Download or read book Private Virtue and Public Policy written by James Finn and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private virtue is a major factor in forming public policies, including those that affect the material well-being of citizens. This is a central thesis of Catholic social thought, but it is not a parochial view. As this affluent nation grapples with resistant social issues of all kinds-drugs, homelessness, poverty, the consequences of sexual permissiveness, inadequate education, and the breakdown of families-it is becoming increasingly evident that the need for private virtue is a central fact of our political and social life. In this respect, Catholic social thought and the American experience are mutually supportive. This volume examines the implications of this statement. In a sense, it is the next step in the dialogue and debate initiated by the Catholic bishops in the United States over a period of years in the mid-eighties. The pastoral letter that resulted from their deliberatons asked how the economic life of the United States could best serve the material and spiritual well-being of people, both those in the United States and those in other countries. It also proposed some answers. Even before the bishops released their statement, the Lay Commission on Catholic Social teaching and the U.S. Economy joined the debate with its own lay letter, which both overlaps and differs in significant respects from the bishops' statement. This volume, which is initiated by the Lay Commission, takes the debate even further. Various experts discuss the relationship between public policies and private, virtue and examine specific aspects of economic life. Among these are: the meaning of "economic rights," what to do about Third World debt, economic justice and the family, and certain macroeconomic issues. Their view is independent, authoritative, clearly articulated, and inevitably they will be controversial. They also enrich and further the ongoing dialogue on how best to make the economy serve the people, and in particular the most deprived. Contributors include William E. Simon and Michael Novak, chairman and vice-chairman of the Lay Commission, J. Brian Benestad, Allan Carlson, J. Peter Grace, Howard J. Wiarda, John P. Cullity, James Q. Wilson, and the editor of this volume James Finn.

Download or read book Private Virtue and Public Policy written by James Finn and published by Transaction Pub. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private virtue is a major factor in forming public policies, including those that affect the material well-being of citizens. This is a central thesis of Catholic social thought, but it is not a parochial view. As this affluent nation grapples with resistant social issues of all kinds-drugs, homelessness, poverty, the consequences of sexual permissiveness, inadequate education, and the breakdown of families-it is becoming increasingly evident that the need for private virtue is a central fact of our political and social life. In this respect, Catholic social thought and the American experience are mutually supportive. This volume examines the implications of this statement. In a sense, it is the next step in the dialogue and debate initiated by the Catholic bishops in the United States over a period of years in the mid-eighties. The pastoral letter that resulted from their deliberatons asked how the economic life of the United States could best serve the material and spiritual well-being of people, both those in the United States and those in other countries. It also proposed some answers. Even before the bishops released their statement, the Lay Commission on Catholic Social teaching and the U.S. Economy joined the debate with its own lay letter, which both overlaps and differs in significant respects from the bishops' statement. This volume, which is initiated by the Lay Commission, takes the debate even further. Various experts discuss the relationship between public policies and private , virtue and examine specific aspects of economic life. Among these are: the meaning of "economic rights," what to do about Third World debt, economic justice and the family, and certain macroeconomic issues. Their view is independent, authoritative, clearly articulated, and inevitably they will be controversial. They also enrich and further the ongoing dialogue on how best to make the economy serve the people, and in particular the most deprived. Contributors include William E. Simon and Michael Novak, chairman and vice-chairman of the Lay Commission, J. Brian Benestad, Allan Carlson, J. Peter Grace, Howard J. Wiarda, John P. Cullity, James Q. Wilson, and the editor of this volume James Finn.

Download or read book Value and Virtue in Public Administration written by Michiel S. de Vries and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multidisciplinary analysis of the role of values and virtue in public administration, this book calls for a rediscovery of virtue. It explores ways of enabling the public sector to balance the values that are presently dominant with classic values such as accountability, representation, equality, neutrality, transparency and the public interest.

Download or read book The Public Clash of Private Values written by Christopher Z. Mooney and published by CQ Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abortion, capital punishment, gambling, homosexual rights, pornography, physician assisted suicide, and sex education are among the most controversial issues facing public policymakers today. All involve controversial questions of first principle that render public policy no less than legal sanctions of right or wrong, or morality policy. Mooney brings together top researchers in the field to explore the unique characteristics and politics of morality policy. The result is a definition of the current state of knowledge in the field and a guideline for future observation.

Download or read book Private Virtues Public Vices written by Emma Saunders-Hastings and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-03-23 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking challenge to our ideas about philanthropy, marking it as a deeply political activity that allows the wealthy to dictate more than we think. Philanthropy plays a huge role in supporting the provision of many public goods in contemporary societies. As a result, decisions that affect public outcomes and people’s diverse interests are often dependent on the preferences and judgments of the rich. Political theorist Emma Saunders-Hastings argues that philanthropy is a deeply political activity. She asks readers to look at how the power wielded by philanthropy impacts democracy and deepens political inequality by enabling the wealthy to exercise outsize influence in public life and by putting in place paternalistic relationships between donors and their intended beneficiaries. If philanthropy is to be made compatible with a democratic society of equals, it must be judged not simply on the benefits it brings but on its wider political consequences. Timely and thought-provoking, Private Virtues, Public Vices will challenge readers’ thoughts on what philanthropy is and how it truly affects us.

Download or read book The Public Use of Private Interest written by Charles L. Schultze and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to conventional wisdom, government may intervene when private markets fail to provide goods and services that society values. This view has led to the passage of much legislation and the creation of a host of agencies that have attempted, by exquisitely detailed regulations, to compel legislatively defined behavior in a broad range of activities affecting society as a whole—health care, housing, pollution abatement, transportation, to name only a few. Far from achieving the goals of the legislators and regulators, these efforts have been largely ineffective; worse, they have spawned endless litigation and countless administrative proceedings as the individuals and firms on who the regulations fall seek to avoid, or at least soften, their impact. The result has been long delays in determining whether government programs work at all, thwarting of agreed-upon societal aims, and deep skepticism about the power of government to make any difference. Strangely enough in a nation that since its inception has valued both the means and the ends of the private market system, the United States has rarely tried to harness private interests to public goals. Whenever private markets fail to produce some desired good or service (or fail to deter undesirable activity), the remedies proposed have hardly ever involved creating a system of incentives similar to those of the market place so as to make private choice consonant with public virtue. In this revision of the Godkin Lectures presented at Harvard University in November and December 1976, Charles L. Schultze examines the sources of this paradox. He outlines a plan for government intervention that would turn away from the direct "command and control" regulating techniques of the past and rely instead on market-like incentives to encourage people indirectly to take publicly desired actions.

Download or read book In Search of the Republic written by Richard Vetterli and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1996 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When In Search of the Republic was originally published in 1987, scholarly interpretations of the concept of virtue in the American founding were considered peripheral to mainstream political theory. Since then, the authors' arguments that public virtue, civic responsibility, and private morality were at the heart of the Founding Fathers' political thought is now accepted by a growing number of contemporary political theorists. This revised edition includes a new preface that places In Search of the Republic within the context of contemporary debates over the role of virtue and religion in early American political discourse. This is a superb introduction for students and scholars interested in learning about the moral, political, and constitutional theories of the Founding Fathers.

Download or read book The Public and the Private in Aristotle s Political Philosophy written by Judith A. Swanson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aristotle offers a conception of the private and its relationship to the public that suggests a remedy to the limitations of liberalism today, according to Judith A. Swanson. In this fresh and lucid interpretation of Aristotle's political philosophy, Swanson challenges the dominant view that he regards the private as a mere precondition to the public. She argues, rather, that for Aristotle private activity develops virtue and is thus essential both to individual freedom and happiness and to the well-being of the political order. Swanson presents an innovative reading of The Politics which revises our understanding of Aristotle's political economy and his views on women and the family, slavery, and the relation between friendship and civic solidarity. She examines the private activities Aristotle considers necessary to a complete human life—maintaining a household, transacting business, sustaining friendships, and philosophizing. Focusing on ways Aristotle's public invests in the private through law, rule, and education, she shows how the public can foster a morally and intellectually virtuous citizenry. In contrast to classical liberal theory, which presents privacy as a shield of rights protecting individuals from one another and from the state, for Aristotle a regime can attain self-sufficiency only by bringing about a dynamic equilibrium between the public and the private. The Public and the Private in Aristotle's Political Philosophy will be essential reading for scholars and students of political philosophy, political theory, classics, intellectual history, and the history of women.

Download or read book The Essential Neoconservative Reader written by Mark Gerson and published by Addison Wesley Publishing Company. This book was released on 1996-06-09 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Essential Neoconservative Reader captures the drama and historical importance of neoconservatism's rise from 1965 to the present, by collecting influential essays by its most noted figures - among them Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and James Q. Wilson. The word neoconservative was first used as a term of derision for disgruntled ex-liberals of the 1960s. Perhaps because of this, there has never been a central credo or organization unifying neoconservatism as a movement. With this collection, however, neoconservatism is cast in a new light, portrayed as a comprehensive outlook on economics, politics, society, and culture linked by common principles and a distinctive vision.

Download or read book Sovereign Virtue written by Ronald Dworkin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Equality is the endangered species of political ideals. Even left-of-center politicians reject equality as an ideal: government must combat poverty, they say, but need not strive that its citizens be equal in any dimension. In his new book Ronald Dworkin insists, to the contrary, that equality is the indispensable virtue of democratic sovereignty. A legitimate government must treat all its citizens as equals, that is, with equal respect and concern, and, since the economic distribution that any society achieves is mainly the consequence of its system of law and policy, that requirement imposes serious egalitarian constraints on that distribution. What distribution of a nation's wealth is demanded by equal concern for all? Dworkin draws upon two fundamental humanist principles--first, it is of equal objective importance that all human lives flourish, and second, each person is responsible for defining and achieving the flourishing of his or her own life--to ground his well-known thesis that true equality means equality in the value of the resources that each person commands, not in the success he or she achieves. Equality, freedom, and individual responsibility are therefore not in conflict, but flow from and into one another as facets of the same humanist conception of life and politics. Since no abstract political theory can be understood except in the context of actual and complex political issues, Dworkin develops his thesis by applying it to heated contemporary controversies about the distribution of health care, unemployment benefits, campaign finance reform, affirmative action, assisted suicide, and genetic engineering.

Download or read book Public Policy for Democracy written by Helen Ingram and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fundamental rethinking is under way about the roles of government, citizens, and community organizations in public policy. Can government be reconstructed to make public policies more responsive to citizens and thus more effective? This challenge is apparent in the activist policy agenda of the Clinton administration, which supports national service programs, government-voluntary collaborations, and community-based development projects. Public Policy for Democracy is an important and timely contribution to the current discussion of how to get people more involved in their own governance. In this book, contributors urge policymakers and policy analysts to promote a more vigorous and inclusive democracy by incorporating concerns about citizenship in their craft, rather than strictly emphasizing efficiency and effectiveness. The authors provide insight into how the social construction of politics affects the recipients of the policies and the public in general. They call attention to how policies reinforce negative stereotypes of some groups, such as welfare recipients, and often lead to political alienation and withdrawal. In addition, they discuss how polices using "clinical reason"—a term borrowed from medicine and used as a way to classify people—are increasingly applied to nonmedical situations, such as domestic violence, to restrict individual power and legitimacy. The authors argue that much needs to be done by the government itself to improve policy design and empower all citizens to participate in the democratic process. They identify concrete strategies for policymakers to enhance the role of citizens without sacrificing program effectiveness.

Download or read book Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism written by Peter Berkowitz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtue has been rediscovered in the United States as a subject of public debate and of philosophical inquiry. Politicians from both parties, leading intellectuals, and concerned citizens from diverse backgrounds are addressing questions about the content of our character. William Bennett's moral guide for children, A Book of Virtues, was a national bestseller. Yet many continue to associate virtue with a prudish, Victorian morality or with crude attempts by government to legislate morals. Peter Berkowitz clarifies the fundamental issues, arguing that a certain ambivalence toward virtue reflects the liberal spirit at its best. Drawing on recent scholarship as well as classical political philosophy, he makes his case with penetrating analyses of four central figures in the making of modern liberalism: Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and Mill. These thinkers are usually understood to have neglected or disparaged virtue. Yet Berkowitz shows that they all believed that government resting on the fundamental premise of liberalism--the natural freedom and equality of all human beings--could not work unless citizens and officeholders possess particular qualities of mind and character. These virtues, which include reflective judgment, sympathetic imagination, self-restraint, the ability to cooperate, and toleration do not arise spontaneously but must be cultivated. Berkowitz explores the various strategies the thinkers employ as they seek to give virtue its due while respecting individual liberty. Liberals, he argues, must combine energy and forbearance, finding public and private ways to support such nongovernmental institutions as the family and voluntary associations. For these institutions, the liberal tradition powerfully suggests, play an indispensable role not only in forming the virtues on which liberal democracy depends but in overcoming the vices that it tends to engender. Clearly written and vigorously argued, this is a provocative work of political theory that speaks directly to complex issues at the heart of contemporary philosophy and public discussion. New Forum Books makes available to general readers outstanding, original, interdisciplinary scholarship with a special focus on the juncture of culture, law, and politics. New Forum Books is guided by the conviction that law and politics not only reflect culture, but help to shape it. Authors include leading political scientists, sociologists, legal scholars, philosophers, theologians, historians, and economists writing for nonspecialist readers and scholars across a range of fields. Looking at questions such as political equality, the concept of rights, the problem of virtue in liberal politics, crime and punishment, population, poverty, economic development, and the international legal and political order, New Forum Books seeks to explain--not explain away--the difficult issues we face today.

Download or read book The Egalitarian Spirit of Christianity written by Stephen Strehle and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2009 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Strehle explores some of the most cherished political ideals of modern society, including equality and democracy, liberty and natural rights, progress and capitalism, federalism and mixed government. He has no illusions about forging an exhaustive study that includes all possible forces - inside or outside the religious community. He does not dismiss the vital contribution of other possible sources of inspiration from the world of religion or undermine the well-established place of "secular" sources. Instead Strehle demonstrates that certain ideas associated with the religious community were entangled within the overall process and have left an indelible mark upon significant aspects of the emerging American landscape."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book The Moral Dimensions of Public Policy Choice written by John Martin Gillroy and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 1992-08-15 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining philosophy with practical politics, an expanding area of policy studies applies moral precepts, critical principles, and conventional values to collective decisions. This evolving new approach to policy analysis asserts that the same variety of ethical principles available to the individual are also available to make collective decisions in the public interest and should be used.Although policy analysis has long been dominated by assumptions originally developed for the examination of markets, such as efficiency, these essays by leading scholars - the best work done in the field over the past three decades - explore alternatives to the "market paradigm" and show how moral discrimination and choice can extend beyond the individual to encompass public decisions.Chapters by John Martin Gillroy and Maurice Wade review the political philosophies of Immanuel Kant and David Hume as backgrounds for the development of modern concepts of public policy choice. They present this anthology as a first step in codifying options, arguments, and methods within this important developing area of policy studies.

Download or read book American Politics Then Now written by James Q. Wilson and published by AEI Press. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Q. Wilson is one of America's preeminent public policy scholars. For decades, he has analyzed the changing political and cultural landscape with clarity and honesty, bringing his wisdom to bear on all facets of American government and society. This is a collection of fifteen of Wilson's most insightful essays-drawing on thirty years of his observations on religion, crime, the media, terrorism and extremism, and the old-fashioned notion of 'character.' Readers of every political persuasion will come away from this volume with a new understanding of how American politics and culture have evolved over the last half-century. These essays are not 'the grumpy words of a conservative who can't be reconciled to the realities of contemporary American life,' Wilson writes. Rather, they are straight talk from a painstaking empiricist and consummate social scientist who believes in American exceptionalism. American Politics, Then & Now is a compelling portrait of a beloved nation.

Download or read book On Character written by James Q. Wilson and published by American Enterprise Institute. This book was released on 1995 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays argue that to have good character one needs to have at least developed a sense of empathy and self control.

Download or read book American Virtues written by Jean M. Yarbrough and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with the Declaration of Independence, this analysis of Thomas Jefferson's moral and political philosophy focuses exclusively on the full range of moral, civic and intellectual virtues that form the American character.