Today, American ""rugged individualism"" is in a fight for its life on two battlegrounds: in the policy realm and in the intellectual world of ideas that may lead to new policies. In this book, the authors look at the political context in which rugged individualism flourishes or declines and offer a balanced assessment of its future prospects. They outline its path from its founding-marked by the Declaration of Independence-to today, focusing on different periods in our history when rugged individualism was thriving or was under attack. The authors ultimately look with some optimism toward new frontiers of the twenty-first century that may nourish rugged individualism. They assert that we cannot tip the delicate balance between equality and liberty so heavily in favor of equality that there is no liberty left for individual Americans to enjoy. In considering reasons to be pessimistic as well as reasons to be optimistic about it, they also suggest where supporters of rugged individualism might focus greater encouragement and resources.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• pt. I. Constitution
• pt. II. Politics
• pt. III. Race
• pt. IV. Education
• pt. V. Environment and health
• pt. VI. International
• pt. VII. Potpourri.

Throughout history, personal liberty, free markets, and peaceable, voluntary exchanges have been roundly denounced by tyrants and often greeted with suspicion by the general public. Unfortunately, Americans have increasingly accepted the tyrannical ideas of reduced private property rights and reduced rights to profits, and have become enamored with restrictions on personal liberty and control by government. In this latest collection of essays selected from his syndicated newspaper columns, Walter E. Williams takes on a range of controversial issues surrounding race, education, the environment, the Constitution, health care, foreign policy, and more. Skewering the self-righteous and self-important forces throughout society, he makes the case for what he calls the ""the moral superiority of personal liberty and its main ingredient - limited government."" With his usual straightforward insights and honesty, Williams reveals the loss of liberty in nearly every important aspect of our lives, the massive decline in our values, and the moral tragedy that has befallen Americans today: our belief that it is acceptable for the government to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Foreword / Victor Davis Hanson
• Introduction: The Triumph of Democracy and the Antidemocratic Tradition
• 1. The Monitory Failures of Athenian Democracy
• 2. The Antidemocratic Tradition and the American Founding
• 3. Democracy and Leviathan
• Conclusion: Restoring Limited Government.

By democracy we usually mean a government comprising popular rule, individual human rights and freedom, and a free-market economy. Yet the flaws in traditional Athenian democracy can instruct us on the weaknesses of that first element of modern democracies shared with Athens: rule by all citizens equally. In Democracy's Dangers and Discontents, Bruce Thornton discusses those criticisms first aired by ancient critics of Athenian democracy, then traces the historical process by which the Republic of the founders has evolved into something similar to ancient democracy, and finally argues for the relevance of those critiques to contemporary US policy. He asserts that many of the problems we face today are the consequences of the increasing democratization of our government and that the flaws of democracy, being ultimately an expression of the flaws in human nature, are unlikely to be corrected. Yet, he says, the continuing vigour of the US Constitution and the American character give us hope that democracy's dangers and discontents do not have to end in soft despotism and that we can restore the limited government of the founders and recover American democracy's "aptitude and strength.".
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• General introduction : anthropology and politics
• Part 1. Ancient Greece. Political ideas in Greece before Plato ; Plato ; Aristotle ; Xenophon, Isocrates, Demosthenes ; Political ideas in the Hellenistic age
• Part 2. Rome. Roman law and western humanism ; The historical context ; Roman political institutions ; Private law ; Political ideas under the Roman republic ; Political ideas under the empire
• Part 3. The Christian west. The "political" ideas of the Bible ; Christianity and politics at the time of the Roman empire ; Early Middle Ages (fifth to eleventh centuries) ; Feudalism and sacred kingship ; The high Middle Ages (eleventh to thirteenth centuries) : the papal revolution ; Saint Thomas Aquinas ; The end of the Middle Ages (fourteenth to fifteenth centuries) : toward the modern concept of the state ; Medieval millenarianism.

"Provides a context for understanding today's super states by tracing the origins of political thought from the earliest prestates through subsequent eras, including the philosophers and thinkers of the Greek city-state, Roman law, and the Christian Gospels; Nemo further examines the influence on political organization that extends from canon law and the influence of numerous Christian thinkers"--Provided by publisher.

• Preface
• 1. The New Deal and the origin of modern American conservatism
• 2. Liberty versus equality
• 3. Limited government versus expansive government
• 4. Constitutional conservatism versus liberal reinterpretation
• 5. The 2012 election and the future of conservatism.

Providing an often-overlooked historical perspective, Gordon Lloyd and David Davenport show how the New Deal of the 1930s established the framework for today's US domestic policy and the ongoing debate between progressives and conservatives. They examine the pivotal issues of the dispute, laying out the progressive-conservative arguments between Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1930s and illustrating how those issues remain current in public policy today. The authors detail how Hoover, alarmed by the excesses of the New Deal, pointed to the ideas that would constitute modern US conservatism and how three pillars-liberty, limited government, and constitutionalism-formed his case against the New Deal and, in turn, became the underlying philosophy of conservatism today. Illustrating how the debates between Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover were conducted much like the campaign rhetoric of liberals and conservatives in 2012, Lloyd and Davenport assert that conservatives must, to be a viable part of the US national conversation, "go back to come back"-because US history contains signposts for the way forward.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)