Both these types of documents are political texts that address ideas and issues about liberty, equality, and fraternity.

The American Founding Documents, as the name suggests, are documents focusing on the formation and establishment of the United States and are mainly political texts from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Only US Founding passages deals with a liberal Western ideology

Both passage types focus on different parts of the world and different periods but often focus on the individual's rights and the relationships between individuals and the state.

Many of these passages come from the Founding Fathers of the US and discuss issues more familiar to American students than to international ones: questions of federalism and republicanism rarely come up in East Asian curricula.

The most significant and influential of US Founding documents are the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Federalist Papers.

After America declared independence from England and fought a bloody war to ensure independence, the 13 original colonies wrote and approved a document called the Articles of Confederation.

The Articles of Confederation served as America’s constitution from 1781 until 1789, when it was replaced with the current version of the constitution. This original document was focused on preserving the rights of individual states and delegated little power to any central governing body (federalism). This means that for the first eight years, America was a confederation and not a federation as it is today. In effect, the governor of each “state” was the president of that “state” / “nation.”

Over time, the Articles (the confederate political system) proved to be inadequate to address the needs of the rapidly growing and expanding US, so the states decided to gather to discuss changes to the government.

This meeting, commonly referred to as the Constitutional Convention, proposed an entirely new form of government with a strong federal component and a chief executive (the President).

The new proposal was sent to the states, which each held ratifying conventions to debate and confirm or reject the constitution.

It is during this time of state ratification that The Federalist Papers were written. After the proposal was sent to the states to discuss, newspaper articles (written pseudonymously) criticizing the new government began to appear. These anti-federalists, as they came to be called, objected to the strengthening of the central government and therefore discouraged the acceptance of the new federal constitution.

In response to these sentiments, three prominent political thinkers of the day, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison (the eventual 4th President of the US), wrote a series of articles in response to the anti-federalists. Much more organized and cohesive, these writings came to be known as The Federalist Papers and are now presented as a collection of 85 essays on the topic of adopting the new constitution and its strong federal government.

Great Global Conversation writings are from the 19th & 20th centuries. These passages are inspired by the original principles and values that the United States was founded on (Liberty, equality, and fraternity). In that sense, these two content areas are different but connected.

Another essential thing to note is that while the U.S founding documents focus on America, GC passages focus on the “conversation” among philosophers, politicians, intellectuals, and activists in the wider western world, specifically the United States parent Great Britain.

The Great Global Conversation takes a shorter view of history.

GC passages can go back as far as Ancient Rome or be as recent as Hillary Clinton.

Common GC topics include women’s suffrage, civil rights, union movements, and slavery.