American Heritage & Political Thought Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards generated directly from the lecture notes covering key terms in political philosophy, economic systems, colonial history, and founding principles.

Free Rider

An individual who reaps benefits off of someone else's work without contributing to the effort.

Collective Action Problem

A situation where individuals would be better off cooperating, but conflicting interests prevent cooperation, leaving everyone worse off.

Social Contract

An agreement involving the sacrifice of some individual freedom to benefit society and establish legitimate government.

Selective Incentives

Specific rewards or punishments offered to individuals to encourage cooperation and solve collective action problems.

Telos

The purpose, end, or essential nature of an action, practice, or political community.

Libertarianism

A political ideology advocating for individual rights, self-ownership, and minimal government involvement in personal and economic life.

Veil of Ignorance

John Rawls' thought experiment where individuals design a just society without knowing their own position, race, gender, or status within it.

Law of Demand

An economic principle stating that as the price of a good increases, the quantity demanded decreases ($P \uparrow \rightarrow Q_d \downarrow$).

Law of Supply

An economic principle stating that as the price of a good increases, the quantity supplied increases ($P \uparrow \rightarrow Q_s \uparrow$).

Equilibrium Price

The market price where the quantity of a good demanded by consumers equals the quantity supplied by producers.

Opportunity Cost

The value of the best alternative forgone when making a choice.

Law of Comparative Advantage

The economic principle that individuals or nations should specialize in producing goods for which they have the lowest opportunity cost.

Utilitarianism

A moral theory asserting that actions are right if they maximize overall happiness and pleasure while minimizing pain for the greatest number of people.

Price-Gouging

The practice of raising prices of essential goods to excessive levels during emergencies or demand spikes when consumers have few alternatives.

Demagogue

A leader who gains popularity and power by appealing to people's emotions, fears, and prejudices rather than rational argument.

Sovereignty

Ultimate political power and final legal authority within a state or community.

Anarchy

The complete absence of government or central authority, resulting in ongoing chaos.

Human Predicament Cycle

A political cycle moving continuously through Tyranny, Revolution, Anarchy, and Competing Groups back to Tyranny.

Totalitarianism

A system of government where the state exerts nearly total control over all public and private aspects of society.

Minimal State

Robert Nozick's libertarian concept that government power should be restricted strictly to basic protections against force, theft, and fraud.

Mayflower Compact

A 1620 agreement signed by Pilgrims establishing a social contract and self-governing covenant community.

Predestination

John Calvin's theological doctrine that God has already determined who will be saved as 'the elect' prior to creation.

Christian Calling

The Puritan concept that individuals glorify God through diligent everyday work in an occupation that serves society.

Natural Liberty

John Winthrop's concept of liberty where individuals do whatever they want, including evil, which is incompatible with moral authority.

Civil Liberty

John Winthrop's concept of liberty where individuals have the freedom to do only that which is good, just, and honest under covenant and law.

Mercantilism

An economic policy where governments regulate trade, control markets, and impose tariffs to maximize national wealth and state power.

Command System

An economic system in which government central planners control prices, wages, and resource allocation instead of free market forces.

Salutary Neglect

The British historical policy prior to 1763 of loosely enforcing economic regulations and trade acts in the American colonies.

Coincidence of Wants

A situation in barter trade where two parties each possess a good that the other party desires for direct exchange.

Principle of Wrongful Possession

Brennan and Jaworski's premise that if it is morally wrong for someone to possess, do, or use something, then it is morally wrong for that person to buy or sell it. Buying/selling it doesn’t make it wrong, it’s posessing it that does.

Invisible Hand

Adam Smith's principle that individuals pursuing their own self-interest naturally regulate the market and promote overall economic prosperity.

Meritocracy

A social system in which individuals achieve positions, wealth, and status based strictly on their talent, effort, and abilities.

Rule of Law

The principle that all people and government officials are bound by predictable, publicly known laws rather than arbitrary political power.

Generality

A Rule of Law principle requiring that laws must apply broadly to categories of people rather than singling out specific individuals or groups.

Prospectivity

A Rule of Law principle requiring that laws apply to future actions rather than retroactively punishing past conduct.

Publicity

A Rule of Law principle requiring laws to be clearly published and known so citizens can follow them.

Due Process

A Rule of Law principle requiring that laws be administered and enforced impartially and fairly.

Virtual Representation

The British doctrine that Parliament represented the interests of all subjects across the empire, regardless of whether subjects voted for them.

Committees of Correspondence

Colonial groups established to facilitate communication between colonies and coordinate collective political action against British policies.

Declaration of Sentiments

The 1848 document signed at the Seneca Falls Convention, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, demanding equal rights and voting rights for women.

Political Entrepreneur

An individual who expends personal effort and resources to organize disparate groups and solve collective action problems, exemplified by Samuel Adams organizing the Sons of Liberty.

David Hume's Marsh Example

An illustration of the collective action problem where two neighboring farmers fail to drain a shared swamp because each prefers the other to do the work, leaving both worse off.

Roger Williams

Puritan minister banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who founded Providence, Rhode Island, and championed freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state.

Teleological Justice

Aristotle's philosophy that justice requires distributing goods according to the intrinsic purpose, end, or essential nature of the practice or item in question.

Honorific Justice

Aristotle's belief that allocating goods according to their telos inherently praises, rewards, and fosters the virtues associated with that good.

Thomas Hobbes's State of Nature

A theoretical human condition without government characterized as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, where fear forces people to surrender sovereignty to a powerful ruler.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Human Nature

The philosophical belief that humans are innately noble savages who are free and good in nature, but become corrupted by civil institutions and private property.

Plato's Philosopher-Kings

The political ideal presented in the Republic asserting that a good society should be ruled by enlightened, virtuous philosophers rather than a democratic majority.

The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution

Roger Williams's 1644 treatise arguing that enforcing religious uniformity is scripturally baseless, offends God, causes civil wars, and subjects divine laws to state control.

A Model of Christian Charity

John Winthrop's 1630 sermon delivered aboard the Arbella emphasizing that the community must be knit together by ligaments of love to serve as a visible City upon a Hill.

John Cotton's View of Power

The Puritan theological principle outlined in An Exposition Upon the 13th Chapter of the Revelation asserting that earthly power inherently corrupts and must be strictly bounded.

Cotton Mather's Two Callings

The Puritan obligation requiring every believer to pursue both a general spiritual calling to serve Jesus Christ and a particular occupational calling to serve society through productive work.

The Utah Compromise

A 2015 legislative agreement providing state protections against housing and employment discrimination for LGBTQ individuals while safeguarding religious liberties for institutions.

Liberal Pluralism

A political philosophy holding that diverse interest groups, faiths, and viewpoints should peacefully coexist and negotiate influence within a constitutional framework.

Thick Christianity

Jonathan Rauch's term for high-demand religious communities that require significant personal sacrifice and obedience, resulting in strong community resilience and social capital.

Four Core Values of a Good Society

Liberty, equality, community, and prosperity.

Pericles' Funeral Oration

An ancient Athenian speech celebrating the Golden Age of Athens by praising equal justice under law, civic virtue, and individual freedom, while overlooking Athenian slavery.

City of God

St. Augustine's vision of an ideal society governed by humility, self-sacrifice, and Christian virtues rather than worldly political power.

Thomas More's Utopia

A 1516 philosophical work describing an imaginary island community with common property, universal education, six-hour workdays, and public trials.

Magna Carta

The 1215 English charter that placed the first written constitutional limits on monarchical power, establishing principles such as jury trials and consultation on taxation.

Learned Hand's Definition of Liberty

The judicial philosophy describing the spirit of liberty as the humility to remember that one may not always be entirely right.

Jeremy Bentham

Utilitarian philosopher who argued that morality consists strictly of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, proposing the pauper management plan to clear beggars from streets.

John Stuart Mill's Defense of Liberty

The utilitarian argument asserting that protecting individual rights and distinguishing higher intellectual pleasures from lower physical pleasures maximizes utility in the long run.

Ancient Liberty vs. Modern Liberty

Benjamin Constant's distinction between active collective participation in community governance versus modern individual independence and freedom from government interference.

Corporate Colony

A colonial settlement founded by joint-stock investors seeking commercial financial return and material wealth, exemplified by the Virginia Company at Jamestown.

Covenant Community

A colonial settlement founded on religious devotion and shared covenants with God and one another to build a moral society, exemplified by the Pilgrims and Puritans.

John Rolfe

Jamestown colonist who married Pocahontas and saved the Virginia settlement's economy by cultivating marketable sweet tobacco.

Indentured Servitude

A labor system where individuals contracted to work without wages for a set period of years in return for transatlantic passage to the American colonies.

Divine Right of Kings

The political doctrine claiming that monarchs derive their authority directly from God and are unaccountable to any earthly authority or public consent.

Ligaments of Love

John Winthrop's metaphor describing how mutual affection, charity, and service knit members of a Christian covenant community together into a single body of Christ.

City upon a Hill

John Winthrop's biblical metaphor describing the Massachusetts Bay colony as a visible, worldwide exemplar of a righteous and just society.

Navigation Acts

Mercantilist trade laws passed by the British Parliament requiring colonial goods to be transported exclusively on British ships and channeled through British ports.

Triangular Trade

The historical Atlantic trade route moving manufactured goods from Britain to Africa, enslaved Africans to the Americas, and raw agricultural staples back to Britain.

The Middle Passage

The transatlantic voyage between West Africa and the West Indies that subjected captured enslaved Africans to inhumane and lethal conditions.

Subsidies and Bounties

Direct government financial payments given to domestic producers under mercantilism to keep export prices artificially competitive.

Division of Labor

The separation of a production process into distinct, specialized tasks performed by different workers to increase efficiency and output, as illustrated by Adam Smith's pin factory.

Economic Dignity

Gene Sperling's concept that economic systems must be structured to preserve human worth, meaningful employment, and family well-being rather than treating people solely as commodities.

Gene Sperling's Basketball Analogy

The concept that all markets are defined by rules, showing that adding regulations does not eliminate market competition any more than adding rules against punching eliminates basketball.

Sandel's Degradation Objection

The argument that buying and selling certain goods—such as military service, surrogate pregnancies, or civic votes—treats them as commodities and corrupts their intrinsic moral value.

Instrumental Rationality

The economic premise that individuals logically rank their preferences and select the most cost-effective means to achieve their self-interested ends.

Incidental Limits to Markets

Brennan and Jaworski's special incident limits to selling—incidents when it’s wrong to sell. ex. if you know someone is buying something to hurt someone

Inherent Limits to Markets

The moral doctrine rejected by Brennan and Jaworski that certain items are intrinsically degraded and made immoral simply by exchanging them for money.

Consumer Sovereignty

The market principle where individual consumer choices and purchasing patterns determine which goods and services businesses produce.

Market Shortage

An economic imbalance that occurs when the quantity demanded exceeds the quantity supplied because the market price is held below equilibrium.

The Way to Wealth

Benjamin Franklin's collection of Poor Richard's aphorisms advising that personal industriousness, frugality, and self-discipline produce worldly and moral success.

Hubris in Meritocracy

The moral hazard identified by Michael Sandel where successful individuals develop excessive pride and view their wealth as entirely self-made, forgetting the role of luck and divine grace.

Humiliation in Meritocracy

Michael Sandel's observation that in a meritocratic society, those who experience economic hardship internalize their failure as a personal defect and lack of worth.

The English Whigs

The seventeenth-century British political party that resisted monarchical tyranny, defended parliamentary authority, and provided political philosophy for American Patriots.

The Glorious Revolution

The 1688 bloodless transition that ousted King James II, installed William and Mary, and established parliamentary supremacy and the English Bill of Rights.

Ex Post Facto Law

A retroactive statute that penalizes past actions that were legal when committed, violating the Rule of Law principle of prospectivity.

Consent (Rule of Law)

The core legal principle requiring that laws must be generally accepted by the public and enacted through legitimate representative procedures.

John Locke's State of Nature

A condition of moral equality and freedom governed by the Law of Nature where individuals possess natural rights, but enter a social contract to establish impartial enforcement.

Rule of Law vs. Rule of Will

The distinction between a constitutional order governed by established, neutral, and predictable laws versus an arbitrary regime governed by personal monarchical whim.

Stamp Act of 1765

The first direct British internal tax imposed on American colonists, requiring paper goods and legal instruments to bear official revenue stamps.

Intolerable Acts of 1774

British coercive statutes that closed Boston Harbor, curtailed local Massachusetts town meetings, and mandated the quartering of troops following the Boston Tea Party.

Continental Congress

The body of colonial delegates that coordinated unified resistance against British policies, managed the Revolutionary War, and issued the Declaration of Independence.

Primogeniture

The traditional common-law inheritance mandate requiring all real estate to pass intact to the eldest son, which was eliminated in post-revolutionary America to foster equality.

Thomas Paine's Government vs. Society

The distinction in Common Sense stating that society is produced by our wants and promotes happiness, while government is produced by our wickedness and is a necessary evil.

Four Sections of the Declaration of Independence

The Introduction explaining separation, Theoretical Core articulating natural rights and consent, Evidence detailing the King's repeated injuries, and Conclusion proclaiming sovereign statehood.

Massachusetts Slaves' Petition of 1777

A legislative appeal invoking natural rights and Christian obligations to argue that enslavement unjustly strips people of agency, family, and religious duties.