Liberal democracy, it has been claimed, stands at the end of history. But there are hidden internal strains that could threaten its fabric.
Nature and Liberty explores three of the most important practical problems of modern liberal politics - those connected with ethnicity and race, sex and the family, and bureaucratized government. The author traces liberals' difficulties in dealing with these problems to their own reluctance to have recourse to nature as a guide for political life.

An international collection of the world's most distinguished historians and political philosophers takes a fresh look at the political, legal, and philosophical contributions of Thomas Jefferson. The insightful essays analyze and illuminate the sophisticated layers of the political and legal thought of America's most influential and intellectually complex Founder. With contributors that include Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Morton Frisch, Paul Rahe, James Stoner, Robert K. Faulkner, John Zvesper, Howard Temperly, Robert A. Rutland, Raoul Berger, Colin Bonwick, Peter Parish, Jeffrey Sedgwick, J. R. Pole, Richard King, and Jean M. Yarborough, this is essential reading for historians and political philosophers.

Liberal democracy is currently being more widely adopted, so much so that the thesis that this regime stands at "the end of history" has become fashionable. Yet immense internal problems remain unresolved in these regimes. In "Nature and Liberty", John Zvesper explores three of these within modern liberal politics - those connected with ethnicity and race, sex and family life, and the bureaucratized government. He traces the difficulties that liberals have in dealing with these problems to the "physiphobia" - the unreasonable fear of nature - in contemporary liberal political theory. John Zvesper examines the practical problems by using evidence from the political experience of America, a regime that has often been taken to illustrate the characteristic virtues and vices of liberal democracy. The book culminates in a critique of dominant liberal theories, and a sketch of the outlines of a more adequate theory.

This book analyses the origins of modern party politics in America. Dr Zvesper argues that the partisan conflict between Federalists and Republicans in the 1790s was not merely an interesting historical sequel to the American Revolution and the framing of the Constitution, but was a confrontation of two of the fundamental alternatives of modern political philosophy. Consideration of this fact, along with evidence of the class structure of American society, is then used to explain why the Republican party was the natural superior in the dispute with Federalism, and why Republican philosophy and rhetoric have been so essential to American politics ever since.