The Pursuit of Happiness, and Other Sobering Thoughts PDF Download

Author: George F. Will
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Columns originally published in Newsweek and the Washington Post which deal with human nature and contemporary American life and politics.

Author: J. David Hoeveler
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299128104
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
The ascendancy of conservatism in the last twenty years is an unprecedented episode in American intellectual and political history. In Watch on the Right, J. David Hoeveler Jr. gives us enlightening, often immensely entertaining, portraits of the key thinkers behind this "revolution." As Hoeveler writes, "conservative thinkers hang their hats on many different racks," and this book dramatizes for us the breadth of the conservative coalition as exemplified by the eight writers surveyed: William F. Buckley Jr. George Will, Robert Nisbet, Irving Kristol, Hilton Kramer, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., and Michael Novak. These eight "gurus" of the right represent a very wide spectrum of conservative thought, but Hoeveler also considers the present-day conservative renaissance against the literary background that has given the movement its identity since Edmund Burke. Amid the multiple voices unifying themes do emerge. American conservatives share a hostility toward the liberal "new class"--the professional media and academic elites and the entrenched government bureaucracies that still believe in the perfectibility of society by enforced social engineering. Moreover, conservatives of all persuasions are united in struggling to sustain traditional values against the onslaught of revolutionary capitalism and technology, and all are profoundly hostile to imperialistic communism on the Soviet model. Despite the existence of a generic conservatism, however, Hoeveler's portraits provide us with a fascinating tour of the shifts and turns in modern social thought from the decline of liberalism in the late 1960s to the current era--a path that leads through such diverse areas as the Cold War, bourgeois culture, art and aesthetics, civil rights and the welfare state, New Age culture, and the gender revolution. To a whole generation that has never known anything but conservative leadership, Watch on the Right will explain, in clear accessible prose, how the movement flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. For readers who saw it happen (but never thought it would) and for liberals (who are feverishly trying to recover "their " mandate), this book as no other pulls the ideological threads of the story together. Watch on the Right is illustrated with delightful pen-and-ink caricatures.

Author: David W. Reinhard
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813186536
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
In 1981, a Right Wing Republican at long last resided in the White House, presiding over what may prove to be the most fundamental restructuring of American political life since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Fortunately, The Republican Right since 1945 now provides us with the necessary historical understanding of conservative Republicans. David Reinhard's dispassionate yet lively book recounts the Republican Right's political struggles from the death of FDR in 1945 to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. Younger readers will discover that Right Wing Republicans are older than Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater and that some conservative Republicans once feared the overextension of American power abroad and the rise of the "garrison state" at home. Those old enough to remember when the Republican Right was called the "Old Guard" will rediscover the events and personalities of those earlier years, thanks to Reinhard's use of more than thirty five manuscript collections and the most recent historical writing. Not content to let this history end where traditional manuscript sources run thin, Reinhard has brought the story of the Republican Right Wing forward to President Ronald Reagan's inauguration, placing Right Wing Republican reaction to the Johnson and the Nixon-Ford years within the context of the earlier period and chronicling the electoral triumph of Ronald Reagan and the Republican Right. Students of the past and observers of the present will appreciate Reinhard's treatment of the always-troubled Nixon-Republican Right association; challenger Ronald Reagan's battle against President Gerald Ford in 1976; the decline of GOP moderation; and the rise of the New Right-Moral Majority forces and their relationship to the now ascendant Republican Right. Reinhard illuminates the conservative Republican past and thereby makes the current political scene more understandable. Thoroughly researched and brilliantly written, The Republican Right since 1945 will fascinate scholars and general readers alike.

Author: J. David Hoeveler
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0742542564
Category : Postmodernism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
During the 1970s, the United States became the world's preeminent postindustrial society. The new conditions changed the way Americans lived and worked, and even their perceptions of reality. Americans struggled to find their place in a world where symbol became more important than fact, appearance more important than reality, where image supplanted essence. In this reassessment of a little studied decade, J. David Hoeveler, Jr., finds that the sense of detachment and dislocation that characterizes the postindustrial society serves as a paradigm for American thought and culture in the 1970s. The book examines major developments in literary theory, philosophy, architecture, and painting as expressions of a 1970s consciousness. Hoeveler also explores the rival "political" readings of these subjects and considers the postmodernist phenomenon as it became an ideological battleground in the decade. Clear and engaging, the work will be of great interest to historians, theorists, and everyone who wants to further explore the 1970s.

Author: David Bromwich
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300059205
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Liberal education has been under siege in recent years. Far-right ideologues in journalism and government have pressed for a uniform curriculum that focuses on the achievements of Western culture. Partisans of the academic left, who hold our culture responsible for the evils of society, have attempted to redress imbalances by fostering multiculturalism in education. In this eloquent and passionate book a distinguished scholar criticizes these positions and calls for a return to the tradition of independent thinking that he contends has been betrayed by both right and left. Under the guise of educational reform, says David Bromwich, these groups are in fact engaging in politics by other means. Bromwich argues that rivals in the debate over education have one thing in common: they believe in the all-importance of culture. Each assumes that culture confers identity, decides the terms of every moral choice, and gives a meaning to life. Both sides therefore see education as a means to indoctrinate students in specific cultural and political dogmas. By contrast, Bromwich contends that genuine education is concerned less with culture than with critical thinking and independence of mind. This view of education is not a middle way among the political demands of the moment, says Bromwich. Its earlier advocates include Mill and Wollstonecraft, and its roots can be traced to such secular moralists as Burke and Hume. Bromwich attacks the anti-democratic and intolerant premises of both right and left--premises that often appear in the conservative guise of "preserving the tradition" on the one hand, or the radical guise of "opening up the tradition" on the other. He discusses the new academic "fundamentalists" and the politically correct speech codes they have devised to enforce a doctrine of intellectual conformity; educational policy as articulated by conservative apologists George Will and William Bennett; the narrow logic of institutional radicalism; the association between personal reflection and social morality; and the discipline of literary study, where the symptoms of cultural conflict have appeared most visibly. Written with the wisdom and conviction of a dedicated teacher, this book is a persuasive plea to recover a true liberal tradition in academia and government--through independent thinking, self-knowledge, and tolerance of other points of view.

Author: George F. Will
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0306924404
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
Examine the ways in which expertise, reason, and manners are continually under attack in our institutions, courts, political arenas, and social venues with this collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist. George F. Will has been one of this country’s leading columnists since 1974. He won the Pulitzer Prize for it in 1977. The Wall Street Journal once called him “perhaps the most powerful journalist in America.” In this new collection, he examines a remarkably unsettling thirteen years in our nation’s experience, from 2008 to 2020. Included are a number of columns about court cases, mostly from the Supreme Court, that illuminate why the composition of the federal judiciary has become such a contentious subject. Other topics addressed include the American Revolutionary War, historical figures from Frederick Douglass to JFK, as well as a scathing assessment of how State of the Union Addresses are delivered in the modern day. Mr. Will also offers his perspective on American socialists, anti-capitalist conservatives, drug policy, the criminal justice system, climatology, the Coronavirus, the First Amendment, parenting, meritocracy and education, China, fascism, authoritarianism, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, and the morality of enjoying football. American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020 is a collection packed with wisdom and leavened by humor from one the preeminent columnists and intellectuals of our time.

Author: Stanley Hauerwas
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268076618
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Selected by Christianity Today as one of the 100 most important books on religion of the twentieth century. Leading theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas shows how discussions of Christology and the authority of scripture involve questions about what kind of community the church must be to rightly tell the stories of God. He challenges the dominant assumption of contemporary Christian social ethics that there is a special relation between Christianity and some form of liberal democratic social system.

Author: Mark J. Rozell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429718918
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
In this book - one of the few academic works to scrutinise the major figures of American conservatism since the Reagan-Bush era began - the contributors identify and assess current trends in conservative political thought. Through their profiles of conservative opinion leaders, these scholars offer even-handed, critical examinations not only of the

Author: Lynda Lee Kaid
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452265623
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1104

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Book Description
The Encyclopedia of Political Communication discusses the major theoretical approaches to the field, including direct and limited effects theories, agenda-setting theories, sociological theories, framing and priming theories, and other past and present conceptualizations. With nearly 600 entries, this resource pays considerable attention to important political messages such as political speeches, televised political advertising, political posters and print advertising, televised political debates, and Internet sites. The audiences for political communications are also central, necessitating concentration on citizen reactions to political messages, how the general public and voters in democratic systems respond to political messages, and the effects of all types of media and message types.

Author: Nigel Ashford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136708332
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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First published in 1991, this is a reissue of the path-breaking Dictionary of Conservative and Libertarian Thought, the first book to examine the ideals and arguments produced by the intellectual traditions of both conservatism and classical liberalism. Covering the ideas of many such distinguished thinkers as Hayek, Scruton, Friedman and Buchanan, the volume provides a valuable survey of the historical development of both schools of thought in all of the major western countries and their contributions to contemporary debates. From American Conservatism to French Liberalism, Invisible Hand to Organic Society, from Scientism to Scepticism and Utopianism to Voluntarism, this is a vital work whose reissue will be welcomed as much by the keen layperson as by students of political science, the history of philosophy, economics and public policy.