By JM Berger

Can legal codes and court rulings function as extremist ideological texts? 

Academics usually define extremism as a set of beliefs that fall outside the norms of the society in which they are situated, but entire societies have at times been organized around recognizably extreme beliefs. This paper will examine the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 393 (1856), more commonly known as the Dred Scott decision. Widely considered the worst Supreme Court decision of all time, the opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney decreed that Black people, whether enslaved or free, could never become citizens of the United States and that they had no rights under the Constitution. 

This paper will analyze the Dred Scott decision to consider whether and how it implements and institutionalizes many widely recognized tropes of extremist ideology. The paper will conclude with a discussion of empirical frameworks that can enable and empower the study of lawful extremism. 

United States, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Montery. 2023, 57pg

By John J. Dilulio, Jr..

FROM THE JACKET: “Do you know is you are going to heaven?" Shortly after being appointed the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives--the "faith czar." John J. Dilulio, Jr., was asked this question. Suddenly Dilulio, a practicing Catholic and a New Democrat who had pioneered "faith factor" studis and founded programs for inner-city children, became acutely aware that he was no longer a private citizen who might have humored the television evangelist standing before him. Now he was an Assistant to the President, as he recalls in his introduction-"someone responsible for assisting President George W. Bush in faithfully upholding the Constitution, faithfully executing democratically enacted public laws, and faithfully acting in the public interest without regard to religious identities (and all contrary political purposes be damned). So I paused.*

Using his brief tenure in the Bush administration as a springboard, Dilulio leaps into the ongoing debate over whether as a nation America is Christian or secular and to what degree church-state separation is compelled by the Constitution. Avoiding political pieties, this lively, informative, and entertaining book makes an impassioned case for a middle way: one that recognizes the United States as a "Godly republic" under whose Constitution sacred institutions may be empowered to partner with the government…”

Berkeley Los Angeles. University Of California Press. 2007.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Sam Harris

FROM THE COVER: “In The End of Faith, Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs- even when these beliefs inspire the worst of human atrocities. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic.

"The End of Faith is a genuinely frightening book. ... Read Sam Harris and wake up." -Richard Dawkins, The Guardian

NY. W•W• Norton. 2004. 341p.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Susan Jacoby

FROM THE JACKET: At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers celebrates the noble and essential secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, Susan Jacoby offers a powerful defense of more than two hundred years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution. Moving from nineteenth-century abolitionism and suffragism through the twentieth-century's civil liberties, civil rights, and feminist movements, Freethinkers illuminates the neglected accomplishments of secularists who, allied with tolerant and liberal religious believers, have stood at the forefront of the battle for social reforms opposed by reactionaries in the past and today. Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Clarence Darrow--as well as once-famous secularists such as Robert Green Ingersoll, "the Great Agnostic"-Freethinkers restores to history generations of dedicated humanist champions. It is they, Jacoby shows, who have led the struggle to uphold the unique combination of secular government and religious liberty that is and always has been the glory of the American system.

NY. Henry Holt and Company. 2004. 441p.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Frank Morison

FROM THE COVER: “I wanted to take this last phase of the life of Jesus, with all its quick and pulsating drama, its sharp, clear-cut background of antiquity, and its tremendous psychological and human intersEt - -to strip it of its overgrowth of primitive beliefs, dogmatic suppositions, and to see this supremely great Person as He really was.”

Such was English journalist Frank Morison's drive to learn of Christ. The strangeness of the Resurrection story had captured his attention, and, influenced by skeptic thinkers at the turn of the century, he set out to prove that the story of Christ's Resurrection was only a myth. His probings, however, led him to discover the validity of the biblical record in a moving, personal way. Who Moved the Stone? is considered by many to be a classic apologetic on the subject of the Resurrection. Morison includes a vivid and poignant account of Christ's betrayal, trial, and death as a backdrop to his retelling of the climactic Resurrection itself.”

Grand Rapids. Michigan. Lamplighters Books. 1958 (1930) 192p.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Dr. Benjamin Spock and Michael Zimmerman

FROM THE COVER: “The Untold Story of Vietnam- WHAT IS THE TRUTH? What would happen if the U.S. stopped the bombing? Or pulled out her troops? Or else went after total military victory? Are we in Vietnam because of a request from the Vietnamese people? Or because of treaty obligations? Or because of past pledges? Do the Viet Cong hold the people in check through terror? Is the war in the South an invasion from the North? What was the significance of the recent South Vietnamese elections? How valid is the "domino theory? What is the danger from China? Is the United States being threatened? Can we believe what our own government tells us? You may think you have the answers to these ques tions. You may not be quite as sure when you finish this book by a famous American who could no longer remain silent.

NY. Dell. 1968. 96p.

Edited by Liisa Janssens

New technologies are often implemented before their ethical consequences have been fully understood. In this volume, experts working in the sciences, arts, and philosophy of technology share novel perspectives on how we can

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016. 144p.

By Donelson R. Forsyth

This fascinating new book examines diversity in moral judgements, drawing on recent work in social, personality, and evolutionary psychology, reviewing the factors that influence the moral judgments people make. Why do reasonable people so often disagree when drawing distinctions between what is morally right and wrong? Even when individuals agree in their moral pronouncements, they may employ different standards, different comparative processes, or entirely disparate criteria in their judgments. Examining the sources of this variety, the author expertly explores morality using ethics position theory, alongside other theoretical perspectives in moral psychology, and shows how it can relate to contemporary social issues from abortion to premarital sex to human rights. Also featuring a chapter on applied contexts, using the theory of ethics positions to gain insights into the moral choices and actions of individuals, groups, and organizations in educational, research, political, medical, and business settings, the book offers answers that apply across individuals, communities, and cultures. Investigating the relationship between people’s personal moral philosophies and their ethical thoughts, emotions, and actions, this is fascinating reading for students and academics from psychology and philosophy and anyone interested in morality and ethics.

New York: Routledge, 2010. 211p.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Gerald R. Cragg

FROM THE PREFACE: “This span in the history of the Christian church stretches from the age of religious and civil strife which existed before the middle of the seventeenth century to the age of industrialism and republicanism which followed the French Revolution and the beginning of the Napoleonic wars. The church in general, reacting strongly against the turbulences of the Civil War and the Thirty Years' War, placed a premium on order, moderation, and stability. Movements suspected of enthusiasm, such as Puritanism, Quietism, and Jansenism, fell into disrepute, and the authority exercised by the state in religious affairs became more pronounced. It was an age dominated by Reason, which, until it provoked a reaction in such movements as Pietism and Evangelicism, posed a formidable challenge to Christianity.”

London. Penguin. 1960. 297p.

used book. may contain mark-up

Selected and Edited by Henry Bettenson

FROM THE COVER FLAP: This book presents a selection from the most important records of the history of the Christian Church from its beginning. It goes in all cases to official documents and other sources, and provides the general reader with many extracts, about most of which he may have heard, though he will have seen very few and will certainly not have them conveniently to his hand in one volume. The book opens with references to Christianity in the Classical authors, and continues with, among other subjects, the Relation of Church and State in the Roman Empire, the Formation of the Creeds, the Development of Doctrine, the Breach between East and West, the Empire and the Papacy, the Relations between Church and State….”

London. Oxford University Press. 1959. 479p.

By James Carroll

FROM THE COVER: In this "rare book that combines searing passion ... with a subject that has affected all of our lives" (Chicago Tribune), the novelist and cultural critic James Carroll maps the profoundly troubling two-thousand-year course of the Church's battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has provoked in his own life as a Catholic. More than a chronicle of religion, this dark history is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture. A courageous and affecting reckoning with difficult truths that will touch every reader, Constantines Sword is truly a book for our times.

A Mariner Boo.k Houghton Mifelin Company. 2002. 757p. USED BOOK. CONTAINS MARK-UP.

Edited by Edmund S. Phelps

From the Preface: “The self-interest model has had sweeping success over recent decades in the study of both economics and politics. Yet the inner ambiguities and limitations of that model could not indefinitely escape notice and examination. Self interest in some interpretation is some of the story some of the time, never the whole story. On March 3 and 4, 1972, a number o fsocial scientists met at Russell Sage Foundation to speculate and theorize on the roles that altruism and morality in a society may play in shaping human behaviorand institutions within it. The nine papers presented at the conference are by economists. The commentaries on them were drawn from representatives of other disciplines, primarily philosophy and law. This volume is a rough. approximation to the proceedings of the conference. An introduction by the editor has been added to announce some of the main themes and to bring out some of the interrelations among the papers.”

NY. Russell Sage Foundation. 1975. 225p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By A. G. N. Flew

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: The obvious and the right place from which to begin a study of evolutionary ethics is the work of Charles Darwin. For, primarily, it is his ideas - or what have been thought to be his ideas which advocates of evolutionary ethics or evolutionary politics have tried to apply more widely. This is not, of course, to say that Darwin hadn ointellectual ancestors; any more than it is to suggest that biological theory has since his death stood still. To say or to suggest either thing would be absurdly wrong…”

NY. St. Martinn’s Press. 1967. 78p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Michael Polanyi

From Chapter 1: “What is the nature of science? Given any amount of experience, can scientific propositions be derived from it by the application of some explicit rules of procedure? Let us limit ourselves for the sake of simplicity to the exact sciences and conveniently assume that all relevant experience is given us in the form of numerical measurements; so that we are presented with a list of figures representing positions, masses, times, velocities, wavelengths, etc., from which we have t oderive some mathematical law of nature. Could we do that by the applicationo f definite operations? Certainly not….”

Chicago And London. The University Of Chicago Press. 1946. 95p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Patrick Devlin

From the cover: The limits of individual freedom within society-the boundaries of the public and the private in the realm of morals, and the point at which the law may e n t e ra r e the core concern of these seven essays by a prominent British jurist. Linked by their interest in the con- nection between morality and the law, they consider in detail the relation of moral law to various branches of criminal law, the quasi- criminal law, the law of tort, the laws of contract and of marriage.

For the force of its commands and prohibitions morality still depends heavily on religion, but in our secular society law may no longer be justified by religious belief. The law, Lord Devlin argues, must be concerned solely with the facts of common morality, rather than with any philosophical or religious conception of how it ought to be; what the law-maker has to ascertain is not the "true" belief. but the common belief; those who serve the law have a duty to defend "the law as it is, morality as it is. freedom as it is--none of them perfect, but the things that their society has got, and must not let go."

Lord Devlin disputes the contention in the Wolfenden report on homosexuality that there is a realm of private morality which lies outside the law. In either case, he asserts. the argument depends upon the definition of the private and the public realm. In this regard he considers the doctrine of John Stuart Mill contained in On Liberty, from which many arguments on public and private freedom derive.

London. Oxford University Press. 1965. 149p. CONTAINS MARK-UP.

By G. .J Warnock

The central issue is that of identifying and understanding the fundamental principles of morality but the book also discusses the place of rules in moral thought, the nature of obligation, the relation between morality and religion and that of being moral and rational.

London Methuen. 1971. 175p.

By Charles Fried

Investigates a complex structure of morality, the demands such morality places on individuals, and the behavioral consequences of the system of right and wrong

Cambridge.Mass. Cambridge University Press. 1978. 220p.

By Giza Lopes

From the series foreword by Graeme R. Newman: “ Lopes convincingly argues that not only have the clergy as the shepherds of Death been replaced by modern medicine’s doctors and technologies, but that the rule of law has intervened to codify the ways and rights of helping people to die. She catalogues, with fascinating case studies and detailed historical observation, the quite different ways that the United States and European countries have tackled this problem of all problems. This is an erudite book that leaves no detail untouched; relentlessly unravels the moral, judicial, and political events that arguably precede—seen and unseen—not only every assisted death but arguably every single death on earth; and shows how these events have relentlessly set the stage for the coming movement to quicken the time it takes to die.”

Santa Barbara. Praeger. 2015. 256p.

By R. M. Hare

From the cover: 'What I think about morals is up to me.' 'You can't think just what you like about moral questions.' Mr. Hare's aim is to resolve this antinomy by showing how, when thinking morally, a man can be both free and rational. Out of his earlier suggestions, in The Language of Morals, about the logical character and function of moral judgements, he de­velops an account of the main features of moral reasoning.. Topics touched upon include: 'ought' and 'can' and the problem of moral weakness; the place of imagination in moral thinking; ideals, moral and aesthetic; and the rational basis of toleration. The book ends with a more detailed practical illustration of moral reasoning, drawn from argu­ments about our attitudes toward racial conflicts.”

New York. Oxford University Pres. 1965. 230p.

By William Frankena

FROM THE PREFACE: This book is intended to introduce students and the general reader to the branch of philosophy called “ethics.” I shall try, among other things, to present some of the standard material of ethics that beginners and others should know. Idris will not, however, be a summary of what moral philosophers are agreed upon, as introductions to other subjects may be summaries of what the experts in those fields agree upon. Such a substantial body of agreement does not exist in philosophy. Nor will this be simply an introductory review of the various differing positions moral philosophers have taken, although many of these positions will be presented and discussed. My aim in this book is not just to introduce the problems and positions of moral philosophers, but also to do moral philosophy.

New Jersey. Prentice Hall. 1963. 113p.