Following Thomas Paine, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others, Tocqueville’s Democracy in America regards mores or manners as of the utmost significance for democracy. Tocqueville further attributes to women and especially mothers the primary role of inculcating democratic habits of equality. His portrayals of women in Democracy in America are suggestive of the many ways in which gender, race, and class intersect with one another in Jacksonian America. Looking ahead, Tocqueville also anticipates what contemporary feminist theorist Judith Butler describes as “gender troubles.” In Botting’s view, both Tocqueville and Butler appreciate the complex ways in which women and their sexuality shape the mores and manners that animate the culture of democracy. In Tocqueville’s case, the transformation of American girls from objects of sexual desire coveted by the male gaze to mothers who bear primary responsibility for the transmission of manners takes place between volumes 1 and 2 of Democracy. Botting further suggests that Tocqueville’s shifting attitude toward women parallels his own marriage and an increased ability on his part to identify with the sacrifices of young American wives.

Focusing on the decades leading up to the Declaration of Independence, chapter 5 presents historical arguments in favor and against independence. Selections from Patriots and Loyalists show that both the liberal social contract and the republican political contract could be levered in support of either position. Based on the political contract between ruler and ruled, Jonathan Mayhew argued that the people as a whole has a duty to rebel when the ruler becomes tyrannical. Daniel Leonard, in turn, opposed the Parliament’s oppression of the colonies from a liberal perspective, contending that men enter civil society to protect their property and that taxation without representation violated the principles of the social contract. After the First Continental Congress, however, Leonard changed to the Loyalist side and excerpts from his later writings reveal the use of republican arguments about virtual representation to argue against independence. Jonathan Boucher, again, argued based on the Locke’s theory that a right of resistance is incompatible with the duty to submit to majority decision. Other authors in this chapter include Daniel Dulaney, John Adams, Thomas Paine, and Peter Oliver.

Hobson’s mature welfare economics was less a product of Oxford liberalism than of a radical tradition going back to Paine. However, Hobson also strove to express that radicalism in qualitative terms, and here was more strongly influenced by the illiberal Ruskin, whose inspiration was pre-capitalist, than by liberal predecessors. By 1900, Ruskin was frequently interpreted in a socialist manner: the task Hobson set himself was to show that Ruskin’s insights were compatible with his version of New Liberalism. The outcome, with its stress on quality rather than quantity, was distinctly different from the liberal orthodoxy that established itself in his lifetime.

Introduces the central thesis of the book: that freedom of thought, conscience, inquiry, and speech is inviolable for science and politics and sacrosanct to civilization. Who the devil is and what he is due is stated: The devil is anyone who disagrees with you or someone else, and what he is due is the right to speak his mind. The reason we must give the devil his due is explained: for our own safety’s sake. Why? Because my freedom to speak and dissent is inextricably tied to your freedom to speak and dissent. If I censor you, why shouldn’t you censor me? If you silence me, why shouldn’t I silence you? Once customs and laws are in place to silence someone on one topic, what’s to stop people from silencing anyone on any topic that deviates from the accepted canon? The tyranny of censorship must be combatted with the bulwark of freedom.

Religion was a force throughout Twain’s lifetime, early on as the strict Calvinism inherited from his mother, and later as he rebelled against orthodoxy. His reading of Thomas Paine at an early age introduced him to religious skepticism, which challenged the beliefs he held as a child. Despite his skepticism, he was very close with a number of clergymen, most notably his family minister Joseph Twichell, who may be considered his closest adult friend. He vowed to reform and become a devout Christian in order to marry Olivia Langdon, but his “reform” ended after a year or so. In many of his works, he satirically exposes religious hypocrisy, and in his later unpublished writing, most notably Letters from the Earth (not published until 1962), he expresses doubt and scorn for conventional Christianity.