John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty

C. Bradley Thompson examines Adam’s “political and constitutional thought by interpreting it within the tradition of political philosophy stretching from Plato to Montesquieu….Thompson reconstructs the contours and influences of Adams’s mental universe, the ideas he challenged, the problems he considered central to constitution-making, and the methods of his reasoning. Skillfully blending history and political science, Thompson’s work shows how the spirit of liberty animated Adams’s life and reestablishes this forgotten Revolutionary as an independent and important thinker.”

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Anthem by Ayn Rand

“They existed only to serve the state. They were conceived in controlled Palaces of Mating. They died in the Home of the Useless. From cradle to grave, the crowd was one—the great WE.

In all that was left of humanity there was only one man who dared to think, seek, and love. He lived in the dark ages of the future. In a loveless world, he dared to love the woman of his choice.  In an age that had lost all trace of science and civilization, he had the courage to seek and find knowledge.

But these were not the crimes for which he would be hunted. He was marked for death because he had committed the unpardonable sin: He had stood forth from the mindless human herd. He was a man alone. He had rediscovered the lost and holy word—I.”

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Zero to One by Peter Thiel

“Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.”

“Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.”

“Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.”

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Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

“Raised in a strict Muslim family, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilation, brutal beatings, adolescence as a devout believer during the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four troubled, unstable countries ruled largely by despots. She escaped from a forced marriage and sought asylum in the Netherlands, … and fought for the rights of Muslim women and the reform of Islam as a member of Parliament. Under constant threat, demonized by Islamists and politicians, disowned by her father, and expelled from family and clan, she refuses to be silenced.”

“A celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali’s story tells how a bright little girl evolves out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to” with ‘balancing’ personal freedom with religious totalitarianism, “no other book could be more timely or more significant.”

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Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

Joseph J. Ellis Founding Brothers connects the lives of seven of America’s founding fathers – John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington – with the issues, they sought to resolve in creating the United States of America. Ellis does so by examining six events in their lives using the documents written at the time:

  • “Burr and Hamilton’s deadly duel, and what may have really happened;
  • Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison’s secret dinner, during which the seat of the permanent capital was determined in exchange for passage of Hamilton’s financial plan;
  • Franklin’s petition to end the “peculiar institution” of slavery–his last public act–and Madison’s efforts to quash it;
  • Washington’s precedent-setting Farewell Address, announcing his retirement from public office and offering his country some final advice;
  • Adams’s difficult term as Washington’s successor and his alleged scheme to pass the presidency on to his son;
  • Adams and Jefferson’s renewed correspondence at the end of their lives, in which they compared their different views of the Revolution and its legacy.”

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How We Know by Harry Binswanger

What is knowledge? How is it acquired? How are claims to knowledge to be validated? Can man achieve rational certainty, or is he doomed to perpetual doubt? How We Know answers these and related questions by providing an uncompromising defense of reason, logic, and objectivity. Using vivid examples, Dr. Binswanger traces the hierarchical development of knowledge, from its base in sensory perception, to concept­formation, to logical inference, to its culmination in the principles of science and philosophy.

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A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth

 “Political Economy, like the exact sciences, is composed of a small number of fundamental principles and a great many corollaries that follow from these principles. . . . These principles are not the work of men; they derive from the nature of things. They are not established; they are found. They govern lawmakers and princes, who never violate them with impunity.” – Jean Baptiste Say

A classic of political economy, on par with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, that puts the entrepreneur at the center of the economic process.

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The Diversity Delusion by Heather Mac Donald

How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture

“Diversity” in the academy purported to be about bridge-building and broadening people’s experiences. It has had the opposite effect: dividing society, reducing learning, and creating an oppositional mind-set that prevents individuals from seizing the opportunities available to them. It is humanistic learning, by contrast, that involves an actual encounter with diversity and difference, as students enter worlds radically different from their own. Humanistic study involves imaginative empathy and curiosity, which are being squelched in today’s university in favor of self-engrossed complaint. Teaching the classics is the duty we owe these great works for giving us an experience of the sublime. Once we stop lovingly transmitting them to the next generation, they die. For decades, universities have drifted further and further away from their true purpose. Now they are taking the rest of the world with them.” – Heather Mac Donald

How the anti-Western Civilization, anti-freedom, post-modern, “woke”, collectivist, ideologies dominating the social science and humanity departments of American Universities are spilling outside the university into all realms of American culture like a virus.

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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

After a difficult life as a youth, the orphan Jane Eyre, now governess of the secluded Thornfield Hall —the first place she has ever really felt at home — discovers the secret of the attic that threatens to destroy her dreams of happiness forever.

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