Ideology in America

Ideology in America
Author: Christopher Ellis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2012-04-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107394430

Public opinion in the United States contains a paradox. The American public is symbolically conservative: it cherishes the symbols of conservatism and is more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal. Yet at the same time, it is operationally liberal, wanting government to do and spend more to solve a variety of social problems. This book focuses on understanding this contradiction. It argues that both facets of public opinion are real and lasting, not artifacts of the survey context or isolated to particular points in time. By exploring the ideological attitudes of the American public as a whole, and the seemingly conflicted choices of individual citizens, it explains the foundations of this paradox. The keys to understanding this large-scale contradiction, and to thinking about its consequences, are found in Americans' attitudes with respect to religion and culture and in the frames in which elite actors describe policy issues.

The New American Ideology

The New American Ideology
Author: George C. Lodge
Publisher: New York : Knopf
Total Pages: 384
Release: 1975
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780394492278

In George Lodge's classic account, now appearing for the first time in paperback, the author argues that America is in the midst of a great transformation, comparable to the one which ended the medieval era in the West. The old ideas--individualism, property rights, competition, the limited state, and scientific specialization--have become increasingly irrelevant in a world of necessariliy huge organizations and limited resources. The United States today has become a considerably less self-assured nation, lacking a sense of direction and control, profoundly uncertain about authority and legitimacy.

A Citizen's Guide to American Ideology

A Citizen's Guide to American Ideology
Author: Morgan Marietta
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2012-03-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1136593659

Conservatives and Liberals often resort to cartoon images of the opposing ideology, relying on broadly defined caricatures to illustrate their opposition. To help us get past these stereotypes, this short, punchy book explains the two dominant political ideologies in America today, providing a thorough and fair analysis of each as well as insight into their respective branches. To help us understand the differences between the two contrasting ideologies, Morgan Marietta employs an innovative metaphor of a tree—growth from ideological roots to a core value, expanding into a problem that creates the competing branches of the ideology. This approach suggests a clear way to explain and compare the two ideologies in an effort to enhance democratic debate. A Citizen’s Guide to American Political Ideologies is a brief, non-technical and conversational overview of one of the most important means of understanding political rhetoric and policy debates in America today.

The Ideological Origins of American Federalism

The Ideological Origins of American Federalism
Author: Alison L. LaCroix
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2011-10-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674062035

Federalism is regarded as one of the signal American contributions to modern politics. Its origins are typically traced to the drafting of the Constitution, but the story began decades before the delegates met in Philadelphia. In this groundbreaking book, Alison LaCroix traces the history of American federal thought from its colonial beginnings in scattered provincial responses to British assertions of authority, to its emergence in the late eighteenth century as a normative theory of multilayered government. The core of this new federal ideology was a belief that multiple independent levels of government could legitimately exist within a single polity, and that such an arrangement was not a defect but a virtue. This belief became a foundational principle and aspiration of the American political enterprise. LaCroix thus challenges the traditional account of republican ideology as the single dominant framework for eighteenth-century American political thought. Understanding the emerging federal ideology returns constitutional thought to the central place that it occupied for the founders. Federalism was not a necessary adaptation to make an already designed system work; it was the system. Connecting the colonial, revolutionary, founding, and early national periods in one story reveals the fundamental reconfigurations of legal and political power that accompanied the formation of the United States. The emergence of American federalism should be understood as a critical ideological development of the period, and this book is essential reading for everyone interested in the American story.

Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations

Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations
Author: Christopher McKnight Nichols
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 725
Release: 2022-08-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0231554273

Winner, 2023 Joseph Fletcher Prize for Best Edited Book in Historical International Relations, History Section, International Studies Association Ideology drives American foreign policy in ways seen and unseen. Racialized notions of subjecthood and civilization underlay the political revolution of eighteenth-century white colonizers; neoconservatism, neoliberalism, and unilateralism propelled the post–Cold War United States to unleash catastrophe in the Middle East. Ideologies order and explain the world, project the illusion of controllable outcomes, and often explain success and failure. How does the history of U.S. foreign relations appear differently when viewed through the lens of ideology? This book explores the ideological landscape of international relations from the colonial era to the present. Contributors examine ideologies developed to justify—or resist—white settler colonialism and free-trade imperialism, and they discuss the role of nationalism in immigration policy. The book reveals new insights on the role of ideas at the intersection of U.S. foreign and domestic policy and politics. It shows how the ideals coded as “civilization,” “freedom,” and “democracy” legitimized U.S. military interventions and enabled foreign leaders to turn American power to their benefit. The book traces the ideological struggle over competing visions of democracy and of American democracy’s place in the world and in history. It highlights sources beyond the realm of traditional diplomatic history, including nonstate actors and historically marginalized voices. Featuring the foremost specialists as well as rising stars, this book offers a foundational statement on the intellectual history of U.S. foreign policy.

Thomas Paine's American Ideology

Thomas Paine's American Ideology
Author: Alfred Owen Aldridge
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1984
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780874132601

Covering Paine's intellectual career between 1775 and 1787, Aldridge summarizes his work as an apprentice magazine editor, sketches the publishing history of Common Sense and its doctrines, and shows the relations of these ideas to those in the works of Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Seeking to create a just and ordered society through reason and choice instead of through passive submission to accident and force, he developed such themes as the inherent nature of man, the meaning of virtue, and the identity of American character. This book reveals that as part of the polemics over Common Sense, Paine wrote a pamphlet, Four Letters on Interesting Subjects, which discredits the notion of reconciliation with Britain, the provincial perspective of placing Pennsylvania above the Union, the charter of the British Constitution. Aldridge also investigates The Crisis and Paine's Letter to the Abbe Raynal. ISBN 0-87413-260-6 : $38.50.

Modernization as Ideology

Modernization as Ideology
Author: Michael E. Latham
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2003-06-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807860794

Providing new insight on the intellectual and cultural dimensions of the Cold War, Michael Latham reveals how social science theory helped shape American foreign policy during the Kennedy administration. He shows how, in the midst of America's protracted struggle to contain communism in the developing world, the concept of global modernization moved beyond its beginnings in academia to become a motivating ideology behind policy decisions. After tracing the rise of modernization theory in American social science, Latham analyzes the way its core assumptions influenced the Kennedy administration's Alliance for Progress with Latin America, the creation of the Peace Corps, and the strategic hamlet program in Vietnam. But as he demonstrates, modernizers went beyond insisting on the relevance of America's experience to the dilemmas faced by impoverished countries. Seeking to accelerate the movement of foreign societies toward a liberal, democratic, and capitalist modernity, Kennedy and his advisers also reiterated a much deeper sense of their own nation's vital strengths and essential benevolence. At the height of the Cold War, Latham argues, modernization recast older ideologies of Manifest Destiny and imperialism.

The American Ideology

The American Ideology
Author: Brian Vanyo
Publisher: Liberty Publishing Company
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2012-08-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780983193302

James Madison once wrote, "A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." To those who seek to reclaim their command over American government today, "The American Ideology" serves as a powerful weapon to advance that cause. "The American Ideology" provides an objective investigation into the political philosophy that facilitated self-government in the United States. The book examines the origin of the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence. It demonstrates how the Constitution was designed to preserve those ideals. And it identifies the fundamental values that must accompany freedom in any republic in order to sustain it. Based on the writings and speeches of the Founding Fathers, the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville, and the critical works of John Locke, Charles de Montesquieu, and William Blackstone, "The American Ideology" serves as an authoritative study on the foundation of American liberty. "The American Ideology" also sheds light on the means by which the federal government has since subverted American liberty. It identifies the points in American history when the government has departed from its founding principles. It explains how the federal government's commerce and taxing powers under the Constitution have been stretched so far that any kind of individual activity can now be taxed and regulated. And thanks to the Supreme Court's recent ruling on the legality of "Obamacare," the federal government now has free reign to coerce individual behavior--it can tax and regulate inactivity. When this regulatory state is compared against the Founding Fathers' original design, it is clear that the federal government's authority today is overbearing, unnatural, and unconstitutional. As Brian Vanyo writes in "The American Ideology," there is a way for change to prevail--for the people to recover their sovereignty and restore their natural rights. Using the political philosophy that inspired the American Revolution, there is a way for the people to win their independence once again. But they must first arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America

Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America
Author: Hans Noel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2014-01-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107434807

Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America puts ideology front and center in the discussion of party coalition change. Treating ideology as neither a nuisance nor a given, the analysis describes the development of the modern liberal and conservative ideologies that form the basis of our modern political parties. Hans Noel shows that liberalism and conservatism emerged as important forces independent of existing political parties. These ideologies then reshaped parties in their own image. Modern polarization can thus be explained as the natural outcome of living in a period, perhaps the first in our history, in which two dominant ideologies have captured the two dominant political parties.