American Political Theory

Bill Bradley believes that America is at a crossroads, a "teachable moment" in which we are compelled to reevaluate our political system and leadership. With clarity and urgency, Bradley outlines the story we are being told now about who we are and what is possible for our nation. He then offers a new story, including what changes need to be made, and suggests that the party that chooses to embrace this new story will be in power for a generation.

Estados Unidos como potencia económica es objeto de deseo mundial. Tanto entre las elites, que lo ven como lo más cercano a la utopía del libre mercado, la competencia y la privatización, como entre los más pobres, embebidos por un incesante imperialismo cultural que les graba a fuego el American Dream de la tierra de las oportunidades. Sin embargo, la realidad difiere bastante de la imagen que Washington proyecta ante el mundo, especialmente en el caso de la clase media y trabajadora.

Following Abraham Lincoln's election, many Democratic newspapers across the North mistrusted Lincoln's claim that he would not abolish slavery, and their lukewarm support collapsed after Lincoln announced his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the fall of 1862. The advent of a national draft in the spring of 1863 only added fuel to the fire with anti-Lincoln Democrats, who argued that it was illegal to draft civilians.

This audiobook is about the development of the American social welfare state, from FDR to LBJ, with particular emphasis on the ideas (social, political, and economic) that have formed the basis of America's social welfare state.

The most famous debates in American history were held over 150 years ago, and despite their fame, no official transcripts were ever taken. Throughout the fall of 1858, US Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas participated in seven three-hour debates throughout Illinois. This unprecedented method of campaigning drew national attention, one that is still often idealized, even today, among those who feel politics is too bitterly partisan.

In The Heavens Might Crack, historian Jason Sokol traces the diverse responses, both in America and throughout the world, to King's death. Whether celebrating or mourning, most agreed that the final flicker of hope for a multiracial America had been extinguished.

All Americans, liberal or conservative, religious or not, can agree that religious freedom, anchored in conscience rights, is foundational to the US democratic experiment. But what freedom of conscience means, what its scope and limits are, according to the Constitution - these are matters for heated debate.

Before September 11, 2001, one terrorist group had killed more Americans than any other: Hezbollah, the “Party of God.” Today it remains potentially more dangerous than even al Qaeda. Yet little has been known about its inner workings, past successes, and future plans–until now.

Beyond Shangri-La chronicles relations between the Tibetans and the United States since 1908, when a Dalai Lama first met with U.S. representatives. What was initially a distant alliance became more intimate and entangled in the late 1950s, when the Tibetan people launched an armed resistance movement against the Chinese occupiers. The Tibetans fought to oust the Chinese and to maintain the presence of the current Dalai Lama and his direction of their country.

'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' is the best-known phrase from the Declaration of Independence, one of the most important documents of the eighteenth century and the whole Enlightenment Age. Written by Thomas Jefferson, it is frequently evoked today as a shorthand for that idea we call the 'American Dream'. But this is a line with a surprising history. Rather than being uniquely American, the vision it encapsulates - of a free and happy world - owes a great deal to British thinkers too.

In 1941, the magazine publishing titan Henry R. Luce urged the nation’s leaders to create an American Century. But in the post-World-War-II era, proponents of the American Century faced a daunting task. Even so, Luce had articulated an animating idea that, as William O. Walker III skillfully shows in The Rise and Decline of the American Century, would guide United States foreign policy through the years of hot and cold war.

As progressives reject the Constitution to implement their socialist agenda, Congressman Ken Buck argues that we must reclaim our heritage of liberty by applying the principles we learn through the U.S. Capitol’s art, architecture, and artifacts. This audiobook tells the story of how our nation’s founders carefully designed a political system that would guard against tyranny and protect individual liberty. Using the Capitol and its features as the backdrop, Buck shows how our heritage as a free people is woven into every institution in America.

In spring of 1953, newly elected President Eisenhower sat down with his staff to discuss the state of American strategy in the Cold War. America, he insisted, needed a new approach to an urgent situation. From this meeting emerged Eisenhower's teams of "bright young fellows", charged with developing competing policies, each of which would come to shape global politics.

Nineteenth-century America was the closest thing to pure free-market capitalism that has ever existed. There was no welfare state, no central bank, no deficit spending to speak of, no fiat money, and no income tax for most of the century, and no antitrust laws or federal regulatory agencies until the end of the century. During the 20th century, by contrast, American liberty declined as the size, scope, and power of government exploded. Federal spending, taxes, deficits, and debt have spiraled out of control.

The 2016 presidential election was unlike any other in recent memory, and Donald Trump was an entirely different kind of candidate than voters were used to seeing. He was the first true outsider to win the White House in over a century and the wealthiest populist in American history. John L. Campbell contextualizes Donald Trump's success by focusing on the long-developing economic, racial, ideological, and political shifts that enabled Trump to win the White House. Campbell argues that Trump's rise to power was the culmination of a half-century of deep, slow-moving change in America.

People on the right are furious. People on the left are livid. And the center isn't holding. There is only one thing on which almost everyone agrees: there is something very wrong in Washington. The country is being run by pollsters. Few politicians are able to win the voters' trust. Blame abounds and personal responsibility is nowhere to be found. There is a cynicism in Washington that appalls those in every state, red or blue.

In an inspiring narrative history, Jeff Biggers reframes today's battles as a continuum of a vibrant American tradition. Resistance is a chronicle of the courageous resistance movements that have insured the benchmarks of our democracy - movements that served on the front lines of the American Revolution, the defense of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the defeat of fascism during World War II, and landmark civil rights and environmental protection achievements.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson insisted that "the policeman is the frontline soldier in our war against crime", and police forces, arms makers, policy makers, and crime experts heeded this call to arms, bringing weapons and practices from the arena of war back home. The Punitive Turn in American Life offers a political and cultural history of the ways in which punishment and surveillance have moved to the center of American life and become imbued with militarized language and policies.

In Why Veterans Run, Jeremy Teigen explains the tendency of parties to elevate those with armed forces experience to run for high office. He describes the veteran candidate phenomenon by examining the related factors and patterns, showing why different eras have more former generals running and why the number of veterans in election cycles varies. With both quantitative and qualitative analysis, Why Veterans Run investigates each postwar era in US electoral history and elaborates why so many veterans run for office.

In Unmasking American Marxism author Casey Amnon takes listeners beyond the slogans, laying out the true origins of Marxism and socialism and how their meanings in our modern political landscape have been twisted far beyond historical meanings. With this crucial resource in hand, listeners will be able to recognize the inherent bias of today’s media conglomerates and how they are complicit in knowingly disseminating false information to millions of Americans.