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“Bitter Days”: The Heyday of Anti-Communism

Richard M. Fried

in Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective

Even independent of McCarthy, the years 1950–1954 marked the climax of anti-communism in American life. The Korean stalemate generated both a bruising debate over containment and sourness in national ... More

Even independent of McCarthy, the years 1950–1954 marked the climax of anti-communism in American life. The Korean stalemate generated both a bruising debate over containment and sourness in national politics. Korea's sapping effect and a series of minor scandals heightened the Democratic Party's anemia. In addition, the 1950 congressional campaign, revealing McCarthyism's apparent sway over the voters and encouraging the GOP's right wing, signaled that anti-communism occupied the core of American political culture. Senate resistance to McCarthy was scattered and weak. In the House, HUAC did much as it pleased. Truman upheld civil liberties with occasional eloquence, but he remained on the defensive. Rampant anti-communism narrowed the range of selection open to associations, utterances, and ideas. People were constrained by both external pressures and the inner checks with which they reactively restricted their own affairs.Less

Uncertain Victory: Big Business and the Politics of Regulatory Reform

Benjamin C. Waterhouse

in Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA

This chapter explores how the debate over the Chrysler bailout within the business community highlighted persistent tensions over what “free market” solutions really should look like, as well as ... More

This chapter explores how the debate over the Chrysler bailout within the business community highlighted persistent tensions over what “free market” solutions really should look like, as well as business's ongoing policy struggle with the liberal regulatory state. By the end of the 1970s, industrial lobbyists led by major employers' associations had notched a number of significant political victories and established themselves as powerful players in national policymaking. Organized business groups played key roles in stopping the forward tide of liberal reform legislation and spreading a market-oriented, antiregulatory vision throughout American political culture. For many lobbyists and executives, however, such achievements represented only a starting point toward loftier goals: the severe rollback of environmental, consumer, and workplace regulations and the comprehensive overhaul of the regulatory apparatus.Less

Restaging the Charismatic Scenario: Fictions of African American Leadership

Erica R. Edwards

in Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership

This chapter situates the twentieth-century cultural complex of black charismatic leadership within the making of post-Reconstruction black political culture. In African American political culture ... More

This chapter situates the twentieth-century cultural complex of black charismatic leadership within the making of post-Reconstruction black political culture. In African American political culture since the Reconstruction, charismatic leadership can be described as a fraught discursive compact—a narrative and performative regime—that has had to contend repeatedly with the contestations of performing artists, writers, social critics, and activists. Charisma, as a political fiction or ideal, forms assumptions about authority and identity that structures how political mobilization is conceived and enacted. This fiction is staged in real time and in media playback: its narrative thread is woven into the fabric of what might be called the charismatic scenario, which has throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries taken form in ways as diverse as the United Negro Improvement Association parades, the Million Man and Millions More marches, and the various scenes that make up the historical imaginary of the civil rights and Black Power movements.Less

Religious Rhetoric in American Political History

Christopher B. Chapp

in Religious Rhetoric and American Politics: The Endurance of Civil Religion in Electoral Campaigns

This chapter begins by tackling emotion and identity from a historical point of view, evaluating the use of religious rhetoric in American politics from early Puritan political communities through ... More

This chapter begins by tackling emotion and identity from a historical point of view, evaluating the use of religious rhetoric in American politics from early Puritan political communities through the twentieth century. By examining the evolution of religious rhetoric, the chapter provides insight into how religious rhetoric is constitutive of American political culture and how it is used politically across contexts. The main argument here is that emotion and identity are central elements in religious rhetoric throughout American history; identity and emotion provide considerable insight into American political culture and political preference formation. Religious rhetoric, thus, is not attached to any one political issue or ideological outlook; rather, it is a flexible genre that has been appropriated to fit numerous political causes.Less

The Rhetorical Construction of Religious Constituencies

Christopher B. Chapp

in Religious Rhetoric and American Politics: The Endurance of Civil Religion in Electoral Campaigns

This chapter concludes that religious rhetoric is a force mainly responsible for shaping the contours of American political culture. Religious rhetoric is also electorally consequential and ... More

This chapter concludes that religious rhetoric is a force mainly responsible for shaping the contours of American political culture. Religious rhetoric is also electorally consequential and culturally significant, with important implications for the interpretation of American political representation. Even though its use has changed over time, religious rhetoric has been remarkably consistent in its ability to stir up the emotions of the mass public and to create a sense of shared spiritualized identity. The chapter explores the interconnections among religious persuasion, representation, and culture. It is important to theorize the nature of religious constituencies to fully understand the politics of religious appeals. Ultimately, separation of church and state may just be a misnomer in American electoral politics, since religious rhetoric is responsible for actively creating religious constituencies that can drive election results.Less

Reflections on the Bible and American Political Life

Mark A. Noll

in Faithful Narratives: Historians, Religion, and the Challenge of Objectivity

This chapter looks at the establishment of a powerful common discourse based on biblical language and motifs, both Jewish and Christian, that reinforced American public and political culture. It ... More

This chapter looks at the establishment of a powerful common discourse based on biblical language and motifs, both Jewish and Christian, that reinforced American public and political culture. It argues a point about modern American life: that the Bible can be used either “for the common good” or as a weapon that heightens conflict across the socio-political spectrum. The rich yet complex history of the Bible in America has revealed a potent force working to heal as well as to destroy. This account of Scripture in American life underscores several theoretical issues—most pointedly, the degree to which religious texts, beliefs, and practices are so naturally embedded in the fabric of history that they have become invisible or indecipherable to many contemporaries, whether they are scholars, students, or the general public.Less

Conclusion

George Klosko

in The Transformation of American Liberalism

Recap of the main argument of the book and implications. Criticism of equality of opportunity as a basis for welfare programs, in comparison to “moderate liberalism.” Other possible justifications ... More

Recap of the main argument of the book and implications. Criticism of equality of opportunity as a basis for welfare programs, in comparison to “moderate liberalism.” Other possible justifications for welfare programs, including values of equality and independence. The absence of strong arguments for welfare programs in American political culture.Less

Reflections

Matthew Frye Jacobson

in The Historian's Eye: Photography, History, and the American Present

Two images and essays capture the author’s reflections on the Obama legacy and on the significance of hatred in American political culture.

Towards a ‘tolerable state of order’

in The evolving role of nation-building in US foreign policy: Lessons learned, lessons lost

Explores the political culture argument and illustrates it through a description of how political culture shaped threat perceptions and such national security analyses and statements as the Project ... More

Explores the political culture argument and illustrates it through a description of how political culture shaped threat perceptions and such national security analyses and statements as the Project Solarium position papers NSC-68 in the formative years of the Cold War. The chapter also explores the process by which the US came to view the entire world as its ‘national security zone’, in which virtually every event was of importance to US national security.Less

Epilogue The Rubicon Is Passed the War and Beyond

Elizabeth R. Varon

in Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859

This book argues that from the very founding of the United States, the “question of Union or Disunion” was inseparable from the issue of slavery's destiny. The central premise of American political ... More

This book argues that from the very founding of the United States, the “question of Union or Disunion” was inseparable from the issue of slavery's destiny. The central premise of American political culture, in the North and South alike, was that the republic was fragile—beset by external and internal enemies, and in perpetual danger of moral decline. Americans proved endlessly creative in tapping deep anxieties about the republic's survival as a rhetorical weapon in their political combat. By the time immediatists took the stage, Americans with rival political agendas had already, for nearly half a century, honed the art of casting their opponents as traitors bent on destroying the Union.Less

A Conversation with William W. Freehling and Michael F. Holt, September 19, 2008

JOHN W. QUIST

in James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War

At the 2008 Buchanan symposium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Michael F. Holt and William W. Freehling discussed sectionalism, the coming of the Civil War, historical contingency, shifts in the ... More

At the 2008 Buchanan symposium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Michael F. Holt and William W. Freehling discussed sectionalism, the coming of the Civil War, historical contingency, shifts in the historical profession, and their own views of antebellum American political culture. This chapter provides an edited transcript of Holt and Freehling’s lively conversation about the political crisis of the 1850s. Both historians view Buchanan as a strong-willed president whose missteps exacerbated sectionalism. They also argue that Lincoln should have offered the South explicit reassurances regarding slavery during the seventeen weeks that separated the 1860 election from his March 4, 1861, inauguration. Freehling and Holt also discussed James Buchanan’s politics and statecraft as well as broader issues concerning the Civil War era and responded to audience questions.Less

Conclusion: The Way Forward

Louis Michael Seidman

in On Constitutional Disobedience

With all of the arguments presented regarding constitutional obedience, it can be said that a major cultural change is needed in order to disregard or even change the Constitution. At present, ... More

With all of the arguments presented regarding constitutional obedience, it can be said that a major cultural change is needed in order to disregard or even change the Constitution. At present, support for constitutional disobedience is weak as constitutionalism is deeply lodged in American political culture. But with this admiration comes also deep skepticism produced by the partisan nature of constitutional argument. It is argued that the fight against constitutional obligation rests on the desire of Americans for self-determination.Less

Constraints on the Executive

Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule

in The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic

This chapter discusses domestic political constraints on the executive. It argues that the system of elections, the party system, and American political culture constrain the executive far more than ... More

This chapter discusses domestic political constraints on the executive. It argues that the system of elections, the party system, and American political culture constrain the executive far more than do legal rules created by Congress or the courts. Chief among the political constraints are the credibility constraint, which gives the executive incentives to use various self-binding mechanisms to generate credibility across lines of party, ideology, and interest; and the popularity constraint, which gives the executive incentives to satisfy the preferences of some sufficient fraction of the public. Two crises, the security crisis of 2001 and the economic crisis of 2008, show that the Bush administration's behavior can be explained by reference to its public standing, rather than the law.Less