{"title":"Anthea Butler. White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. 176. $24.00 (cloth).","authors":"J. M. Patterson","doi":"10.1086/717951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/717951","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41928,"journal":{"name":"American Political Thought","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44811768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Steven B. Smith. Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021. Pp. 256. $28.00 (cloth).","authors":"Randal R. Hendrickson","doi":"10.1086/717950","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/717950","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41928,"journal":{"name":"American Political Thought","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42478567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyzes the thought of American political writer David Foster Wallace. It argues that Wallace’s primary concern as a political writer was the disappearance of authority in contemporary American life, a condition that should be neither celebrated with postmodern irony nor lamented with reactionary conservatism. Instead, Wallace sought a middle way through the seemingly intractable political and cultural conflict of the late twentieth century. Analyzing four of Wallace’s essays—“E Unibus Pluram,” “Up Simba!,” “Authority and American Usage,” and “Host”—that range in topic from political talk radio to the history of American lexicography, this article focuses on three themes: the consequences of visual spectacle for linguistic communication, the place of doubt and certainty in civic life, and the meaning of democratic authority. The article concludes with an assessment of Wallace’s relevance for the twenty-first century.
{"title":"David Foster Wallace and the Audience of Democratic Authority","authors":"Joel M. Winkelman","doi":"10.1086/717927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/717927","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the thought of American political writer David Foster Wallace. It argues that Wallace’s primary concern as a political writer was the disappearance of authority in contemporary American life, a condition that should be neither celebrated with postmodern irony nor lamented with reactionary conservatism. Instead, Wallace sought a middle way through the seemingly intractable political and cultural conflict of the late twentieth century. Analyzing four of Wallace’s essays—“E Unibus Pluram,” “Up Simba!,” “Authority and American Usage,” and “Host”—that range in topic from political talk radio to the history of American lexicography, this article focuses on three themes: the consequences of visual spectacle for linguistic communication, the place of doubt and certainty in civic life, and the meaning of democratic authority. The article concludes with an assessment of Wallace’s relevance for the twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":41928,"journal":{"name":"American Political Thought","volume":"11 1","pages":"96 - 115"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43761524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Brian P. Simpson. A Declaration and Constitution for a Free Society: Making the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution Fully Consistent with the Protection of Individual Rights. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2021. Pp. xiii + 307. $120.00 (cloth).","authors":"S. Gerber","doi":"10.1086/716681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716681","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41928,"journal":{"name":"American Political Thought","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41362760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
What are the political consequences of negative political theory concepts such as demagoguery? What happens when they are deployed in a way that brands an innocent victim with a reputation he or she does not deserve? This article contends that Daniel Shays was just such a victim. Despite playing only a peripheral role in the erroneously named “Shays’s Rebellion” of 1786–87, Shays himself was singled out by elites looking for ways to deflect blame away from themselves and their oligarchic Massachusetts regime. Subsequently labeling the movement “Shays’s Rebellion,” these elites cemented the narrative that Shays had led protest movements in western Massachusetts. Shays thus entered American political vernacular as the paradigmatic demagogue—and “Shays’s Rebellion” became the example of demagogue-led state failure—through the successful weaponization of a political idea. More broadly, the Shays case functions as a window into the relationship between ideas and political development in American politics.
{"title":"Creating a Demagogue: The Political Origins of Daniel Shays’s Erroneous Legacy in American Political History","authors":"Charles U. Zug","doi":"10.1086/716687","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716687","url":null,"abstract":"What are the political consequences of negative political theory concepts such as demagoguery? What happens when they are deployed in a way that brands an innocent victim with a reputation he or she does not deserve? This article contends that Daniel Shays was just such a victim. Despite playing only a peripheral role in the erroneously named “Shays’s Rebellion” of 1786–87, Shays himself was singled out by elites looking for ways to deflect blame away from themselves and their oligarchic Massachusetts regime. Subsequently labeling the movement “Shays’s Rebellion,” these elites cemented the narrative that Shays had led protest movements in western Massachusetts. Shays thus entered American political vernacular as the paradigmatic demagogue—and “Shays’s Rebellion” became the example of demagogue-led state failure—through the successful weaponization of a political idea. More broadly, the Shays case functions as a window into the relationship between ideas and political development in American politics.","PeriodicalId":41928,"journal":{"name":"American Political Thought","volume":"10 1","pages":"601 - 628"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42920385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
William Graham Sumner is popularly thought of as the Progressive Era’s strongest champion of the unencumbered individual, following Richard Hofstadter’s identification of Sumner as “one of America’s preeminent and influential social Darwinists.” Sumner scholars have increasingly pushed back against this characterization, pointing to the roles of cooperation and the “law of sympathy” within Sumner’s writings. However, the revision of Sumner has remained focused on the texts that Hofstadter identified as Sumner’s “political” writings. This article argues that such a focus would have confused Sumner, who saw the study of politics as intimately tied to the study of history. Reconstructing Sumner’s political thought by contextualizing his “political” writings in his understanding of historical development and his extended historical accounts, the article argues that Sumner understood civil liberty not as an abstract concept but as an empirical fact that emerged from the interplay of historical forces.
继理查德·霍夫施塔特（Richard Hofstadter）将萨姆纳认定为“美国杰出且有影响力的社会达尔文主义者之一”之后，威廉·格雷厄姆·萨姆纳（William Graham Sumner）被普遍认为是进步时代最有力的无障碍个人拥护者，指出了合作的作用和萨姆纳作品中的“同情法则”。然而，对萨姆纳的修订仍然集中在霍夫施塔特认定为萨姆纳“政治”著作的文本上。这篇文章认为，这样的关注会让萨姆纳感到困惑，他认为政治研究与历史研究密切相关。本文通过将萨姆纳的“政治”著作置于其对历史发展的理解和扩展的历史叙述的语境中，重建了萨姆纳的政治思想，认为萨姆纳将公民自由理解为一个经验事实，而不是一个抽象的概念。
{"title":"“An Affair of History, Law, and Institutions”: William Graham Sumner’s Historical Method and the Responsibility of the Individual","authors":"Simon Gilhooley","doi":"10.1086/716686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716686","url":null,"abstract":"William Graham Sumner is popularly thought of as the Progressive Era’s strongest champion of the unencumbered individual, following Richard Hofstadter’s identification of Sumner as “one of America’s preeminent and influential social Darwinists.” Sumner scholars have increasingly pushed back against this characterization, pointing to the roles of cooperation and the “law of sympathy” within Sumner’s writings. However, the revision of Sumner has remained focused on the texts that Hofstadter identified as Sumner’s “political” writings. This article argues that such a focus would have confused Sumner, who saw the study of politics as intimately tied to the study of history. Reconstructing Sumner’s political thought by contextualizing his “political” writings in his understanding of historical development and his extended historical accounts, the article argues that Sumner understood civil liberty not as an abstract concept but as an empirical fact that emerged from the interplay of historical forces.","PeriodicalId":41928,"journal":{"name":"American Political Thought","volume":"10 1","pages":"577 - 600"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42202942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021), Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch called for the reversal of Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the Supreme Court’s leading Free Exercise Clause precedent. For years, Smith has been targeted by originalists who contend that, among other things, Smith is incompatible with a Madisonian understanding of religious freedom. This article challenges that conclusion. It attempts to do so not by employing the typical tools of originalist legal scholarship, but rather by setting forth Madison’s political science of religious liberty. The article argues the logic of Federalist 10 is incompatible with exemptions from generally applicable laws and, therefore, that a Madisonian construction of the Free Exercise Clause would not support a constitutional right to religious exemptions. Insofar as Federalist 10 articulates the Constitution’s underlying structural design, Free Exercise Clause exemptions undermine one of the principal mechanisms that Madison believed would protect liberty, including religious liberty.
{"title":"James Madison’s Political Science of Religious Liberty","authors":"V. P. Muñoz","doi":"10.1086/716633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716633","url":null,"abstract":"In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021), Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch called for the reversal of Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the Supreme Court’s leading Free Exercise Clause precedent. For years, Smith has been targeted by originalists who contend that, among other things, Smith is incompatible with a Madisonian understanding of religious freedom. This article challenges that conclusion. It attempts to do so not by employing the typical tools of originalist legal scholarship, but rather by setting forth Madison’s political science of religious liberty. The article argues the logic of Federalist 10 is incompatible with exemptions from generally applicable laws and, therefore, that a Madisonian construction of the Free Exercise Clause would not support a constitutional right to religious exemptions. Insofar as Federalist 10 articulates the Constitution’s underlying structural design, Free Exercise Clause exemptions undermine one of the principal mechanisms that Madison believed would protect liberty, including religious liberty.","PeriodicalId":41928,"journal":{"name":"American Political Thought","volume":"10 1","pages":"552 - 576"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43368872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein. The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality. New York: Viking, 2019. Pp. 543. $35.00 (cloth).","authors":"Jeremy Bailey","doi":"10.1086/716685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716685","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41928,"journal":{"name":"American Political Thought","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49213026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This is a reconstruction of John H. Schaar’s first introductory lecture for his course on American political thought taught often at University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Santa Cruz. Schaar argues that America had two foundings: the communitarian experiment of the New England Puritans and that of the American Revolution and Constitution of 1789, which were rooted in liberal political theory. While the first founding has been forgotten, even reviled, the second founding led to corruption, violence, individualism, and privatism. Schaar calls for the restoration of participatory community while recognizing the formidable obstacles to accomplishing that.
这是John H. Schaar在加州大学伯克利分校和加州大学圣克鲁斯分校开设的美国政治思想课程的第一次介绍讲座的重建。沙尔认为，美国有两个基础:新英格兰清教徒的社群主义实验，以及根植于自由政治理论的美国独立战争和1789年宪法。虽然第一次建国已经被遗忘，甚至遭到谩骂，但第二次建国导致了腐败、暴力、个人主义和私人主义。沙尔呼吁恢复参与性社区，同时认识到实现这一目标的巨大障碍。
{"title":"“Two Foundings”: An Unpublished Lecture by John H. Schaar","authors":"Joshua I. Miller","doi":"10.1086/716680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716680","url":null,"abstract":"This is a reconstruction of John H. Schaar’s first introductory lecture for his course on American political thought taught often at University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Santa Cruz. Schaar argues that America had two foundings: the communitarian experiment of the New England Puritans and that of the American Revolution and Constitution of 1789, which were rooted in liberal political theory. While the first founding has been forgotten, even reviled, the second founding led to corruption, violence, individualism, and privatism. Schaar calls for the restoration of participatory community while recognizing the formidable obstacles to accomplishing that.","PeriodicalId":41928,"journal":{"name":"American Political Thought","volume":"10 1","pages":"629 - 652"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44068807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Robert Elder. Calhoun: American Heretic. New York: Basic, 2021. Pp. 640. $35.00 (cloth).","authors":"J. H. Read","doi":"10.1086/716690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716690","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41928,"journal":{"name":"American Political Thought","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47703248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：