This is the third and final volume in the series on American political thought edited by Ronald J. Pestritto and Thomas G. West. The book addresses how the major themes in American political thought_identified in the first two books of the series_have played out in the world of modern American politics. The first volume focused on the founding era, and examined the prevalence of social-compact theory among the founders and implications of that theory for the design of American institutions. The second volume examined the major challenges that nineteenth-century thought posed to the political ideas of the founding, and suggested that these challenges created tensions that would significantly affect the development of American politics in the twentieth century and beyond. In Modern America and the Legacy of the Founding, the authors address these fundamental tensions: how does modern America resolve the inherent conflict between the original constitutional order and the challenges posed by modern liberalism? The authors look at the contemporary effects of this fundamental tension on questions of foreign policy and domestic policy, and on questions of our national political institutions and the ideas that shape them today.

Ronald J. Pestritto is Charles and Lucia Shipley Chair in the American Constitution at Hillsdale College. Thomas G. West is professor of politics at the University of Dallas and a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute.

Chapter 1 Prologue: From Natural Law and Natural Rights to Progressivist Liberalism
Chapter 2 Foundational Concepts in American Political Thought
Chapter 3 The Post-1990 Transformation: Ideas and Institutions
Chapter 4 The National Regulatory State in Progressive Political Theory and Twentieth-Century Constitutional Law
Chapter 5 Culture, Compassion, and Today's Progressive Party System
Chapter 6 The Pulse of Democracy: Public Opinion, Opinion Polling, and Modern Democratic Theory
Chapter 7 Progressivism, the Brownlow Commission, and the Rise of the Administrative State
Chapter 8 The Post-1990 Transformation: Ideas and Policies
Chapter 9 Transforming Formal Freedom into Effective Freedom: Dewey, the New Deal, and the Great Society
Chapter 10 Natural Law, Our Constitution, and Our Democracy
Chapter 11 The Post-1990 Transformation: Foreign Policy
Chapter 12 The American Founding and Conservative Foreign Policy Today
Chapter 13 The Bush Doctrine: New Ways for a New World
Chapter 14 American Founding Principles and American Foreign Policy