Download or read book On the Abolition of All Political Parties written by Simone Weil and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NYRB Classics Original Simone Weil—philosopher, activist, mystic—is one of the most uncompromising of modern spiritual masters. In “On the Abolition of All Political Parties” she challenges the foundation of the modern liberal political order, making an argument that has particular resonance today, when the apathy and anger of the people and the self-serving partisanship of the political class present a threat to democracies all over the world. Dissecting the dynamic of power and propaganda caused by party spirit, the increasing disregard for truth in favor of opinion, and the consequent corruption of education, journalism, and art, Weil forcefully makes the case that a true politics can only begin where party spirit ends. This volume also includes an admiring portrait of Weil by the great poet Czeslaw Milosz and an essay about Weil’s friendship with Albert Camus by the translator Simon Leys.

Download or read book On the Abolition of All Political Parties written by Simone Weil and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NYRB Classics Original Simone Weil—philosopher, activist, mystic—is one of the most uncompromising of modern spiritual masters. In “On the Abolition of All Political Parties” she challenges the foundation of the modern liberal political order, making an argument that has particular resonance today, when the apathy and anger of the people and the self-serving partisanship of the political class present a threat to democracies all over the world. Dissecting the dynamic of power and propaganda caused by party spirit, the increasing disregard for truth in favor of opinion, and the consequent corruption of education, journalism, and art, Weil forcefully makes the case that a true politics can only begin where party spirit ends. This volume also includes an admiring portrait of Weil by the great poet Czeslaw Milosz and an essay about Weil’s friendship with Albert Camus by the translator Simon Leys.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of American Political Parties and Interest Groups written by L. Sandy Maisel and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-01-28 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of American Political Parties and Interest Groups is a major new volume that will help scholars assess the current state of scholarship on parties and interest groups and the directions in which it needs to move. Never before has the academic literature on political parties received such an extended treatment. Twenty nine chapters critically assess both the major contributions to the literature and the ways in which it has developed. With contributions from most of the leading scholars in the field, the volume provides a definitive point of reference for all those working in and around the area. Equally important, the authors also identify areas of new and interesting research. These chapters offer a distinctive point of view, an argument about the successes and failures of past scholarship, and a set of recommendations about how future work ought to develop. This volume will help set the agenda for research on political parties and interest groups for the next decade. The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics are a set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of scholarship on American politics. Each volume focuses on a particular aspect of the field. The project is under the General Editorship of George C. Edwards III, and distinguished specialists in their respective fields edit each volume. The Handbooks aim not just to report on the discipline, but also to shape it as scholars critically assess the scholarship on a topic and propose directions in which it needs to move. The series is an indispensable reference for anyone working in American politics. General Editor for The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics: George C. Edwards III

Download or read book Oppression and Liberty written by Simone Weil and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discussing political and social oppression, its permanent causes, the way it works and its contemporary form, this volume of Simone Weil's writings offers thought-provoking ideas on political theory.

Download or read book Ideas of Power written by Verlan Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking book presents a new understanding of ideological change. It shows how and why America's political parties have evolved.

Download or read book Simone Weil an Anthology written by Simone Weil and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a philosopher, theologian, political activist, and mystic whose work endures among the greatest spiritual thinking in human history. Born and educated in Paris, she was devoted to advocating for disenfranchised citizens around the world. Called the 'saint of all outsiders' by Andre Gide, Weil's compassion for the plight of the working class and the armed forces fueled her enlightened treatises and existential inquiries.

Download or read book The Liberty Party 1840 1848 written by Reinhard O. Johnson and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2009-06-15 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early 1840, abolitionists founded the Liberty Party as a political outlet for their antislavery beliefs. A mere eight years later, bolstered by the increasing slavery debate and growing sectional conflict, the party had grown to challenge the two mainstream political factions in many areas. In The Liberty Party, 1840?1848, Reinhard O. Johnson provides the first comprehensive history of this short-lived but important third party, detailing how it helped to bring the antislavery movement to the forefront of American politics and became the central institutional vehicle in the fight against the ?peculiar institution.? As the major instrument of antislavery sentiment, the Liberty organization was more than a political party and included not only eligible voters but also disfranchised African Americans and women. Most party members held evangelical beliefs, and as Johnson relates, an intense religiosity permeated most of the group?s activities. At least eight U.S. senators, eighteen members of the House of Representatives, five state governors, and two justices of the Supreme Court were among the many Liberty Party members with distinguished careers in the public and private sectors. Though most early Liberty supporters came from the Whig Party, an increasing number of former Democrats joined the party as it matured. Johnson discusses the Liberty Party?s founding and its national growth through the presidential election of 1844; its struggles to define itself amid serious internal disagreements over philosophy, strategy, and tactics in the ensuing years; and the reasons behind its decline and merger into the Free Soil coalition in 1848. Since most Liberty Party activities occurred at the state level, Johnson treats the history of each state party in considerable detail, demonstrating how the party developed differently state by state and illustrating how these differences blended with the national view of the party.Informative appendices include statewide results for all presidential and gubernatorial elections between 1840 and 1848, the Liberty Party?s 1844 platform, and short biographies of every Liberty member mentioned in the main text of the book. Epic in scope and encyclopedic in detail, The Liberty Party, 1840?1848 will serve as an invaluable reference for anyone interested in nineteenth-century American politics.

Download or read book Let the People Pick the President written by Jesse Wegman and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Wegman combines in-depth historical analysis and insight into contemporary politics to present a cogent argument that the Electoral College violates America’s ‘core democratic principles’ and should be done away with..." —Publishers Weekly The framers of the Constitution battled over it. Lawmakers have tried to amend or abolish it more than 700 times. To this day, millions of voters, and even members of Congress, misunderstand how it works. It deepens our national divide and distorts the core democratic principles of political equality and majority rule. How can we tolerate the Electoral College when every vote does not count the same, and the candidate who gets the most votes can lose? Twice in the last five elections, the Electoral College has overridden the popular vote, calling the integrity of the entire system into question—and creating a false picture of a country divided into bright red and blue blocks when in fact we are purple from coast to coast. Even when the popular-vote winner becomes president, tens of millions of Americans—Republicans and Democrats alike—find that their votes didn't matter. And, with statewide winner-take-all rules, only a handful of battleground states ultimately decide who will become president. Now, as political passions reach a boiling point at the dawn of the 2020 race, the message from the American people is clear: The way we vote for the only official whose job it is to represent all Americans is neither fair nor just. Major reform is needed—now. Isn't it time to let the people pick the president? In this thoroughly researched and engaging call to arms, Supreme Court journalist and New York Times editorial board member Jesse Wegman draws upon the history of the founding era, as well as information gleaned from campaign managers, field directors, and other officials from twenty-first-century Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns, to make a powerful case for abolishing the antiquated and antidemocratic Electoral College. In Let the People Pick the President he shows how we can at long last make every vote in the United States count—and restore belief in our democratic system.

Download or read book The Wolf at the Door written by Michael J. Graetz and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Deep, informed, and reeks of common sense.” —Norman Ornstein “It is now beyond debate that rising inequality is not only leaving millions of Americans living on a sharp edge but also is threatening our democracy...For activists and scholars alike who are struggling to create a more equitable society, this is an essential read.” —David Gergen We are in an age of crisis. That much we can agree on. But a crisis of what, exactly? And how do we get out of it? In a follow up to their influential and much debated Death by a Thousand Cuts, Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro focus on what really worries people: not what the rich are making or the government is taking from them but their own insecurity. Americans are worried about losing their jobs, their status, and the safety of their communities. They fear the wolf at the door. The solution is not protectionism or class warfare but better jobs, higher wages, greater protection for families suffering from unemployment, better health insurance, and higher quality childcare. And it turns out those goals are more achievable than you might think. The Wolf at the Door is one of those rare books that doesn’t just diagnose our problems, it shows how to address them. “This is a terrific book, original, erudite, and superbly well-informed, and full of new wisdom about what might and what might not help the majority of Americans who have not shared in our growing prosperity, but are left facing the wolf at the door...Everyone interested in public policy should read this book.” —Angus Deaton, Princeton University “Graetz and Shapiro wrestle with a fundamental question of our day: How do we address a system that makes too many Americans anxious that economic security is slipping out of reach? Their cogent call for sensible and achievable policies...should be read by progressives and conservatives alike.” —Jacob J. Lew, former Secretary of the Treasury

Download or read book Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College written by Alexander Keyssar and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New Statesman Book of the Year “America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.” —Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. “Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.” —Michael Kazin, The Nation “Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.” —Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book Three Outsiders written by Diogenes Allen and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2006-08-24 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The three outsiders are Blaise Pascal, Soren Kierkegaard, and Simone Weil. They were outsiders because they distanced themselves from the institutional church and also the societies around them in their respective eras. They believed that the church failed to take seriously the profound and disturbing relationship with God which is in Jesus Christ. From their position Òoutside they questioned the assumptions, practices, and understandings of their church and secular contemporaries. Each produced profoundly original but difficult writings (often in uncompleted fragments), which Professor Allen has organized and interpreted for anyone who asks the question, ÒHow am I to be a Christian?

Download or read book American Political Parties and Elections written by Louis Sandy Maisel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few Americans and even fewer citizens of other nations understand the electoral process in the United States. Still fewer understand the role played by political parties in the electoral process or the ironies within the system. Participation in elections in the United States is much lower than in the vast majority of mature democracies. Perhaps this is because of the lack of competition in a country where only two parties have a true chance of winning, despite the fact that a large number of citizens claim allegiance to neither and think badly of both. Or perhaps it is because in the U.S. campaign contributions disproportionately favor incumbents in most legislative elections, or that largely unregulated groups such as the now notorious 527s have as much impact on the outcome of a campaign as do the parties or the candidates' campaign organizations. These factors offer a very clear picture of the problems that underlay our much trumpeted electoral system. The second edition of this Very Short Introduction introduces the reader to these issues and more. Drawing on updated data and new examples from the 2016 presidential nominations, L. Sandy Maisel provides an insider's view of how the system actually works while shining a light on some of its flaws. He also illustrates the growing impact of campaigning through social media, the changes in campaign financing wrought by the Supreme Court recent decisions, and the Tea Party's influence on the sub-presidential nominating process. As the United States enter what is sure to be yet another highly contested election year, it is more important than ever that Americans take the time to learn the system that puts so many in power.

Download or read book The South and the Politics of Slavery 1828 1856 written by William J. Cooper, Jr. and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1980-06-01 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The politics of slavery consumed the political world of the antebellum South. Although local economic, ethnic, and religious issues tended to dominate northern antebellum politics, The South and the Politics of Slavery convincingly argues that national and slavery-related issues were the overriding concerns of southern politics during these years. Accordingly, southern voters saw their parties, both Democratic and Whig, as the advocates and guardians of southern rights in the nation. William Cooper traces and analyzes the history of southern politics from the formation of the Democratic party in the late 1820s to the demise of the Democratic-Whig struggle in the 1850s, reporting on attitudes and reactions in each of the eleven states that were to form the Confederacy. Focusing on southern politicians and parties, Cooper emphasizes their relationship with each other, with their northern counterparts, and with southern voters, and he explores the connections between the values of southern white society and its parties and politicians. Based on extensive research in regional political manuscripts and newspapers, this study will be valuable to all historians of the period for the information and insight it provides on the role of the South in politics of the nation during the lifespan of the Jacksonian party system.

Download or read book The Abolition of the State written by Wayne Price and published by . This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you have long been struggling with the meaning to your life, because it does not seem fair, just or make sense, then this book is for you. For too long we have been in the dark about unconditional love, as everything seemed to be conditional. The United States is adolescence at it's best, we need to understand how the process works , that will help us grow culturally. Thinking "out of the box" is so needed. God did not die 2006 years ago, he speaks to many of us today as he did long ago. Learn how to process life and hear the still small voice within. Greater is it that is in you than it that is in the world. It is inside not outside you.

Download or read book Painting the Map Red written by Hugh Hewitt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nationally syndicated talk show host and political strategist Hugh Hewitt delivers this insider's guide to the 2006 elections and the crucial messages GOP candidates and activists will be adopting to foster the spread of Red States.

Download or read book American Political History A Very Short Introduction written by Donald T. Critchlow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-14 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Founding Fathers who drafted the United States Constitution in 1787 distrusted political parties, popular democracy, centralized government, and a strong executive office. Yet the country's national politics have historically included all those features. In American Political History: A Very Short Introduction, Donald Critchlow takes on this contradiction between original theory and actual practice. This brief, accessible book explores the nature of the two-party system, key turning points in American political history, representative presidential and congressional elections, struggles to expand the electorate, and critical social protest and third-party movements. The volume emphasizes the continuity of a liberal tradition challenged by partisan divide, war, and periodic economic turmoil. American Political History: A Very Short Introduction explores the emergence of a democratic political culture within a republican form of government, showing the mobilization and extension of the mass electorate over the lifespan of the country. In a nation characterized by great racial, ethnic, and religious diversity, American democracy has proven extraordinarily durable. Individual parties have risen and fallen, but the dominance of the two-party system persists. Fierce debates over the meaning of the U.S. Constitution have created profound divisions within the parties and among voters, but a belief in the importance of constitutional order persists among political leaders and voters. Americans have been deeply divided about the extent of federal power, slavery, the meaning of citizenship, immigration policy, civil rights, and a range of economic, financial, and social policies. New immigrants, racial minorities, and women have joined the electorate and the debates. But American political history, with its deep social divisions, bellicose rhetoric, and antagonistic partisanship provides valuable lessons about the meaning and viability of democracy in the early 21st century. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Download or read book Northern Men with Southern Loyalties written by Michael Todd Landis and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decade before the Civil War, Northern Democrats, although they ostensibly represented antislavery and free-state constituencies, made possible the passage of such proslavery legislation as the Compromise of 1850 and Fugitive Slave Law of the same year, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and the Lecompton Constitution of 1858. In Northern Men with Southern Loyalties, Michael Todd Landis forcefully contends that a full understanding of the Civil War and its causes is impossible without a careful examination of Northern Democrats and their proslavery sentiments and activities. He focuses on a variety of key Democratic politicians, such as Stephen Douglas, William Marcy, and Jesse Bright, to unravel the puzzle of Northern Democratic political allegiance to the South. As congressmen, state party bosses, convention wire-pullers, cabinet officials, and presidents, these men produced the legislation and policies that led to the fragmentation of the party and catastrophic disunion.Through a careful examination of correspondence, speeches, public and private utterances, memoirs, and personal anecdotes, Landis lays bare the desires and designs of Northern Democrats. He ventures into the complex realm of state politics and party mechanics, drawing connections between national events and district and state activity as well as between partisan dynamics and national policy. Northern Democrats had to walk a perilously thin line between loyalty to the Southern party leaders and answering to their free-state constituents. If Northern Democrats sought high office, they would have to cater to the "Slave Power." Yet, if they hoped for election at home, they had to convince voters that they were not mere lackeys of the Southern grandees.