Author: Ian Dunt
Publisher: Canbury Press
ISBN: 9781912454419
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
From Viktor Orban in Hungary, to Brexit in Britain, to Donald Trump in America, nationalists are launching an all-out assault on liberal values. In this sweeping narrative, political journalist Ian Dunt tells the story of liberalism, from its epic struggle against absolute monarchy to its modern-day resistance to the new populism.
Author: Thomas Frank
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1627795405
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Get Book Here
Book Description
From the bestselling author of What's the Matter With Kansas, a scathing look at the standard-bearers of liberal politics -- a book that asks: what's the matter with Democrats? It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming. With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank's Listen, Liberal lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals-the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America.
Author: Mark Lilla
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849049955
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Get Book Here
Book Description
For nearly 40 years, Ronald Reagan's vision--small government, lower taxes, and self-reliant individualism--has remained America's dominant political ideology. The Democratic Party has offered no truly convincing competing vision. Instead, American liberalism has fallen under the spell of identity politics.Mark Lilla argues with acerbic wit that liberals, originally driven by a sincere desire to protect the most vulnerable Americans, have now unwittingly invested their energies in social movements rather than winning elections. This abandonment of political priorities has had dire consequences. But, with the Republican Party led by an unpredictable demagogue and in ideological disarray, Lilla believes liberals now have an opportunity to turn from the divisive politics of identity, and offer positive ideas for a shared future. A fiercely-argued, no-nonsense book, The Once and Future Liberal is essential reading for our momentous times.
Author: Samir Amin
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583678220
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129
Get Book Here
Book Description
Samir Amin's ambitious new book argues that the ongoing American project to dominate the world through military force has its roots in European liberalism, but has developed certain features of liberal ideology in a new and uniquely dangerous way. Where European political culture since the French Revolution has given a central place to values of equality, the American state has developed to serve the interests of capital alone, and is now exporting this model throughout the world. American imperialism, Amin argues, will be far more barbaric than earlier forms of imperialism, pillaging natural resources and destroying the lives of the poor. The Liberal Virus examines the ways in which the American model is being imposed on the world, and outlines its economic and political consequences. It shows how both citizenship and class consciousness are diluted in "low-intensity democracy" and argues instead for democratization as an ongoing process—of fundamental importance for human progress—rather than a fixed constitutional formula designed to support the logic of capital accumulation. In a panoramic overview, Amin examines the objectives and outcomes of American policy in the different regions of the world. He concludes by outlining the challenges faced by those resisting the American project today: redefining European liberalism on the basis of a new compromise between capital and labor, re-establishing solidarity among the people of the South, and reconstructing an internationalism that serves the interests of regions that are currently divided against each other.
Author: Frank A. Warren
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231084451
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Get Book Here
Book Description
Although deconstruction has become a popular catchword, as an intellectual movement it has never entirely caught on within the university. For some in the academy, deconstruction, and Jacques Derrida in particular, are responsible for the demise of accountability in the study of literature. Countering these facile dismissals of Derrida and deconstruction, Herman Rapaport explores the incoherence that has plagued critical theory since the 1960s and the resulting legitimacy crisis in the humanities. Against the backdrop of a rich, informed discussion of Derrida's writings -- and how they have been misconstrued by critics and admirers alike -- The Theory Mess investigates the vicissitudes of Anglo-American criticism over the past thirty years and proposes some possibilities for reform.
Author: Lionel Trilling
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590175514
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 339
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Liberal Imagination is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but an important statement about politics and society. Published in 1950, one of the chillier moments of the Cold War, Trilling’s essays examine the promise —and limits—of liberalism, challenging the complacency of a naïve liberal belief in rationality, progress, and the panaceas of economics and other social sciences, and asserting in their stead the irreducible complexity of human motivation and the tragic inevitability of tragedy. Only the imagination, Trilling argues, can give us access and insight into these realms and only the imagination can ground a reflective and considered, rather than programmatic and dogmatic, liberalism. Writing with acute intelligence about classics like Huckleberry Finn and the novels of Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but also on such varied matters as the Kinsey Report and money in the American imagination, Trilling presents a model of the critic as both part of and apart from his society, a defender of the reflective life that, in our ever more rationalized world, seems ever more necessary—and ever more remote.
Author: Steve Fraser
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465097669
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Get Book Here
Book Description
No political image in recent American history has enjoyed the impact of the "limousine liberal." It has managed to mobilize an enduring politics of resentment directed against everything from civil rights to women's liberation, from the war on poverty to environmental regulation. Coined in 1969 by New York City mayoralty candidate Mario Procaccino, the term took aim at what he and his largely white lower middle class and blue collar following considered the repellent hypocrisy of well-heeled types who championed the cause of the poor, especially the black poor, but who had no intention of bearing the costs of their plight. The metaphor zeroed in on liberal elites who preferred to upset rather than defend the status quo not only in race relations, but in the sexual, moral, and religious order and had little interest in looking after the needs of working people. In The Limousine Liberal, the acclaimed historian Steve Fraser argues that it is impossible to understand American politics without coming to grips with this image, where it originated, why it persists, and where it may be taking us. He reveals that the limousine liberal had existed in all but name long before Procaccino gave it one. From Henry Ford decrying an improbable alliance of Jews, bankers, and Bolsheviks in the 1920s to the Tea Party's vehement hatred of Hillary Clinton, the fear of the limousine liberal has stoked right-wing populism for nearly a century. Today it fuses together disparate elements of the conservative movement. Sunbelt entrepreneurs on the rise, blue collar ethnics and middle classes in decline, heartland evangelicals, and billionaire business dynasts have found common cause, despite their real differences, in shared opposition to liberal elites. The Limousine Liberal tells an extraordinary story of why the most privileged and powerful elements of American society were indicted as subversives and reveals the reality that undergirds that myth. It goes to the heart of the great political transformation of the postwar era: the rise of the conservative right and the unmaking of the liberal consensus.
Author: Paul Sabin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393634051
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Get Book Here
Book Description
“Crisp, clear, eloquent.” –Kim Phillips-Fein, New Republic An “elegantly argued and meticulously documented” (Timothy Noah, New York Times Book Review) account of the postwar struggle over the proper role of citizens and government in American society. In the 1960s and 1970s, an insurgent attack on traditional liberalism took shape in America. It was built on new ideals of citizen advocacy and the public interest. Environmentalists, social critics, and consumer advocates like Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, and Ralph Nader crusaded against what they saw as a misguided and often corrupt government. Drawing energy from civil rights protests and opposition to the Vietnam War, the new citizens’ movement drew legions of followers and scored major victories. Citizen advocates disrupted government plans for urban highways and new hydroelectric dams and got Congress to pass tough legislation to protect clean air and clean water. They helped lead a revolution in safety that forced companies and governments to better protect consumers and workers from dangerous products and hazardous work conditions. And yet, in the process, citizen advocates also helped to undermine big government liberalism—the powerful alliance between government, business, and labor that dominated the United States politically in the decades following the New Deal and World War II. Public interest advocates exposed that alliance’s secret bargains and unintended consequences. They showed how government power often was used to advance private interests rather than restrain them. In the process of attacking government for its failings and its dangers, the public interest movement struggled to replace traditional liberalism with a new approach to governing. The citizen critique of government power instead helped clear the way for their antagonists: Reagan-era conservatives seeking to slash regulations and enrich corporations. Public Citizens traces the history of the public interest movement and explores its tangled legacy, showing the ways in which American liberalism has been at war with itself. The book forces us to reckon with the challenges of regaining our faith in government’s ability to advance the common good.
Author: Roger Wolsey
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 145683942X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 397
Get Book Here
Book Description
Christianity receives a lot of attention in the media, but the most frequently discussed version represents a type of Christianity that sometimes turns people away from the Church. Kissing Fish presents a postmodern systematic theology of progressive Christianity, a growing movement that reclaims the radical message of the Gospel. This informative, contemplative, and entertaining book will guide you through the beliefs that inspire us to love one another in the transformative way that Jesus proclaimed, including practices that will take your faith to a new level. Kissing Fish is a scholarly yet thoroughly accessible introduction to progressive Christianity. While the intended target audience for this work would seem to be those who have either left the Christian faith or never adopted it at all; the work is filled with pearls of wisdom for all of us, whether associated with Christianity or not. Kissing Fish is a truly remarkable work, serving both as a reminder of the beauty and grace that form the central tenets of the faith, while offering a graceful yet prophetic rebuttal to its more exclusionary tendencies. Kissing Fish is part theological text and part tell-all personal spiritual journey. Imagine a down-to-earth combination of the works of Marcus Borg, Anne Lamott, Jim Wallis, Rob Bell, Shane Claiborne, Diana Butler-Bass, Brian McLaren, Walter Wink, Wes Howard-Brook, and Donald Miller. A profound romp that informs and inspires.
Author: Francis Wade
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1783605308
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201
Get Book Here
Book Description
For decades Myanmar has been portrayed as a case of good citizen versus bad regime – men in jackboots maintaining a suffocating rule over a majority Buddhist population beholden to the ideals of non-violence and tolerance. But in recent years this narrative has been upended. In June 2012, violence between Buddhists and Muslims erupted in western Myanmar, pointing to a growing divide between religious communities that before had received little attention from the outside world. Attacks on Muslims soon spread across the country, leaving hundreds dead, entire neighbourhoods turned to rubble, and tens of thousands of Muslims confined to internment camps. This violence, breaking out amid the passage to democracy, was spurred on by monks, pro-democracy activists and even politicians. In this gripping and deeply reported account, Francis Wade explores how the manipulation of identities by an anxious ruling elite has laid the foundations for mass violence, and how, in Myanmar’s case, some of the most respected and articulate voices for democracy have turned on the Muslim population at a time when the majority of citizens are beginning to experience freedoms unseen for half a century.
