America's Political Class Under Fire
America's Political Class Under Fire

Author: David A. Horowitz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-02

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1135398356

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While the clash between what has been called the modern and undeveloped worlds has led to America's military involvement in the Middle East and other places, few people realize the tension between the modern and the traditional within the United States. Beginning in the 1920's, professional intellectuals and academics began influencing the nation's public policy on matters as diverse as education, economics, and public health. In this thoughtful work, David A. Horowitz analyzes the tension between the so-called New Class of knowledge professionals and their critics, who accused them of being out of touch with the common sense of everyday people, strangers to the American Way, even Communists. America's Political Class Under Fire is organized over nine periods of 20th-century history, providing a window into everything from the Scopes evolution trial and McCarthyism to affirmative action and the Clinton health care fiasco. Along the way, the book explores the New Left, populist conservatism, and the mid-90's reaction to political liberalism, which saw Newt Gingrich rise to the top post in the House of Representatives. In telling these stories, Horowitz seeks to encourage a more balanced and fair-minded assessment of the consequences of expertise and applied intellect to democratic existence in the United States.

Science under Fire
Science under Fire

Author: Andrew Jewett

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0674987918

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Americans have long been suspicious of experts and elites. This new history explains why so many have believed that science has the power to corrupt American culture. Americans today are often skeptical of scientific authority. Many conservatives dismiss climate change and Darwinism as liberal fictions, arguing that “tenured radicals” have coopted the sciences and other disciplines. Some progressives, especially in the universities, worry that science’s celebration of objectivity and neutrality masks its attachment to Eurocentric and patriarchal values. As we grapple with the implications of climate change and revolutions in fields from biotechnology to robotics to computing, it is crucial to understand how scientific authority functions—and where it has run up against political and cultural barriers. Science under Fire reconstructs a century of battles over the cultural implications of science in the United States. Andrew Jewett reveals a persistent current of criticism which maintains that scientists have injected faulty social philosophies into the nation’s bloodstream under the cover of neutrality. This charge of corruption has taken many forms and appeared among critics with a wide range of social, political, and theological views, but common to all is the argument that an ideologically compromised science has produced an array of social ills. Jewett shows that this suspicion of science has been a major force in American politics and culture by tracking its development, varied expressions, and potent consequences since the 1920s. Looking at today’s battles over science, Jewett argues that citizens and leaders must steer a course between, on the one hand, the naïve image of science as a pristine, value-neutral form of knowledge, and, on the other, the assumption that scientists’ claims are merely ideologies masquerading as truths.

Children Under Fire
Children Under Fire

Author: John Woodrow Cox

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2021-03-30

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 006288395X

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Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction * Winner of the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice Based on the acclaimed series—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—an intimate account of the devastating effects of gun violence on our nation’s children, and a call to action for a new way forward In 2017, seven-year-old Ava in South Carolina wrote a letter to Tyshaun, an eight-year-old boy from Washington, DC. She asked him to be her pen pal; Ava thought they could help each other. The kids had a tragic connection—both were traumatized by gun violence. Ava’s best friend had been killed in a campus shooting at her elementary school, and Tyshaun’s father had been shot to death outside of the boy’s elementary school. Ava’s and Tyshaun’s stories are extraordinary, but not unique. In the past decade, 15,000 children have been killed from gunfire, though that number does not account for the kids who weren’t shot and aren’t considered victims but have nevertheless been irreparably harmed by gun violence. In Children Under Fire, John Woodrow Cox investigates the effectiveness of gun safety reforms as well as efforts to manage children’s trauma in the wake of neighborhood shootings and campus massacres, from Columbine to Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Through deep reporting, Cox addresses how we can effect change now, and help children like Ava and Tyshaun. He explores their stories and more, including a couple in South Carolina whose eleven-year-old son shot himself, a Republican politician fighting for gun safety laws, and the charlatans infiltrating the school safety business. In a moment when the country is desperate to better understand and address gun violence, Children Under Fire offers a way to do just that, weaving wrenching personal stories into a critical call for the United States to embrace practical reforms that would save thousands of young lives. *A Newsweek Favorite Book of 2021 *An NPR 2021 "Books We Love" selection *A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction *A Kirkus "2021's Best, Most Urgent Books of Current Affairs" selection

The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History
The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History

Author: Michael Kazin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-08-08

Total Pages: 657

ISBN-13: 1400839467

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An essential guide to U.S. politics, from the founding to today With 150 accessible articles written by more than 130 leading experts, this essential reference provides authoritative introductions to some of the most important and talked-about topics in American history and politics, from the founding to today. Abridged from the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, this is the only single-volume encyclopedia that provides comprehensive coverage of both the traditional topics of U.S. political history and the broader forces that shape American politics--including economics, religion, social movements, race, class, and gender. Fully indexed and cross-referenced, each entry provides crucial context, expert analysis, informed perspectives, and suggestions for further reading. Contributors include Dean Baker, Lewis Gould, Alex Keyssar, James Kloppenberg, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Lisa McGirr, Jack Rakove, Nick Salvatore, Stephen Skowronek, Jeremi Suri, Julian Zelizer, and many more. Entries cover: Key political periods, from the founding to today Political institutions, major parties, and founding documents The broader forces that shape U.S. politics, from economics, religion, and social movements to race, class, and gender Ideas, philosophies, and movements The political history and influence of geographic regions

Forgotten Americans
Forgotten Americans

Author: Isabel Sawhill

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2018-09-25

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0300241062

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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.

Insurgent Democracy
Insurgent Democracy

Author: Michael J. Lansing

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-11-08

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 022643477X

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In 1915, western farmers mounted one of the most significant challenges to party politics America has seen: the Nonpartisan League, which sought to empower citizens and restrain corporate influence. Before its collapse in the 1920s, the League counted over 250,000 paying members, spread to thirteen states and two Canadian provinces, controlled North Dakota’s state government, and birthed new farmer-labor alliances. Yet today it is all but forgotten, neglected even by scholars. Michael J. Lansing aims to change that. Insurgent Democracy offers a new look at the Nonpartisan League and a new way to understand its rise and fall in the United States and Canada. Lansing argues that, rather than a spasm of populist rage that inevitably burned itself out, the story of the League is in fact an instructive example of how popular movements can create lasting change. Depicting the League as a transnational response to economic inequity, Lansing not only resurrects its story of citizen activism, but also allows us to see its potential to inform contemporary movements.

Evangelicals and Democracy in America
Evangelicals and Democracy in America

Author: Steven G. Brint

Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation

Published: 2009-08-13

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1610445929

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Separation of church and state is a bedrock principal of American democracy, and so, too, is active citizen engagement. Since evangelicals comprise one of the largest and most vocal voting blocs in the United States, tensions and questions naturally arise. In the two-volume Evangelicals and Democracy in America, editors Steven Brint and Jean Reith Schroedel have assembled an authoritative collection of studies of the evangelical movement in America. Religion and Politics, the second volume of the set, focuses on the role of religious conservatives in party politics, the rhetoric evangelicals use to mobilize politically, and what the history of the evangelical movement reveals about where it may be going. Part I of Religion and Politics explores the role of evangelicals in electoral politics. Contributor Pippa Norris looks at evangelicals around the globe and finds that religiosity is a strong predictor of ideological leanings in industrialized countries. But the United States remains one of only a handful of post-industrial societies where religion plays a significant role in partisan politics. Other chapters look at voting trends, especially the growing number of higher-income evangelicals among Republican ranks, how voting is influenced both by "values" and race, and the management of the symbols and networks behind the electoral system of moral-values politics. Part II of the volume focuses on the mobilizing rhetoric of the Christian Right. Nathaniel Klemp and Stephen Macedo show how the rhetorical strategies of the Christian Right create powerful mobilizing narratives, but frequently fail to build broad enough coalitions to prevail in the pluralistic marketplace of ideas. Part III analyzes the cycles and evolution of the Christian Right. Kimberly Conger looks at the specific circumstances that have allowed evangelicals to become dominant in some Republican state party committees but not in others. D. Michael Lindsay examines the "elastic orthodoxy" that has allowed evangelicals to evolve into a formidable social and political force. The final chapter by Clyde Wilcox presents a new framework for understanding the relationship between the Christian Right and the GOP based on the ecological metaphor of co-evolution. With its companion volume on religion and society, this second volume of Evangelicals and Democracy in America offers the most complete examination yet of the social circumstances and political influence of the millions of Americans who are white evangelical Protestants. Understanding their history and prospects for the future is essential to forming a comprehensive picture of America today.

Democracy and its Elected Enemies
Democracy and its Elected Enemies

Author: Steven Rosefielde

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-10-07

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1107653258

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Democracy and its Elected Enemies reveals that American politicians have usurped their constitutional authority, substituting their economic and political sovereignty for the people's. This has been accomplished by creating an enormous public service sector operating in the material interest of politicians themselves and of their big business and big social advocacy confederates to the detriment of workers, the middle class and the non-political rich, jeopardizing the nation's security in the process. Steven Rosefielde and Daniel Quinn Mills contend that this usurpation is the source of America's economic decline and fading international power, and provide an action plan for restoring 'true' democracy in which politicians only provide the services people vote for within the civil and property rights protections set forth in the constitution.

The Ruling Class
The Ruling Class

Author: Angelo Codevilla

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780825305580

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In this profound and incisive work, Angelo M. Codevilla introduces readers to the Ruling Class, the group of bipartisan political elites who run America. This Ruling Class, educated at prestigious universities and convinced of its own superiority, has everything to gain by raising taxes and expanding the reach of government. This class maintains that it knows what is best and continually increases its power over every facet of American life, from family and marriage to the environment, guns, and God. It is becoming increasingly apparent that this Ruling Class does not represent the interests of the majority of Americans, who value self-rule and the freedom on whose promise America was founded. Millions of Americans are now reasserting our right to obey the Constitution, not the Ruling Class. This desire transcends all organizations and joins independents, Republicans, and Democrats into The Country Party, whose members embody the ideas and habits that made America great. The majority of Americans feel that the Ruling Class is demeaning us, impoverishing us, demoralizing us, and want to be rid of it.

Pursuing Johns
Pursuing Johns

Author: Thomas C. Mackey

Publisher: Ohio State University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0814209882

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In Pursuing Johns, Thomas C. Mackey studies the New York Committee of Fourteen and its members' attempts to influence vagrancy laws in early-20th-century New York City as a way to criminalize men's patronizing of female prostitutes. It sought out and prosecuted the city's immoral hotels, unlicensed bars, opium dens, disorderly houses, and prostitutes. It did so because of the threats to individual "character" such places presented. In the early 1920s, led by Frederick Whitin, the Committee thought that the time had arrived to prosecute the men who patronized prostitutes through what modern parlance calls a "john's law." After a notorious test case failed to convict a philandering millionaire for vagrancy, the only statutory crime available to punish men who patronized prostitutes, the Committee lobbied for a change in the state's criminal law. In the process, this representative of traditional 19th-century purity reform allied with the National Women's Party, the advanced feminists of the 1920s. Their proposed "Customer Amendment" united the moral Right and the feminist Left in an effort to alter and use the state's criminal law to make men moral, defend their character, and improve New York City's overall morality. Mackey's contribution to the literature is unique. Instead of looking at how vice commissions targeted female prostitutes or the commerce supporting and surrounding them, Mackey concentrates on how men were scrutinized. Book jacket.