Political Founding

This book provides a complete overview of the American Founders' political theory, covering natural rights, natural law, state of nature, social compact, consent, and the policy implications of these ideas. The book is intended as a response to the current scholarly consensus, which holds that the Founders' political thought is best understood as an amalgam of liberalism, republicanism, and perhaps other traditions. 

A rallying cry for a more just approach to the law that bolsters social justice movements by throwing out originalism—the theory that judges should interpret the Constitution exactly as conservatives say the Founders meant it “The greatest trick conservatives ever pulled was convincing the...

An accessible and entertaining biography of our nation’s greatest public servant and original political maverick John Quincy Adams, from the bassist of the Grammy-nominated band the Avett Brothers. During the tumultuous period between the era of the Founding Fathers and the disunion of the...

America wasn’t founded. It was forged in smoke, sabotage, and the kind of silence that doesn’t beg for credit. The Boston Tea Party was a cover. Beneath wigs and warpaint, rebels moved Turkish opium through the harbor and crossed names off ledgers. Some were loyalists. Some weren’t. Nobody asked twice. In the smoke-filled port cities of rebellion, a syndicate formed. Part secret society, part shadow state, it traded liberty like cargo and laundered loyalty through blood. Washington held the center. Franklin read every cipher twice.

Part coming of age, part political intrigue, Founding Stones questions what it means to be a citizen of the world. Trouble simmers in a small Pacific Northwest town when generations of secrets collide. Hannah, the daughter of the largest berry farmer in the county, searches for her voice after her twin sister dies of cancer. She jumps into the controversy around immigrant workers at the farm, and naively causes further problems.

A small group of men and women, fed up with the oppression that grips this once great country, is determined to set the nation back on course. They are patriots with a mission to create fairness, truth and hope by reestablishing the economic opportunities that our society once enjoyed. To achieve this, these loyal Americans must fight a heart-pounding modern day war.

How did the founding generation intend for us to interpret and apply the Constitution? Are liberals right when they cite its “elastic” clauses to justify big government, or are conservatives right when they cite its explicit limits on federal power? Professor Brion McClanahan, popular author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers, finds the answers by going directly to the source—the Founders themselves, who debated all the relevant issues in their state constitutional conventions.

After 72 arduous years, the fate of the suffrage movement and its masterwork, the 19th amendment, rested not only on one state, Tennessee, but on the shoulders of a single man: 24-year-old legislator Harry Burn. Burn had previously voted with the anti-suffrage forces. If he did so again, the vote would be tied and the amendment would fall one state short of the 36 necessary for ratification. At the last minute, though, Harry Burn’s mother convinced him to vote in favor of the suffragist, and American history was forever changed.

James Risen has broken story after story on the abuses of power of the Bush administration. From warrantless wiretapping to secret financial data mining to the CIA's rogue operations, he has shown again and again that the executive branch has dangerously overreached, repudiated checks and...

In The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America, Richard R. Beeman offers an ambitious overview of political life in pre-Revolutionary America. Beeman uncovers an extraordinary diversity of political belief and practice. In so doing, he closes the gap between eighteenth-century political rhetoric and reality. Although the majority of people living in America before the Revolution would not have used the term "democracy," important changes were underway that made it increasingly difficult for political leaders to ignore "popular pressures".

In 1787, delegates from the recently independent 13 colonies met in Philadelphia to try to forge a new, stronger constitution. That summer, the representatives ironed out a document that had pluses and minuses for all involved, a point noted by Ben Franklin in explaining why he assented to it at the end of the process.

Brian Phillips Murphy follows the collaborations between political leaders and a group of unelected political entrepreneurs, including Robert R. Livingston and Alexander Hamilton, who persuaded legislative powers to grant monopolies corporate status in order to finance and manage civic institutions.

Few institutions have been more ingeniously designed than the U.S. federal government via the Constitution in 1787. This auspicious beginning more than two centuries ago helps explain why the U.S. remains a magnet for opportunity seekers, students, entrepreneurs, dissidents, and persecuted believers. Yet for decades now, America’s federal government has been underperforming. In an era of substantial political fermentation and debate, rediscovering and re-applying American Republicanism represents the best path forward for the United States.