Liberty and Power: A Reader

Liberty and Power takes readers through a documentary tour of the timeless and fundamental social conflict between individuals seeking liberty from external control and those seeking power over others. With medieval law codes, Early Modern corporate charters, narrative accounts from pirates, filibusters, and revolutionaries, and cultural products like popular literature and paintings, this volume introduces the classical liberal theory of history. To liberal thinkers–great and humble alike–the social use of force necessarily divides the population into warring factions and produces disruptive change. History, then, is a train of errors in need of moral and intellectual correction.