how civil liberties were constructed in the past, but how they were continually re-thought -and re-fought - in response to modernity. The last chapters put into context the controversies of the last decade or so-the threat of terrorism and the rise of the database nation. If liberty is to survive now it must, like it did in the past, adapt to new circumstances. But to do this we need to agree about the value we place on liberty.

Author : Anthony Lewis
Publisher : ReadHowYouWant.com
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : History
ISBN : 9781458758385

Get Book

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate by Anthony Lewis Pdf

More than any other people on earth, we Americans are free to say and write what we think. The press can air the secrets of government, the corporate boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. This extraordinary freedom results not from America’s culture of tolerance, but from fourteen words in the constitution: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment.InFreedom for the Thought That We Hate, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Lewis describes how our free-speech rights were created in five distinct areas—political speech, artistic expression, libel, commercial speech, and unusual forms of expression such as T-shirts and campaign spending. It is a story of hard choices, heroic judges, and the fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face to face with one of America’s great founding ideas.

Author : Mathew Thomson
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2013-11-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9780191665097

Get Book

Lost Freedom by Mathew Thomson Pdf

Lost Freedom addresses the widespread feeling that there has been a fundamental change in the social life of children in recent decades: the loss of childhood freedom, and in particular, the loss of freedom to roam beyond the safety of home. Mathew Thomson explores this phenomenon, concentrating on the period from the Second World War until the 1970s, and considering the roles of psychological theory, traffic, safety consciousness, anxiety about sexual danger, and television in the erosion of freedom. Thomson argues that the Second World War has an important place in this story, with war-borne anxieties encouraging an emphasis on the central importance of a landscape of home. War also encouraged the development of specially designed spaces for the cultivation of the child, including the adventure playground, and the virtual landscape of children's television. However, before the 1970s, British children still had much more physical freedom than they do today. Lost Freedom explores why this situation has changed. The volume pays particular attention to the 1970s as a period of transition, and one which saw radical visions of child liberation, but with anxieties about child protection also escalating in response. This is strikingly demonstrated in the story of how the paedophile emerged as a figure of major public concern. Thomson argues that this crisis of concern over child freedom is indicative of some of the broader problems of the social settlements that had been forged out of the Second World War.

Author : Tyler Stovall
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 456 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2022-08-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9780691205373

Get Book

White Freedom by Tyler Stovall Pdf

The racist legacy behind the Western idea of freedom The era of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to our modern conceptions of freedom and democracy, was also the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. America, a nation founded on the principle of liberty, is also a nation built on African slavery, Native American genocide, and systematic racial discrimination. White Freedom traces the complex relationship between freedom and race from the eighteenth century to today, revealing how being free has meant being white. Tyler Stovall explores the intertwined histories of racism and freedom in France and the United States, the two leading nations that have claimed liberty as the heart of their national identities. He explores how French and American thinkers defined freedom in racial terms and conceived of liberty as an aspect and privilege of whiteness. He discusses how the Statue of Liberty—a gift from France to the United States and perhaps the most famous symbol of freedom on Earth—promised both freedom and whiteness to European immigrants. Taking readers from the Age of Revolution to today, Stovall challenges the notion that racism is somehow a paradox or contradiction within the democratic tradition, demonstrating how white identity is intrinsic to Western ideas about liberty. Throughout the history of modern Western liberal democracy, freedom has long been white freedom. A major work of scholarship that is certain to draw a wide readership and transform contemporary debates, White Freedom provides vital new perspectives on the inherent racism behind our most cherished beliefs about freedom, liberty, and human rights.

Author : Stephen D. Solomon
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2016-04-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9781466879393

Get Book

Revolutionary Dissent by Stephen D. Solomon Pdf

When members of the founding generation protested against British authority, debated separation, and then ratified the Constitution, they formed the American political character we know today-raucous, intemperate, and often mean-spirited. Revolutionary Dissent brings alive a world of colorful and stormy protests that included effigies, pamphlets, songs, sermons, cartoons, letters and liberty trees. Solomon explores through a series of chronological narratives how Americans of the Revolutionary period employed robust speech against the British and against each other. Uninhibited dissent provided a distinctly American meaning to the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and press at a time when the legal doctrine inherited from England allowed prosecutions of those who criticized government. Solomon discovers the wellspring in our revolutionary past for today's satirists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann, and protests like flag burning and street demonstrations. From the inflammatory engravings of Paul Revere, the political theater of Alexander McDougall, the liberty tree protests of Ebenezer McIntosh and the oratory of Patrick Henry, Solomon shares the stories of the dissenters who created the American idea of the liberty of thought. This is truly a revelatory work on the history of free expression in America.

Author : Harry Browne
Publisher : Liamworks
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Conduct of life
ISBN : 0965603679

Get Book

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne Pdf

"Freedom is living your life the way you want to live it. This book shows how you can have that freedom now - without having to change the world or the people around you."--Jacket

Author : John H. Garvey
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Law
ISBN : 067431929X

Get Book

What are Freedoms For? by John H. Garvey Pdf

We generally suppose that it is our right to freedom which allows us to make the choices that shape our lives. The right to have an abortion is called "freedom of choice" because, it is said, a woman should be free to choose between giving birth and not doing so. Freedom of speech protects us whether we want to salute the flag or burn it. There is a correlative principle: one choice is as good as another. Freedom is not a right that makes moral judgments. It lets us do what we want. John Garvey disputes both propositions. We should understand freedom, he maintains, as a right to act, not a right to choose; and furthermore, we should view freedom as a right to engage in actions that are good and valuable. This may seem obvious, but it inverts a central principle of liberalism--the idea that the right is prior to the good. Thus friendship is a good thing; and one reason the Constitution protects freedom of association is that it gives us the space to form friendships. This book casts doubt on the idea that freedoms are bilateral rights that allow us to make contradictory choices: to speak or remain silent, to believe in God or to disbelieve, to abort or to give birth to a child. Garvey argues that the goodness of childbearing does not entail the goodness of abortion; and if freedom follows from the good, then freedom to do the first does not entail the freedom to do the second. Each action must have its own justification. Garvey holds that if the law is to protect freedoms, it is permissible--indeed it is necessary--to make judgments about the goodness and badness of actions. The author's keen insights into important rights issues, communicated with verve and a variety of both real and hypothetical cases, will be of interest to all who care about the meaning of freedoms.

Author : Douglas R. Egerton
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199782253

Get Book

Death Or Liberty by Douglas R. Egerton Pdf

Here, the author offers a sweeping chronicle of African American history stretching from Britain's 1763 victory in the Seven Years' War to the election of slaveholder Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800.

Author : Serena Zabin
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : Army spouses
ISBN : 9780544911154

Get Book

The Boston Massacre by Serena Zabin Pdf

A dramatic untold 'people's history' of the storied event that helped trigger the American Revolution The story of the Boston Massacre--when on a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot five local men to death--is familiar to generations. But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: the Massacre arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political. Professor Serena Zabin draws on original sources and lively stories to follow British troops as they are dispatched from Ireland to Boston in 1768 to subdue the increasingly rebellious colonists. And she reveals a forgotten world hidden in plain sight: the many regimental wives and children who accompanied these armies. We see these families jostling with Bostonians for living space, finding common cause in the search for a lost child, trading barbs and and sharing baptisms. Becoming, in other words, neighbors. When soldiers shot unarmed citizens in the street, it was these intensely human, now broken bonds that fueled what quickly became a bitterly fought American Revolution. Serena Zabin'sThe Boston Massacre delivers an indelible new slant on iconic American Revolutionary history.

Author : Robert G. Parkinson
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2021-03-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9781469662589

Get Book

Thirteen Clocks by Robert G. Parkinson Pdf

In his celebrated account of the origins of American unity, John Adams described July 1776 as the moment when thirteen clocks managed to strike at the same time. So how did these American colonies overcome long odds to create a durable union capable of declaring independence from Britain? In this powerful new history of the fifteen tense months that culminated in the Declaration of Independence, Robert G. Parkinson provides a troubling answer: racial fear. Tracing the circulation of information in the colonial news systems that linked patriot leaders and average colonists, Parkinson reveals how the system's participants constructed a compelling drama featuring virtuous men who suddenly found themselves threatened by ruthless Indians and defiant slaves acting on behalf of the king. Parkinson argues that patriot leaders used racial prejudices to persuade Americans to declare independence. Between the Revolutionary War's start at Lexington and the Declaration, they broadcast any news they could find about Native Americans, enslaved Blacks, and Hessian mercenaries working with their British enemies. American independence thus owed less to the love of liberty than to the exploitation of colonial fears about race. Thirteen Clocks offers an accessible history of the Revolution that uncovers the uncomfortable origins of the republic even as it speaks to our own moment.

Author : Franklin D. Roosevelt
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 121 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2018-05-15
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9783732667567

Get Book

State of the Union Addresses by Franklin D. Roosevelt Pdf

Reproduction of the original: State of the Union Addresses by Franklin D. Roosevelt

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 1074 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1955
Category : Arts
ISBN : UOM:39015065850656

Get Book

Thought by Anonim Pdf