America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for EmpireTransaction Publishers, 01.01.2003 - 221 Seiten Urged on by a powerful ideological and political movement, George W. Bush committed the United States to a quest for empire. American values and principles were universal, he asserted, and should guide the transformation of the world. Claes Ryn sees this drive for virtuous empire as the triumph of forces that in the last several decades acquired decisive influence in both the American parties, the foreign policy establishment, and the media. Public intellectuals like William Bennett, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Michael Novak, Richard Perle, and Norman Podhoretz argued that the United States was an exceptional nation and should bring â democracy,â â freedom,â and â capitalismâ to countries not yet enjoying them. Ryn finds the ideology of American empire strongly reminiscent of the French Jacobinism of the eighteenth century. He describes the drive for armed world hegemony as part of a larger ideological whole that both expresses and aggravates a crisis of democracy and, more generally, of American and Western civilization. America the Virtuous sees the new Jacobinism as symptomatic of America shedding an older sense of the need for restraints on power. Checks provided by the U.S. Constitution have been greatly weakened with the erosion of traditional moral and other culture. |
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... cultural , and political decline , including an erosion of constitutionalism . The ideology is about far more than America's role in the world : it en- compasses a view of human nature and society and sets forth its own notion of virtue ...
... cultural , social , and political environment in which it has acquired great influence . I wanted to explain more fully how this expanding ideological and political move- ment both feeds upon and contributes to the troubles of Western ...
... cultural developments within West- ern society in the last couple of centuries . It also owes greatly to the specific and very diligent efforts of individuals bent on the creation of an American empire . Since the United States was ...
... cultural trends within Western civili- zation produced and gave prominence to the idea that societies ought to be radically remade and that those who know what needs to be done should dominate others for their benefit . Communism is a ...
... culturally influential nation of the West- ern world , the signs are now everywhere that the will to dominate is breaking free of such traditional restraints . This is clear , for instance , from politicians who ignore or neutralize ...
Inhalt
The Crisis of Western Civilization and the Rise of Jacobinism | 15 |
The New Jacobinism | 25 |
Creative Traditionalism or Radicalism? | 43 |
Democracy Plebiscitary or Constitutional? | 49 |
Contrasting Forms of Morality and Society | 55 |
Aristocratic and AntiAristocratic Democracy | 59 |
The Father of Democratism | 71 |
Love of Ones Own and Love of the Common | 77 |
Democracy in Peril | 97 |
The New Jacobins and American Democracy | 111 |
Democracy for the World | 123 |
Jacobin Capitalism | 145 |
Equality | 155 |
A Center that Cannot Hold | 165 |
Responsible Nationhood | 177 |
Needed A New Moral Realism | 189 |
Moral Universality A Philosophical Interlude | 83 |
Pluralistic Political Morality | 89 |
Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen
America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire Claes G. Ryn Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2017 |
America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire Claes G. Ryn Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2017 |
America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire Claes G. Ryn Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2011 |