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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... dominate others for their benefit . Communism is a par- ticularly stark example of a plan to improve the human condition that placed unlimited power in the hands of a small elite . Simulta- neously , the same trends have liberated the ...
... dominate . According to a great many philosophers , desiring power over oth- ers is one of the permanent and most prominent features of human nature . This desire always threatens to break free of restraints upon it and become ...
... dominate others but feel good about doing it , even want to have the applause of oth- ers for assuming such high responsibility . They feel the need to dress up their striving in appealing garb . Hence the will to power almost always ...
... dominating the world . The humility characteristic of the older kind of American is becoming rare in leading political circles . All but gone as well is the old notion , set forth in a 1630 sermon by John Winthrop , governor of the ...
... dominate but a wish to serve peace and human well - being . In the history of ancient Rome the period from the Punic Wars to Augustus saw the rise of a similar , more and more blatant desire for empire . Joseph Schumpeter ( 1883- 1950 ) ...
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 |