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Informationen zum Autor Thomas G. West holds the Paul Ermine Potter and Dawn Tibbets Potter Endowed Professorship at Hillsdale College, Michigan. His research areas include American political thought, natural law and natural right, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, and Leo Strauss. Klappentext This book provides a complete overview of the Founders' natural rights theory and its policy implications. Zusammenfassung 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. It argues that the foundational documents overwhelmingly point to natural rights as the lens through which all politics is understood. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction; Part I. The Political Theory of the Founding: An Overview: 1. Equality, natural rights, and the laws of nature; 2. The case against the natural rights founding; 3. Equality and natural rights misunderstood; 4. The founder's arguments for equality, natural rights, and natural law; 5. The state of nature; 6. The social compact and consent of the governed; 7. Natural rights and public policy; Part II. The Moral Conditions of Freedom: 8. Why government should support morality; 9. How government supports morality; 10. Sex and marriage in political theory and policy; 11. Cultivating public support for liberty and virtue; 12. What virtues should government promote?; 13. The founder's virtues: questions and clarifications; Part III. Property and Economics: 14. The founder's understanding of property rights; 15. Private ownership; 16. Free markets; 17. Sound money; 18. The Hamilton-Jefferson quarrel; Conclusion. Justice, nobility, and the politics of natural rights; Index.
