American Liberalism

Author : David F. Ericson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226216845
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Shaping of American Liberalism written by David F. Ericson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1993-06 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reinterpretation of opposing positions in the debate over the origins of American political tradition; the Hartz v.s. the Bailyn viewpoints.

Author : John McGowan
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807885086
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Liberalism written by John McGowan and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2007-10-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans live in a liberal democracy. Yet, although democracy is widely touted today, liberalism is scorned by both the right and the left. The United States stands poised between its liberal democratic tradition and the illiberal alternatives of liberalism's critics. John McGowan argues that Americans should think twice before jettisoning the liberalism that guided American politics from James Madison to the New Deal and the Great Society. In an engaging and informative discussion, McGowan offers a ringing endorsement of American liberalism's basic principles, values, and commitments. He identifies five tenets of liberalism: a commitment to liberty and equality, trust in a constitutionally established rule of law, a conviction that modern societies are irreducibly plural, the promotion of a diverse civil society, and a reliance on public debate and deliberation to influence others' opinions and actions. McGowan explains how America's founders rejected the simplistic notion that government or society is necessarily oppressive. They were, however, acutely aware of the danger of tyranny. The liberalism of the founders distributed power widely in order to limit the power any one entity could exercise over others. Their aim was to provide for all an effective freedom that combined the right to self-determination with the ability to achieve one's self-chosen goals. In tracing this history, McGowan offers a clear vision of liberalism's foundational values as America's best guarantee today of liberty and the peace in which to exercise it.

Author : Nancy Cohen
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807853542
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914 written by Nancy Cohen and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cohen argues that the values and programs characteristic of modern American liberalism were invented not during the Progressive Era, as is generally assumed, but in the conflict-ridden years after the Civil War.

Author : Ronald J. Pestritto
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9780742515178
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism written by Ronald J. Pestritto and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2005 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the political principles of Woodrow Wilson that influenced his presidency and the impact he had on United States and the progressive movement.

Author : Carol A. Horton
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780195349467
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Race and the Making of American Liberalism written by Carol A. Horton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-08 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race and the Making of American Liberalism traces the roots of the contemporary crisis of progressive liberalism deep into the nation's racial past. Horton argues that the contemporary conservative claim that the American liberal tradition has been rooted in a "color blind" conception of individual rights is innaccurate and misleading. In contrast, American liberalism has alternatively served both to support and oppose racial hierarchy, as well as socioeconomic inequality more broadly. Racial politics in the United States have repeatedly made it exceedingly difficult to establish powerful constituencies that understand socioeconomic equity as vital to American democracy and aspire to limit gross disparities of wealth, power, and status. Revitalizing such equalitarian conceptions of American liberalism, Horton suggests, will require developing new forms of racial and class identity that support, rather than sabotage this fundamental political commitment.

Author : H. W. Brands
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780300098242
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Strange Death of American Liberalism written by H. W. Brands and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative book, H. W. Brands confronts the vital question of why an ever-increasing number of Americans do not trust the federal government to improve their lives and to heal major social ills. How is it that government has come to be seen as the source of many of our problems, rather than the potential means of their solution? How has the word liberal become a term of abuse in American political discourse? From the Revolution on, argues Brands, Americans have been chronically skeptical of their government. This book succinctly traces this skepticism, demonstrating that it is only during periods of war that Americans have set aside their distrust and looked to their government to defend them. The Cold War, Brands shows, created an extended--and historically anomalous--period of dependence, thereby allowing for the massive expansion of the American welfare state. Since the 1970s, and the devastating blow dealt to Cold War ideology by America's defeat in Vietnam, Americans have returned to their characteristic distrust of government. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Brands contends, the fate of American liberalism was sealed--and we continue to live with the consequences of its demise.

Author : Eric Alterman
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143121642
Total Pages : 578 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cause written by Eric Alterman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major history of American liberalism and the key personalities behind the movement Why is it that nearly every liberal initiative since the end of the New Deal—whether busing, urban development, affirmative action, welfare, gun control, or Roe v. Wade—has fallen victim to its grand aspirations, often exacerbating the very problem it seeks to solve? In this groundbreaking work, the first full treatment of modern liberalism in the United States, bestselling journalist and historian Eric Alterman together with Kevin Mattson present a comprehensive history of this proud, yet frequently maligned tradition. In The Cause, we meet the politicians, preachers, intellectuals, artists, and activists—from Eleanor Roosevelt to Barack Obama, Adlai Stevenson to Hubert Humphrey, and Billie Holiday to Bruce Springsteen—who have battled for the heart and soul of the nation.

Author : Donald A. Downs
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801466121
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cornell '69 written by Donald A. Downs and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-24 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In April 1969, one of America's premier universities was celebrating parents' weekend—and the student union was an armed camp, occupied by over eighty defiant members of the campus's Afro-American Society. Marching out Sunday night, the protesters brandished rifles, their maxim: "If we die, you are going to die." Cornell '69 is an electrifying account of that weekend which probes the origins of the drama and describes how it was played out not only at Cornell but on campuses across the nation during the heyday of American liberalism.Donald Alexander Downs tells the story of how Cornell University became the battleground for the clashing forces of racial justice, intellectual freedom, and the rule of law. Eyewitness accounts and retrospective interviews depict the explosive events of the day and bring the key participants into sharp focus: the Afro-American Society, outraged at a cross-burning incident on campus and demanding amnesty for its members implicated in other protests; University President James A. Perkins, long committed to addressing the legacies of racism, seeing his policies backfire and his career collapse; the faculty, indignant at the university's surrender, rejecting the administration's concessions, then reversing itself as the crisis wore on. The weekend's traumatic turn of events is shown by Downs to be a harbinger of the debates raging today over the meaning of the university in American society. He explores the fundamental questions it posed, questions Americans on and off campus are still struggling to answer: What is the relationship between racial justice and intellectual freedom? What are the limits in teaching identity politics? And what is the proper meaning of the university in a democratic polity?

Author : Kevin Boyle
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801485381
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.8X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968 written by Kevin Boyle and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The UAW engaged in these struggles in an attempt to build a cross-class, multiracial reform coalition that would push American politics beyond liberalism and toward social democracy. The effort was in vain; forced to work within political structures - particularly the postwar Democratic party - that militated against change, the union was unable to fashion the alliance it sought. The UAW's political activism nevertheless suggests a new understanding of labor's place in postwar American politics and of the complex forces that defined liberalism in that period. The book also supplies the first detailed discussion of the impact of the Vietnam War on a major American union and shatters the popular image of organized labor as being hawkish on the war.

Author : Robert Booth Fowler
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 070063150X
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Enduring Liberalism written by Robert Booth Fowler and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2021-10-29 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Has the United States become more pluribus than unum? In terms of the nation's political beliefs, Robert Booth Fowler answers both yes and no. While his study affirms significant diversity among an elite cadre of public intellectuals, it vigorously denies it in a general public that collectively adheres to the same set of liberal core values. Enduring Liberalism pursues two objectives. One, it explores the political thought of public intellectuals and the general public since the 1960s. Two, it assesses contemporary and classic interpretations of American political thought in light of the study's findings. Fowler interprets the writings of public intellectuals like Robert Bellah, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Michael Walzer, William Bennett, Seymour Martin Lipset, William Galston, and others, as well as survey data of American political attitudes, to spotlight this oft-ignored divide between citizens and high-profile commentators, whose contentious debates are mistakenly assumed to reflect countrywide rifts. Fowler's argument is straightforward, but the interpretation is controversial. He recounts how the consensus liberal view in post-World War II American political thought collapsed among public intellectuals during the tumult of the 1960s and remains so to this day. His book examines the resultant diversity among contemporary public intellectuals, focusing on three predominant themes: concern for community, worry about the environment, and interest in civil society. In marked contrast to these disputatious commentators, Fowler finds the realm of popular opinion to be characterized by much greater consensus. Indeed, there seems to be a trend toward an even more general embrace of the liberal values that characterize our attitudes toward the individual, individual liberty, political equality, economic opportunity, and consent of the governed. Liberal values-above all the celebration of the individual and individual rights-have revolutionized the so-called private realms of life like family and religious communities to an extent unimagined in the 1950s. From these conclusions, Fowler demonstrates that most interpretations of American political thinking have exaggerated the extent of conflict and diversity in our nation's often raucous policy disputes. But he also cautions us not to overstate the public's widely shared liberal values and, by doing so, miss opportunities to facilitate problem solving or to recognize the ways in which our reform efforts may be constrained.