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Crisis of the two constitutions : the rise, decline, and recovery of American greatness /

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Encounter Books, 2021Edition: First American editionDescription: 451 pagesContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781641771023
  • 164177102X
Subject(s): Additional physical formats: Online version:: Crisis of the two constitutionsDDC classification:
  • 342.7302/9 23
LOC classification:
  • KF4541 . K47 20201
Contents:
Education, Cultural Relativism, and the American Founding -- Natural Right in the American Revolution -- The Founders and the Classics -- Federalist 10 and American Republicanism -- The Promise of American Citizenship -- Civility and Citizenship -- Education and Politics -- A New Birth of Freedom -- The Crisis of American National Identity -- Democracy and the Bush Doctrine -- Woodrow Wilson and the Statesmanship of Progress -- Separation of Powers and the Administrative State -- The Reagan Revolution and the Legacy of the New Deal -- What's Wrong with Conservatism -- The Conservative Challenge -- The Old New Left and the New New Left -- Trump and the Conservative Cause.
Summary: "If Conservatism is to succeed and thrive, it must return to its American roots (not Burke or the common law, or Kirk and traditionalism, or libertarianism and Hayek) Donald Trump understands, in a common sense and political way, the principles of the Founding and how they should be applied to forge a new governing coalition. The neoconservative foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration has more in common with progressivism than with the American Founding. Politics is not "downstream from culture" because politics, especially political foundings, create the culture of a country. Multiculturalism and identity politics, and their notion of group rights, is incompatible with the nation state, citizenship, and the protection of rights as America's Founders those things"--
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Holdings
Item type Current library Home library Collection Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Standard Loan Rathdrum Library Adult Nonfiction Rathdrum Library Book 342.73/KESLER (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 50610022969872
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

American politics grows embittered because it is increasingly torn between two rival constitutions, two opposed cultures, two contrary ways of life. American conservatives rally around the founders' Constitution, as amended and as grounded in the natural and divine rights and duties of the Declaration of Independence. American liberals herald their "living Constitution," a term that implies that the original is dead or superseded, and that the fundamental political imperative is constant change or transformation (as President Obama called it) toward a more and more perfect social democracy ruled by a Woke elite.

Crisis of the Two Constitutions details how we got to and what is at stake in our increasingly divided America. It takes controversial stands on matters political and scholarly, describing the political genius of America's founders and their efforts to shape future generations through a constitutional culture that included immigration, citizenship, and educational policies. Then it turns to the attempted progressive refounding of America, tracing its accelerating radicalism from the New Deal to the 1960s' New Left to today's unhappy campus nihilists. Finally, the volume appraises American conservatives' efforts, so far unavailing despite many famous victories, to revive the founders' Constitution and moral common sense. From Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, what have conservatives learned and where should they go from here?

Along the way, Charles R. Kesler argues with critics on the left and right, and refutes fashionable doctrines including relativism, multiculturalism, critical race theory, and radical traditionalism, providing in effect a one-volume guide to the increasingly influential Claremont school of conservative thought by one of its most engaged, and engaging, thinkers.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Education, Cultural Relativism, and the American Founding -- Natural Right in the American Revolution -- The Founders and the Classics -- Federalist 10 and American Republicanism -- The Promise of American Citizenship -- Civility and Citizenship -- Education and Politics -- A New Birth of Freedom -- The Crisis of American National Identity -- Democracy and the Bush Doctrine -- Woodrow Wilson and the Statesmanship of Progress -- Separation of Powers and the Administrative State -- The Reagan Revolution and the Legacy of the New Deal -- What's Wrong with Conservatism -- The Conservative Challenge -- The Old New Left and the New New Left -- Trump and the Conservative Cause.

"If Conservatism is to succeed and thrive, it must return to its American roots (not Burke or the common law, or Kirk and traditionalism, or libertarianism and Hayek) Donald Trump understands, in a common sense and political way, the principles of the Founding and how they should be applied to forge a new governing coalition. The neoconservative foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration has more in common with progressivism than with the American Founding. Politics is not "downstream from culture" because politics, especially political foundings, create the culture of a country. Multiculturalism and identity politics, and their notion of group rights, is incompatible with the nation state, citizenship, and the protection of rights as America's Founders those things"--

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Introduction (p. ix)
  • Part I The Founders' Constitution
  • 1 The Founders and the Classics (p. 3)
  • 2 Relativism and the Declaration of Independence (p. 33)
  • 3 Federalist 10 and American Republicanism (p. 47)
  • 4 Civility and Citizenship: George Washington on Civil and Religious Liberty (p. 83)
  • 5 Perpetuating the Republic: Education and Politics (p. 101)
  • 6 A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln, Harry V. Jaffa, and the Founders (p. 119)
  • Part II The Progressives' Constitution
  • 7 Three Waves of Liberalism (p. 143)
  • 8 Woodrow Wilson and the Statesmanship of Progress (p. 169)
  • 9 Constitutional Decline and the Administrative State (p. 196)
  • 10 From Citizenship to Multiculturalism (p. 218)
  • 11 Barack Obama and the Future of Liberalism (p. 257)
  • 12 The Old New Left and the New New Left (p. 273)
  • Part III Conservatives and the Two Constitutions
  • 13 Reagan's Unfinished Revolution (p. 291)
  • 14 What's Wrong with Conservatism? (p. 318)
  • 15 Democracy and the Bush Doctrine (p. 341)
  • 16 Culture, Creed, and American Nationalism (p. 354)
  • 17 Trump and the Conservative Cause (p. 369)
  • 18 Thinking about Trump: Morality, Politics, and the Presidency (p. 383)
  • Acknowledgments (p. 401)
  • Notes (p. 405)
  • Index (p. 435)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Charles R. Kesler is editor of the Claremont Review of Books and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. He is the Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, the author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism , and the coeditor, with William F. Buckley, Jr., of Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought . His edition of The Federalist Papers is the best-selling one in the country. In 2017, Politico magazine named Kesler to its annual Politico 50 list of "the key thinkers, doers, and visionaries who are reshaping American politics and policy," and in 2018 the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation awarded him a Bradley Prize.

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