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A Nation Among Nations By Thomas Bender

Decent Essays

In Chapter three of his book, “A Nation Among Nations,” Thomas Bender investigates the Civil War and draws parallels with American history and modern nation making around the world. Chapter three is focused on the Civil War and what led to political thinkers believing in a strong unified nation as the best protection of individual liberties. Documents that help us understand what led to ideas that would promote the citizens individual liberties are the United States Constitution , The Bill of Rights and Simon Bolivar’s A Constitution for Venezuela . To better understand what the nation was founded on we should first acknowledge the dictionary definition of individual liberty: “the liberty of an individual to exercise freely those rights generally accepted as being outside of governmental control.” We should also make it clear that the government’s duty is to provide individuals with the opportunity to utilize their liberty with protection from the government.
America was founded on the principles of establishing and protecting liberty, which is described by The Declaration of Independence. The Constitution of the United States was written to provide a unified and functioning government and also to protect individual rights. The colonists disagreed with the workings of the British government and decided to become an independent state. Once the Constitution was put in place, “the First Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the Constitution.” The

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