Book Description

"A brilliant analysis of the current political crises we face at home and abroad and how we might extricate ourselves by returning to our Founding principles. All who value freedom and believe in the American Experiment should read this book." - Linda Chavez, Fox News analyst and Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity What has happened to the American ideals of liberty and equality? Has America's image become tarnished at home and abroad? Does democracy itself merely trigger repression instead of fulfilling the promise of freedom? Can individual rights coexist with national security? In Rediscovering America, John Agresto urges a return to the founding principles of our republic in order to revive the great American experiment. Rejecting the simple slogans of both the left and the right, Agresto confronts the challenges that inequality and injustice pose to our ideals of democracy and freedom. From the burgeoning of new "rights" to the growth of entitlements, from clamor in the public square to ideological struggles in the halls of academia, Rediscovering America is a trenchant critique of our contemporary political culture. The art of American statecraft, Agresto argues, is both to free and to restrain, to turn individual liberty into a social good. Our task is to understand, respect, and transmit what the Founding Fathers hoped to accomplish, why they did what they did, and how they hoped to achieve it. Drawing on history, political theory, and current affairs, Rediscovering America is a searching examination of our country's crisis in self-understanding - and a ringing call to restore America's promise to its citizens and to the world. John Agresto, former president of St. John's College in Santa Fe and former Acting Chancellor, Provost, and Academic Dean at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani, is the author of Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions and other books. "John Agresto cuts through the fog of present day debates to re-mind Americans that the way forward in the 21st century must be through a renewed commitment to the nation's founding ideals and institutions. This is a book that will inspire and inform every thoughtful American." - James Piereson, President, William E. Simon Foundation "An elegantly written and cogently argued account of how the recovery of America's first principles, rightly understood in the way the Founders themselves understood them, would go a long way toward alleviating the serious problems we face today.... This book should be required reading for all university students and concerned citizens." - Edward J. Erler, Senior Fellow, The Claremont Institute "If you want to understand why we should be patriots, and how to make America lovely and lovable once again, start with this pithy, accessible, instructive book." - Matthew Franck, Director, William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution "Agresto guides the reader to understand that America stands, first and foremost, for the principle of equality, a principle he then admirably defends from contemporary critics on both the right and the left." - Ralph A. Rossum, Salvatori Professor of American Constitutionalism, Claremont McKenna College