Benjamin C. Waterhouse
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691149165
- eISBN:
- 9781400848171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691149165.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
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 ...
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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
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.
Richard M. Fried
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195043617
- eISBN:
- 9780199853724
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195043617.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
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 ...
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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
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.
Erica R. Edwards
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816675456
- eISBN:
- 9781452947488
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816675456.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
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 ...
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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
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.
Lawrence Davidson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813125244
- eISBN:
- 9780813135021
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813125244.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
Elected officials, and especially presidential candidates, are increasingly asked to define their relationships to special interest groups. Such special, or private, interests play a disproportionate ...
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Elected officials, and especially presidential candidates, are increasingly asked to define their relationships to special interest groups. Such special, or private, interests play a disproportionate role in politics and legislation, whether in the form of large commercial or ethnic lobbies or in the shadowy realm of backroom dealmaking. This book argues that widespread public disinterest in global affairs, a prevailing characteristic of American political culture, has given private interest groups a paramount influence over the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy. These well-organized, well-funded groups affect all levels of government, disguising their own interests as vital national interests. The book draws from numerous historical examples, dating from America's founding to the present, to examine the causes and the serious consequences of Americans' apathy toward foreign policy. This unique historical analysis of our increasingly privatized system of government offers compelling evidence that the United States is a democracy not of individuals, but of competing and powerful private groups.Less
Elected officials, and especially presidential candidates, are increasingly asked to define their relationships to special interest groups. Such special, or private, interests play a disproportionate role in politics and legislation, whether in the form of large commercial or ethnic lobbies or in the shadowy realm of backroom dealmaking. This book argues that widespread public disinterest in global affairs, a prevailing characteristic of American political culture, has given private interest groups a paramount influence over the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy. These well-organized, well-funded groups affect all levels of government, disguising their own interests as vital national interests. The book draws from numerous historical examples, dating from America's founding to the present, to examine the causes and the serious consequences of Americans' apathy toward foreign policy. This unique historical analysis of our increasingly privatized system of government offers compelling evidence that the United States is a democracy not of individuals, but of competing and powerful private groups.
Christopher B. Chapp
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451263
- eISBN:
- 9780801465680
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451263.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
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 ...
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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
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.
Eran Shalev
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300186925
- eISBN:
- 9780300188417
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300186925.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
The Bible has always been an integral part of American political culture. Yet in the years before the Civil War, it was the Old Testament, not the New Testament, that pervaded political rhetoric. ...
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The Bible has always been an integral part of American political culture. Yet in the years before the Civil War, it was the Old Testament, not the New Testament, that pervaded political rhetoric. From Revolutionary times through about 1830, numerous American politicians, commentators, ministers, and laymen depicted their young nation as a new, God-chosen Israel and relied on the Old Testament for political guidance. This book closely examines how this powerful predilection for Old Testament narratives and rhetoric in early America shaped a wide range of debates and cultural discussions—from republican ideology, constitutional interpretation, southern slavery, and, more generally, the meaning of American nationalism to speculations on the origins of American Indians and to the emergence of Mormonism. The author argues that the effort to shape the United States as a biblical nation reflected conflicting attitudes within the culture—proudly boastful on the one hand but uncertain about its abilities and ultimate destiny on the other. This book explores the meaning and lasting effects of the idea of the United States as a new Israel, and sheds new light on our understanding of the nation's origins and culture during the founding and antebellum decades.Less
The Bible has always been an integral part of American political culture. Yet in the years before the Civil War, it was the Old Testament, not the New Testament, that pervaded political rhetoric. From Revolutionary times through about 1830, numerous American politicians, commentators, ministers, and laymen depicted their young nation as a new, God-chosen Israel and relied on the Old Testament for political guidance. This book closely examines how this powerful predilection for Old Testament narratives and rhetoric in early America shaped a wide range of debates and cultural discussions—from republican ideology, constitutional interpretation, southern slavery, and, more generally, the meaning of American nationalism to speculations on the origins of American Indians and to the emergence of Mormonism. The author argues that the effort to shape the United States as a biblical nation reflected conflicting attitudes within the culture—proudly boastful on the one hand but uncertain about its abilities and ultimate destiny on the other. This book explores the meaning and lasting effects of the idea of the United States as a new Israel, and sheds new light on our understanding of the nation's origins and culture during the founding and antebellum decades.
Christopher B. Chapp
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451263
- eISBN:
- 9780801465680
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451263.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
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 ...
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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
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.
Mark A. Noll
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451829
- eISBN:
- 9780801471056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451829.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
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 ...
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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
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.
George Klosko
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199973415
- eISBN:
- 9780190676346
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199973415.003.0010
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, American Politics
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 ...
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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
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.
Alondra Nelson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816676484
- eISBN:
- 9781452948164
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816676484.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. The Black Panthers are most often remembered for their ...
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Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. The Black Panthers are most often remembered for their revolutionary rhetoric and militant action. This book recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization’s broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party’s health activism—its network of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination—was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms. Drawing on extensive historical research as well as interviews with former members of the Black Panther Party, the book argues that the Party’s focus on health care was both practical and ideological. Building on a long tradition of medical self-sufficiency among African Americans, the Panthers’ People’s Free Medical Clinics administered basic preventive care, tested for lead poisoning and hypertension, and helped with housing, employment, and social services. In 1971, the party launched a campaign to address sickle-cell anemia. In addition to establishing screening programs and educational outreach efforts, it exposed the racial biases of the medical system that had largely ignored sickle-cell anemia, a disease that predominantly affected people of African descent.Less
Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. The Black Panthers are most often remembered for their revolutionary rhetoric and militant action. This book recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization’s broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party’s health activism—its network of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination—was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms. Drawing on extensive historical research as well as interviews with former members of the Black Panther Party, the book argues that the Party’s focus on health care was both practical and ideological. Building on a long tradition of medical self-sufficiency among African Americans, the Panthers’ People’s Free Medical Clinics administered basic preventive care, tested for lead poisoning and hypertension, and helped with housing, employment, and social services. In 1971, the party launched a campaign to address sickle-cell anemia. In addition to establishing screening programs and educational outreach efforts, it exposed the racial biases of the medical system that had largely ignored sickle-cell anemia, a disease that predominantly affected people of African descent.
Daniel LaChance
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226066691
- eISBN:
- 9780226066721
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226066721.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In the latter half of the twentieth century, Americans imagined the death penalty in ways that reflected and reinforced broader shifts in the nation's cultural and political landscape. As the core ...
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In the latter half of the twentieth century, Americans imagined the death penalty in ways that reflected and reinforced broader shifts in the nation's cultural and political landscape. As the core constituency of an insurgent New Right, white, middle class Americans became increasingly disenchanted with the welfare state and embraced more libertarian understandings of freedom, one in which the state refused to engage in social engineering and instead returned to its first duty: to maintain order. The death penalty was symptomatic of a state that was returning to fundamentals. The left, however, was also implicated in this new political culture. Civil libertarians grew increasingly critical of a rehabilitation-centered criminal justice system.They looked askance at the discretion it vested in those state actors charged with rehabilitating offenders, arguing that they exercised power over inmates in a biased, tyrannical, and personality-altering way. In this ideological context, retributive approaches to punishment, including the death penalty, gained renewed respectability. To its supporters and even, at times, its detractors, capital punishment was imagined as a form of punishment that would showcase the power of individuals to exert control over their world. These claims are illustrated through in-depth analyses of how the state that killed and those it executed were represented in the legal, political, and fictional imagination. While a rhetoric of freedom initially endowed capital punishment with regenerative properties, its implementation gradually became mired in the very legalism and bureaucracy it was supposed to transcend.Less
In the latter half of the twentieth century, Americans imagined the death penalty in ways that reflected and reinforced broader shifts in the nation's cultural and political landscape. As the core constituency of an insurgent New Right, white, middle class Americans became increasingly disenchanted with the welfare state and embraced more libertarian understandings of freedom, one in which the state refused to engage in social engineering and instead returned to its first duty: to maintain order. The death penalty was symptomatic of a state that was returning to fundamentals. The left, however, was also implicated in this new political culture. Civil libertarians grew increasingly critical of a rehabilitation-centered criminal justice system.They looked askance at the discretion it vested in those state actors charged with rehabilitating offenders, arguing that they exercised power over inmates in a biased, tyrannical, and personality-altering way. In this ideological context, retributive approaches to punishment, including the death penalty, gained renewed respectability. To its supporters and even, at times, its detractors, capital punishment was imagined as a form of punishment that would showcase the power of individuals to exert control over their world. These claims are illustrated through in-depth analyses of how the state that killed and those it executed were represented in the legal, political, and fictional imagination. While a rhetoric of freedom initially endowed capital punishment with regenerative properties, its implementation gradually became mired in the very legalism and bureaucracy it was supposed to transcend.
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780719087509
- eISBN:
- 9781781704882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719087509.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, European Union
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 ...
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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
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.
Fiona Deans Halloran
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835876
- eISBN:
- 9781469600239
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807837351_halloran
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Thomas Nast (1840–1902), the founding father of American political cartooning, is perhaps best known for his cartoons portraying political parties as the Democratic donkey and the Republican ...
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Thomas Nast (1840–1902), the founding father of American political cartooning, is perhaps best known for his cartoons portraying political parties as the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant. Nast's legacy also includes a trove of other political cartoons, his successful attack on the machine politics of Tammany Hall in 1871, and his wildly popular illustrations of Santa Claus for Harper's Weekly magazine. Throughout his career, his drawings provided a pointed critique that forced readers to confront the contradictions around them. This biography focuses not just on Nast's political cartoons for Harper's but also on his place within the complexities of Gilded Age politics and highlights the many contradictions in his own life: he was an immigrant who attacked immigrant communities, a supporter of civil rights who portrayed black men as foolish children in need of guidance, and an enemy of corruption and hypocrisy who idolized Ulysses S. Grant. He was a man with powerful friends, including Mark Twain, and powerful enemies, including William M. “Boss” Tweed. The author interprets Nast's work, explores his motivations and ideals, and illuminates Nast's lasting legacy on American political culture.Less
Thomas Nast (1840–1902), the founding father of American political cartooning, is perhaps best known for his cartoons portraying political parties as the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant. Nast's legacy also includes a trove of other political cartoons, his successful attack on the machine politics of Tammany Hall in 1871, and his wildly popular illustrations of Santa Claus for Harper's Weekly magazine. Throughout his career, his drawings provided a pointed critique that forced readers to confront the contradictions around them. This biography focuses not just on Nast's political cartoons for Harper's but also on his place within the complexities of Gilded Age politics and highlights the many contradictions in his own life: he was an immigrant who attacked immigrant communities, a supporter of civil rights who portrayed black men as foolish children in need of guidance, and an enemy of corruption and hypocrisy who idolized Ulysses S. Grant. He was a man with powerful friends, including Mark Twain, and powerful enemies, including William M. “Boss” Tweed. The author interprets Nast's work, explores his motivations and ideals, and illuminates Nast's lasting legacy on American political culture.
JOHN W. QUIST
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813044262
- eISBN:
- 9780813046242
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813044262.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
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 ...
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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
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.
Louis Michael Seidman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199898275
- eISBN:
- 9780190260125
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199898275.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
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, ...
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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
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.
Elizabeth R. Varon
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807832325
- eISBN:
- 9781469606200
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807887189_varon.15
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
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 ...
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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
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.
Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199765331
- eISBN:
- 9780190259952
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199765331.003.0005
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
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 ...
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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
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.
