Dimensions, Contradictions, Limits

Dimensions, Contradictions, Limits PDF

Author: David Cardwell

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2017-06-26

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9781979910750

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The book contends that liberalism in all its forms continues to underpin specific institutions such as the university, the free press, the courts, and, of course, parliamentary democracy. Liberal ideas are regularly mobilized in areas such as counterterrorism, minority rights, privacy, and the pursuit of knowledge. This book contends that while we may not agree on much, we can certainly agree that an understanding of liberalism and its emancipatory capacity is simply too important to be left to the liberals.This collection of short essays attempts to show how liberals and the wider concept of liberalism remain relevant in what many perceive to be a highly illiberal age. Liberalism in the broader sense revolves around tolerance, progress, humanitarianism, objectivity, reason, democracy, and human rights. Liberalism's emphasis on individual rights opened a theoretical pathway to neoliberalism, through private property, a classically minimal liberal state, and the efficiency of "free markets."

Freedom Will Win—if Free Men Act!

Freedom Will Win—if Free Men Act! PDF

Author: Robert Donato Venosa

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13:

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A proper understanding of liberal internationalism requires an appreciation of both its domestic and international aspects. This dissertation reconstructs and evaluates the debates on international order that occurred within the most influential non-state foreign policy organizations in Britain and the United States between the 1930s and the 1950s—the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The members of these two organizations played an integral role in the project to contrive a coherent intellectual framework for the largely incoherent and contentious system of liberal internationalism that the Allies had tried to impose in 1919. One of the hallmarks of liberal states is the prominence of non-state elites in the policymaking process. These non-state elites—just as much as the liberal internationalism they played an indispensable role in propagating—played a crucial role in the formation of a new foreign policy orthodoxy within the United States and Great Britain. But the nature and extent of the relationship between the liberal state and its non-state elites is contentious. In contrast with liberal and Marxist theorists—who argue that the liberal state is weak in comparison with either civil society or capitalist interests—I argue that the relationship between the liberal state and the CFR/Chatham House was one of symbiosis rather than of simple domination by one over the other. While the state in each instance was always the senior partner and always decided policy, the CFR and Chatham House nevertheless provided useful—arguably indispensable—functions for the liberal state in the formation and implementation of foreign policy.

Being Alive and Having to Die

Being Alive and Having to Die PDF

Author: Dan Cryer

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2011-10-25

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1429989351

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One of the year's Top Ten Books on Religion and Spirituality (Booklist), Being Alive and Having to Die is the story of the remarkable public and private journey of Reverend Forrest Church, the scholar, activist, and preacher whose death became a way to celebrate life. Through his pulpit at the prestigious Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York, Reverend Forrest Church became a champion of liberal religion and a leading opponent of the religious right. An inspired preacher, a thoughtful theologian and an eloquent public intellectual, Church built a congregation committed to social service for people in need, while writing twenty five books, hosting a cable television program, and being featured in People, Esquire, New York Magazine, and on numerous national television and radio appearances. Being Alive and Having to Die works on two levels, as an examination of liberal religion during the past 30 years of conservative ascendancy, and as a fascinating personal story. Church grew up the son of Senator Frank Church of Idaho, famous for combating the Vietnam War in the 1960s and the CIA in the 1970s. Like many sons of powerful fathers, he rebelled and took a different path in life, which led him to his own prominence. Then, in 1991, at the height of his fame, he fell in love with a married parishioner and nearly lost his pulpit. Eventually, he regained his stature, overcame a long-secret alcoholism, wrote his best books–and found himself diagnosed with terminal cancer. His three year public journey toward death brought into focus the preciousness of life, not only for himself, but for his ministry. Based on extraordinary access to Church and over 200 interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, Dan Cryer bears witness to a full, fascinating, at time controversial life. Being Alive and Having to Die is an honest look at an imperfect man and his lasting influence on modern faith.

The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill

The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill PDF

Author: Matthew Bowman

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2023-08-29

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0300251386

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A gripping account of an alien abduction and its connections to the breakdown of American society in the 1960s In the mid-1960s, Betty and Barney Hill became famous as the first Americans to claim that aliens had taken them aboard a spacecraft against their will. Their story--involving a lonely highway late at night, lost memories, and medical examinations by small gray creatures with large eyes--has become the template for nearly every encounter with aliens in American popular culture since. Historian Matthew Bowman examines the Hills' story not only as a foundational piece of UFO folklore but also as a microcosm of 1960s America. The Hills, an interracial couple who lived in New Hampshire, were civil rights activists, supporters of liberal politics, and Unitarians. But when their story of abduction was repeatedly ignored or discounted by authorities, they lost faith in the scientific establishment, the American government, and the success of the civil rights movement. Bowman tells the fascinating story of the Hills as an account of the shifting winds in American politics and culture in the second half of the twentieth century. He exposes the promise and fallout of the idealistic reforms of the 1960s and how the myth of political consensus has given way to the cynicism and conspiratorialism and the paranoia and illusion of American life today.