(Download) "Power Versus Liberty" by James H. Read # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Power Versus Liberty
- Author : James H. Read
- Release Date : January 29, 2000
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 568 KB
Description
Does every increase in the power of government entail a loss of liberty for the
people? James H. Read examines how four key Founders--James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, James
Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson--wrestled with this question during the first two decades of the
American Republic.
Power versus Liberty reconstructs a four-way
conversation--sometimes respectful, sometimes shrill--that touched on the most important issues
facing the new nation: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, federal authority versus states'
rights, freedom of the press, the controversial Bank of the United States, the relation between
nationalism and democracy, and the elusive meaning of "the consent of the
governed."
Each of the men whose thought Read considers differed on these key
questions. Jefferson believed that every increase in the power of government came at the expense
of liberty: energetic governments, he insisted, are always oppressive. Madison believed that
this view was too simple, that liberty can be threatened either by too much or too little
governmental power. Hamilton and Wilson likewise rejected the Jeffersonian view of power and
liberty but disagreed with Madison and with each other.
The question of how to
reconcile energetic government with the liberty of citizens is as timely today as it was in the
first decades of the Republic. It pervades our political discourse and colors our readings of
events from the confrontation at Waco to the Oklahoma City bombing to Congressional debate over
how to spend the government surplus. While the rhetoric of both major political parties seems to
posit a direct relationship between the size of our government and the scope of our political
freedoms, the debates of Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, and Jefferson confound such simple
dichotomies. As Read concludes, the relation between power and liberty is inherently
complex.
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