A Note from the Editor - Summer 2005

The inaugural issue of The Social Contract quarterly appeared in the Fall of 1990. John Tanton, editor and publisher, answered the question "Why Another Journal" by observing that a number of public issues are directly or indirectly influenced by human population growth; its absolute size, distribution, and rate of change. Various individuals and organizations produced pamphlets, newsletters, and books on the issue, but "the lack of any journal dealing with these related topics has meant that there has been no epicenter for their discussion, and no coherent body of literature to which people that come along can be referred."To fill this void in the movement to reform mass immigration, John Tanton launched The Social Contract, to provide a medium where viewpoints from a variety of outlooks could be presented to a wider audience, where new authors could find a place to publish, and where older items of enduring interest could be reprinted. The name of the journal was taken from the time of Rousseau and reflects Tanton's belief that "so many of the questions we face are ethical and contractarian ones," balancing rights and responsibilities.In 1994, The Social Contract Press was established as an outgrowth of the journal. It has published a number of original titles such as The Immigration Invasion by Tanton and myself, and Recharting America's Future by Roy Beck. TSC Press has reissued several out-of-print books by Garrett Hardin. In 1995 we released a reprint of Jean Raspail's The Camp of the Saints by far the most popular title in our catalog. We also act as a distributor of works in our area of interest by other publishers.Thanks to the advent of the internet, the contents of The Social Contract journal reach thousands of people worldwide. We are especially pleased to note that many, perhaps most, of our internet readers are students, teachers and researchers. Articles are often assigned as class reading by professors, and occasionally we get the last-minute-of-the-twenty-fourth-hour request for help in preparing a class-room assignment.This issue in your hands is a Social Contract sampler highlighting some of the material that has appeared in these pages over the past fifteen years. Please visit our website at www.thesocialcontract.com, where, in our archives, you can find each of our quarterly themes, and all of the more than thirteen hundred articles, their authors and key words, served by a powerful search engine.We value our readers who contribute suggestions of future topics and distribute articles to their friends, colleagues, and fellow activists.We thank you for your loyalty and encouragement.Wayne Lutton, Ph.D., Editor