The cycles of American history

Sample

Michael Cromartie

The controversial "Religious New Right" formed a crucial part of the Reagan coalition and helped transform the political life of several regions. Though it failed to produce a viable presidential candidate in the 1980s, its power is still very much in evidence. The movement could rightly boast of many platform victories at the 1992 Republican party convention in Houston. In this provocative collection nine distinguished observers give their assessments of what the Religious New Right has achieved and what its potential is for the rest of this decade. Historian George Marsden of Notre Dame, sociologist Robert Wuthnow of Princeton, and political scientists Robert Booth Fowler of the University of Wisconsin and Corwin Smidt of Calvin College ponder its past and future from their varying perspectives. Five other scholars - James L. Guth, Carl F.H. Henry, James Davison Hunter, Grant Wacker, and George Weigel - offer challenging responses, and nine prominent activists and experts add insightful comments.

Sample

Robert S. Taylor

How can citizens best protect themselves from the arbitrary power of abusive spouses, tyrannical bosses, and corrupt politicians? 'Exit Left' makes the case that in each of these three spheres the answer is the same: exit. By promoting open and competitive markets and providing the information and financial resources necessary to enable exit, the book argues that this can empower people's voices and offer them an escape from abuse and exploitation. This will advance a conception of freedom, viz. freedom as non-domination (FND), which is central to contemporary republican thought. Neo-republicans have typically promoted FND through constitutional means (separation of powers, judicial review, the rule of law, and federalism) and participatory ones (democratic elections and oversight), but this book focuses on economic means, ones that have been neglected by contemporary republicans but were commonly invoked in the older, commercial-republican tradition of Alexander Hamilton, Immanuel Kant, and Adam Smith. Just as Philip Pettit and other neo-republicans have revived and revised classical republicanism, so this book will do the same for commercial republicanism. This revival will enlarge republican practice by encouraging greater use of market mechanisms, even as it hews closely to existing republican theory.

Sample

Arthur Hertzberg

"Internationally known historian and rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, challenges us to reexamine the case for the legitimacy of the state of Israel from a secular point of view. He argues that the religious blinders of absolute thinking and hatred have obscured our vision. In this time of great turmoil in the Mideast, when conflict represents a potential nuclear threat to the region and to the world, it is an argument that is more relevant and urgent than ever." "Charting a pragmatic middle path between the Israeli right wing and critics like Edward Said and Noam Chomsky, Hertzberg chronicles the conflict between the original secular vision of Israel and the illusions that came in the subsequent riptide of Israeli triumphalism and the myths of messianism. The deep need of the Israeli people for both power and security has created a paradox, one that can only be solved when the deeper question of legitimacy is addressed in a clear-eyed, secular fashion, away from the growing threat of clashing right wings and religious violence. Hertzberg calls us to go back to the future, to the original idea behind the founding of Israel - that a people persecuted, marginalized, and murdered under state sanction need a safe land, a place to be independent and free." "Between the growing religiously motivated blindness of the right wing (Arab, Jewish, and American Christian), and the one-sided blindness of the Western liberal intelligentsia, it has become difficult to see the future. Hertzberg calls on the United States to use its power and influence to help recover the original Zionist intent and settle the questions of legitimacy and coexistence for both Israelis and Palestinians."--Jacket.

Sample

John D. Caputo

John D. Caputo has a long career as one of the preeminent postmodern philosophers in America. The author of such books as Radical Hermeneutics, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, and The Weakness of God, Caputo now reflects on his spiritual journey from a Catholic altar boy in 1950s Philadelphia to a philosopher after the death of God. Part spiritual autobiography, part homily on what he calls the "nihilism of grace," Hoping Against Hope calls believers and nonbelievers alike to participate in the "praxis of the kingdom of God," which Caputo says we must pursue "without why." Caputo's conversation partners in this volume include Lyotard, Derrida, and Hegel, but also earlier versions of himself: Jackie, a young altar boy, and Brother Paul, a novice in a religious order. Caputo traces his own journey from faith through skepticism to hope, after the "death of God." In the end, Caputo doesn't want to do away with religion; he wants to redeem religion and to reinvent religion for a postmodern time.