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Book details
  • Genre:POLITICAL SCIENCE
  • SubGenre:Political Freedom
  • Language:English
  • Pages:164
  • eBook ISBN:9798350976069
  • Paperback ISBN:9798350963496

The Freedom Principles

America's Promise at a Crossroads

by Thomas France

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Overview

"A rousing aspirational assessment of American values." - Kirkus Reviews

This book is part memoir, part family history, and part discussion of American politics, history, and culture, but it mostly is a celebration of America's promise of freedom and democracy. This promise empowers us to infuse our lives with meaning, fulfillment, prosperity, and happiness, but it is at a crossroads. Nearly 250 years into America's audacious experiment, the divisions that are the natural byproduct of our national soul threaten to overwhelm us. Our current American stalemate does not require a political or cultural revolution. What we need instead is a better understanding and appreciation of the fundamental principles that empower our freedom and bolster our democracy. Discover the impact of the Freedom Principles and learn how they can help us revitalize America's promise of freedom and democracy.

Description

There is a path for Americans to find common ground and revitalize our freedom and democracy.  America’s promise of freedom and democracy is powerful and inspirational – freedom unleashes our human potential by incentivizing us to maximize our spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical potential, and democracy is the only viable means for free people to collectively give their consent to be governed.  But this promise is at a crossroads, stalemated by fear, anger, and division that has swamped our public life.  

Our current American stalemate does not require a political or cultural revolution. What we require instead is a renewed understanding of the fundamental principles that empower our freedom and bolster our democracy: 

  • Fairness, the foundation of freedom;
  • Responsibility, the price of freedom;
  • Engagement, the inspiration for freedom;
  • Enterprise, the engine of freedom;
  • Discipline, the conscience of freedom;
  • Opportunity, the product of freedom; and
  • Morality, the soul of freedom. 

This book explores the impact each of these Freedom Principles has had on the author’s life and illustrates how they can inform and guide our individual lives and help manage and support our collective relationships.  The Freedom Principles provide a platform of common understanding and values that can help us better navigate our differences and disagreements and make them more a source of strength than a seed of disintegration and destruction.  Embracing the Freedom Principles gives us the strength to resist fear, anger, and hate; it allows us to solve problems and find success; it enables freedom to be a way of life, not just a slogan.

With a renewed personal commitment to these Freedom Principles, we can overcome our fears, begin to heal some of our divisions, become more comfortable trusting ourselves and our fellow citizens, and work more purposefully and effectively in pursuit of our individual happiness.  We can write a new chapter of the American story that recognizes freedom and democracy as our shared American value.

About the author

Thomas France is a lawyer, author, husband, and father of three who was born and raised in Corvallis, Oregon. He graduated from Oregon State University and Washington and Lee University Law School. Tom is a corporate attorney and has represented Fortune 500 corporations, small businesses, and individual entrepreneurs in a variety of business transactions for 28 years. He lives in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., with his family. Tom wrote "The Freedom Principles: America's Promise at a Crossroads" because America has kept its promise to him. Although he is an unremarkable man in most respects, his journey has been remarkable. He is a corporate lawyer, living an upper middle-class life in the suburbs of Washington, DC, yet he is just one generation removed from the poverty and isolation of the Ozark Mountains and the hardscrabble life of rural, small-town Iowa. His American dream has been made possible by the unconditional love and support of family, certain fundamental values and principles that have shaped and guided his life, and the power and inspiration of America's promise of freedom and democracy.