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Global news is generally bad news. On the surface, the story is about war, poverty, ethnic and sectarian strife. Democracy movements advanced by the U.S. government seem to be stalled or even reversed. Yet just below the surface, more hopeful trends are brewing. A new global awareness of the people at "the bottom of the pyramid" is summoning forth an unprecedented response to human need and suffering. It involves a shift from vertical to horizontal power that official aid agencies are only beginning to comprehend. Whereas twenty-five years ago, government aid accounted for 70 percent of all American outflows, today 85 percent of all outflows of resources come from private individuals, busine...
Noted scholar and activist Don Eberly details the history, achievements, and goals of the civil society movement. He demonstrates why civil society is crucial to the preservation of democratic values and institutions, and he explains why the concern over America's moral decay must be our major priority. Our society, argues Eberly, cannot thrive, and perhaps cannot survive, without strong social institutions, a vibrant moral order, and an active, intellectual grass roots dimension.
The crisis of western civilization is a crisis of public philosophy. This is the charge of Public Philosophy and Political Science, a stunning new collection of essays edited by E. Robert Statham Jr. Vividly cataloging the decay of the moral and intellectual foundations of civic liberty, the book portrays a generation of Americans alienated from institutions built on public philosophy. The work exposes the failure of America's political scientists to acknowledge and understand this alarming crisis in the American body politic. The distinguished contributors examine the evolution of public philosophy; the inextricable relationship between politics and philosophy; and the interplay between pub...
In The Civil Society Reader Don Eberly presents the classic writings of the leading scholars and organizers who have brought the civil society debate to the forefront of American politics.
Decades after our contemporary international system witnessed the end of the Second World War, the events that followed in its aftermath has fashioned an international system characterized by global conflict in the guise of the Cold War. Although wars were part of the struggle between the two rival super powers - the US and USSR - their main theatre was the Third World and hostilities during the Cold War era were global. It is against this backdrop that Governance, Conflict Analysis and Conflict Resolution addresses conflict in the Caribbean and elsewhere, exploring the linkages between conflict and development. The book is divided into eight sections and offers diverse views on conflict, co...
Americans care about the public value of moral habits. They like to see virtue rewarded and vice censured, appealing as this does to the nation's deep sense that one's success rests neither in money nor in power but in one's civility. In The Soul of Civil Society Don Eberly and Ryan Streeter look beyond such abstractions as the 'voluntary sector' and superficial communitarian solutions to civic anomie to identify the pivotal role played by local voluntary associations in a civil society. Not only important for the services they provide, these 'little platoons, ' as Edmund Burke labeled them, are the public incubators of a 'new' morality, their emphasis on civic engagement at the local level central to preserving America's democratic culture on the national and international stage. More than simply championing the promise of a social renaissance, The Soul of Civil Society is essential reading for those seeking to do battle with a culturally entrenched individualism that threatens the core of America's moral vitality.
Once upon a time, civic virtue described an ethic of political involvement for all citizens. As American democracy evolved, however, the public and private spheres separated. The latter became domesticated and disengaged from public life by an ideology based on gender and a "disinterested love" of neighbor. Private passion was to be isolated from public reason, private love from public justice. But it need not be so. Drawing on examples of ordinary heroes, Ann Mongoven argues for a transformed civic virtue that articulates "just love": passionate care for fellow citizens as such. By connecting theory to practice, Mongoven dramatizes the challenges raised through tangible political examples and lets ordinary heroes suggest the path toward civic renewal.
Abortion. Poverty. Pornography. More than thirty years ago evangelical conservatives, moderates, and liberals alike began tackling these and other major social problems head on through concerted political effort. The intervening decades witnessed the rise of groups such as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, which supported numerous politicians and religiously driven policies. Why is it, then, that despite the seemingly great potential of these and other similar groups, the same pervading social problems still persist? How is it that evangelicals have been so ineffective at changing the political and social landscape of the United States in a positive way? Based on a conference o...