Bøker av James E. Block

Block offers a new perspective on the formation of the modern American self and society. He roots self and society in the concept of agency, rather than liberty, and dispenses with the national myth of the "sacred cause of liberty"-with the Declaration of Independence as its "American scripture."

Why do free people submit to any rule? How is consent of the governed formed? Block argues that the source is found in the nursery and schoolroom, where the necessary synthesis of self-direction and integrative social conduct-so contradictory in logic yet so functional in practice-are established without provoking reservation or resistance.