Larry P Arnn

The study of statesmanship is not a subject for leaders in politics alone. It is the study of the whole human being in thought and action.The classics teach us of the difficult choices that must be made, an activity that guides lives and forms character. This collection of writings includes ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and modern scholarship on statesmanship from Xenophon, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Erasmus, Niccolo Machiavelli, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and more, selected and with an introduction by the president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, John A. Burtka.

"In the course of human events there have always been those who deny or reject human freedom, but Americans will never falter in defending the fundamental truths of human liberty proclaimed on July 4, 1776. We will-we must-always hold these truths. The declared purpose of the President's Advisory 1776 Commission is to "enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union." This requires a restoration of American education, which can only be grounded on a history of those principles that is "accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling." And a rediscovery of ourshared identity rooted in our founding principles is the path to a renewed American unity and a confident American future"--

The Founding of the American Republic is on trial. Critics say it was a poison pill with a time-release formula; we are its victims. Its principles are responsible for the country's moral and social disintegration because they were based on the Enlightenment falsehood of radical individual autonomy. In this well-researched book, Robert Reilly declares: not guilty. To prove his case, he traces the lineage of the ideas that made the United States, and its ordered liberty, possible. These concepts were extraordinary when they first burst upon the ancient world: the Judaic oneness of God, who creates ex nihilo and imprints his image on man; the Greek rational order of the world based upon the Reason behind it; and the Christian arrival of that Reason (Logos) incarnate in Christ. These may seem a long way from the American Founding, but Reilly argues that they are, in fact, its bedrock.