Download or read book New Conservative Explications written by Kenneth B. Newell and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-18 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because of the triumph of postmodern studies, explication of classic poems by great dead white male English poets of preceding centuries has greatly declined in the last several decades, even though many of the poems may still be puzzling to interested readers, young and old. This book is addressed to both audiences in the hope that new explications of twelve classic poems (or sections of these poems) by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Hardy, Yeats, and Auden may help sustain interest in the poems. Although the explication procedure is now unpopular in theory and held to be as subjective as interpretation, the procedure is based on the experience that, if a puzzling poem is reasoned with, it can often be found to make sense on a basic level of understanding—a sense perhaps complex, ambiguous, or ambivalent but not self-contradictory. In essence, then, this is a book of poetry explications having esthetic aims but written in an era of unesthetic political and cultural studies. The term conservative in the title refers to explicatory rather than political conservatism as well as to critical and literary conservation—i.e., to conserving the practice of explication whether upon literary works old or new, and so also conserving esthetic interest in the old works themselves. The book also attempts to show that new conservative explications are still possible and can be still useful—even in the postmodern era and even on classic poems already much explicated—and that therefore explication still has much to do in the work of literary studies in the postmodern era.
Download or read book Conservatism in America written by P. Gottfried and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-08-20 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the American conservative movement, as it now exists, does not have deep roots. It began in the 1950s as the invention of journalists and men of letters reacting to the early Cold War and trying to construct a rallying point for likeminded opponents of international Communism. The resulting movement has exaggerated the permanence of its values; while its militant anti-Communism, instilled in its followers, and periodic suppression of dissent have weakened its capacity for internal debate. Their movement came to power at least partly by burying an older anti-welfare state Right, one that in fact had enjoyed a social following that was concentrated in a small-town America. The newcomers played down the merits of those they had replaced; and in the 1980's the neoconservatives, who took over the postwar conservative movement from an earlier generation, belittled their predecessors in a similar way. Among the movement's major accomplishments has been to recreate its own past. The success of this revised history lies in the fact that even the movement's critics are now inclined to accept it.
Download or read book The Political Theory of Conservative Economists written by Conrad P. Waligorski and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2021-10-08 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s difficult to overstate the impact of conservative economics on American life. The conservative thought of economists like Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and Friedrick Hayek has provided the conceptual framework that undergirds nearly every aspect of current U.S. social-economic policy. Although a great deal has been written about the economic theories of these Nobel Pirze-winning economists, this study is the first to examine the political theory that underlies conservative economics and its implications for public policy. Long associated with the “Chicago” and “public choice” schools of thought, Friedman, Buchanan, Hayek, and others have consistently repudiated Keynesian principles. They have steadfastly opposed social welfare policies and regulation of private enterprise, championing instead the free market as a mechanism for ordering society. In this book Conrad Waligorski analyzes the political content of the conservative economists’ arguments. In so doing, he illuminates the political, economic, and philosophical ideas behind and justification for the laissez-faire policy—the reduced regulation, intervention, and welfare favored by conservative governments in the United States, Canada, and Britain.
Download or read book The Right Balance written by Hugh Segal and published by Douglas & McIntyre. This book was released on 2011 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative case for the special balance and uniquely Canadian nature of the Conservative imperative throughout our history. In a manner that reflects his long-time academic and practitioner's association with conservative politics and ideas in Canada, Hugh Segal traces the deep historical roots of Canadian conservatism and the themes that unite its pre- and post-confederation reality with today's challenges and issues. The Right Balance connects the historical roots and exclusive intellectual principles of Canadian conservatism to the fundamental idea of Canada with a new and insightful perspective. Provocative and timely, this book puts the present Stephen Harper-led Conservative Party of Canada into a dynamic historical context and gives readers fresh insights into how Canadian conservatism is different and why, providing depth and texture to today's headlines. The Right Balance will appeal to both adults and students who are interested in the economics, ideas and DNA of our present political debates.
Download or read book America Divided written by Maurice Isserman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive account of the turbulent 1960s, "America Divided" presents the most sophisticated understanding to date of all sides of the decade's many political, social, and cultural conflicts. 45 photos.
Download or read book Postwar American Fiction and the Rise of Modern Conservatism written by Bryan M. Santin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bryan M. Santin examines over a half-century of intersection between American fiction and postwar conservatism. He traces the shifting racial politics of movement conservatism to argue that contemporary perceptions of literary form and aesthetic value are intrinsically connected to the rise of the American Right. Instead of casting postwar conservatives as cynical hustlers or ideological fanatics, Santin shows how the long-term rhetorical shift in conservative notions of literary value and prestige reveal an aesthetic antinomy between high culture and low culture. This shift, he argues, registered and mediated the deeper foundational antinomy structuring postwar conservatism itself: the stable social order of traditionalism and the creative destruction of free-market capitalism. Postwar conservatives produced, in effect, an ambivalent double register in the discourse of conservative literary taste that sought to celebrate neo-aristocratic manifestations of cultural capital while condemning newer, more progressive manifestations revolving around racial and ethnic diversity.
Download or read book The Conservatarian Manifesto written by Charles C. W. Cooke and published by Crown Forum. This book was released on 2016-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call to arms for the growing movement of "Conservatarians"--members of the right who are fiscally conservative but socially liberal--and a fascinating look at conservatism's past and future. There is an underserved movement budding among conservatives, in which fiscal responsibility, constitutional obedience, and controlled government spending remain crucial tenets, but issues like gay marriage and drug control are approached with a libertarian bent. In The Conservatarian Manifesto, Charles C.W. Cooke engages with the data and the philosophy behind this movement, applauding conservatarianism as a force that can help Republicans mend the many ills that have plagued their party in recent years. Conservatarians are vexed by Republicans' failure to cut the size and scope of Washington D.C., but they are critical of some libertarians for their unacceptable positions on abortion, national defense, and immigration. They applaud conservatives' efforts to protect Second Amendment rights--efforts that have recently been wildly successful--but they see the War on Drugs as an unmitigated disaster that goes against everything conservatives ought to value. All movements run the risk of stagnation, and of losing touch with the principles and values that made them successful in the first place. In this book, Charles Cooke shows the way back to a better and more honest conservatism that champions limited government, reality-based policy, and favor for the smallest minority of all: the individual.
Download or read book The Politics Industry written by Katherine M. Gehl and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.
Download or read book The Death of Conservatism written by Sam Tanenhaus and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sam Tanenhaus’s essay “Conservatism Is Dead” prompted intense discussion and debate when it was published in The New Republic in the first days of Barack Obama’s presidency. Now Tanenhaus, a leading authority on modern politics, has expanded his argument into a sweeping history of the American conservative movement. For seventy-five years, he argues, the Right has been split between two factions: consensus-driven “realists” who believe in the virtue of government and its power to adjust to changing conditions, and movement “revanchists” who distrust government and society–and often find themselves at war with America itself. Eventually, Tanenhaus writes, the revanchists prevailed, and the result is the decadent “movement conservatism” of today, a defunct ideology that is “profoundly and defiantly unconservative–in its arguments and ideas, its tactics and strategies, above all in its vision.” But there is hope for conservatism. It resides in the examples of pragmatic leaders like Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan and thinkers like Whittaker Chambers and William F. Buckley, Jr. Each came to understand that the true role of conservatism is not to advance a narrow ideological agenda but to engage in a serious dialogue with liberalism and join with it in upholding “the politics of stability.” Conservatives today need to rediscover the roots of this honorable tradition. It is their only route back to the center of American politics. At once succinct and detailed, penetrating and nuanced, The Death of Conservatism is a must-read for Americans of any political persuasion.
Download or read book Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America written by Paul E. Gottfried and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-12-29 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an original interpretation of the achievement of Leo Strauss, stressing how his ideas and followers reshaped the American conservative movement. The conservative movement that reached out to Strauss and his legacy was extremely fluid and lacked a self-confident leadership. Conservative activists and journalists felt a desperate need for academic acceptability, which they thought Strauss and his disciples would furnish. They also became deeply concerned with the problem of 'value relativism', which self-described conservatives thought Strauss had effectively addressed. But until recently, neither Strauss nor his disciples have considered themselves to be 'conservatives'. Contrary to another misconception, Straussians have never wished to convert Americans to ancient political ideals and practices, except in a very selective rhetorical fashion. Strauss and his disciples have been avid champions of American modernity, and 'timeless' values as interpreted by Strauss and his followers often look starkly contemporary.
Download or read book The Myth of American Religious Freedom written by David Sehat and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-14 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the battles over religion and politics in America, both liberals and conservatives often appeal to history. Liberals claim that the Founders separated church and state. But for much of American history, David Sehat writes, Protestant Christianity was intimately intertwined with the state. Yet the past was not the Christian utopia that conservatives imagine either. Instead, a Protestant moral establishment prevailed, using government power to punish free thinkers and religious dissidents. In The Myth of American Religious Freedom, Sehat provides an eye-opening history of religion in public life, overturning our most cherished myths. Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, which had limited authority. The Protestant moral establishment ruled on the state level. Using moral laws to uphold religious power, religious partisans enforced a moral and religious orthodoxy against Catholics, Jews, Mormons, agnostics, and others. Not until 1940 did the U.S. Supreme Court extend the First Amendment to the states. As the Supreme Court began to dismantle the connections between religion and government, Sehat argues, religious conservatives mobilized to maintain their power and began the culture wars of the last fifty years. To trace the rise and fall of this Protestant establishment, Sehat focuses on a series of dissenters--abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, socialist Eugene V. Debs, and many others. Shattering myths held by both the left and right, David Sehat forces us to rethink some of our most deeply held beliefs. By showing the bad history used on both sides, he denies partisans a safe refuge with the Founders.
Download or read book God s Own Party written by Daniel K. Williams and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012-07-12 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In God's Own Party, Daniel K. Williams presents the first comprehensive history of the Christian Right, uncovering how evangelicals came to see the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they could reclaim America as a Christian nation.
Download or read book Reconstructing Conservatism written by Richard Hayton and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers in depth four particular dilemmas for contemporary Conservatism: European integration; national identity and the 'English Question'; social liberalism versus social authoritarianism; and the problems posed by a neo-liberal political economy.
Download or read book Prison Break written by David Dagan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American conservatism rose hand-in-hand with the growth of mass incarceration. For decades, conservatives deployed "tough on crime" rhetoric to attack liberals as out-of-touch elitists who coddled criminals while the nation spiraled toward disorder. As a result, conservatives have been the motive force in building our vast prison system. Indeed, expanding the number of Americans under lock and key was long a point of pride for politicians on the right - even as the U.S. prison population eclipsed international records. Over the last few years, conservatives in Washington, D.C. and in bright-red states like Georgia and Texas, have reversed course, and are now leading the charge to curb prison growth. In Prison Break, David Dagan and Steve Teles explain how this striking turn of events occurred, how it will affect mass incarceration, and what it teaches us about achieving policy breakthroughs in our polarized age. Combining insights from law, sociology, and political science, Teles and Dagan will offer the first comprehensive account of this major political shift. In a challenge to the conventional wisdom, they argue that the fiscal pressures brought on by recession are only a small part of the explanation for the conservatives' shift, over-shadowed by Republicans' increasing anti-statism, the waning efficacy of "tough on crime" politics and the increasing engagement of evangelicals. These forces set the stage for a small cadre of conservative leaders to reframe criminal justice in terms of redeeming wayward souls and rolling back government. These developments have created the potential to significantly reduce mass incarceration, but only if reformers on both the right and the left play their cards right. As Dagan and Teles stress, there is also a broader lesson in this story about the conditions for cross-party cooperation in our polarized age. Partisan identity, they argue, generally precedes position-taking, and policy breakthroughs are unlikely to come by "reaching across the aisle," promoting "compromise," or appealing to "expert opinion." Instead, change happens when political movements redefine their own orthodoxies for their own reasons. As Dagan and Teles show, outsiders can assist in this process - and they played a crucial role in the case of criminal justice - but they cannot manufacture it. This book will not only reshape our understanding of conservatism and American penal policy, but also force us to reconsider the drivers of policy innovation in the context of American politics.
Download or read book Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology written by W. Wesley McDonald and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind and A Program for Conservatives, has been regarded as one of the foremost figures of the post-World War II revival in conservative thought. While numerous commentators on contemporary political thought have acknowledged his considerable influence on the substance and direction of American conservatism, no analysis of his social and political writing has dealt extensively with the philosophical foundations of his work. In this provocative study, W. Wesley McDonald examines those foundations and demonstrates their impact on the conservative intellectual movement that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. Kirk played a pivotal role in drawing conservatism away from the laissez-faireprinciplesoflibertarianism and toward those of a traditional community grounded in a renewed appreciation of man's social and spiritual nature and the moral prerequisites of genuine liberty. In a humane social order, a community of spirit is fostered in which generations are bound together. According to Kirk, this link is achieved through moral and social norms that transcend the particularities of time and place and, because they form the basis of genuine civilized existence, can only be neglected at great peril. These norms, reflected in religious dogmas, traditions, humane letters, social habit and custom, and prescriptive institutions, create the sources of the true community that is the final end of politics. Although this study does not challenge Kirk's debts to a predominantly Catholic and Anglo-Catholic tradition of natural law, its focus is on his appeal to historical experience as the test of sound institutions. This aspect of his thought was essential to Kirk's understanding of moral, cultural, and aesthetic norms and can be seen in his responses to American humanists Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt and to English and American romantic literature.Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology is particularly relevant because of the growing interest in Kirk's legacy and the current debate over the meaning of conservatism. McDonald addresses both of those developments in the context of examining Kirk's thought, attempting to correct some of the inadequacies contained in earlier studies that assess Kirk as a political thinker. This book will serve as a significant contribution to the commentary on this fascinating figure.
Download or read book The Enigma of Clarence Thomas written by Corey Robin and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enigma of Clarence Thomas is a groundbreaking revisionist take on the Supreme Court justice everyone knows about but no one knows. Most people can tell you two things about Clarence Thomas: Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment, and he almost never speaks from the bench. Here are some things they don’t know: Thomas is a black nationalist. In college he memorized the speeches of Malcolm X. He believes white people are incurably racist. In the first examination of its kind, Corey Robin – one of the foremost analysts of the right – delves deeply into both Thomas’s biography and his jurisprudence, masterfully reading his Supreme Court opinions against the backdrop of his autobiographical and political writings and speeches. The hidden source of Thomas’s conservative views, Robin shows, is a profound skepticism that racism can be overcome. Thomas is convinced that any government action on behalf of African-Americans will be tainted by racism; the most African-Americans can hope for is that white people will get out of their way. There’s a reason, Robin concludes, why liberals often complain that Thomas doesn’t speak but seldom pay attention when he does. Were they to listen, they’d hear a racial pessimism that often sounds similar to their own. Cutting across the ideological spectrum, this unacknowledged consensus about the impossibility of progress is key to understanding today’s political stalemate.
Download or read book The Great Exception written by Jefferson Cowie and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the New Deal was a unique historical moment and what this reveals about U.S. politics, economics, and culture Where does the New Deal fit in the big picture of American history? What does it mean for us today? What happened to the economic equality it once engendered? In The Great Exception, Jefferson Cowie provides new answers to these important questions. In the period between the Great Depression and the 1970s, he argues, the United States government achieved a unique level of equality, using its considerable resources on behalf of working Americans in ways that it had not before and has not since. If there is to be a comparable battle for collective economic rights today, Cowie argues, it needs to build on an understanding of the unique political foundation for the New Deal. Anyone who wants to come to terms with the politics of inequality in the United States will need to read The Great Exception.
