Updated for Obama's last year in office, the liberal syndicated radio and television host Bill Press reflects on how the Obama administration has failed and disillusioned the American left. The bestselling liberal syndicated radio and television host Bill Press turns a critical eye on Barack Obama and assesses why his performance as president on issues liberals care deeply about has failed the American left. Press argues efficiently that Obama may have drawn the wrong lessons from the enthusiastic crowds that swarmed around him on the campaign trail in 2008--instead of seeing the potential and desire for a stronger progressivism, Obama tried to rise above and unite the parties. The tragedy of the Obama presidency is that, by trying to be the first "post-partisan" president, he ended up being one of the weakest. On issues as far ranging as gun safety to health care to foreign policy, Obama has let voters down by simply not doing enough or taking the wrong actions. As Press describes it, liberals began the Obama presidency with high hopes, and they now near its end with deep disappointment and a sense of buyer's remorse.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to significant U.S. health policy controversies, including Democratic and Republican responses to the coronavirus pandemic. It explores partisan divisions, major challenges, and policy preferences of key Democratic and Republican stakeholders. This volume provides readers with a broad overview of a variety of issues in contemporary health policy that span health care reform, health insurance, pharmaceuticals, public health, health care for underserved populations, and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The book explores the politics of each issue, drawing upon historical evidence, legislative research, public opinion polls, and the views of key decision makers from both Democratic and Republican perspectives. This coverage provides readers with a clear sense of how policymakers from each party think about the issues involved. This resource devotes special attention to the COVID-19 public health crisis, providing authoritative coverage of the actions, rhetoric, and policy choices of President Trump and his administration, governors across the nation, and leaders of Congress from both parties. This chapter, like all others in the book, is written so that it is accessible to readers from a variety of audience levels, including students and general readers. Identifies key milestones and policy decisions that shape contemporary debates over each issue Uses a nonpartisan, unbiased, and impartial lens to help readers understand not only where parties stand on contested health policy issues, but how these disagreements reflect larger ideological and partisan views Brings both a historical perspective and a detailed view of policymaking-and the role of political institutions-to each topic addressed Informs readers about the ethical, historical, and legal context of each issue Provides a chronology of events in U.S. health care policy Includes further readings of important and illuminating sources at the end of each chapter

This important book presents a compelling case that traditional received theory (Paretian-utilitarian) has followed a dangerous path one not espoused by Adam Smith and Nobel Laureate James Buchanan. The latter viewed value and preferences as mutable (not 'given') and believed that rights systems must underlie moral law and impartial justice. Men must be 'taken as they are' in this system. Adoption of the Smith-Buchanan paradigm, Professor Roth brilliantly argues, leads to the kind of moral and political philosophy that informs the science of statutes and legislators that underpins our Founding Fathers' republican self-government project.' - Bob Ekelund, Professor and Eminent Scholar in Economics (Emeritus), Auburn University, USEconomists and the State shows how modern economists have strayed far from Adam Smith's procedurally based, consequence-detached political economy. Timothy P. Roth argues that this wrong turn has left economists ill-equipped to address an expanding federal enterprise and new threats to our self-governing republic. He subsequently sets out to offer ways to redress this. Making the case for a return to the moral and political philosophy that informed Adam Smith's 'science of the statesman or legislator,' this book argues that economists must reject their relentlessly utilitarian, teleological theory of the state and embrace Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan's constitutional political economy project. The author outlines the specific requirements of a non-teleological conception of the state - a conception that is vital to the continuing development of a theory of the state informed by a prior ethical commitment to the moral equivalence of persons. This book will appeal to scholars and students of political economy, political thought, public choice economics and Austrian economics as well as to practitioners and policy-makers interested in how economics should support those serving the public. Contents: Preface 1. The Smithian Inheritance 2. Institutions Matter 3. What Economists Do 4. The Founders' Republican Self-government Project Derailed 5. What Has Been Wrought 6. What Went Wrong 7. What Should Economists Do? References Index

Latin America underwent remarkable change in the 1980s as country after country cast off authoritarian regimes and instituted democratic policies and practices. Since then, the Left has weakened, and many of the groups commonly labeled the Right--including traditional groups linked with the Church, the military, and the economically privileged, as well as new groups of neo-liberal intellectuals and businessmen--have moved to a new form of active electoral politics. The future of democracy in the region will depend heavily on how these groups act. This book of up-to-date studies by a group of research scholars from Latin America and the United States examine the factors essential to an understanding of the Right's goals, organizations, and commitment to democracy. The book is divided into four distinctive sections, the first of which deals with the general characteristics of the Right. The following three sections explore in-depth the political strategies and organizations of the Right in elections and governing coalitions, the conservative trends that are changing the Church, and the fate of neo-liberal ideas among businessmen traditionally dependent on the State. Several chapters are devoted to the distinctive dynamics in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru.

Taken together, the essays in this book document the profound changes of the Right. But it also shows that the impact of the Right on democracy--whether it will improve it or weaken it--is not yet clear. The Right is increasingly involved in democratic institutions, but political parties are still weak and authoritarian temptations still strong. In this time of economic crises, business organizations have remained fragile. Conservative social policies have created terrifying social problems. Offering a unique analysis of the contemporary Right, this work is an essential tool in understanding the fate of democracy in post-Cold War Latin America.

In this outstanding volume, Mimi Gladstein details Rand's belief in the moral supremacy of individualism over collectivism, highlighting her contribution to libertarian thought. The novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand was one of the most influential 20th century advocates of free market capitalism. Her work inspired Objectivism, a philosophical movement and former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan cited Rand as a formative intellectual influence. In this outstanding volume, Mimi Gladstein details Rand's belief in the moral supremacy of individualism over collectivism, highlighting her contribution to libertarian thought. "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers" provides comprehensive accounts of the works of seminal conservative thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions - the first series of its kind. Even the selection of thinkers adds another aspect to conservative thinking, including not only theorists but also thinkers in literary forms and those who are also practitioners. The series comprises twenty volumes, each including an intellectual biography, historical context, critical exposition of the thinker's work, reception and influence, contemporary relevance, bibliography including references to electronic resources and an index.

A new understanding of the slow drift to extremes in American politics that shows how the anti-abortion movement remade the Republican Party "A timely and expert guide to one of today's most hot-button political issues."-Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A sober, knowledgeable scholarly analysis of a timely issue."-Kirkus Reviews "[Ziegler's] argument [is] that, over the course of decades, the anti-abortion movement laid the groundwork for an insurgent candidate like Trump."-Jennifer Szalai, New York Times The modern Republican Party is the party of conservative Christianity and big business-two things so closely identified with the contemporary GOP that we hardly notice the strangeness of the pairing. Legal historian Mary Ziegler traces how the anti-abortion movement helped to forge and later upend this alliance. Beginning with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Buckley v. Valeo, right-to-lifers fought to gain power in the GOP by changing how campaign spending-and the First Amendment-work. The anti-abortion movement helped to revolutionize the rules of money in U.S. politics and persuaded conservative voters to fixate on the federal courts. Ultimately, the campaign finance landscape that abortion foes created fueled the GOP's embrace of populism and the rise of Donald Trump. Ziegler offers a surprising new view of the slow drift to extremes in American politics-and explains how it had everything to do with the strange intersection of right-to-life politics and campaign spending.

This title is an important addition to the "MCLT" series. This volume includes an intellectual biography, historical context, critical exposition of Alexis de Tocqueville's work, reception and influence, contemporary relevance, bibliography including references to electronic resources and an index. "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers" provides comprehensive accounts of the works of seminal conservative thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions - the first series of its kind. Even the selection of thinkers adds another aspect to conservative thinking, including not only theorists but also thinkers in literary forms and those who are also practitioners. The series is comprised of twenty volumes.

* Takes a unique perspective by examining political ideology and behaviour via evolutionary psychology and genetics to explain conservative and liberal differences * Fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology, the social sciences, and humanities, as well as general readers interested in political behavior * Explores the potential future of political behavior and participation in relation to possible consequences of evolution and genetics

As a result of national political and judicial actions, the political landscape of the South has experienced a partisan realignment from the Democratic to the Republican party. At the same time, the South has continued to have a tremendous impact on the national agenda through continued dominance of the national political scene through its new allegiance to the Republican party and has been instrumental in the rise of the Republican party nationally.

However, as Rhodes makes clear in this analysis, the realignment has not been uniform among the states of the region, nor has it led to the demise of the Democratic party. Although the Republican realignment appears to continue to trickle down to the local and state legislative levels, the Democratic party remains competitive across the South in most arenas. Rhodes suggests that the increasing wealth and suburbanization of the South strengthens the Republican presence and the party has maximized its growth in the South to a level of competitiveness at most electoral levels. Nonetheless, issues that have characterized politics in the South in the past--race, gender, class, and religion--continue to permeate the new politics of the South. An important analysis for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with Southern and party politics.

This is the fourth volume in the "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers" series. Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) was one of the foremost economic thinkers of the twentieth century. Today Schumpeter is most well-known for his idea of 'creative destruction'. This is the notion that a market economy is simultaneously creative and destructive and therein lies the process of renewal that is central to the endurance and also the unpopularity of capitalism. Schumpeter's work also contains one of the most important conservative critiques of mass democracy. Schumpeter argued that mass democracy had totalitarian tendencies and was likely to degenerate into the tyranny of the popular.

Investigates historic strands of conservative thought and responds to the radical changes which many think have transformed the Conservative party into a populist movement upholding English nationalism. All Souls College Oxford was one of the meeting points of English public intellectuals in the twentieth century. Its Fellows prided themselves on agreeing in everything except their opinions. They included Cabinet Ministers from all the three major parties, and academics of diverse political allegiances, who met for frank conversations and lively disagreements. Davenport-Hines investigates historic strands of conservative thought: aversion to rapid and disruptive change, mistrust of majority opinions, prizing of community loyalties and pride over the assertion of aggressive individualism, the recession of the Church of England, and the impact of militarism. Conservative Thinkers from All Souls College Oxford draws on the ideas of two conservative thinkers, 'Trimmer' Halifax and Michael Oakeshott, to examine the conservative assumptions, ideas, writings and influence of seven Fellows of All Souls from the last century. Their brands of conservatism regarded popular democracy as an unavoidable necessity which must be managed rather than loved. Their scepticism about the rule of the people was rooted in a meritocratic commitment to the government of the wise. They disliked plutocracy, regretted consumerism, and loathed sloppy and self-serving thought. All were more or less dissatisfied with the workings of the Westminster parliamentary model.

History, Historians, and Conservatism in Britain and America examines the subjects, motives, and personal and intellectual origins of conservative historians who were also successful public intellectuals. In their search for a persuasive and wide appeal, conservatives depended until at least the 1960s upon history and historians to provide conservative concepts with authority and authenticity. Beginning with the Great War in Britain and the Second World War in America, conservative historians participated actively and influentially in debates about the heart, soul, and especially the mind of conservatism. Particular emphasis is placed on four historians in Britain--F. J. C. Hearnshaw, Keith Feiling, Arthur Bryant, and Herbert Butterfield--and three in America-Daniel Boorstin, Peter Viereck, and Russell Kirk-who developed conservative responses to unprecedented and threatening events both at home and abroad. These historians shared basic assumptions about human nature and society, but their subjects, interpretations, conclusions, and prescriptions were independent and idiosyncratic. Uniquely close to powerful political figures, each historian also spoke directly to a large public, which bought their books, read their contributions to newspapers and journals, listened to them on the radio, and watched them on television.
Provocative and compelling, Reba Soffer's pioneering study provides a comprehensive explanation of the content, context, and consequences of conservative ideas that became dominant in Britain and remained marginal in America until the Reagan ascendancy.

This is the fifth volume in the "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers Series". Since the dawn of the Enlightenment, modernity and the Papacy have experienced a difficult though never severed relationship. "Modern Papacy" goes beyond the caricatures to demonstrate how the popes - specifically John Paul II and Benedict XVI - have articulated a sophisticated critique of the post-Enlightenment world, one that acknowledges the real progress made in modernity while simultaneously highlighting its political and philosophical shortcomings. Far from falling on deaf ears, the nature of their engagement with the modern world has sparked criticism and praise from Catholics and non-Catholics alike - sometimes in surprising ways. Whether the subject is faith and reason, religion and the modern sciences, the roots and future of Europe, or the origin and ends of human freedom, John Paul II and Benedict XVI pose questions that simply cannot be ignored, regardless of whether one likes their answers. "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers" provides comprehensive accounts of the works of seminal conservative thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions - the first series of its kind. Even the selection of thinkers adds another aspect to conservative thinking, including not only theorists but also thinkers in literary forms and those who are also practitioners. The series comprises twenty volumes, each including an intellectual biography, historical context, critical exposition of the thinker's work, reception and influence, contemporary relevance, bibliography including references to electronic resources and an index.

This is a book for our political moment. As Doug Schoen (The End of Authority, Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) warned us nearly a decade ago, we are facing a wholesale lack of trust in our institutions. This problem has deep roots within liberalism, and it cannot be solved by tweaking the liberal paradigm, in which different conceptions of the good exclude each other as well as a nonexclusive common good. The essence of liberalism is contained in the language of "values," which in politics serves as wedges to divide people, as Jo Renee Formicola has shown (The Politics of Values, Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). Scholars are beginning to imagine a postliberal paradigm, preeminently John Milbank and Adrian Pabst in their Politics of Virtue (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). The liberal approach is nearing its end, yet at the moment its tentacles seem impossible to escape. In no small part this because its assumptions are embedded in our political language, in the language of "values," as well as terms like "morality," "sovereignty," and "secular." Only a thoroughgoing survey, reaching back to the early modern era, can uncover the nature of liberalism's basic assumptions and diagnose its breakdown. This book therefore complements and grounds critiques of liberalism such as Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed (2018). This book does so by questioning values language, building on Edward Andrew's The Genealogy of Values (Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), the only monograph on the topic in English. Central to liberalism is a denial of a good that is qualitatively superior to individual interest: individuals disagree about the good - they have different values - and the state protects us from fighting each other. By contrast, a postliberal political philosophy is able to understand the common good as friendship and social trust, which are built up by loyalty. The pursuit of "values" and of "morality" in liberalism actually distorts and harms the common good as friendship: if I am loyal to certain impersonal "values," that means I am not loyal to you. Political thinkers have, however, systematically ignored the phenomenon of friendship over the past five hundred years. No other book on liberalism connects so many dots. The target audience is graduate students and scholars. Topics covered along the way in this work include the shortcomings of the concept of "sovereignty" and the invention of "morality" as its supplement, the inappropriateness of the distinction between the empirical and the transcendental, the true nature of the secular and the sacred, the necessarily symbolic expression of the common good, and the false conceptualization of "religion" and politics.

How extremism is going mainstream in Germany through clothing brands laced with racist and nationalist symbols The past decade has witnessed a steady increase in far right politics, social movements, and extremist violence in Europe. Scholars and policymakers have struggled to understand the causes and dynamics that have made the far right so appealing to so many people--in other words, that have made the extreme more mainstream. In this book, Cynthia Miller-Idriss examines how extremist ideologies have entered mainstream German culture through commercialized products and clothing laced with extremist, anti-Semitic, racist, and nationalist coded symbols and references. Drawing on a unique digital archive of thousands of historical and contemporary images, as well as scores of interviews with young people and their teachers in two German vocational schools with histories of extremist youth presence, Miller-Idriss shows how this commercialization is part of a radical transformation happening today in German far right youth subculture. She describes how these young people have gravitated away from the singular, hard-edged skinhead style in favor of sophisticated and fashionable commercial brands that deploy coded extremist symbols. Virtually indistinguishable in style from other popular clothing, the new brands desensitize far right consumers to extremist ideas and dehumanize victims. Required reading for anyone concerned about the global resurgence of the far right,The Extreme Gone Mainstream reveals how style and aesthetic representation serve as one gateway into extremist scenes and subcultures by helping to strengthen racist and nationalist identification and by acting as conduits of resistance to mainstream society.

Capitalism and Socialism in Cuba documents the history of the attempts by a small island nation to survive and gain respectability within an everchanging international political economy. Professor Ruffin presents a detailed account of the social, political, and economic forces affecting Cuba's prospects for development under both capitalism and socialism. Part one of the study focuses on Cuba's historical association with capitalism and the relationship that Cuba established with the United States. Part two of the study delineates the nature of Cuba-Soviet relations and deals exclusively with the question of socialist dependency. Professor Ruffin's study is a systematic analysis of the internal (race and class formations) and external (capitalism and socialism) factors that have thus far shaped Cuban history.

This anthology provides detailed examinations of the major themes and perspectives of the paleoconservatives as political thinkers and activists. A long forgotten and persistently disregarded group within the American Right, but their ideas show a remarkable staying power. Paleoconservatives, as this anthology undertakes to show, have been among the most original and insightful representatives of the Right over the last thirty years but because of internal quarrels and their conspicuous defiance of the conservative establishment, they have become isolated voices. Almost everything about the paleoconservatives should be of interest to historians of political movements, including the process by which they became a marginalized force on the intellectual right and their periodic attempts to build bridges across the political spectrum.

After decades on the social and political margins, far-right groups and movements are enjoying increasing success, and even claiming a place in mainstream electoral politics in many Western political systems. Research shows that new media like Twitter, YouTube, and community sites likes 4chan and Reddit are increasingly involved with the mobilization of popular support for far-right electoral campaigns, and even organized political violence. These technologies - including other social media, discussion websites, certain online games, chat servers, talk radio, cable news, and print media - are making contemporary far-right ideologies possible in diverse ways, altering methods of recruitment to the extent that they become unrecognizable from far-right movements of the past, and thus, more dangerous. The results of these new technological processes can be seen in the increasing normalization of far-right values within mainstream culture, politics, and media ecosystems within countries from the United States, Britain, Australia, Germany, and Hungary. This book brings together recent academic research exploring how far-right groups use new media to recruit followers to extremist beliefs and mobilize political action. In doing so, the book reveals the complex ways that evolving technologies are used both purposively, subtly, and in some cases incidentally, to recruit and mobilize far-right support.

This edited volume brings together leading specialists in Conservative Party politics to examine the effectiveness with which the Cameron led coalition has adapted to the demands of government. While the main focus is on the first year in office, there are insights into why a Conservative modernisation statecraft strategy resulted in a hung Parliament and the need to form a coalition. The coherence of the policy agenda that informs 'liberal conservatism' is analyzed and the impact of the coalition on party policy across a range of social and foreign areas is examined; including economic, European and immigration policies, as well as territorial politics. The contributors also consider how cohesive and unified the coalition actually is in parliamentary terms and the effectiveness of Cameron as leader and Prime Minister. They also evaluate the impact of the coalition on wider perceptions of party politics and on 'New' Labour and how it has adapted to opposition.

Is populism fueled by a feeling of manhood under attack? If gender is its driving force, are there better ways to respond? COVID-19 delivers a stark warning: the global surge of populism endangers public health. Wronged and Dangerous introduces "viral masculinity" as a novel way to meet that threat by tackling the deep connection of our social and physical worlds. It calls us to ask not what populism says, but how it spreads. Leading with gender without leaving socioeconomic forces behind, it upends prevailing wisdom about populist politics today. You do not need to know or care about gender to get invested. You only need to be concerned with our future.