Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
Welfare and the Constitution - cover

We are sorry! The publisher (or author) gave us the instruction to take down this book from our catalog. But please don't worry, you still have more than 500,000 other books you can enjoy!

Welfare and the Constitution

Sotirios A. Barber

Publisher: Princeton University Press

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

Welfare and the Constitution defends a largely forgotten understanding of the U.S. Constitution: the positive or "welfarist" view of Abraham Lincoln and the Federalist Papers. Sotirios Barber challenges conventional scholarship by arguing that the government has a constitutional duty to pursue the well-being of all the people. He shows that James Madison was right in saying that the "real welfare" of the people must be the "supreme object" of constitutional government. With conceptual rigor set in fluid prose, Barber opposes the shared view of America's Right and Left: that the federal constitutional duties of public officials are limited to respecting negative liberties and maintaining processes of democratic choice. Barber contends that no historical, scientific, moral, or metaethical argument can favor today's negative constitutionalism over Madison's positive understanding. He urges scholars to develop a substantive account of constitutional ends for use in critiquing Supreme Court decisions, the policies of elected officials, and the attitudes of the larger public. He defends the philosophical possibility of such theories while also offering a theory of his own as a starting point for the discussion the book will provoke. This theory holds, for example, that voucher schemes which drain resources from secular public schools to schools that would train citizens to submit to religious authority are unconstitutional; First Amendment issues aside, such schemes defeat what is undeniably an element of the "real welfare" of the people, individually and collectively: the capacity to think critically for oneself.
Available since: 01/10/2009.

Other books that might interest you

  • Soviet Cold War Weaponry: Aircraft Warships Missiles and Artillery - cover

    Soviet Cold War Weaponry:...

    Anthony Tucker-Jones

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    "In this companion volume to his photographic history of Soviet tanks and armoured vehicles, Anthony Tucker-Jones provides a visual guide to the vast array of aircraft, warships and missiles the Soviet armed forces deployed at the height of the Cold War. Although the superpowers never came to blows, the so-called 'Cold War' was far from cold, with numerous 'hot' proxy wars being fought in Africa and the Middle East. All these conflicts employed Soviet weaponry which has been captured in action in the colour and black-and-white photographs selected for this book.    Between the 1950s and 1980s Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries churned out thousands of weapons ready for the Third World War. They also embarked on a technological arms race with NATO in an attempt to counter each new piece of equipment as it appeared. The MiG fighters, the Badger and Backfire bombers, the nuclear submarines have achieved almost iconic status, but, as Anthony Tucker-Jones's book shows, there was much more to the Soviet armoury than these famous weapons. Much of it, despite its age, remains in service with armies, guerrilla forces and terrorist organizations around the world today."
    Show book
  • The Big Con - Crackpot Economics and the Fleecing of America - cover

    The Big Con - Crackpot Economics...

    Jonathan Chait

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The scam of supply-side economics is clearly and convincingly explained in “a classic of political journalism” (Michael Lewis). Jonathan Chait has written for a range of publications, from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post, and considers himself a moderate. But he’s convinced that American politics has been hijacked. Over the past three decades, a fringe group of economic hucksters has corrupted and perverted our nation’s policies, Chait argues, revealing in The Big Con how these canny zealots first took over the Republican Party, and then gamed the political system and the media so that once-unthinkable policies—without a shred of academic, expert, or even popular support—now drive the political agenda, regardless of which party is in power. The principle is supposedly “small government”—but as he demonstrates, the government is no smaller than it was in the days of Ronald Reagan; it’s simply more debt-ridden and beholden to wealthy elites. Why have these ideas succeeded in Washington even as the majority of the country recognizes them for the nonsense they are? How did a clique of extremists gain control of American economic policy and sell short the country’s future? And why do their outlandish ideas still determine policy despite repeated electoral setbacks? Explaining just how things work in Washington, DC, and distinguishing between short-term volatility in the “political weather” and the long-term, radical shift in the “political climate,” Chait presents a riveting drama of greed and deceit that should be read by every concerned citizen. “Chait is both very serious and seriously funny as he traces the rise of conservatism over the past thirty years.” —Michael Kinsley
    Show book
  • Hot Planet Cool Media - Socialist Polemics on War Propaganda and Popular Culture - cover

    Hot Planet Cool Media -...

    Stephen Harper

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    From the Arab Spring and London riots through the era of Brexit and Trump, the Covid-19 pandemic and war in Europe, this volume collects eleven years of lively, informative and entertaining essays and polemics, focusing on media treatment of major world events, political entanglements and culture-war squabbles.
    Taking aim at the distortions and omissions of news reports and cultural narratives in the Western world, Stephen Harper highlights the dislocation between humanity's existential crisis and the failure of the corporate media to register its underlying causes – or even to entertain any real discussion of its solution. Instead, he argues, the media blithely serve the narrow interests of a global elite that is subjecting the planet to a reign of fire in the form of endless wars and ecological destruction.
    Harper reviews contemporary journalistic, cinematic and televisual coverage, engaging with broad cultural topics such as 'cancel culture', the incel phenomenon and Covid conspiracy theories, as well as key events like the debate between Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Žižek. For all its eclecticism, Hot Planet, Cool Media has an ideological cohesiveness, rejecting popular left and right political positions and advocating the cause of socialism or communism in the Marxian sense of a classless, leaderless, moneyless society.
    Show book
  • Evil Roman Emperors - The Shocking History of Ancient Rome's Most Wicked Rulers from Caligula to Nero and More - cover

    Evil Roman Emperors - The...

    Phillip Barlag

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Nero fiddled while Rome burned. As catchy as that aphorism is, it's sadly untrue, even if it has a nice ring to it. The one thing Nero is well-known for is the one thing he actually didn't do. But fear not, the truth of his life, his rule and what he did with unrestrained power, is plenty weird, salacious and horrifying.And he is not alone. Roman history, from the very foundation of the city, is replete with people and stories that shock our modern sensibilities. Evil Roman Emperors puts the worst of Rome's rulers in one place and offers a review of their lives and a historical context for what made them into what they became.Lucius Tarquinius Suburbus called peace conferences with warring states, only to slaughter foreign leaders; Commodus sold offices of the empire to the highest bidder; Caligula demanded to be worshipped as a god; even the Roman Senate itself was made up of oppressors, exploiters, and murderers of all stripes.Roman history, deviant or otherwise, is a subject of endless fascination. What's never been done before is to look at the worst of the worst at the same time, comparing them side by side, and ranking them against one another. Until now.
    Show book
  • Dark Psychology - Seeing through Manipulation Blackmail and Psychotic Mind Control - cover

    Dark Psychology - Seeing through...

    Amanda Grapes

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    This bundle contains four books, which are the following: 
    Book 1: People who are manipulative, often make use of secret tactics to get other people to do what they want. They try to exercise control over their victims by using hidden aggression methods. This is different from regular aggression, because it is typically sneaky and subtle. 
    In the third chapter of this book, self-help scams are addressed. The self-help industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry that feeds on the gullible wishful thinking of the ones who go to seminars, buy books, overpriced courses, etc. 
    Book 2: What is the dark side of human nature? 
    Do people look out for themselves or for each other? 
    Issues like these will be discussed in this brief but informational book. Topics like bullying, schizophrenia, other personality disorders, and domestic violence will be addressed. Last but not least, your thoughts will be altered about liars and the ethical dilemma of telling lies. In this sense, this book shows you a variety of interrelated topics that will shape your view on said topics. 
    Book 3: In this book, you will learn more about the culture we live in today. Are we being brainwashed by the media? How is social media affecting us? 
    And with those two questions in mind, does this mean there are more narcissists today than ever before? 
    Book 4: Men and women are not the same. We all know that they think differently. But how do they use those thinking patterns to get what they want? How do they persuade the other gender to give them what they desire? This is where some human psychology will be helpful. The differences will be addressed in the first chapter of this book.
    Show book
  • Searching for America's Heart - RFK and the Renewal of Hope - cover

    Searching for America's Heart -...

    Peter Edelman

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    From an author who resigned from the Clinton administration: “Part memoir and part manifesto . . . a beautifully written call to renew the fight against poverty.”?Jonathan Kozol, New York Times bestselling author of Savage Inequalities 
     
    Peter Edelman has worked as an aide to Robert F. Kennedy, a lawyer, a children’s advocate, and a policymaker. He has devoted his life to the cause of justice and to ending inequality. But in 1996, while serving in the Clinton administration as an expert on welfare policy and children, he found himself in an untenable position. The president signed a new welfare bill that ended a sixty-year federal commitment to poor children, and as justification invoked the words of RFK. For Edelman, Clinton’s twisting of Kennedy’s vision was deeply cynical, so in a rare gesture that sparked front-page headlines, he resigned. The nation, he believed, had been harmed. 
     
    In this book, he shows that in an age of unprecedented prosperity, Americans have in many respects forsaken their fellow citizens, leaving behind a devastatingly large number of poor and near-poor, many of them children. Edelman shines a bright light on these forgotten Americans. Based in part on a firsthand look at community efforts across the country, he also proposes a bold and practical program for addressing the difficult issues of entrenched poverty, focusing on novel ways of braiding together national and local civic activism, reinvigorating our commitment to children, and building hope in our most shattered communities—creating a vision true to the legacy of Robert F. Kennedy. 
     
    “Moving and insightful.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution 
     
    “I have read a lot of books on inequality, but none offers a more thoughtful vision of poverty and welfare in America . . . compelling.”?William Julius Wilson, author of When Work Disappears
    Show book