The landmark political treatise that refuted the so-called divine right of kings and established the principles of representative government   "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."   With these stirring words, Jean-Jacques Rousseau begins The Social Contract-the first shot in a battle of ideas that would set the stage for the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. In the feverish days of the Enlightenment, Rousseau...

Las personas que intentan obtener el beneplácito de algún soberano, a menudo le ofrecen algo de gran importancia para ellos mismos, o algo que saben es de su particular agrado. Es por esto que los gobernantes siempre están recibiendo caballos, armas, brocados de oro, joyas y todo tipo de ropas elegantes que los donatarios consideran apropiados. Con la esperanza de traer ante vuestra Majestad una muestra de mi lealtad, me doy cuenta de que no hay...

The government should be a government of people, not money. The Occupy Wall Street movement senses this but lacks focus. This book provides that focus. The government has roles to play in the safety, conflict resolution, and pooling resources. The roles that the government has to play require strict adherence to the rules. There can be no forgiveness. Religion asks for perfection. To ask for the impossible guarantees failure. The role religion...

Written after 1513's "The Prince," Niccolo Machiavelli's war treatise, "The Art of War", is a dazzling array of war tactics and strategies based on the military strength of the Romans. Machiavelli wrote "The Art of War" as a dialogue between a group of young men in the Florentine republic. The main narrator, Lord Fabrizio Colonna, is the voice of knowledge and wisdom. The others ask questions about military tactics, and Fabrizio gives them advice...

Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decadesand he fought with the Polish ant-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and...

National Review has been the leading conservative national magazine since it was founded in 1955, and in that capacity it has played a decisive role in shaping the conservative movement in the United States. In The Making of the American Conservative Mind, Jeffrey Hart provides an authoritative and high-spirited history of how the magazine has come to define and defend conservatism for the past fifty years. He also gives a firsthand account of the...

Americans are once again rediscovering the wisdom of the founders who wrote and ratified the U.S. Constitution, which has stood the test of two centuries. James Madison's efforts in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 earned him the reputation of being the "father of the Constitution." The time is ripe for Madison to take his place alongside John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as a thinker for the ages. This book looks at the ways in which Madison's...

To Gently Leave This Life: The Right To Die, which explores the right-to-die movement and the human tragedies, such as Karen Quinlan's difficult death, that precipitated assisted dying legislation in several states in the U.S., and in several countries in Europe, Canada, and South Africa. Patients living in these states and countries have the option of choosing assisted death if their suffering becomes unbearable.FAYE GIRSH, PRESIDENT – WORLD FEDERATION...

Since the early days of the American republic, political thinkers have maintained that a grossly unequal division of property, wealth, and power would lead to the erosion of democratic life. Yet over the past thirty-five years, neoconservatives and neoliberals alike have redrawn the tenets of American liberalism. Nowhere is this more evident than in our current mainstream political discourse, in which the politics of economic inequality are rarely...

I agree with you on all the points you have listed. Yet, I still need the local congregation. -anonymous The Christian Right group of Churches have been consistently losing members for the last twenty years, and do not have an inkling of the cause. They have joined with the Republicans to try and enforce their will upon society. They have failed in the last two elections as indicated by the election of Barak Obama. This of course gives rise to speculation...