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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Conservatism & right-of-centre democratic ideologies
The 1992 presidential election campaign showed just how deep
were the divisions within the Republican party. In "Beautiful
Losers," Samuel Francis argues that the victory of the Democratic
party marks not only the end of the Reagan-Bush era, but the
failure of the American conservatism.
While many current analyses of democracy focus on creating a more
civil, respectful debate among competing political viewpoints, this
study argues that the existence of structural social inequality
requires us to go beyond the realm of political debate. Challenging
prominent contemporary theories of democracy, the author draws on
John Dewey to bring the work of combating social inequality into
the forefront of democratic thought. Dewey's 'pragmatic' principles
are deployed to present democracy as a developing concept
constantly confronting unique conditions obstructing its growth.
Under structurally unequal social conditions, democracy is thereby
seen as demanding the overcoming of this inequality; this
inequality corrupts even well-organized forums of political debate,
and prevents individuals from governing their everyday lives.
Dewey's approach shows that the process of fighting social
inequality is uniquely democratic, and he avoids current democratic
theory's tendency to abstract from this inequality.
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