American Ideas of Equality

American Ideas of Equality
Author: Carl L Bankston
Publisher:
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2021-02-26
Genre:
ISBN: 9781621966944

Equality is a fundamental American value. The nation's Declaration of Independence declared equality as a self-evident foundation for political life and the pursuit of equality has continued to dominate policy debates in the twenty-first century. However, equality is a complex idea and it has had different meanings in different eras. Using a variety of data sources, this book describes how the views we hold regarding this fundamental national value developed as products of our cultural history from the origins of the American republic to 2020. It traces how cultural transmission, political and economic structures, and communication technology have shaped this core American value. The book begins with the early days of the American republic and follows ideological changes through the era of the self-made man, the rise of corporate society, the New Deal, the post-World War II era, and the era of Civil Rights. It ends with a detailed discussion of how this history has resulted in some of the most divisive political and social controversies of the twenty-first century. Most studies of equality have taken this as having a single, clear meaning. Most often, this has been either how much equality of opportunity exists now or has existed in the past, or how much equality of condition exists now or has existed in the past. They rarely consider that people can be equal or unequal in different ways, and that what we mean when we talk about equality or engage in debates about it has been shaped by historical experience. This book is a work of historical sociology that examines the forces that have shaped and re-shaped this fundamental cultural value. The book leads readers through an exploration of how different stages of American history have led to thinking about equality in terms of independence from hierarchy, the opportunity for self-creation, access to services and resources, widespread upward mobility, and equality across social categories. It takes a unique multidisciplinary approach, combining intellectual and cultural history with political, economic, and sociological analysis. No other book offers this kind of analysis of the both the historical origins and contemporary consequences of a cultural concept at the core of American national life. American Ideas of Equality will be a valuable resource for academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in American studies; cultural, economic, and political history; political science; and sociology.

John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic

John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic
Author: Jeffry H. Morrison
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2003-01-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0268087229

Jeffry H. Morrison offers readers the first comprehensive look at the political thought and career of John Witherspoon—a Scottish Presbyterian minister and one of America’s most influential and overlooked founding fathers. Witherspoon was an active member of the Continental Congress and was the only clergyman both to sign the Declaration of Independence and to ratify the federal Constitution. During his tenure as president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, Witherspoon became a mentor to James Madison and influenced many leaders and thinkers of the founding period. He was uniquely positioned at the crossroads of politics, religion, and education during the crucial first decades of the new republic. Morrison locates Witherspoon in the context of early American political thought and charts the various influences on his thinking. This impressive work of scholarship offers a broad treatment of Witherspoon’s constitutionalism, including his contributions to the mediating institutions of religion and education, and to political institutions from the colonial through the early federal periods. This book will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in American political history and thought and in the relation of religion to American politics.

Love Your Enemies

Love Your Enemies
Author: Arthur C. Brooks
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2019-03-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0062883771

NATIONAL BESTSELLER To get ahead today, you have to be a jerk, right? Divisive politicians. Screaming heads on television. Angry campus activists. Twitter trolls. Today in America, there is an “outrage industrial complex” that prospers by setting American against American, creating a “culture of contempt”—the habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect, but as worthless and defective. Maybe, like more than nine out of ten Americans, you dislike it. But hey, either you play along, or you’ll be left behind, right? Wrong. In Love Your Enemies, social scientist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller From Strength to Strength Arthur C. Brooks shows that abuse and outrage are not the right formula for lasting success. Brooks blends cutting-edge behavioral research, ancient wisdom, and a decade of experience leading one of America’s top policy think tanks in a work that offers a better way to lead based on bridging divides and mending relationships. Brooks’ prescriptions are unconventional. To bring America together, we shouldn’t try to agree more. There is no need for mushy moderation, because disagreement is the secret to excellence. Civility and tolerance shouldn’t be our goals, because they are hopelessly low standards. And our feelings toward our foes are irrelevant; what matters is how we choose to act. Love Your Enemies offers a clear strategy for victory for a new generation of leaders. It is a rallying cry for people hoping for a new era of American progress. Most of all, it is a roadmap to arrive at the happiness that comes when we choose to love one another, despite our differences.

Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment

Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment
Author: Mark G. Spencer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 1257
Release: 2015-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826479693

The first reference work on one of the key subjects in American history, filling an important gap in the literature, with over 500 original essays.

Presbyterians and American Culture

Presbyterians and American Culture
Author: Bradley J. Longfield
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 066423156X

This book provides a history of Presbyterians in American culture from the early eighteenth to the late twentieth century. Longfield assesses both the theological and cultural development of American Presbyterianism, with particular focus on the mainline tradition that is expressed most prominently in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He explores how Presbyterian churches--and individuals rooted in those churches--influenced and were influenced by the values, attitudes, perspectives, beliefs, and ideals assumed by Americans in the course of American history. The book will serve as an important introduction to Presbyterian history that will interest historians, students, and church leaders alike.

Culture, Power And History

Culture, Power And History
Author: Stephen J. Pfohl
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004146598

This volume brings together theoretical meditations and empirical studies of the intersection of culture, power and history in social life. Contributors bring a diversity of critical sociological perspectives and subject matters to this important edited book.

Atlantic Crossings

Atlantic Crossings
Author: Daniel T. RODGERS
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 671
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674042824

This text is an account of the vibrant international network that the American soci-political reformers constructed - so often obscured by notions of American exceptionalism - and of its profound impact on the USA from the 1870's through to 1945.

The Evils of Necessity

The Evils of Necessity
Author: Eric Robert Papenfuse
Publisher: American Philosophical Society
Total Pages: 192
Release: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780871698711

Robert Goodloe Harper (1765-1825), a prominent attorney congressman from South Carolina & Maryland, was one of the most influential Federalists of the early national period. Harper is traditionally remembered as an extreme example of unthinking, reactionary conservatism in an era of intense partisanship & bitter sectional conflict. In this lively, revisionist account, Eric Robert Papenfuse reinterprets Harper's political philosophy in light of his personal struggle with the moral dilemma of slavery. Papenfuse uses newly discovered documents to show how Harper rose to power among back country South Carolinians as both an advocate of innate racial equality & a proponent of the gradual end to slavery's westward expansion. Though deeply troubled by slavery's irremediable moral & political evils, Harper accepted the system as a temporary necessity, & turned his efforts to achieving social progress through the education of lower-class white Americans & the "emancipation" of European peasants from Napoleonic tyranny. The establishment of the American Colonization Society in 1816 renewed Harper's commitment to resolving the problem of slavery by educating blacks & transporting them to an environment free from white racial prejudice, where they might one day become a "great nation." By conveniently reproducing & indexing four of Harper's most important speeches & letters, Papenfuse invites readers to examine for themselves a fundamental paradox of the age: how an abiding conviction that all races were inherently equal could allow for such forced rationalizations, painful self-deceptions, & maddening compromises.