Author: David Allen Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674248988 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
As US power grew after WWI, officials and nonprofits joined to promote citizen participation in world affairs. David Allen traces the rise and fall of the Foreign Policy Association, a public-education initiative that retreated in the atomic age, scuttling dreams of democratic foreign policy and solidifying the technocratic national security model.
Author: David Allen Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674287746 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
The surprising story of the movement to create a truly democratic foreign policy by engaging ordinary Americans in world affairs. No major arena of US governance is more elitist than foreign policy. International relations barely surface in election campaigns, and policymakers take little input from Congress. But not all Americans set out to build a cloistered foreign policy “establishment.” For much of the twentieth century, officials, activists, and academics worked to foster an informed public that would embrace participation in foreign policy as a civic duty. The first comprehensive history of the movement for “citizen education in world affairs,” Every Citizen a Statesman recounts an abandoned effort to create a democratic foreign policy. Taking the lead alongside the State Department were philanthropic institutions like the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and the Foreign Policy Association, a nonprofit founded in 1918. One of the first international relations think tanks, the association backed local World Affairs Councils, which organized popular discussion groups under the slogan “World Affairs Are Your Affairs.” In cities across the country, hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered in homes and libraries to learn and talk about pressing global issues. But by the 1960s, officials were convinced that strategy in a nuclear world was beyond ordinary people, and foundation support for outreach withered. The local councils increasingly focused on those who were already engaged in political debate and otherwise decried supposed public apathy, becoming a force for the very elitism they set out to combat. The result, David Allen argues, was a chasm between policymakers and the public that has persisted since the Vietnam War, insulating a critical area of decisionmaking from the will of the people.
Author: Theodore Roosevelt Publisher: Good Press ISBN: Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 30
Book Description
Citizenship in a Republic is the title of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910. One notable passage from the speech is referred to as "The Man in the Arena": It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
Author: Nathaniel Southgate Shaler Publisher: Theclassics.Us ISBN: 9781230274256 Category : Languages : en Pages : 80
Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI IMMIGRATION, UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, AND THE NEGRO QUESTION THE success of a democracy depends altogether on the quality of the people who compose it; if they be of a common mind as to the main purposes of the state, sufficiently educated, mutually helpful and considerate, seeking good government, in a word, truly patriotic, the commonwealth will be strong; if there be an admixture of people who do not have these qualities in direct proportion to the amount of the uncitizenly element, the political life will be weakened, and at a certain stage in the degradation the state will cease to have the characteristics of a government for and by its true people. It is this general truth that makes the question of immigration of great interest to all Americans, for into their country there is now pouring a great tide of folk gathered from .nearly all the states of the civilised world, and some that are not, in one sense of the word, civilised at all. At first sight there is much to please us in this spectacle of folk who have suffered from the political oppression which other lands inflict upon them, seeking a refuge in the ample room of our national domain; to them and their children this country is a land of promise and often of ample fulfilment. It is indeed a noble thing for a state to be, as our own is, a place of safety to millions of shipwrecked persons. There is, however, another and very practical side to the question which every citizen must consider. These foreign people are principally from countries whose speech, customs, and ideas of government are very different from our own. This difference is not a matter of the moment; it has existed for the centuries during the time in which our ideas of democracy have been slowly forming...
Author: Mickey Edwards Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300186029 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 250
Book Description
“An urgent and engaging look at how American politics have become the founding fathers’ worst nightmare” (The Daily Beast). America’s political system is dysfunctional. We know it, yet the problem seems intractable—after every election, voters discover yet again that political “leaders” are simply quarreling in a never-ending battle between the two warring tribes. As a former congressman, Mickey Edwards witnessed firsthand how important legislative battles can devolve into struggles not over principle but over party advantage. He offers graphic examples of how this problem has intensified and reveals how political battles have become nothing more than conflicts between party machines. In this critically important book, he identifies exactly how our political and governing systems reward intransigence, discourage compromise, and undermine our democracy—and describes exactly what must be done to banish the negative effects of partisan warfare from our political system and renew American democracy. “Overcoming tribalism and knee-jerk partisanship is the central challenge of our time. Mickey Edwards shows why and how in this fascinating book filled with sensible suggestions.” —Walter Isaacson, New York Times–bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci “Many Americans, whether Democrats, Republicans, independent or otherwise, would welcome a few more like [Edwards] in office.” —The Boston Globe
Author: Joseph Heath Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0197509630 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 439
Book Description
In political theory, the traditional model of state power was that elected officials make policy decisions which are then faithfully executed by a lower cadre of public servants. The complexity of the modern state, however, leaves this model outdated. The vast number of economic and social problems it confronts is such that a great deal of rule-making power is now delegated to a class of civil servants. Yet many political philosophers have not taken this model up, and the field has ignored the important role played by the class of "permanent" state officials--the "deep state" as some call it--in liberal states. In most liberal democracies for example, the central bank is as independent as the supreme court, yet deals with a wide range of economic, social, and political issues. How do these public servants make these policy decisions? What normative principles inform their judgments? In The Machinery of Government, Joseph Heath attempts to answer these questions. He looks to the actual practice of public administration to see how normative questions are addressed. More broadly, he attempts to provide the outlines of a "philosophy of the executive" by taking seriously the claim to political authority of the most neglected of the three branches of the state. Heath both provides a corrective to the prevailing tendency to underestimate the contribution of civil servants to the success of liberal-democratic welfare states, and suggests a more satisfactory account of the principles implicit in public administration.
Author: Ben Carson, MD Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0698195000 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 135
Book Description
Dear Reader, Many people have wondered why I’ve been speaking out on controversial issues for the last few years. They say I’ve never held political office. I’m not a constitutional scholar. I’m not even a lawyer. All I can say to that is “Guilty as charged.” It’s true that I’ve never voted for a budget America could not afford. I’ve never raised anyone’s taxes. And I’ve never promised a lobbyist anything in exchange for a donation. Luckily, none of that really matters. Our founding fathers didn’t want a permanent governing class of professional politicians. They wanted a republic, in Lincoln’s words, "of the people, by the people, and for the people." A country where any farmer, small-business owner, manual laborer, or doctor could speak up and make a difference. I believe that making a difference starts with understanding our amazing founding document, the U.S. Constitution. And as someone who has performed brain surgery thousands of times, I can assure you that the Constitution isn’t brain surgery. The founders wrote it for ordinary men and women, in clear, precise, simple language. They intentionally made it short enough to read in a single sitting and to carry in your pocket. I wrote this book to encourage every citizen to read and think about the Constitution, and to help defend it from those who misinterpret and undermine it. In our age of political correctness it’s especially important to defend the Bill of Rights, which guarantees our freedom to speak, bear arms, practice our religion, and much more. The Constitution isn’t history—it’s about your life in America today. And defending it is about what kind of country our children and grandchildren will inherit. I hope you’ll enjoy learning about the fascinating ways that the founders established the greatest democracy in history—and the ways that recent presidents, congresses, and courts have threatened that democracy. As the Preamble says, the purpose of the Constitution is to create a more perfect union. My goal is to empower you to help protect that union and secure the blessings of liberty. Sincerely, Ben Carson
Author: Jack Fuller Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 9780226268804 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
Collection of essays in which the author, president and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, discusses what he understands to be the underlying public values a newspaper serves and the implications of those values.
Author: Susan Nakley Publisher: University of Michigan Press ISBN: 0472130447 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 283
Book Description
Nationalism, like medieval romance literature, recasts history as a mythologized and seamless image of reality. Living in the Future analyzes how the anachronistic nationalist fantasies in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales create a false sense of England’s historical continuity that in turn legitimized contemporary political ambitions. This book spells out the legacy of the Tales that still resonates throughout English literature, exploring the idea of England in the medieval literary imagination as well as critiquing more recent centuries’ conceptions of Chaucer’s nationalism. Chaucer uses two extant national ideals, sovereignty and domesticity, to introduce the concept of an English nation into the contemporary popular imagination and reinvent an idealized England as a hallowed homeland. For nationalist thinkers, sovereignty governs communities with linguistic, historical, cultural, and religious affinities. Chaucerian sovereignty appears primarily in romantic and household contexts that function as microcosms of the nation, reflecting a pseudo-familial love between sovereign and subjects and relying on a sense of shared ownership and judgment. This notion also has deep affinities with popular and political theories flourishing throughout Europe. Chaucer’s internationalism, matched with his artistic use of the vernacular and skillful distortions of both time and space, frames a discrete sovereign English nation within its diverse interconnected world. As it opens up significant new points of resonance between postcolonial theories and medieval ideas of nationhood, Living in the Future marks an important contribution to medieval literary studies. It will be essential for scholars of Middle English literature, literary history, literary political and postcolonial theory, and literary transnationalism.
Author: David Allen
Author: David Allen
Author: Theodore Roosevelt
Author: Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
Author: Mickey Edwards
Author: Theodore Roosevelt
Author: Joseph Heath
Author: Ben Carson, MD
Author: Jack Fuller
Author: Susan Nakley