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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... desire always threatens to break free of restraints upon it and become tyrannical and ruthless . For that reason , it has been a central purpose of civilization to domesticate and moderate it . Greek culture , as represented by the ...
... desire for power rarely shows itself in its own tawdry voraciousness . Those who have it want not only to dominate others but feel good about doing it , even want to have the applause of oth- ers for assuming such high responsibility ...
... desire to punish the perpetrators of the attack on the United States and to head off further attacks also made them receptive to calls for a far - reaching battle against " evil " in general and terrorism in particular . This ...
... desire for empire . Joseph Schumpeter ( 1883- 1950 ) . the economist and social thinker , pointed to that era as " the classic example of that kind of insincerity in both foreign and do- mestic affairs which permeates not only avowed ...
... desire for power may lead Western society and mankind as a whole to catastrophe . The histori- ans of the future will be greatly interested in how Western statesmen and intellectuals handled this dangerous situation . They will be able ...
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 |