Foreword by Dr P. M. S. Hacker
Preface
Acknowledgements

1 The US Bill of Rights
2 President Andrew Johnson
3 Whittaker Chambers
4 Alger Hiss
5 President George W. Bush
6 The ‘War on Terror’

Appendix 1 Narratives
Appendix 2 Constitution of the United States of America
Appendix 3 The Bill of Rights

Bibliography
Index

“Norman Coles’ distinctive perspective on four significant episodes in American history suggest, inter alia, the light that can be cast on domestic and international politics by philosophy, particularly by that closer attention to the use of words and to the logic of an argument that a training in philosophy can instil.
… At the same time, as he makes clear in his study of President Andrew Johnson, political failures and disastrous policies themselves are to be attributed, not to philosophical mistakes, but to lack of imagination and empathy, and to the corrupting power of human prejudice.” Vincent Denard, formerly lecturer in Philosophy, Trinity College, Dublin

“In an era dominated by mass media, and in a political milieu determined by public relations men, critical political debate has declined. As a consequence . the forms of representative democratic politics and liberal political societies which obtain in Britain, Europe, and the USA are under severe pressure. It is salutary to see how the instruments of logic and the methods of philosophical analysis can be brought to bear on political discourse and illuminate different ways in which political societies have been hoodwinked by rhetoric, intellectual and moral dishonesty, and plain conceptual error or confusion. To shed light on the dark forces that are a perennial internal threat to liberal democratic society is the purpose of Norman Coles' lucid new book. ” Dr P. M. S. Hacker, Fellow of St John's College, Oxford