When political debates devolve, as they often do these days, into a contest between big-government progressivism and natural rights individualism, Americans tend to appeal to the “self-evident” truths inscribed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But Peter Lawler and Richard Reinsch remind us that these truths understood in the abstract are untethered from a prior, unwritten constitution presupposed by the Framers—one found in culture, customs, traditions, experiences, and beliefs. A Constitution in Full is Lawler and Reinsch’s attempt to return this critical context to US constitutionalism—to recover a political sense of individualism in relation to country, family, religious community, and nature. Power, the authors suggest, is a public trust, not a form of obedience to either majoritarian suppression of particular liberties or the endless rights-claims lodged by autonomous individuals against society. Instead, power is ordered to the demands of a shared political enterprise that emerges from man’s social nature. Building on political insights from Alexis de Tocqueville, Orestes Brownson, John Courtney Murray, and others Lawler and Reinsch seek to restore the relational person—the individual grounded in family, work, faith, and community—to a central place in our understanding of republican constitutionalism. Their work promotes the ongoing development of constitutional self-government rooted in our historical, legal, and religious foundations. The shared middle-class values that once united almost all Americans as well as any confidence in democratic deliberation or political liberty are rapidly atrophying. This book aims to rebuild this confidence by helping us think seriously about the complex interplay between political and economic liberties and the relational life of creatures and citizens.

A Constitution in Full: Recovering the Unwritten Foundation of American Liberty (American Political Thought)

Politics & Social Sciences

Lawler, Peter Augustine

Reinsch II, Richard M.

Philosophy

University Press of Kansas

American Political Rhetoric is the only reader designed for introductory classes in American politics and government that is both focused on fundamental political principles and includes nothing but classic examples of our nation's political rhetoric. There are selections from The Federalist, Washington, Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Abigail Adams, the Seneca Falls Declaration, Franklin Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, and many others. In addition, there are generous excerpts from leading Supreme Court opinions on race, gender, school prayer, abortion, the separation of powers, federalism, and other key political issues. In American Political Rhetoric, Peter Lawler and Robert Schaefer contend that the study of politics is, first and foremost, for citizens, who learn best from considering the arguments put forward by our statesmen. The student enters into the controversy that animates political life, learning to form thoughtful opinions about basic political questions. Those opinions, in turn, form the foundation of the citizen's political activity in a democracy. The fifth edition is updated throughout and includes new readings on the President and Congress, race, gender, and foreign policy.

American Political Rhetoric: A Reader

Reference

Schaefer, Robert Martin

Words, Language & Grammar

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

American Views of Liberty presents diverse views of the American understanding of human liberty. This book begins rather traditionally with the Declaration of Independence, but with the un-Jeffersonian view that the Declaration's defense of liberty is not free from Christian presuppositions. That public defense differs from Jefferson's private mixture of Epicureanism and secularized Christianity, which is untenable. Attention is then given to the criticisms of American liberty found in four penetrating best-sellers by Bloom, Bellah, D'Souza, and Fukuyama. Liberty as political liberty is examined in The Federalist and George Bush's failed constitutionalism. The noble defense of human liberty against liberalism is displayed through an overview of contemporary conservative factionalism and through Alexis de Tocqueville's criticism of the therapeutic despotism of the administrative state. The guiding intention of this book is to oppose the therapeutic project to put death to death, and so to bring history or human liberty to an end.

American Views of Liberty (Major Concepts in Politics and Political Theory)

History

Americas

Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers

No descriptive material is available for this title.

Business & Money

International

The Restless Mind

Offers an account of Alexis de Tocqueville's thought and life. Lawler attempts to make clear the understanding of the human condition that is at the foundation of Tocqueville's mixed view of human liberty, and provide an understanding of liberty that does justice to human existence.

Sociology

Offers an account of Alexis de Tocqueville's thought and life. Lawler attempts to make clear the understanding of the human condition that is at the foundation of Tocqueville's mixed view of human liberty, and provide an understanding of liberty that does justice to human existence.

Dissatisfied with existing textbooks, the editors of The American Experiment have assembled 29 lectures from outstanding teachers of American politics to offer a comprehensive overview of American government, from the founding to the role of public opinion and mass media in contemporary American society. Written at a level accessible to beginning students, The American Experiment can be used in place of a main or supplemental text in introductory courses as well as a layperson's guide to American government.

The American Experiment

Dissatisfied with existing textbooks, the editors of The American Experiment have assembled 29 lectures from outstanding teachers of American politics to offer a comprehensive overview of American government, from the founding to the role of public opinion and mass media in contemporary American society. Written at a level accessible to beginning students, The American Experiment can be used in place of a main or supplemental text in introductory courses as well as a layperson's guide to American government.

Expanded to include the issues of gender, foreign policy, and the role of the judiciary, the new edition of this popular text provides introductory students with some of the best examples of American political rhetoric, from "The Declaration of Independence" to Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." In each chapter, different voices speak to a major theme in American political rhetoric. In addition to excerpts from pivotal Supreme Court cases, the text includes contributions from such diverse sources as The Federalist, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mario Cuomo, Robert Bork, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Vaclav Havel.

American Political Rhetoric

Postmodernism Rightly Understood is a dramatic return to realism--a poetic attempt to attain a true understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the postmodern predicament. Prominent political theorist Peter Augustine Lawler reflects on the flaws of postmodern thought, the futility of pragmatism, and the spiritual emptiness of existentialism. Lawler examines postmodernism by interpreting the writings of five respected and best selling American authors--Francis Fukuyama, Richard Rorty, Allan Bloom, Walker Percy, and Christopher Lasch. Lawler explains why the alternatives available in our time are either a 'soulless niceness,' which Fukuyama, Rorty, and Bloom described as the result of modern success, or a postmodern moral responsibility that accompanies love in the ruins, as articulated by Percy and Lasch. This is a fresh and compelling look at the crisis of the human soul and intellect accompanied by the onset of postmodernity.

Postmodernism Rightly Understood

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lawler, Peter Augustine. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lawler, Peter Augustine

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lawler, Peter Augustine. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Constitution in Full: Recovering the Unwritten Foundation of American Liberty (American Political Thought)

American Political Rhetoric: A Reader

American Views of Liberty (Major Concepts in Politics and Political Theory)

American Political Rhetoric: A Reader

The Restless Mind

The Restless Mind

The American Experiment

The American Experiment

American Political Rhetoric

Postmodernism Rightly Understood