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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... questions he raised caused me to clarify , qualify or reinforce some important points . Phillip Henderson , one of my colleagues at the Catholic University of America , who is a keen student of American politics and the presidency ...
... question of whether to reprint the book or publish a new edition had to be faced . When I finally concentrated on that question I quickly realized that the original text was a mere sketch , the bare essentials , of an analysis of a ...
... question has sharpened and extended an earlier American propensity to make the business of the world its own . Though this movement has some strength in Europe , it is far more deeply en- trenched in the United States . A personality ...
... questions involved will become more and more visible as the book moves towards its conclusion . It will be necessary to proceed with care to explain the full signifi- cance of the ideas and phenomena under examination . The mode of ...
... question not just the cost but the virtue . The push for American empire is portrayed by its proponents as a great moral cause . It is not driven by a will to dominate but a wish to serve peace and human well - being . In the history of ...
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 |