Born to be Free: : Jack Miller: Lexington Books

Born to be Free

Description

Jack Miller’s Born to Be Free examines the beauty and power of the American principles that our founding fathers gave us and the lack of knowledge about them in today’s society. With a preface by distinguished professor and author James Ceaser (University of Virginia), Miller goes on to advocate for communicating these values by introducing them back into higher education. Miller examines the overarching benefits of teaching our country’s founding principles and how that could impact America’s future.

Miller founded the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History 14 years ago, launching a project to get these teachings back onto college campuses. The work has also allowed him to expand his own knowledge by discussing and debating our country’s founding ideas with professors and scholars from the Center’s network of over 900 academics across the country.

In the book’s second section, Miller discusses the programs and growth of the Jack Miller Center along with its ongoing success in partnering with and supporting educators. Building on its success in higher education, the project has expanded to include graduate courses and seminars for high school teachers to enrich their knowledge of America’s founding principles and history and help them introduce these principles into their classrooms.

The final chapters of the book dive into the personal life of Miller, exploring his past from a modest beginning, on through his college years, and eventually to becoming a prominent Chicago-area entrepreneur and philanthropist. All the while, he underscores the great need for education in our country’s founding principles, and why he has devoted so much time, effort, and so many millions of dollars into this project.

Section One – What I Have Learned about Our Founding Principles and History
Chapter 1 – The Declaration as Our Mission Statement
Chapter 2 – Life without Liberty Loses Its Meaning: Our Founders Protected Both
Chapter 3 – The Constitution: A Game Plan for Realizing the MissionChapter 4 – Overcoming Challenges through the Disappearing Art of CompromiseChapter 5 – The Constitution: Protecting Us against Tyranny
Chapter 6 – The Power to Tax and the Concentration of Power Could Destroy Freedom
Chapter 7 – Finally, in SummarySection Two – The Jack Miller Center: My Legacy to the CountryChapter 8 – A Spur-of-the-Moment Start
Chapter 9 – The Professors Are the Key to Success
Chapter 10 – A Full-Fledged Program Helps Assure Success
Chapter 11 – Expanding Our Mission to High Schools
Chapter 12 – Helping Donors Invest Wisely
Section Three – A Life Well Lived
Chapter 13 – Growing Up in a Patriotic America
Chapter 14 – The College Years, a Blur
Chapter 15 – Meandering into a Career
Chapter 16 – Building a Business through Hard Work and Sweat Equity
Chapter 17 – An Entrepreneur’s Path to Philanthropy
Chapter 18 – Keeping Busy and Happy toward the End
Epilogue – Michael L. Andrews

Product details

Published	15 Oct 2018
Format	Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition	1st
Extent	176
ISBN	9781498575911
Imprint	Lexington Books
Illustrations	37 BW Photos
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Some claim America is an idea. It isn’t; America is a set of shared values, where ideas flourish, as long as the ideas don’t subvert the values. Yes values are only “shared” if they are effectively communicated. And our educational institutions are failing at that job. Miller delivers some stinging rebukes about the present state of education, but is always optimistic about the future. In this deeply personal and yet universal book, Miller calls us back toward teaching the values of the Founding. And the indispensable value at the core of his analysis is one we have nearly forgotten: responsibility.

Michael C. Munger, Director of PPE Program, Duke University
Jack Miller is a man who loves his country and reveres the political principles on which it is founded. But he fears that younger generations of Americans are not learning or appreciating these principles, so he founded The Jack Miller Center (JMC) to encourage the study and teaching of these principles. This book presents Mr. Miller's understanding of American principle and tells of his efforts to found JMC. It is an all-round fascinating read.

Michael Zuckert, University of Notre Dame
From the preface: Jack Miller’s capstone work, Born to Be Free, offers his reflections on the American Founding, describes the formation and purpose of the Miller Center, and presents an autobiographical sketch of his life.This may sound like three books in one, but the different parts are held together by the common theme of freedom. Freedom is at the center of Jack’s own beliefs, his freedom and the equal freedom of all Americans. How freedom can be secured and what people must do to keep it alive are the underlying themes of this book.

James Ceaser, University of Virginia