The Best Political Freedom Books 2025

1. The Paradoxes of Freedom [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. One of America's most influential social philosophers offers a restatement of traditional liberal-democratic views as they pertain to our constitutional form of government. The topics explored in Sidney Hook's book include the nature and extent of human freedom, the Bill of Rights, judicial review as it pertains to constitutional interpretation and the balance of powers among the three branches of government, censorship, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, social justice, the importance of intelligence in political and moral spheres, as well as civil disobedience and the right to revolution within a democratic order. Here we have a sustained, nonpartisan analysis of the place of the Constitution and judicial review within our democracy. Special emphasis is given to reconsidering the proper role of the Supreme Court if and when a Constitutional Convention is convoked to address this and related questions.

The Paradoxes of Freedom, Used [Paperback]

2. Rediscovering the Ideas of Liberty: The Foundations of America's Greatness, Used [Paperback]

Rediscovering the Ideas of Liberty: The Foundations of America's Greatness

Rediscovering the Ideas of Liberty: The Foundations of America's Greatness, Used [Paperback]

3. Ten Tortured Words: How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America . . . and What's Happened Since [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. In the steamy summer of 1787, as America's founding fathers fashioned their Constitution, they told the most powerful institution in their new nation what it must "not" do: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Few Americans understand the miracle in world history these ten words represent. For the first time in human experience, the legislative power of a nation was forbidden from legislating the conscience of man. And for over one hundred and fifty years, religion flourished, institutions of faith multiplied, and revivals transformed whole communities. Th elected representatives of the people often called for days of prayer, recognizing that religion is essential to national character. So what happened? Why is it that today a cross-shaped memorial or a religious symbol in a city seal is considered a violation of the Constitution? Why are pastors threatened if they speak out about politics and children kept from even asking about religion in the public schools? "Ten Tortured Words" separates historical fact from fiction, illuminating the events and personalities that shaped the writing of the Establishment Clause. In his straightforward, award-winning style, cultural historian Stephen Mansfield interprets the societal shifts that have led to the current rift between religion and politics, and takes a surprising look at what lies ahead for freedom of religion in America.

Ten Tortured Words : How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America ... and What's Happened Since, Used [Hardcover]

4. The Freedom We Crave; Addiction: the Human Condition [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. The Freedom We Crave; Addiction: the Human Condition

The Freedom We Crave; Addiction: the Human Condition, Used [Hardcover]

5. The Ethics of Liberty, Used [Hardcover]

In recent years, libertarian impulses have increasingly influenced national and economic debates, from welfare reform to efforts to curtail affirmative action. Murray N. Rothbard's classic The Ethics of Liberty stands as one of the most rigorous and philosophically sophisticated expositions of the libertarian political position. What distinguishes Rothbard's book is the manner in which it roots the case for freedom in the concept of natural rights and applies it to a host of practical problems. An economist by profession, Rothbard here proves himself equally at home with philosophy. And while his conclusions are radical--that a social order that strictly adheres to the rights of private property must exclude the institutionalized violence inherent in the state--his applications of libertarian principles prove surprisingly practical for a host of social dilemmas, solutions to which have eluded alternative traditions. The Ethics of Liberty authoritatively established the anarcho-capitalist economic system as the most viable and the only principled option for a social order based on freedom. This edition is newly indexed and includes a new introduction that takes special note of the Robert Nozick-Rothbard controversies.

The Ethics of Liberty, Used [Hardcover]

6. Separation of Church and State: Historical Fact and Current Fiction, Used [Hardcover]

Separation of Church and State: Historical Fact and Current Fiction by Robert L. Cord

Separation of Church and State: Historical Fact and Current Fiction, Used [Hardcover]

7. Articles of Faith, Articles of Peace : The Religious Liberty Clauses and the American Public Philosophy, Used [Hardcover]

Articles of Faith, Articles of Peace examines the contemporary challenges to religious liberty and explores ways in which the public philosophy can be reinvigorated.

Articles of Faith, Articles of Peace : The Religious Liberty Clauses and the American Public Philosophy, Used [Hardcover]

8. Survival of Freedom [Mass Market Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Survival of Freedom by John F. Carr

Survival of Freedom, Used [Mass Market Paperback]

9. On Liberty, Used [Paperback]

From the Introduction In his Autobiography, Mill predicts that the essay On Liberty is "likely to survive longer than anything else that I have written." He goes on to say that the essay is the expression of a "single truth: " "the importance, to man and society, of a large variety of types of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions." In the essay itself, Mill defines his subject as "the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual." He defends the absolute freedom of individuals to engage in conduct not harmful to others, and the near-absolute freedom to express and discuss opinions of all kinds. Mill's essay survives, as he had predicted, because his powerful message is still widely rejected by the powerful, and by those who continue to seek power over the lives of others.

On Liberty, Used [Paperback]

10. On Liberty [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. The whole of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty is dedicated to this simple principle. While many of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, from Adam Smith to Godwin and Thoreau, had celebrated liberty, it was Mill who organized the idea into a philosophy and put it into the form in which it is known today. In this text, Mill argues that liberty must play a central role in social policy, necessitating a redrawing of the line between the authority wielded by the state and the independence of the individual.

On Liberty, Used [Paperback]