American Liberal Disillusionment

American Liberal Disillusionment PDF Author: Stuart I. Rochester
Publisher: University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Tracing American liberal disillusionment from World War I through the Cold War, the author argues that Sarajevo contributed as much to the process as did Stalinism. He thus takes issues with historians who play down the theme of "war as watershed." The 1914-20 years were pivotal, Dr. Rochester asserts, in " a remarkable intellectual metamorphosis which found erstwhile liberals converted to conservatism, pollyannas transformed into despairing cynics, and men of faith and conviction reduced to ideological vagabonds." In the same stroke the First World War seemed to prove the frailty of the human condition and the futility of a liberal philosophy. Conceding some skepticism and even pessimism toward the end of the Progressive Era, Dr. Rochester holds that William Allen White captured the prevailing mood when he said: "Progress to some upward ideal of living among men is the surest fact of history." Such faith is the theme of the opening chapter. The following five chapters show the impact of wartime hysteria, profiteering, and repression; of the duplicity at Versailles; and of the ensuing descent from the lofty heights of Wilsonian idealism to the "bungalow minds" of normalcy.

American Liberal Disillusionment

American Liberal Disillusionment PDF Author: Stuart I. Rochester
Publisher: University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Tracing American liberal disillusionment from World War I through the Cold War, the author argues that Sarajevo contributed as much to the process as did Stalinism. He thus takes issues with historians who play down the theme of "war as watershed." The 1914-20 years were pivotal, Dr. Rochester asserts, in " a remarkable intellectual metamorphosis which found erstwhile liberals converted to conservatism, pollyannas transformed into despairing cynics, and men of faith and conviction reduced to ideological vagabonds." In the same stroke the First World War seemed to prove the frailty of the human condition and the futility of a liberal philosophy. Conceding some skepticism and even pessimism toward the end of the Progressive Era, Dr. Rochester holds that William Allen White captured the prevailing mood when he said: "Progress to some upward ideal of living among men is the surest fact of history." Such faith is the theme of the opening chapter. The following five chapters show the impact of wartime hysteria, profiteering, and repression; of the duplicity at Versailles; and of the ensuing descent from the lofty heights of Wilsonian idealism to the "bungalow minds" of normalcy.

The dynamics of disillusionment in the American liberal community, 1914-1920

The dynamics of disillusionment in the American liberal community, 1914-1920 PDF Author: Stuart I. Rochester
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Liberalism
Languages : en
Pages : 848

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Book Description


Why Liberalism Failed

Why Liberalism Failed PDF Author: Patrick J. Deneen
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300240023
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
"One of the most important political books of 2018."—Rod Dreher, American Conservative Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.

Not Much Left

Not Much Left PDF Author: Tom Waldman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520932869
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Tom Waldman's lively and sweeping assessment of the state of American liberalism begins with the political turbulence of 1968 and culminates with the 2006 takeover of Congress by the Democratic Party. Not Much Left: The Fate of Liberalism in America vividly demonstrates how the progressive and liberal wing of the Democratic Party helped end a war, won the civil rights battle, and paved the way for blacks, women, gays, and other minorities to achieve full citizenship. Through reportage, anecdotes, and analysis—particularly of the disastrous defeat of Democrat George McGovern in 1972—Waldman chronicles how the grand coalition that achieved so much in the 1960s began to self-destruct in the early 1970s. Citing the Republican recovery from Barry Goldwater's 1964 defeat, Waldman demonstrates how the two parties' very different reactions to electoral debacle account for recent Republican dominance and Democratic impotence. Assessing liberalism's fate through the Carter and Reagan presidencies, the defeat of Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election, and the on-again, off-again liberalism of the Clinton years, Waldman then brings the discussion up to date with analysis of the 2008 presidential campaign.

The Strange Death of American Liberalism

The Strange Death of American Liberalism PDF Author: H. W. Brands
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300090218
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
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. From the Revolution on, argues Brands, Americans have been chronically skeptical of their government.

Decade of Disillusionment

Decade of Disillusionment PDF Author: Jim F. Heath
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253202017
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Discusses the decade of the Sixties in America, the administrations of two Democratic Presidents, Kennedy and Johnson, and the war in Vietnam.

The Revolt Against the Masses

The Revolt Against the Masses PDF Author: Fred Siegel
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594037965
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This short book rewrites the history of modern American liberalism. It shows that what we think of as liberalism—the top-and-bottom coalition we associate with President Obama—began not with Progressivism or the New Deal but rather in the wake of WWI, in disillusionment with American society. In the 1920s, the first thinkers to call themselves liberals adopted the hostility to bourgeois life that had long characterized European intellectuals of both the left and right. The aim of liberalism’s founders—such as Herbert Croly, Randolph Bourne, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, and H.L. Mencken—was to create an American version of the aristocracy long associated with European statism. Critical of mass democracy and middle-class capitalism, liberals despised the businessman’s pursuit of profit as well as the conventional individual’s pursuit of pleasure; and in the 1950s liberalism expressed itself in the scornful critique of popular culture. It was precisely the success of a recently elevated middle-class culture that frightened the leaders of the New Class, who took up the priestly task of de-democratizing America in the name of administering newly developed rights. The neo-Malthusianism that emerged from the 1960s did not aim to control the breeding habits of the lower classes, as its eugenicist precursors had done, but to mock and restrain the buying habits of the middle class. Today’s brand of liberalism, led by Barack Obama, has displaced the old Main Street private-sector middle class with a new middle class composed of public-sector workers allied with crony capitalists and the country’s arbiters of elite style and taste.

The Making of Modern Liberalism

The Making of Modern Liberalism PDF Author: Alan Ryan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691163685
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 680

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Book Description
One of the world's leading political thinkers explores the history, nature, and prospects of the liberal tradition The Making of Modern Liberalism is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of the more than four decades during which Alan Ryan, one of the world's leading political thinkers, reflected on the past of the liberal tradition—and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism.

Black Visions

Black Visions PDF Author: Michael C. Dawson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226138619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
This comprehensive analysis of the complex relationship of black political thought identifies which political ideologies are supported by blacks, then traces their historical roots and examines their effects on black public opinion.

Fears of a Setting Sun

Fears of a Setting Sun PDF Author: Dennis C. Rasmussen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691241414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The surprising story of how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson came to despair for the future of the nation they had created Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them—including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—came to deem America’s constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Fears of a Setting Sun is the first book to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders’ disillusionment. As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders’ pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America’s political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America’s constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not. As much as Americans today may worry about their country’s future, Rasmussen reveals, the founders faced even graver problems and harbored even deeper misgivings. A vividly written account of a chapter of American history that has received too little attention, Fears of a Setting Sun will change the way that you look at the American founding, the Constitution, and indeed the United States itself.