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From Queen Latifah to Count Basie, Madonna to Monk, "Hole in our
soul: the loss of beauty and meaning in American popular music"
traces popular music back to its roots in jazz, blues, country, and
gospel through the rise in rock'n'roll and the emergence of heavy
metal, punk, and rap. Yet despite the vigour and balance of these
musical origins, Martha Bayles argues, something has gone seriously
wrong, both with the sound of popular music and the sensibility it
expresses. Bayles defended the tough, affirmative spirit of
Afro-American music against the strain of artistic modernism she
calls"perverse". She describes how perverse modernism was grafted
onto popular music in the late 1960s, and argues that the result
has been a cult of brutality and obscenity that is profoundly
anti-musical. Unlike other recent critics of popular music, Bayles
does not blame the problem on commerce. She argues that culture
shapes the market and not the other way around. Finding censorship
of popular music "both a practical and a constitutional
impossibility", Bayles insists that "an informed shift in public
tastes may be our only hope of reversing the current malignant
moods".
Why it is a mistake to let commercial entertainment serve as
America's de facto ambassador to the world What does the world
admire most about America? Science, technology, higher education,
consumer goods-but not, it seems, freedom and democracy. Indeed,
these ideals are in global retreat, for reasons ranging from
ill-conceived foreign policy to the financial crisis and the
sophisticated propaganda of modern authoritarians. Another reason,
explored for the first time in this pathbreaking book, is the
distorted picture of freedom and democracy found in America's
cultural exports. In interviews with thoughtful observers in eleven
countries, Martha Bayles heard many objections to the violence and
vulgarity pervading today's popular culture. But she also heard a
deeper complaint: namely, that America no longer shares the best of
itself. Tracing this change to the end of the Cold War, Bayles
shows how public diplomacy was scaled back, and in-your-face
entertainment became America's de facto ambassador. This book
focuses on the present and recent past, but its perspective is
deeply rooted in American history, culture, religion, and political
thought. At its heart is an affirmation of a certain ethos-of hope
for human freedom tempered with prudence about human nature-that is
truly the aspect of America most admired by others. And its
author's purpose is less to find fault than to help chart a
positive path for the future.
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Democracy Reconsidered (Hardcover, New)
Elizabeth Kaufer Busch; Contributions by David Alvis, Martha Bayles, James W. Ceaser, Eric Cohen, …
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R4,198
Discovery Miles 41 980
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Democracy Reconsidered provides an enlightening study of democracy
in America's post-modern context. Elizabeth Kaufer Busch and Peter
Augustine Lawler explore some of the foundational principles of
democracy as they have been borne out in American society. The
essays included in this volume examine the lessons that novelists,
philosophers, and political theorists have for democratic societies
as they progress towards postmodern skepticism or even disbelief in
the absolute principles that form the foundation of democracies.
Led by the provocative observations of Lawler, a member of
President Bush's Council on Bioethics, the first section lays out
the predicament caused by the gravitation of democracy towards a
disbelief in absolute truth, leading to a "crisis of
self-evidence." The second section searches for tools that one
might use to restore health to the individual and community within
American democracy, including spiritual faith, creative autonomy,
and philosophic inquiry. The third section addresses the supposed
"crisis in liberal education" caused by our "crisis of
self-evidence." Included essays explore the extent to which the
professed aims of liberal education may be at odds with the
cultivation of dutiful citizens. The book closes by considering
some of the political consequences of employing content-less
freedom as the primary standard by which human behaviour is judged.
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Democracy Reconsidered (Paperback)
Elizabeth Kaufer Busch; Contributions by David Alvis, Martha Bayles, James W. Ceaser, Eric Cohen, …
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R1,794
Discovery Miles 17 940
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Democracy Reconsidered provides an enlightening study of democracy
in America's post-modern context. Elizabeth Kaufer Busch and Peter
Augustine Lawler explore some of the foundational principles of
democracy as they have been borne out in American society. The
essays included in this volume examine the lessons that novelists,
philosophers, and political theorists have for democratic societies
as they progress towards postmodern skepticism or even disbelief in
the absolute principles that form the foundation of democracies.
Led by the provocative observations of Lawler, a member of
President Bush's Council on Bioethics, the first section lays out
the predicament caused by the gravitation of democracy towards a
disbelief in absolute truth, leading to a 'crisis of
self-evidence.' The second section searches for tools that one
might use to restore health to the individual and community within
American democracy, including spiritual faith, creative autonomy,
and philosophic inquiry. The third section addresses the supposed
'crisis in liberal education' caused by our 'crisis of
self-evidence.' Included essays explore the extent to which the
professed aims of liberal education may be at odds with the
cultivation of dutiful citizens. The book closes by considering
some of the political consequences of employing content-less
freedom as the primary standard by which human behaviour is judged.
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