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When we talk about patriotism in America, we tend to mean one form: the version captured in shared celebrations like the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance. But as Ben Railton argues, that celebratory patriotism is just one of four distinct forms: celebratory, the communal expression of an idealized America; mythic, the creation of national myths that exclude certain communities; active, acts of service and sacrifice for the nation; and critical, arguments for how the nation has fallen short of its ideals that seek to move us toward that more perfect union. In Of Thee I Sing, Railton defines those four forms of American patriotism, using the four verses of “America the Beautiful...
Through a potent mix of authoritarianism, heterosexism, xenophobia, and ethnoracial nationalism, powerful illiberal Christian movements have upended liberal democracies in countries that were once seen as paradigms of secular governance. Ludger H. Viefhues-Bailey offers new insight into the foundations of these movements, demonstrating how they emerge from the contradictions at the intersection of secularism and democracy. No Separation examines recent conflicts that link national identity, religion, and sexuality: debates over Muslim veiling practices in Germany, same-sex marriage in France, and migration and abortion in the United States. In each case, illiberal Christianities portray popu...
The injustice of genocide denial is commonly understood as a violation of the dignity of victims, survivors, and their descendants, and further described as an assault on truth and memory. This book rethinks the normative relationship between dignity, truth, and memory in relation to genocide denial by adopting the framework of epistemic injustice. This framework performs two functions. First, it introduces constructive normative vocabulary into genocide scholarship through which we can gain a better understanding of the normative impacts of genocide denial when it is institutionalized and systematic. Second, it develops and enriches current scholarship on epistemic injustice with a further,...
Power grabs, partisan stand-offs, propaganda, and riots make for tantalizing fiction, but what do we do when that drama becomes a reality all around us? For a country founded as an escape from British tyranny, the United States seems to have devolved into a land where tyrants rise to power, sycophants blindly follow, and the entire nation suffers. As ancient Greek philosophers warned us, chaotic tragedy unfolds in the absence of reason, and the only cure is a return to wisdom and virtue. America’s founding fathers knew this lesson all too well and dreamed of an enlightened citizenry guided by better-than-ideological dictators. Using contemporary events to illuminate universal human weaknesses, Andrew Fiala charts the perennial history of tyrannical takeovers and the masses who support them and ultimately suffer under their rule. Ultimately, Fiala also points to a solution. Knowing the cyclical nature of tyranny, we can build safeguards against our worst inclinations and keep alive the freedoms our founding fathers envisioned for this nation.
This book aims to recover from ancient and modern thinkers valuable arguments about statesmanship, leadership, and tyranny which illuminate reassessments of political science and practice after the election of Donald Trump. Like almost everyone else, contemporary political scientists were blind-sided by the rise of Trump. No one expected a candidate to win who repeatedly violated both political norms and the conventional wisdom about campaign best practices. Yet many of the puzzles that Trump’s rise presents have been examined by the great political philosophers of the past. For example, it would come as no surprise to Plato that by its very emphasis on popularity, democracy creates the po...
It is an excellent book – highly intelligent, interesting and original. Expressing high philosophy in a readable form without trivialising it is a very difficult task and McAleer manages the task admirably. Plato is, yet again, intensely topical in the chaotic and confused world in which we are now living. Philip Allott, Professor Emeritus of International Public Law at Cambridge University This book is a lucid and accessible companion to Plato’s Republic, throwing light upon the text’s arguments and main themes, placing them in the wider context of the text’s structure. In its illumination of the philosophical ideas underpinning the work, it provides readers with an understanding an...
This book seeks to address the relation of political philosophy and Donald Trump as a political phenomenon through the notions of patriotism, cosmopolitanism, and civic virtue. Political philosophers have been prescient in explaining trends that may explain our political misgivings. Madison warned during the debates on the Constitution that democracies are vulnerable to factions based on passion for personalities and beliefs; various continental thinkers have addressed the problem of nihilism—the modern loss of faith in objective standards of truth and morality—that in Max Weber’s analysis pointed to the importance of charisma, in Carl Schmitt’s to the idea that politics is essential...
缺少秩序的根基,有可能結出民主和自由的甜美果實嗎? 重申基督教立國精神、堅守有限政府、用常識治國── 關於川普主義與美國秩序的深層思考和深入反思! 明明嚮往美國的民主自由,卻未追本溯源? 如何思索清教徒開啟的秩序,以及憲政民主體制的發展? 台灣在內的華語知識界如何深入理解美國秩序?是面對,還是逃避? 川普無疑是備受爭議的政治人物,對他的評價也分化為兩個對立的極端。在2020年美國總統大選經歷開票結果的跌宕起伏、舞弊指控等一連串事件之後,由民主黨贏得過半選舉人團票數,入主白宮。...
Shakespeare in the Present: Political Lessons under Biden is the first case study in applying the lessons of Shakespeare’s plays to post-Trump America. It looks at American politics through the lens of Shakespeare, not simply equating figures in the contemporary world to Shakespearean characters, but showing how the broader conditions of Shakespeare’s imagined worlds reflect and inform our own. Clearly written, in a direct and engaging style, it shows that reading Shakespeare with our contemporary Washington in mind can enrich our understanding of both his works and our world. Shakespeare wrote for his own time, but we always read him in our present. As such, the way we read him now is always affected by our own understanding of our own political world. This book provides quick critical analyses of Shakespeare’s plays and contemporary American politics while serving as an introduction for undergraduates and general readers to this kind of topical, presentist criticism of Shakespeare.
This book examines key twentieth-century philosophers, theologians, and social scientists who began their careers with commitments to the political left only later to reappraise or reject them. Their reevaluation of their own previous positions reveals not only the change in their own thought but also the societal changes in the culture, economics, and politics to which they were reacting. By exploring the evolution of the political thought of these philosophers, this book draws connections among these thinkers and schools and discovers the general trajectory of twentieth-century political thinking in the West.