Edmund Burke

"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion."
Edmund Burke

While Burke himself was Irish, his observations on the nature of representation and government have played an important role in the development of the American Republic.

From Wikipedia:
Edmund Burke (12 January 1729^[1] – 9 July 1797) was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after relocating to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his opposition to the French Revolution. It led to his becoming the leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig party, which he dubbed the "Old Whigs", in opposition to the pro-French-Revolution "New Whigs" led by Charles James Fox. He is generally viewed as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism.^[2]

Biographies of Burke
Wikipedia -
Stanford University
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)
Very difficult to read but worth trying to read some sections of it - (or fome fections of it -as the case may be - olf english often substituted f for s making the reading challenging)

Lewis Hine

Lewis Hine was one of the great documentary photographers of the 20th century. He is most well known for his photographs of immigrants arriving in America and for his work documenting child labor during the Progressive Era.

Hine was an artist and social reformer as the photograph to the right will show. The power of his images stepped beyond the boundaries of simply documenting his subjects to a place where subject, composition and style merged into an image that captured moments and moods.



Video Clip - Lewis Hine Documents Child Labor

Images of Lewis Hine

Thomas Paine

Declared by Washington as the man who kept the revolution alive in its darkest hours Thomas Paine is probably the most tragic figure of the revolution - revered for his words and his thoughts with regard to the revolution and reviled when he turned his great mind to religion some years later. Paine's Pamphlets, The Crisis and Common Sense, did more to strengthen the cause of the Revolution than any other publications or speeches of their time. From USHistory.org "These are the times that try men's souls." This simple quotation from Founding Father Thomas Paine's The Crisis not only describes the beginnings of the American Revolution, but also the life of Paine himself. Throughout most of his life, his writings inspired passion, but also brought him great criticism. He communicated the ideas of the Revolution to common farmers as easily as to intellectuals, creating prose that stirred the hearts of the fledgling United States. He had a grand vision for society: he was staunchly anti-slavery, and he was one of the first to advocate a world peace organization and social security for the poor and elderly. But his radical views on religion would destroy his success, and by the end of his life, only a handful of people attended his funeral. More COMMON SENSE (1776) Paine's call to arms for America. Common Sense THE CRISIS (1776-77) "These are the times that try men's souls." THE RIGHTS OF MAN (1791-92) Paine's reply to an attack on the French Revolution by Edmund Burke. AGE OF REASON (1794, 1796) Paine's biting criticism of the Bible and religion. This document created the wedge between Paine and his admirers during the Revolutionary era and caused Paine's later years to be lived in obscurity. Ironically, many of the Founders would have agreed with its sentiments but understood that speaking them would destroy their reputations among common folk.