The Liberty Threat

What happened to liberty and justice for all? Americans are losing what are supposed to be constitutionally promised rights at an alarming pace. The Founding Fathers understood the overriding essentiality of religious practice unimpeded by governmental authority, but time and vast cultural change has eroded this from the consciences of modern politicians. The struggle for the right to worship freely has been present since the time of the Holy Roman Empire. By looking at how the Ancient Christian world relates to the failures of our own Supreme Court, it is possible to see what has lead to so much government interference in personal religious beliefs in the name of “equality.” As we watch America teeter ever closer to the brink of moral collapse and prejudice towards religion become ever more institutionalized, one question always surfaces: How can we stop this? In The Liberty Threat James Tonkowich explores the history of Christian philosophy from the Church’s infancy through the birth of America and how it influenced religious liberty. With powerful examples fresh from today’s courts, Tonkowich illustrates just how the rigid separation of Church and state has created a world that is hostile to true faith. The Liberty Threat is both a chilling wake-up call and a clear call to action for Christians everywhere.

The American republic is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War. Will conflicts, hostility, and incivility tear the country apart? Os Guinness provides a careful observation of the American experiment, offering a stirring vision for faithful citizenship and renewed responsibility for not only the nation but also the watching world.

Big Data permeates all aspects of modern life, and while there is no shortage of potential benefits resulting from this, author Henrik Skaug Sætra argues that we must also understand the threats Big Data poses to liberty. The issues discussed in Big Data’s Threat to Liberty: Surveillance, Nudging, and the Curation of Information are related to how we are constantly under surveillance. Data is gathered from our homes, our cars, our smartphones, various devices around the house, and public sources such as facial recognition enabled camera surveillance and various websites and social networks. Furthermore, the information gathered is used to influence our actions. Detailed personality profiles are utilized in order to make us purchase products and services, or pay our taxes, through tailor-made nudges aimed at irrational and subconscious mechanisms, and delivered with a level of precision only possible with Big Data-driven algorithmic curation of data. Finally, the information we receive through various media is curated by algorithms, and even people are curated in order to satisfy our desires. By providing us with what the algorithm believes we want, we are spared from the exposure of unpleasant information, and even unpleasant people. The ideological landscapes we traverse are thus characterized by conformity, and a concomitant tyranny of popular opinion becomes ever more coercive as this occurs. The question is: How does being constantly watched, manipulated, and having our world-views shaped as just described affect our freedom? In this book it is argued that Big Data’s threat to individual liberty is routinely misunderstood and underappreciated due to (a) vagueness resulting from the concept of liberty being used without it being defined, or (b) the use of definitions based on flawed understandings of what liberty is. In this new and unique contribution to the ethics of Big Data and artificial intelligence, both these challenges are thoroughly addressed. Explanation of key Big Data–related technologies and how they affect modern society, including explanation of surveillance technologies and nudging algorithms, and how Big Data, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence algorithms are used to tailor and mold opinion Conceptualization of the term liberty, making the concept tangible, as a clear understanding of various forms of liberty enables a proper debate about the effects of technology on liberty, and a debate about what sort of liberty we value A thorough technical explanation of how Big Data influences individuals by way of surveillance that allows for detailed personality profiles, nudging, and the algorithmic curation of information

The Liberty Boys of ’76 was a weekly magazine containing stories of the American Revolution. The stories were based on actual facts and give a faithful account of the exciting adventures of a brave band of American youths who were always ready and willing to imperil their lives for the sake of helping along the gallant cause of independence. This volume reprints the lead novel from issue #424, originally published February 12, 1909.

Christians are often thought of as defending only their own religious interests in the public square. They are viewed as worrying exclusively about the erosion of their freedom to assemble and to follow their convictions, while not seeming as concerned about publicly defending the rights of Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and atheists to do the same. Andrew T. Walker, an emerging Southern Baptist public theologian, argues for a robust Christian ethic of religious liberty that helps the church defend religious freedom for everyone in a pluralistic society. Whether explicitly religious or not, says Walker, every person is striving to make sense of his or her life. The Christian foundations of religious freedom provide a framework for how Christians can navigate deep religious difference in a secular age. As we practice religious liberty for our neighbors, we can find civility and commonality amid disagreement, further the church's engagement in the public square, and become the strongest defenders of religious liberty for all. Foreword by noted Princeton scholar Robert P. George.

Losing Freedom explores the myths of socialism while providing a wealth of diversely-sourced information showing that free enterprise and the free markets are the best answers to poverty and social injustice.

Contains essays, many from the 1970s, in which James Buckley, a former senator, under secretary of state, and judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, shares his opinions on the adverse effects of the growth of the federal government.