Author: Francis Beckwith
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group (MI)
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
The author explains and responds to ethical and philosophical arguments used to defend a pro-choice position. Key court decisions are also critiqued.
Author: Andrew Bernstein
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824828745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
What to do with the dead? In Imperial Japan, as elsewhere in the modernizing world, answering this perennial question meant relying on age-old solutions. Funerals, burials, and other mortuary rites had developed over the centuries with the aim of building continuity in the face of loss. As Japanese coped with the economic, political, and social changes that radically remade their lives in the decades after the Meiji Restoration (1868), they clung to local customs and Buddhist rituals such as sutra readings and incense offerings that for generations had given meaning to death. Yet death, as this highly original study shows, was not impervious to nationalism, capitalism, and the other isms that constituted and still constitute modernity. As Japan changed, so did its handling of the inevitable. Following an overview of the early development of funerary rituals in Japan,Andrew Bernstein demonstrates how diverse premodern practices from different regions and social strata were homogenized with those generated by middle-class city dwellers to create the form of funerary practice dominant today. He describes the controversy over cremation, explaining how and why it became the accepted manner of disposing of the dead. He also explores the conflict-filled process of remaking burial practices, which gave rise, in part, to the suburban "soul parks" now prevalent throughout Japan; the (largely failed) attempt by nativists to replace Buddhist death rites with Shinto ones; and the rise and fall of the funeral procession. In the process, Bernstein shows how today’s "traditional" funeral is in fact an early twentieth-century invention and traces the social and political factors that led to this development. These include a government wanting to separate itself from religion even while propagating State Shinto, the appearance of a new middle class, and new forms of transportation. As these and other developments created new contexts for old rituals, Japanese faced the problem of how to fit them all together. What to do with the dead? is thus a question tied to a still broader one that haunts all societies experiencing rapid change: What to do with the past? Modern Passings is an impressive and far-reaching exploration of Japan’s efforts to solve this puzzle, one that is at the heart of the modern experience.
Author: Peter Wehner
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062820818
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
The New York Times opinion writer, media commentator, outspoken Republican and Christian critic of the Trump presidency offers a spirited defense of politics and its virtuous and critical role in maintaining our democracy and what we must do to save it before it is too late. “Any nation that elects Donald Trump to be its president has a remarkably low view of politics.” Frustrated and feeling betrayed, Americans have come to loathe politics with disastrous results, argues Peter Wehner. In this timely manifesto, the veteran of three Republican administrations and man of faith offers a reasoned and persuasive argument for restoring “politics” as a worthy calling to a cynical and disillusioned generation of Americans. Wehner has long been one of the leading conservative critics of Donald Trump and his effect on the Republican Party. In this impassioned book, he makes clear that unless we overcome the despair that has caused citizens to abandon hope in the primary means for improving our world—the political process—we will not only fall victim to despots but hasten the decline of what has truly made America great. Drawing on history and experience, he reminds us of the hard lessons we have learned about how we rule ourselves—why we have checks and balances, why no one is above the law, why we defend the rights of even those we disagree with. Wehner believes we can turn the country around, but only if we abandon our hatred and learn to appreciate and honor the unique and noble American tradition of doing “politics.” If we want the great American experiment to continue and to once again prosper, we must once more take up the responsibility each and every one of us as citizens share.
Author: Frank Turek
Publisher: Morningstar Publications Inc.
ISBN: 1607087073
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Is there anything wrong with same-sex marriage or transgenderism? Who could possibly be hurt? Using sound reason and evidence―not religion―award-winning author Frank Turek shows that virtually everyone is hurt by same-sex marriage and transgenderism, even those who identify as LGBTQ. Turek provides concise answers to objections about equal rights, discrimination, being born a certain way, and the charge that people who disagree are homophobic or transphobic. He shows how the quest to obliterate all sexual distinctions is self-contradictory and how the march to transition children is producing horrific and irreversible consequences. Turek’s message is direct but respectful―correct, not politically correct. It is a message we must not ignore.
Author: Jonathan M. Metzl
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541644964
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
A physician's "provocative" (Boston Globe) and "timely" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times Book Review) account of how right-wing backlash policies have deadly consequences -- even for the white voters they promise to help. In election after election, conservative white Americans have embraced politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as physician Jonathan M. Metzl shows in Dying of Whiteness, the policies that result actually place white Americans at ever-greater risk of sickness and death. Interviewing a range of everyday Americans, Metzl examines how racial resentment has fueled progun laws in Missouri, resistance to the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee, and cuts to schools and social services in Kansas. He shows these policies' costs: increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling life expectancies, and rising dropout rates. Now updated with a new afterword, Dying of Whiteness demonstrates how much white America would benefit by emphasizing cooperation rather than chasing false promises of supremacy. Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
Author: Tanisha Fazal
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400841445
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
If you were to examine an 1816 map of the world, you would discover that half the countries represented there no longer exist. Yet since 1945, the disappearance of individual states from the world stage has become rare. State Death is the first book to systematically examine the reasons why some states die while others survive, and the remarkable decline of state death since the end of World War II. Grappling with what is a core issue of international relations, Tanisha Fazal explores two hundred years of military invasion and occupation, from eighteenth-century Poland to present-day Iraq, to derive conclusions that challenge conventional wisdom about state death. The fate of sovereign states, she reveals, is largely a matter of political geography and changing norms of conquest. Fazal shows how buffer states--those that lie between two rivals--are the most vulnerable and likely to die except in rare cases that constrain the resources or incentives of neighboring states. She argues that the United States has imposed such constraints with its global norm against conquest--an international standard that has largely prevented the violent takeover of states since 1945. State Death serves as a timely reminder that should there be a shift in U.S. power or preferences that erodes the norm against conquest, violent state death may once again become commonplace in international relations.
Author: Katherine Verdery
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231500432
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
Since 1989, scores of bodies across Eastern Europe have been exhumed and brought to rest in new gravesites. Katherine Verdery investigates why certain corpses—the bodies of revolutionary leaders, heroes, artists, and other luminaries, as well as more humble folk—have taken on a political life in the turbulent times following the end of Communist Party rule, and what roles they play in revising the past and reorienting the present. Enlivening and invigorating the dialogue on postsocialist politics, this imaginative study helps us understand the dynamic and deeply symbolic nature of politics—and how it can breathe new life into old bones.
Author: Hugo Adam Bedau
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781555530082
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
Author: Micki McElya
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674974069
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize Finalist Winner of the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize Winner of the Sharon Harris Book Award Finalist, Jefferson Davis Award of the American Civil War Museum Arlington National Cemetery is one of America’s most sacred shrines, a destination for millions who tour its grounds to honor the men and women of the armed forces who serve and sacrifice. It commemorates their heroism, yet it has always been a place of struggle over the meaning of honor and love of country. Once a showcase plantation, Arlington was transformed by the Civil War, first into a settlement for the once enslaved, and then into a memorial for Union dead. Later wars broadened its significance, as did the creation of its iconic monument to universal military sacrifice: the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. As Arlington took its place at the center of the American story, inclusion within its gates became a prerequisite for claims to national belonging. This deeply moving book reminds us that many brave patriots who fought for America abroad struggled to be recognized at home, and that remembering the past and reckoning with it do not always go hand in hand. “Perhaps it is cliché to observe that in the cities of the dead we find meaning for the living. But, as McElya has so gracefully shown, such a cliché is certainly fitting of Arlington.” —American Historical Review “A wonderful history of Arlington National Cemetery, detailing the political and emotional background to this high-profile burial ground.” —Choice
Author: Vivek Ramaswamy
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1546002987
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
The New York Times bestselling author of Woke Inc. and a 2024 presidential candidate makes the case that the essence of true American identity is to pursue excellence unapologetically and reject victimhood culture. Hardship is now equated with victimhood. Outward displays of vulnerability in defeat are celebrated over winning unabashedly. The pursuit of excellence and exceptionalism are at the heart of American identity, and the disappearance of these ideals in our country leaves a deep moral and cultural vacuum in its wake. But the solution isn’t to simply complain about it. It’s to revive a new cultural movement in America that puts excellence first again. Leaders have called Ramaswamy “the most compelling conservative voice in the country” and “one of the towering intellects in America,” and this book reveals why: he spares neither left nor right in this scathing indictment of the victimhood culture at the heart of America’s national decline. In this national bestseller, Ramaswamy explains that we’re a nation of victims now. It’s one of the few things we still have left in common—across black victims, white victims, liberal victims, and conservative victims. Victims of each other, and ultimately, of ourselves. This fearless, provocative book is for readers who dare to look in the mirror and question their most sacred assumptions about who we are and how we got here. Intricately tracing history from the fall of Rome to the rise of America, weaving Western philosophy with Eastern theology in ways that moved Jefferson and Adams centuries ago, this book describes the rise and the fall of the American experiment itself—and hopefully its reincarnation.
