Tag Archives: United States

HomePosts Tagged "United States"

Populist waves have been a constant in American politics at least since the Jacksonian era of the early nineteenth century, and traces of populist sentiment can be detected as far back Bacon’s Rebellion in colonial Virginia.[1] While the historical and ideological contexts of these movements vary wildly, their essence is always the desire to shift political power away from some…

Consider the American family, never so vexed. Take marriage in particular. Writing in The Christian Science Monitor, Stephanie Hanes reports:
"In 1950, married couples represented 78 percent of households in the United States. In 2011, the US Census Bureau reported, that percentage had dropped to 48 percent . . .
[In 2014], for the first time, the number of unmarried American adults…

An ongoing debate in American political science regards the dispositions of the factions within American society towards one another; some scholars argue that a culture war obtains, while others point towards the peaceful transitions of power and the respect for political opposition in America as hallmarks of an exemplary civil society.[1]  Eric Voegelin analyzed the cultural factors which affect the…

The intellectual culture of the philosophes, what Alexis de Tocqueville called esprit revolutionare,[1] is what political theorists today understand is a form of "political religion."  The term "political religion" might strike some as unacceptable. On the one hand, those who piously affirm the tenets of orthodox spiritual traditions and attest to the reality of their faith may resent the suggestion…

Throughout its history, baseball has at times been viewed as a means of disseminating morality among the American populous; at other times, baseball is nothing but a carrier of vice. Often, this perception depends on the strength of religious devotion in a particular area, as well as economic necessity. These two issues combined in the early-to-mid 1900s as cities with…

As a document written in the 1700’s, all the framers of the U.S. Constitution as well as their immediate relatives, friends, and colleagues are now deceased. We are only left with the document itself and The Federalist Papers for contemporary interpretation. The Federalist Papers are, “the single most important resource for interpreting the Constitution, it provides a wise and sophisticated…

Understanding the American Pursuit of Happiness
Happiness is now the serious study of human well-being. As the study of happiness becomes more serious and exact, happiness researchers become flush with optimism. They are optimistic that their findings will help individuals and policy makers make decisions that will contribute to happier results. For all of happiness’s gauzy connotations, happiness can be thoroughly…

The Pursuit of Happiness and the American Regime: Political Theory in Literature. Elizabeth Amato. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018.
 
In a time marked by enormous economic inequality, upsurges in nationalism and racism, mounting environmental catastrophe, and political life tending toward factional conflict, it is tempting to conclude with scholars like Patrick Deneen, that liberalism has, indeed, failed.[1] Such a failure of…

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Theory of Democracy and Revolutions. Michał Kuź. Warsaw: Lazarski University Press, 2016.
 
Michał Kuź’s Alexis de Tocqueville’s Theory of Democracy and Revolutions is an attempt to combine Tocqueville’s political theory with the insights of contemporary social scientists on politics, culture, and technology. Tocqueville, he argues, formulated a general model of political change that has been shown to have…

America, Aristotle, and the Politics of a Middle Class. Leslie G. Rubin. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2081.
 
Today the middle class in the United States is threatened, with its decline and diminishment exacerbating political conflict at home and schizophrenic policies abroad. The result is that America appears to be in trouble with political polarization, economic stagnation, and government dysfunction. For…