Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
David A. Gerber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Family ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Capitalist Democracies

The United States is a nation of diverse peoples, formed not through a common genealogy, as were its European counterparts among capitalist democracies. Instead, its people have been bound together through allegiance to a constitution, outlining the framework for the making of law and for governance, and a loosely defined, ever-contested creed. Americans are moved to love their country not by membership in an “American family,” but rather by the powerful rhetorical formulations of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence that establish the promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” What this inspiring language means in practice is an ongoing argument that holds Americans together....

scholarly journals Race and Politics in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-179
Author(s):  
Howard A. Palley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
Race And Politics ◽  
Inalienable Rights

Abstract The Declaration of Independence asserts that “All men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Nevertheless, the United States, at its foundation has been faced with the contradiction of initially supporting chattel slavery --- a form of slavery that treated black slaves from Africa purely as a commercial commodity. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom had some discomfort with slavery, were slaveholders who both utilized slaves as a commodity. Article 1 of our Constitution initially treated black slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportioning representation in order to increase Southern representation in Congress. So initially the Constitution’s commitment to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” did not include the enslaved black population. This essay contends that the residue of this initial dilemma still affects our politics --- in a significant manner.

The Bell Curve Takes Shape

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Steven J. Osterlind
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Probability Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Bell Curve ◽  
New Ideas

This chapter tells how quantification as an idea in spirit is moving across the Atlantic to the new country of the United States, and its relevance to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Probability theory begins to take off with Abraham de Moivre as he investigates distributions for numbers. He devises a histogram and begins a study of “errors” in a distribution in his Doctrine of Chances. Three terms are explained: “probability,” “odds,” and “likelihood.” What made the advances in mathematics, statistics, and especially probability theory so prominent was both the sheer volume of new ideas and the absolutely torrential pace at which these developments came.

Declaration of Independence of the United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-109
Author(s):  
Terence Ball ◽  
Richard Dagger ◽  
Daniel I. O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Declaration Of Independence

scholarly journals Analysis of Sino-American Family Education Differences: Collectivistic or Individualistic?—Taking the Glass Castle as an Example

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Liu Yang ◽  
Yang Congzhou
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Education ◽  
Chinese Family ◽  
The Novel ◽  
American Family ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Core Content ◽  
Individualism And Collectivism

Family education is the earliest, longest and the most common way of education, which has a deep influence on the growth of human beings. Due to the differences in value between China and the United States, the concepts of family education in both countries are also different. Value is one of the important parts of culture, whose core content is individualism and collectivism. Based on the two kinds of value, this paper takes the novel Glass Castle as an example to compare Chinese family education with American family education and finally proposes ways to improve Chinese family education.

Preemption of State Law: A Recommended Analysis

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 832-839
Author(s):  
Harold G. Maier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
State Law ◽  
National Authority ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
The People ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Governmental Power ◽  
Political Units

The fundamental principles that guide determinations about the appropriate relationship between state and national authority in matters affecting the foreign affairs of the United States began to evolve even before the ratification of the Constitution in 1789. The centralization of governmental power in this field is reflected in microcosm in the three great state papers of the United States. The nation began in 1776 as “United Colonies” that were “Free and Independent States” under the Declaration of Independence; developed into a “firm league of friendship” under the Articles of Confederation in 1781; and became a “more perfect union” created by the people, not by its constituent political units, under the Constitution in 1789.

Précis: The Rights Revolution in the Twentieth Century

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Tushnet
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Warren Court ◽  
Inalienable Rights

The idea of rights has been central to U.S. political and constitutional discourse from the beginning. The Declaration of Independence appealed to “inalienable rights,” and the first amendments to the Constitution were universally described as a bill of rights. Yet, something distinctive appears to have happened to the idea of rights over the course of the twentieth century. By the end of the century, rights-claims were being asserted in locations, such as schools and prisons, where they had not been found at the century's beginning, and they were being asserted on behalf of claimants, such as fetuses and new arrivals to the United States, who were outside the domain of rights earlier. Even the content of rights-claims changed. Much of the Warren Court's work completed a constitutional agenda outlined, albeit unclearly, in the 1940s and early 1950s as part of the New Deal's constitutional vindication. The Warren Court added something new—an emphasis on personal autonomy—to the New Deal's concerns for fairness in the political process.

Mathematics and Our Founding Fathers

1976 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 301-307
Author(s):  
H. Howard Frisinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Early Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
George Washington ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Founding Fathers

On july 4, 1776, fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence. This paper will discuss the contributions to mathematics or the interest in mathematics of four of these men. Two of these four, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, made significant contributions to the early development of mathematics in the United States. In addition to the mathematical contributions of Franklin and Jefferson, we shall briefly consider the mathematical interests of George Washington and John Adams.

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