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In 1913, Woodrow Wilson was just beginning his time as president of the United States. America's first 'professor'-president, Wilson intended to turn his philosophies into policies. As such, Wilson's two terms in office would mark a turning point, for better or for worse, in American history. And what were those philosophies? In speeches throughout his election campaign, he boldly spelled out his beliefs. "The New Freedom" is a collection of those speeches, edited at the time only to be more suited for reading in a book rather than heard by the ears. These are the words that persuaded millions of Americans to cast their votes for Wilson and his 'progressive' ideas. In this book, Wilson's attitudes towards monopolies, tariffs, and the State itself, are brought forth almost as they were first presented to ordinary citizens on the campaign trail.
In John Stuart Mill's classic restatement of the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, he continued a philosophical perspective that continues to be appolied to this day. The 'principle of utility', otherwise known as 'the greatest happiness principle' has surfaced over and over again throughout history since then, and has often been the basis for important public policy discussions. As an ethical system that tends to view suffering as the highest, and perhaps the only, evil, it is no surprise that proponents of this perspective include philosophers such as Peter Singer, who has applied it to animals rights, euthanasia, infanticide, and other controversial issues. This edition is based on the first edition which was originally released in installments in "Fraser's Magazine" in 1861 and then by the same publishers, "Parker, Son, and Bourn, West Strand", in 1863.
"The Pivot of Civilization" was published in 1922. It contains Margaret Sanger's belief that civilization rises or falls on how it views the 'people problem.' It wasn't simply the fact that there were too many people. The kind of people roaming the planet were also a problem. What kind of people? Sanger says it explicitly: feeble-minded, defective, moronic, epileptic people. What should be done with them? They should be put into camps. They should be sterilized. They should be segregated. Does this sound familiar? It is but one small step to add: "They should be exterminated." 10 years later, Sanger introduced her 'Plan for Peace' (included in this book) which made similar calls. So it was that some of the most devilish ideas carried out by the Nazis not more than a decade later were just as popular in America. Indeed, it appears the Nazis may have gotten their ideas from American eugenicists! Sanger's book will give you a new perspective on the intellectual climate in the early 1900s and a new understanding of contemporary events and issues.
The atheist philosopher David Hume unleashed an assault on Christianity in the 1700s that reverberates to this day. By undermining arguments based on or included references to miracles- or documents that contained them- many a person embraced his strict empiricism. Famously rising to the challenge, the Rev. Richard Whately showed that employing the same kind of 'empirical' scrutiny to other historical claims would result in absurdities. Namely, we could know little, if anything, about the famous Napoleon Bonaparte (Buonaparte). Indeed, one might even conclude he hadn't existed at all! There was only one problem: Napoleon had carried out his great feats within the lifetime of Whately's readers and his existence, and those feats, were common knowledge! Something had to give, either Hume's strict empiricism or knowledge itself (ie, epistemology). Whately is convinced that his playful analysis of Hume's reasoning would have been seen by Hume himself to show the great joke his reasoning was. Unfortunately, Hume died in 1776, and it is up to modern readers to decide for themselves if Whately was correct.
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