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Author: Eli Zaretsky
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745656560
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183
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Book Description
The United States today cries out for a robust, self-respecting, intellectually sophisticated left, yet the very idea of a left appears to have been discredited. In this brilliant new book, Eli Zaretsky rethinks the idea by examining three key moments in American history: the Civil War, the New Deal and the range of New Left movements in the 1960s and after including the civil rights movement, the women's movement and gay liberation.In each period, he argues, the active involvement of the left - especially its critical interaction with mainstream liberalism - proved indispensable. American liberalism, as represented by the Democratic Party, is necessarily spineless and ineffective without a left. Correspondingly, without a strong liberal center, the left becomes sectarian, authoritarian, and worse. Written in an accessible way for the general reader and the undergraduate student, this book provides a fresh perspective on American politics and political history. It has often been said that the idea of a left originated in the French Revolution and is distinctively European; Zaretsky argues, by contrast, that America has always had a vibrant and powerful left. And he shows that in those critical moments when the country returns to itself, it is on its left/liberal bases that it comes to feel most at home.
Author: Eli Zaretsky
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745656560
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183
Get Book Here
Book Description
The United States today cries out for a robust, self-respecting, intellectually sophisticated left, yet the very idea of a left appears to have been discredited. In this brilliant new book, Eli Zaretsky rethinks the idea by examining three key moments in American history: the Civil War, the New Deal and the range of New Left movements in the 1960s and after including the civil rights movement, the women's movement and gay liberation.In each period, he argues, the active involvement of the left - especially its critical interaction with mainstream liberalism - proved indispensable. American liberalism, as represented by the Democratic Party, is necessarily spineless and ineffective without a left. Correspondingly, without a strong liberal center, the left becomes sectarian, authoritarian, and worse. Written in an accessible way for the general reader and the undergraduate student, this book provides a fresh perspective on American politics and political history. It has often been said that the idea of a left originated in the French Revolution and is distinctively European; Zaretsky argues, by contrast, that America has always had a vibrant and powerful left. And he shows that in those critical moments when the country returns to itself, it is on its left/liberal bases that it comes to feel most at home.
Author: Dwight Furrow
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615923535
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
[Furrow's] proposals are fresh - he urges liberals to develop 'a more substantial moral identity' and win a few battles in the values war by building upon their 'inherent culture of caring,' repackaging the conservative movement's successful tactics for the Left.- Publishers WeeklyIn this fresh assessment of the liberal perspective on politics, philosopher Dwight Furrow explains how liberalism lost its moral credentials in the face of challenges from conservatives. He articulates a new way of understanding the moral foundations of liberalism that will restore its political fortunes along with America's shattered moral authority. A work of popular philosophy, Reviving the Left is written in a serious but lively, engaging, and often polemical style.Furrow begins by noting that political ideologies have the power to motivate people because they embody conceptions of how to live. Conservatives have understood this more clearly than liberals, who for too long have relied on bureaucratic solutions and interest-group politics, which have lacked moral credibility and passion. Now more than ever, says Furrow, progressive politics, if it is to move people hungry for change, needs a new vision that will give birth to a more substantial liberal moral identity.Furrow takes conservatism to task for promoting what he labels a culture of cynical, violent narcissism. But rather than praising the liberalism of the past, he argues that liberals must radically revise their conception of moral value in order to reverse the damage left behind by many years of conservative rule. Reviving the Left argues that liberals must build a culture of caring from the ground up by giving social institutions incentives to encourage a more prominent role in public life for empathy, compassion, and responsibility. Only in such a culture will liberal political initiatives have a chance to succeed in the long run.Unlike many books on reviving liberalism, which emphasize economics, policy debates, or political strategies, Furrow's Reviving the Left uniquely focuses on moral values and their philosophical underpinnings. Furrow's extensive use of references to popular culture, especially well-known films, and also topics of current political discourse makes for an exciting, contemporary rethinking of the liberal perspective with widespread appeal.Dwight Furrow (San Diego, CA), professor of philosophy at San Diego Mesa College, is the author of Ethics: Key Concepts in Philosophy and Against Theory: Continental and Analytic Challenges in Moral Philosophy. He is also the editor of Moral Soundings: Readings on the Crisis of Values in Contemporary Life.
Author: Eli Zaretsky
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400079233
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
The fledgling science of psychoanalysis permanently altered the nineteenth-century worldview with its remarkable new insights into human behavior and motivation. It quickly became a benchmark for modernity in the twentieth century--though its durability in the twenty-first may now be in doubt. More than a hundred years after the publication of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, we’re no longer in thrall, says cultural historian Eli Zaretsky, to the “romance” of psychotherapy and the authority of the analyst. Only now do we have enough perspective to assess the successes and shortcomings of psychoanalysis, from its late-Victorian Era beginnings to today’s age of psychopharmacology. In Secrets of the Soul, Zaretsky charts the divergent schools in the psychoanalytic community and how they evolved–sometimes under pressure–from sexism to feminism, from homophobia to acceptance of diversity, from social control to personal emancipation. From Freud to Zoloft, Zaretsky tells the story of what may be the most intimate science of all.
Author: Daniel J. Flynn
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 1400097479
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
"The American flag stands for hatred, warmongering, and imperialism." "Our free-market system is responsible for killing and oppressing millions of people." "This country breeds racists and sexists." Is America really that bad? It is if you accept the lies and propaganda from the anti-American Left in our own country. This dismal, distorted view of the greatest, freest nation in history comes from a Left who would rather idolize Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro than honor George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who burn down businesses and destroy property to protest free markets, and who fight alongside radical terrorists rather than against them. They trample the Constitution while hiding behind the First Amendment, and their idea of displaying the American flag is setting it on fire and parading it through the streets. Yes, this is a Left comprised of people who truly hate their country, and they will stop at nothing to tear her down—smashing our liberty in the process. Why the Left Hates America punches a hole right through the thin veneer of political correctness that has long protected these anti-Americans—exposing their rotting, vacuous core. Author and commentator Daniel J. Flynn digs deep into the American Left and reveals why they blame every bad deed in the world on the United States, while ignoring her myriad contributions. This book cogently points out that, of course, all Americans have the right to speak their minds. But, all too often, the actions by the anti-American Left become destructive and anarchistic. You need not look any further than the explosive 1999 World Trade Organization "protests" in Seattle, campus book burnings, or even John Walker Lindh to see that factions on the Left are the worst perpetrators of anti-Americanism. And what may be most shocking is that many of these anti-Americans are at the same time teachers, professors, journalists, news reporters, and even judges and politicians. Probing and controversial—without devolving into jingoism—this book proves once and for all that what you see in the news and learn in school is often tainted by the anti-American Left, and it shows you what you can do to keep them at bay.
Author: Isabel Sawhill
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300241062
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation’s economic inequalities One of the country’s leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society—economic, cultural, and political—and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. While many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.
Author: Ian Haney López
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620975653
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Dog Whistle Politics, an essential road map to neutralizing the role of racism as a divide-and-conquer political weapon and to building a broad multiracial progressive future "Ian Haney López has broken the code on the racial politics of the last fifty years."—Bill Moyers In 2014, Ian Haney López in Dog Whistle Politics named and explained the coded racial appeals exploited by right-wing politicians over the last half century—and thereby anticipated the 2016 presidential election. Now the country is heading into what will surely be one of the most consequential elections ever, with the Right gearing up to exploit racial fear-mongering to divide and distract, and the Left splintered over the next step forward. Some want to focus on racial justice head-on; others insist that a race-silent focus on class avoids alienating white voters. Can either approach—race-forward or colorblind—build the progressive supermajorities necessary to break political gridlock and fundamentally change the country's direction? For the past two years, Haney López has been collaborating with a research team of union activists, racial justice leaders, communications specialists, and pollsters. Based on conversations, interviews, and surveys with thousands of people all over the country, the team found a way forward. By merging the fights for racial justice and for shared economic prosperity, they were able to build greater enthusiasm for both goals—and for the cross-racial solidarity needed to win elections. What does this mean? It means that neutralizing the Right's political strategy of racial division is possible, today. And that's the key to everything progressives want to achieve. A work of deep research, nuanced argument, and urgent insight, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America is an indispensable tool for the upcoming political season and in the larger fight to build racial justice and shared economic prosperity for all of us.
Author: Manuel Balán
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268106606
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349
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Book Description
Legacies of the Left Turn in Latin America: The Promise of Inclusive Citizenship contains original essays by a diverse group of leading and emerging scholars from North America, Europe, and Latin America. The book speaks to wide-ranging debates on democracy, the left, and citizenship in Latin America. What were the effects of a decade and a half of left and center-left governments? The central purpose of this book is to evaluate both the positive and negative effects of the Left turn on state-society relations and inclusion. Promises of social inclusion and the expansion of citizenship rights were paramount to the center-left discourses upon the factions' arrival to power in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This book is a first step in understanding to what extent these initial promises were or were not fulfilled, and why. In analyzing these issues, the authors demonstrate that these years yield both signs of progress in some areas and the deepening of historical problems in others. The contributors to this book reveal variation among and within countries, and across policy and issue areas such as democratic institution reforms, human rights, minorities’ rights, environmental questions, and violence. This focus on issues rather than countries distinguishes the book from other recent volumes on the left in Latin America, and the book will speak to a broad and multi-dimensional audience, both inside and outside the academic world. Contributors: Manuel Balán, Françoise Montambeault, Philip Oxhorn, Maxwell A. Cameron, Kenneth M. Roberts, Nathalia Sandoval-Rojas, Daniel M. Brinks, Benjamin Goldfrank, Roberta Rice, Elizabeth Jelin, Celina Van Dembroucke, Nora Nagels, Merike Blofield, Jordi Díez, Eve Bratman, Gabriel Kessler, Olivier Dabène, Jared Abbott, Steve Levitsky
Author: Bernard E. Harcourt
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231551452
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 730
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Book Description
Critical philosophy has always challenged the division between theory and practice. At its best, it aims to turn contemplation into emancipation, seeking to transform society in pursuit of equality, autonomy, and human flourishing. Yet today’s critical theory often seems to engage only in critique. These times of crisis demand more. Bernard E. Harcourt challenges us to move beyond decades of philosophical detours and to harness critical thought to the need for action. In a time of increasing awareness of economic and social inequality, Harcourt calls on us to make society more equal and just. Only critical theory can guide us toward a more self-reflexive pursuit of justice. Charting a vision for political action and social transformation, Harcourt argues that instead of posing the question, “What is to be done?” we must now turn it back onto ourselves and ask, and answer, “What more am I to do?” Critique and Praxis advocates for a new path forward that constantly challenges each and every one of us to ask what more we can do to realize a society based on equality and justice. Joining his decades of activism, social-justice litigation, and political engagement with his years of critical theory and philosophical work, Harcourt has written a magnum opus.
Author: Richard Rorty
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780674003125
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 159
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Book Description
One of America's foremost philosophers challenges the lost generation of the American Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers such as Walt Whitman and John Dewey.
Author: Jill Lepore
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393635252
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 733
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Book Description
“Nothing short of a masterpiece.” —NPR Books A New York Times Bestseller and a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. “A nation born in contradiction… will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With These Truths, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.
