Download or read book The Divided States of America written by Donald F. Kettl and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As James Madison led America's effort to write its Constitution, he made two great inventions-the separation of powers and federalism. The first is more famous, but the second was most essential because, without federalism, there could have been no United States of America. Federalism has always been about setting the balance of power between the federal government and the states-and that's revolved around deciding just how much inequality the country was prepared to accept in exchange for making piece among often-warring states. Through the course of its history, the country has moved through a series of phases, some of which put more power into the hands of the federal government, and some rested more power in the states. Sometimes this rebalancing led to armed conflict. The Civil War, of course, almost split the nation permanently apart. And sometimes it led to political battles. By the end of the 1960s, however, the country seemed to have settled into a quiet agreement that inequality was a prime national concern, that the federal government had the responsibility for addressing it through its own policies, and that the states would serve as administrative agents of that policy. But as that agreement seemed set, federalism drifted from national debate, just as the states began using their administrative role to push in very different directions. The result has been a rising tide of inequality, with the great invention that helped create the nation increasingly driving it apart"--

Download or read book The Divided Welfare State written by Jacob S. Hacker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-09-09 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

Download or read book American Republics A Continental History of the United States 1783 1850 written by Alan Taylor and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 New-York Historical Society Book Prize in American History A Washington Post and BookPage Best Nonfiction Book of the Year From a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, the powerful story of a fragile nation as it expands across a contested continent. In this beautifully written history of America’s formative period, a preeminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation confidently marching to its continent-spanning destiny. The newly constituted United States actually emerged as a fragile, internally divided union of states contending still with European empires and other independent republics on the North American continent. Native peoples sought to defend their homelands from the flood of American settlers through strategic alliances with the other continental powers. The system of American slavery grew increasingly powerful and expansive, its vigorous internal trade in Black Americans separating parents and children, husbands and wives. Bitter party divisions pitted elites favoring strong government against those, like Andrew Jackson, espousing a democratic populism for white men. Violence was both routine and organized: the United States invaded Canada, Florida, Texas, and much of Mexico, and forcibly removed most of the Native peoples living east of the Mississippi. At the end of the period the United States, its conquered territory reaching the Pacific, remained internally divided, with sectional animosities over slavery growing more intense. Taylor’s elegant history of this tumultuous period offers indelible miniatures of key characters from Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Fuller. It captures the high-stakes political drama as Jackson and Adams, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster contend over slavery, the economy, Indian removal, and national expansion. A ground-level account of American industrialization conveys the everyday lives of factory workers and immigrant families. And the immersive narrative puts us on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Mexico City, Quebec, and the Cherokee capital, New Echota. Absorbing and chilling, American Republics illuminates the continuities between our own social and political divisions and the events of this formative period.

Download or read book Divided Peoples written by Christina Leza and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The border region of the Sonoran Desert, which spans southern Arizona in the United States and northern Sonora, Mexico, has attracted national and international attention. But what is less discussed in national discourses is the impact of current border policies on the Native peoples of the region. There are twenty-six tribal nations recognized by the U.S. federal government in the southern border region and approximately eight groups of Indigenous peoples in the United States with historical ties to Mexico—the Yaqui, the O’odham, the Cocopah, the Kumeyaay, the Pai, the Apaches, the Tiwa (Tigua), and the Kickapoo. Divided Peoples addresses the impact border policies have on traditional lands and the peoples who live there—whether environmental degradation, border patrol harassment, or the disruption of traditional ceremonies. Anthropologist Christina Leza shows how such policies affect the traditional cultural survival of Indigenous peoples along the border. The author examines local interpretations and uses of international rights tools by Native activists, counterdiscourse on the U.S.-Mexico border, and challenges faced by Indigenous border activists when communicating their issues to a broader public. Through ethnographic research with grassroots Indigenous activists in the region, the author reveals several layers of division—the division of Indigenous peoples by the physical U.S.-Mexico border, the divisions that exist between Indigenous perspectives and mainstream U.S. perspectives regarding the border, and the traditionalist/nontraditionalist split among Indigenous nations within the United States. Divided Peoples asks us to consider the possibilities for challenging settler colonialism both in sociopolitical movements and in scholarship about Indigenous peoples and lands.

Download or read book Divided We Fall written by David French and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David French warns of the potential dangers to the country—and the world—if we don’t summon the courage to reconcile our political differences. Two decades into the 21st Century, the U.S. is less united than at any time in our history since the Civil War. We are more diverse in our beliefs and culture than ever before. But red and blue states, secular and religious groups, liberal and conservative idealists, and Republican and Democratic representatives all have one thing in common: each believes their distinct cultures and liberties are being threatened by an escalating violent opposition. This polarized tribalism, espoused by the loudest, angriest fringe extremists on both the left and the right, dismisses dialogue as appeasement; if left unchecked, it could very well lead to secession. An engaging mix of cutting edge research and fair-minded analysis, Divided We Fall is an unblinking look at the true dimensions and dangers of this widening ideological gap, and what could happen if we don't take steps toward bridging it. French reveals chilling, plausible scenarios of how the United States could fracture into regions that will not only weaken the country but destabilize the world. But our future is not written in stone. By implementing James Madison’s vision of pluralism—that all people have the right to form communities representing their personal values—we can prevent oppressive factions from seizing absolute power and instead maintain everyone’s beliefs and identities across all fifty states. Reestablishing national unity will require the bravery to commit ourselves to embracing qualities of kindness, decency, and grace towards those we disagree with ideologically. French calls on all of us to demonstrate true tolerance so we can heal the American divide. If we want to remain united, we must learn to stand together again.

Download or read book The Divided Family in Civil War America written by Amy Murrell Taylor and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-11-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Civil War has long been described as a war pitting "brother against brother." The divided family is an enduring metaphor for the divided nation, but it also accurately reflects the reality of America's bloodiest war. Connecting the metaphor to the real experiences of families whose households were split by conflicting opinions about the war, Amy Murrell Taylor provides a social and cultural history of the divided family in Civil War America. In hundreds of border state households, brothers--and sisters--really did fight one another, while fathers and sons argued over secession and husbands and wives struggled with opposing national loyalties. Even enslaved men and women found themselves divided over how to respond to the war. Taylor studies letters, diaries, newspapers, and government documents to understand how families coped with the unprecedented intrusion of war into their private lives. Family divisions inflamed the national crisis while simultaneously embodying it on a small scale--something noticed by writers of popular fiction and political rhetoric, who drew explicit connections between the ordeal of divided families and that of the nation. Weaving together an analysis of this popular imagery with the experiences of real families, Taylor demonstrates how the effects of the Civil War went far beyond the battlefield to penetrate many facets of everyday life.

Download or read book Divided written by David Cay Johnston and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issue of inequality has irrefutably returned to the fore, riding on the anger against Wall Street following the 2008 financial crisis and the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the super–rich. The Occupy movement made the plight of the 99 percent an indelible part of the public consciousness, and concerns about inequality were a decisive factor in the 2012 presidential elections. How bad is it? According to Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Cay Johnston, most Americans, in inflation–adjusted terms, are now back to the average income of 1966. Shockingly, from 2009 to 2011, the top 1 percent got 121 percent of the income gains while the bottom 99 percent saw their income fall. Yet in this most unequal of developed nations, every aspect of inequality remains hotly contested and poorly understood. Divided collects the writings of leading scholars, activists, and journalists to provide an illuminating, multifaceted look at inequality in America, exploring its devastating implications in areas as diverse as education, justice, health care, social mobility, and political representation. Provocative and eminently readable, here is an essential resource for anyone who cares about the future of America—and compelling evidence that inequality can be ignored only at the nation’s peril.

Download or read book Divided Government written by Peter F. Galderisi and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1996 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the relationship between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government becomes increasingly hostile, more Americans are wondering whether national politics can be described as gridlock or good government. This provocative and insightful collection of original essays provides answers by exploring the complicated nature and multiple implications of divided government in the United States. The distinguished contributors analyze the consequences of the 1992 and 1994 elections and argue that discussions of divided government are too narrowly focused on the issue of partisan division of governmental institutions. Divided Government convincingly shows how political scientists have downplayed the significance of Constitutional rules, legislative policy disaggregation, and the decline of party organization. They conclude that divided government, in its broader institutional context, will continue regardless of which parties control the different branches.

Download or read book The Other Divide written by Yanna Krupnikov and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The key to understanding the current wave of American political division is the attention people pay to politics.

Download or read book Democracies Divided written by Thomas Carothers and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A must-read for anyone concerned about the fate of contemporary democracies.”—Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Why divisions have deepened and what can be done to heal them As one part of the global democratic recession, severe political polarization is increasingly afflicting old and new democracies alike, producing the erosion of democratic norms and rising societal anger. This volume is the first book-length comparative analysis of this troubling global phenomenon, offering in-depth case studies of countries as wide-ranging and important as Brazil, India, Kenya, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. The case study authors are a diverse group of country and regional experts, each with deep local knowledge and experience. Democracies Divided identifies and examines the fissures that are dividing societies and the factors bringing polarization to a boil. In nearly every case under study, political entrepreneurs have exploited and exacerbated long-simmering divisions for their own purposes—in the process undermining the prospects for democratic consensus and productive governance. But this book is not simply a diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Each case study discusses actions that concerned citizens and organizations are taking to counter polarizing forces, whether through reforms to political parties, institutions, or the media. The book’s editors distill from the case studies a range of possible ways for restoring consensus and defeating polarization in the world’s democracies. Timely, rigorous, and accessible, this book is of compelling interest to civic activists, political actors, scholars, and ordinary citizens in societies beset by increasingly rancorous partisanship.

Download or read book Divided Sovereignty written by Carmen E. Pavel and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divided Sovereignty explores new institutional solutions to the old question of how to constrain states when they commit severe abuses against their own citizens. The book argues that coercive international institutions can stop these abuses and act as an insurance scheme against the possibility of states failing to fulfill their most basic sovereign responsibilities. It thus challenges the long standing assumption that collective grants of authority from the citizens of a state should be made exclusively for institutions within the borders of that state. Despite worries that international institutions such as the International Criminal Court could undermine domestic democratic control, citizens can divide sovereign authority between state and international institutions consistent with their right of democratic self-governance. States are imperfect, incomplete political forms. They presuppose a monopoly of coercive power and final jurisdictional authority over their territory. These twin elements of sovereignty and authority can be used by state leaders and political representatives in ways that stray significantly from the interests of citizens. In the most extreme cases, when citizens become inconvenient obstacles in the pursuit of the self-serving ambitions of their leaders, state power turns against them. Genocide, torture, displacement, and rape are often the means of choice by which the inconvenient are made to suffer or vanish. The book defends universal, principled limits on state authority based on jus cogens norms, a special category of norms in international law that prohibit violations of basic human rights. Against skeptics, it argues that many of the challenges of building an additional layer of institutions can be met if we pay attention to the conditions of institutional success, which require (1) experimentation with different institutional forms, (2) limitations on the scope of authority for coercive international institutions through clear, narrow, well defined mandates, and (3) understanding the limits of existing knowledge on institutional design, which should make us suspicious of proposals for grand institutional schemes, such as global democracy.

Download or read book A House Divided written by Richard Orr Curry and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A House Divided, Richard Orr Curry investigates the political realities that led to the breakup of the Old Dominion and the emergence of a new state during the Civil War. Orr's analysis of the intra-state conflicts over political, economic, and social issues, party factions of Unionism and Secessionism and multiple layers of division within those factions, offer fascinating and original insights into the long debate that would lead to the ratification of the West Virginia state constitution in 1863.

Download or read book A Nation Divided The Conflicting Personalities Visions and Values of Liberals and Conservatives written by Anthony Walsh and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2019-10-02 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Activists have long claimed that “the personal is political”, but this book posits the converse: that the political is personal. The United States today is bitterly divided. It is less an aspirational melting pot of immigrants and more a salad bowl made up of distinct, often clashing flavors. The successive elections of two divisive presidents—one committed to the perennial leftist dream of “fundamental change” and the other to a conservative vision of “Making America Great Again”—have exacerbated what is arguably the greatest rift in politics since the election of Abraham Lincoln. Taking inspiration from Coleridge’s belief that all humans are temperamentally destined to follow the path of Plato the Idealist or Aristotle the Realist, this book examines the political divide in terms of these temperamental differences. Liberals’ and conservatives’ views of human nature have a large bearing on the political policies they espouse, but their temperaments and personalities have the most significant impact. This book analyses the personality traits of liberals and conservatives in terms of the “Big Five” model—openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Conservatives are found in almost all studies to be more conscientious, agreeable, and extroverted, while liberals are found to be more open to new experience and neurotic. The political divisions I explore in this book are all essentially fueled by personality differences. There is a deepening divide between liberals and conservatives in the battle for America’s soul: one side seeks to steer the nation sharply to the left into socialist selfdom, whereas the other side desires a wealthy and free America under the watchful eye of God’s providence. A preponderance of academic texts belongs to the liberal tradition. Conservatives have long lacked a comparable intellectual tradition of their own, although an incipient one is now beginning to form. This book, while maintaining a measure of scholarly distance, is unashamedly written from a conservative point of view.

Download or read book The Divided States Of Hysteria written by Howard Chaykin and published by Image Comics. This book was released on 2018-01-10 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An America sundered. An America enraged. An America terrified. An America shattered by greed and racism, violence and fear, nihilism and tragedy and that's when everything really goes to hell. Collects THE DIVIDED STATES OF HYSTERIA #1-6

Download or read book American Secession written by F.H. Buckley and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans have never been more divided, and we’re ripe for a breakup. The bitter partisan animosities, the legislative gridlock, the growing acceptance of violence in the name of political virtue—it all invites us to think that we’d be happier were we two different countries. In all the ways that matter, save for the naked force of law, we are already two nations. There’s another reason why secession beckons, says F.H. Buckley: we’re too big. In population and area, the United States is one of the biggest countries in the world, and American Secession provides data showing that smaller countries are happier and less corrupt. They’re less inclined to throw their weight around militarily, and they’re freer too. There are advantages to bigness, certainly, but the costs exceed the benefits. On many counts, bigness is badness. Across the world, large countries are staring down secession movements. Many have already split apart. Do we imagine that we, almost alone in the world, are immune? We had a civil war to prevent a secession, and we’re tempted to see that terrible precedent as proof against another effort. This book explodes that comforting belief and shows just how easy it would be for a state to exit the Union if that’s what its voters wanted. But if that isn’t what we really want, Buckley proposes another option, a kind of Secession Lite, that could heal our divisions while allowing us to keep our identity as Americans.

Download or read book Our Divided Political Heart written by E.J. Dionne Jr. and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America today is at a political impasse; we face a nation divided and discontented. Acclaimed political commentator E.J. Dionne argues that Americans can't agree on who we are as a nation because we can't agree on who we've been, or what it is, philosophically and spiritually, that makes us "Americans." Dionne places our current quarrels in the long-standing tradition of struggle between two core values: the love of individualism and our reverence for community. Both make us who we are, and to ignore either one is to distort our national character. He sees the current Tea Party as a representation of hyper-individualism, and takes on their agenda-serving distortions of history, from the Revolution to the Civil War and the constitutional role of government. Tea Partiers have reacted fiercely to President Obama, who seeks to restore a communitarian balance - a cause in American liberalism which Dionne traces through recent decades. The ability of the American system to self-correct may be one of its greatest assets, but we have been caught in cycles of over-correcting. Dionne seeks, through an understanding of our factious past, to rediscover the idea of true progress, and the confidence that it can be achieved.

Download or read book Divided Sovereignties written by Rochelle Raineri Zuck and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debates about the constructions of American nationhood and national citizenship, the frequently invoked concept of divided sovereignty signified the division of power between state and federal authorities and/or the possibility of one nation residing within the geopolitical boundaries of another. Political and social realities of the nineteenth century—such as immigration, slavery, westward expansion, Indigenous treaties, and financial panics—amplified anxieties about threats to national/state sovereignty. Rochelle Raineri Zuck argues that, in the decades between the ratification of the Constitution and the publication of Sutton Griggs’s novel Imperium in Imperio in 1899, four populations were most often referred to as racial and ethnic nations within the nation: the Cherokees, African Americans, Irish Americans, and Chinese immigrants. Writers and orators from these groups engaged the concept of divided sovereignty to assert alternative visions of sovereignty and collective allegiance (not just ethnic or racial identity), to gain political traction, and to complicate existing formations of nationhood and citizenship. Their stories intersected with issues that dominated nineteenth-century public argument and contributed to the Civil War. In five chapters focused on these groups, Zuck reveals how constructions of sovereignty shed light on a host of concerns including regional and sectional tensions; territorial expansion and jurisdiction; economic uncertainty; racial, ethnic, and religious differences; international relations; immigration; and arguments about personhood, citizenship, and nationhood.