Freedom in Contention examines the workings and impacts of social movements, using the conceptual and analytical tools of liberal political economy. This important book will appeal to political economists, sociologists, philosophers, historians, and other researchers interested in social movements as forces for societal change.

From the fights about the teaching of evolution to the details of sex education, it may seem like American schools are hotbeds of controversy. But as Jonathan Zimmerman and Emily Robertson show in this insightful book, it is precisely because such topics are so inflammatory outside school walls that they are so commonly avoided within them. And this, they argue, is a tremendous disservice to our students. Armed with a detailed history of the development of American educational policy and norms and a clear philosophical analysis of the value of contention in public discourse, they show that one of the best things American schools should do is face controversial topics dead on, right in their classrooms. Zimmerman and Robertson highlight an aspect of American politics that we know all too well: We are terrible at having informed, reasonable debates. We opt instead to hurl insults and accusations at one another or, worse, sit in silence and privately ridicule the other side. Wouldn’t an educational system that focuses on how to have such debates in civil and mutually respectful ways improve our public culture and help us overcome the political impasses that plague us today? To realize such a system, the authors argue that we need to not only better prepare our educators for the teaching of hot-button issues, but also provide them the professional autonomy and legal protection to do so. And we need to know exactly what constitutes a controversy, which is itself a controversial issue. The existence of climate change, for instance, should not be subject to discussion in schools: scientists overwhelmingly agree that it exists. How we prioritize it against other needs, such as economic growth, however—that is worth a debate. With clarity and common-sense wisdom, Zimmerman and Robertson show that our squeamishness over controversy in the classroom has left our students woefully underserved as future citizens. But they also show that we can fix it: if we all just agree to disagree, in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

The invention of modern freedom—the equating of liberty with restraints on state power—was not the natural outcome of such secular Western trends as the growth of religious tolerance or the creation of market societies. Rather, it was propelled by an antidemocratic backlash following the Atlantic Revolutions. We tend to think of freedom as something that is best protected by carefully circumscribing the boundaries of legitimate state activity. But who came up with this understanding of freedom, and for what purposes? In a masterful and surprising reappraisal of more than two thousand years of thinking about freedom in the West, Annelien de Dijn argues that we owe our view of freedom not to the liberty lovers of the Age of Revolution but to the enemies of democracy. The conception of freedom most prevalent today—that it depends on the limitation of state power—is a deliberate and dramatic rupture with long-established ways of thinking about liberty. For centuries people in the West identified freedom not with being left alone by the state but with the ability to exercise control over the way in which they were governed. They had what might best be described as a democratic conception of liberty. Understanding the long history of freedom underscores how recently it has come to be identified with limited government. It also reveals something crucial about the genealogy of current ways of thinking about freedom. The notion that freedom is best preserved by shrinking the sphere of government was not invented by the revolutionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who created our modern democracies—it was invented by their critics and opponents. Rather than following in the path of the American founders, today’s “big government” antagonists more closely resemble the counterrevolutionaries who tried to undo their work.

As Americans, we face two fundamental questions: First, are we truly prepared to fight this new war to wipe out terrorism and terrorist regimes, and win it decisively -- no matter what sacrifices it requires or how long it takes? Second, are we once again prepared to teach our children the fundamental principles and values that make this country great -- the values that make this country worth fighting for, living for, and dying for? Sean Hannity is the hottest new phenomenon in TV and talk radio today. His gutsy, take-no-prisoners interviews and commentary on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes have made him one of cable television's most popular personalities. And his ascendance to the top of the talk radio world with ABC Radio's The Sean Hannity Show has won him a huge and devoted following that includes not only conservatives but anyone else who values straight talk over pandering and excuses. Now, in Let Freedom Ring, Sean Hannity offers a survey of the world -- political, social, and cultural -- as he sees it. Devoting special attention to 9/11, the war on terror, and the continuing threat we face at home and abroad, he makes clear that the greatest challenge we have to overcome may not be an attack from overseas, but the slow compromising of our national character. And he asks why, particularly in this time of war, should we entrust our future to the voices of the Left -- the very people who have spent decades ravaging so many of our core values and traditions? Our nation, as Hannity reminds us, was founded on the idea of freedom. And in order to protect our freedoms, he argues, we must stand vigilant against liberal attempts to compromise our strengths. From our military and intelligence forces, to our borders and airports, to our unified commitment to root out terrorists at home and abroad, he reveals how our strongest lines of defense have come under attack -- by left-wing voices within our government, media, schools, and elsewhere. And he shows how even domestic issues like taxation, education, patriotism, and the family have been exploited by liberals with their own agendas -- with potentially disastrous results. Filled with the commonsense commentary and passionate argument that have made Sean Hannity the most compelling conservative voice since Rush Limbaugh, Let Freedom Ring is an urgent call to arms. For, as Hannity warns, "We are engaged in a war of ideas. And civilization is at stake."

"Command and Control is failing us. There is a better way to design and manage work - a better way to make work work - but it remains unknown to the vast majority of managers." An adherent of the Toyota Production System, John Seddon explains how traditional top-down decision making within service organizations leads to managers

Exploring the relationship between religion and the state Focusing on the intersection of religion, law, and politics in contemporary liberal democracies, Blackford considers the concept of the secular state, revising and updating enlightenment views for the present day. Freedom of Religion and the Secular State offers a comprehensive analysis, with a global focus, of the subject of religious freedom from a legal as well as historical and philosophical viewpoint. It makes an original contribution to current debates about freedom of religion, and addresses a whole range of hot-button issues that involve the relationship between religion and the state, including the teaching of evolution in schools, what to do about the burqa, and so on.

At least since the publication of Isaiah Berlin's famous essay "Two Concepts of Liberty" nearly half a century ago, political philosophers have argued vigorously over the relative merits of "positive" and "negative" accounts of freedom. Matthew Kramer writes squarely within the negative-liberty tradition, but he incorporates a number of ideas that are quite often associated with theories of positive liberty. Much of The Quality of Freedom is devoted to elaborating the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of particular freedoms and unfreedoms; however, the book's cardinal objective is to establish the measurability of each person's overall freedom and of each society's aggregate freedom. On the one hand, Kramer contends that the existence of any particular instance of liberty or unfreedom is a matter of fact that can be confirmed or disconfirmed without any reliance on evaluative or normative considerations. On the other hand, he argues that the extent of each person's overall freedom or unfreedom cannot be ascertained entirely in the absence of evaluative assumptions. By combining those two positions and developing them in detail, Kramer pits himself against all positive accounts of liberty and most negative accounts. In the course of so doing, he aims to demonstrate the rigorous measurability of overall liberty--something that many writers on freedom have casually dismissed as impossible. Although Kramer concentrates principally on constructing a systematic analysis of sociopolitical freedom, he engages critically with the work of many of the leading contemporary writers on the topic.