Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Federalist or The Political Mind

Federalist (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Author: Alexander Hamilton

The Federalist, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

  • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
  • Biographies of the authors
  • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
  • Footnotes and endnotes
  • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
  • Comments by other famous authors
  • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
  • Bibliographies for further reading
  • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
  • All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

    A classic of American political thought, The Federalist is a series of eighty-five essays by three authors—Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay—the purpose of which was to gain support for the proposed new Constitution of the United States, a document that many considered too radical. Most ofthe "papers" were published in periodicals as the vote on approving it drew near. Without the support of these powerfully persuasive essays, the Constitution most likely would not have been ratified and America might not have survived as a nation.

    Beginning with an assault upon the country's first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, the authors of The Federalist present a masterly defense of the new system. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay—three of our most influential founders—comment brilliantly on issue after issue, whether it be the proper size and scope of government, taxation, or impeachment. Today lawmakers and politicians frequently invoke these commentaries, more than 200 years after they first appeared.

    Written in haste and during a time of great crisis in the new American government, the articles were not expected to achieve immortality. Today, however, many historians consider The Federalist as the third most important political document in American history, just behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself. They have become the benchmark of American political philosophy, and the best explanation of what the Founding Fathers were trying to achieve.

    Robert A. Ferguson is George Edward Woodberry Professor in Law, Literature, and Criticism at Columbia University; he teaches in both the Law School and the English Department. His books include Law and Letters in American Culture, The American Enlightenment, 1750–1820, and Reading the Early Republic.



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    The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain

    Author: George Lakoff

    The New York Times bestselling author of Don't Think of an Elephant! explains the science behind how we make political decisions.

    Publishers Weekly

    Lakoff (Don't Think of an Elephant) harnesses cognitive science to rally progressive politicians and voters by positing that conservatives have framed the debate on vital issues more effectively than liberals. According to his research, conservatives comprehend that most brain functioning is grounded not in logical reasoning but in emotionalism-as a result, huge portions of the citizenry accept the Republican framing of the "war in Iraq" and "supporting the troops" rather than liberal appeals and phrasing of "the occupation in Iraq" and "squandering tax money." George W. Bush won the presidency by concocting a "redemption narrative," persuading tens of millions of voters that his past moral and business shortcomings should be viewed as a prelude to pulling himself up, rather than as disqualifying behavior. While sections of the book employ technical scientific terminology, the author masterfully makes his research comprehensible to nonspecialists. His conclusion-that if citizens and policy-makers better understand brain functioning, hope exists to ameliorate global warming and other societal disasters in the making-will be of vital importance and interest to all readers. (June)

    Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

    Kirkus Reviews

    Of neural modeling, X-schemas, neurotransmitters and Dubya-signposts on the culture war whose "main battlefield is the brain."Reality, Stephen Colbert famously remarked, has a liberal bias. Yet liberal think-tanker Lakoff (Cognitive Science and Linguistics/Univ. of California, Berkeley; Whose Freedom?: The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea, 2006, etc.) sets out to prove that we are a great deal less rational than we believe ourselves to be. Sure, reality has a liberal bias, and "American values are fundamentally progressive," but the radical right has been winning that culture war at least in part because its tacticians have had a better grasp of our reptilian, fear-driven, emotional inner demons and played to them. "Cut and run," the author notes by way of example. "Can you not think cowardice?" Borrowing a page from the late sociologist Erving Goffman, Lakoff examines a series of "framing issues," the ways in which stories are told and political objectives laid out such that the outcome cannot help but favor the framer. Consider Iraq, for instance: All it would take would be for a skillful narrator to rejigger the frame, and suddenly our occupying army has need to stay for decades, the measure of victory being the guarantee of the safe flow of oil to America. "If the country broke up into three distinct states or autonomous governments," Lakoff adds, "that too might be 'victory' as long as oil profits were guaranteed and Americans in the oil industry protected." The frame is everything: By one frame Anna Nicole Smith is a gold-digger, by another a rags-to-riches success story; by one frame George Bush is a white-knuckle alcoholic, by another a redeemed sinner. The task forprogressives, Lakoff asserts, is to start framing the stories better, outside of the narrative confines of the "Old Enlightenment," lest the right continue its work of dismantling democracy without the left making a peep. The task is also to find an identity-as, Lakoff notes, Barry Goldwater so successfully did as a "biconceptual" conservative-and live up to it. Smart and provocative-essential reading for political activists and policy wonks of any stripe.



    Table of Contents:

    Introduction: Brain Change and Social Change 1

    Pt. I How the Brain Shapes the Political Mind

    Ch. 1 Anna Nicole on the Brain 21

    Ch. 2 The Political Unconscious 43

    Ch. 3 The Brain's Role in Family Values 75

    Ch. 4 The Brain's Role in Political Ideologies 93

    Pt. II Political Challenges for the Twenty-first-Century Mind

    Ch. 5 A New Consciousness 117

    Ch. 6 Traumatic Ideas: The War on Terror 125

    Ch. 7 Framing Reality: Privateering 133

    Ch. 8 Fear of Framing 145

    Ch. 9 Confronting Stereotypes: Sons of the Welfare Queen 159

    Ch. 10 Aim Above the Bad Apples 163

    Ch. 11 Cognitive Policy 169

    Ch. 12 Contested Concepts Everywhere 177

    Pt. III The Technical Is the Political 191

    Ch. 13 Exploring the Political Brain 195

    Ch. 14 The Problem of Self-interest 201

    Ch. 15 The Metaphors Defining Rational Action 209

    Ch. 16 Why Hawks Win 223

    Ch. 17 The Brain's Language 231

    Ch. 18 Language in the New Enlightenment 243

    Afterword: What If It Works? 267

    Notes 275

    Index 283

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