Kirjailijakuva
11+ teosta 576 jäsentä 3 arvostelua

Tietoja tekijästä

Wilfred M. McClay is Professor of History and the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College.

Includes the name: Wilfred McClay

Tekijän teokset

Associated Works

The Phantom Public (1993) — Johdanto, eräät painokset74 kappaletta
The Weekly Standard: A Reader: 1995-2005 (2005) — Avustaja — 47 kappaletta

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

LT Land of Hope : An Invitation to the Great American Story, Wilfred M. McClay, Encounter Books (2019-20), Edition: Revised, 459 pages, dates I read/studied book: 4/20-7/4/22
Recommended by [self], Where is hard copy? BCSO office
https://dokumen.pub/qdownload/land-of-hope-an-invitation-to-the-great-american-s...
https://pdf-to-word.obar.info/

Theme: the great American story
Type: historical “metanarrative”
Value: 1-
Age: hs-retired
Interest: 1-
Objectionable:
Synopsis/Noteworthy:

Introduction: One Long Story
Chapter 1: Beginnings: Settlement and Unsettlement
Chapter 2: The Shaping of British North America
Chapter 3: The Revolution of Self-Rule

33 Such absolutist ideas had great appeal to England colonial rivals France and Spain and shaped their policies toward their overseas holdings. But absolutism ran flatly against the deepest political and economic traditions of the English, for whom there had long been well established limits to the power of any king, going back at least to the restraints placed upon King John in the Magna Carta of 1215, and embodied in the practices of the common law and the institution of Parliament. Efforts to impose absolutism in England always had to battle against fierce headwinds. When the steward King James I ascended to the throne of England in 1603, and brought with him a belief in divine right, he thereby initiated several generations of heated and often violent conflict between the English kings and their parliamentary opponents.
37 That took the form of a meeting held in Albany, New York, in 1754, dubbed the Albany Congress, at which representatives of seven of the thirteen British colonies considered a Plan of Union, proposed by a committee headed by Benjamin Franklin.
41 In the Anglo-American world of the eighteenth century, the spirit of Protestantism and the spirit of science were not seen to be in fundamental conflict with one another.

Chapter 4: A War, a Nation, and a Wound

67 The Convention settled on a compromise between these two positions. This Great Compromise, engineered by Roger Sherman, was, like all such compromises, a political deal. But it ended up being something much more than that. Instead of favoring one principle over another, it acknowledged the legitimate aspects of both principles, giving both their due, and putting them into fruitful tension with one another. The key was the use of a bicameral or two-house structure, patterned after the British division of Parliament into a House of Commons and an aristocratic House of Lords.

Chapter 5: The Experiment Begins

78 The adoption of the Bill of Rights calmed all but the most determined critics of the Constitution. And although Madison and others had thought such a bill of rights was unnecessary, subsequent history showed them to be quite wrong about that and the Anti-Federalists to have been quite prescient, even prophetic, in many of their anxieties. Few today would ever want to contemplate the Constitution stripped of its Bill of Rights. It is one of the glories of the American constitutional system and, despite its added-on status, has become part of the very heart of the Constitution. It is one of the ironies of history that some of the fiercest opponents of the Constitution turned out to be among its chief benefactors. Although maybe that was not as ironic as it might seem, since the Constitution itself was consciously designed as an instrument to harness the energies of contending factions and groups, and since the Framers themselves incorporated their own quarrels into a Constitution that was in many ways better than what either side would have sought on its own.
80 [Washington] also established the precedent, not mentioned in the Constitution, of bringing these advisors together as a “cabinet,” for the purpose of offering general advice to him, even outside their assigned areas.

Chapter 6: From Jefferson to Jackson: The Rise of the Common Man

117 The result, his two-volume book Democracy in America (1835–40), is perhaps the richest and most enduring study of American society and culture ever written. If one were permitted to read only one book on the subject, Democracy in America would almost certainly be the best choice – a surprising statement perhaps, given the fact that nearly two centuries have passed since its initial publication.
118 Chief among the dangers was its pronounced tendency toward individualism – a new word at that time. Tocqueville saw in America the peril that citizens might elect to withdraw from involvement in the larger public life and regard themselves as autonomous and isolated actors, with no higher goal than the pursuit of their own material well- being. He acknowledged that in a modern commercial democracy, this was a particularly strong possibility, because self-interest would inevitably come to be accepted as the chief engine of all human striving. But where, then, would the generous and selfless civic

virtues needed for the sustaining of a decent society come from? How could the individualistic Americans of the 1830s prevent self- interestedness from overwhelming all considerations of the public good and undermining the sources of social cohesion? Why, he asked, in a chapter that reads as if it were written today, are prosperous Americans so restless in the midst of their prosperity? And why, he asks later, are these same individualistic Americans so vulnerable to accepting the “soft despotism” of the state?

Chapter 7: The Culture of Democracy

128 Something that might be useful to introduce here is a distinction that the German sociologist Max Weber made between the ethic of moral conviction and the ethic of responsibility, two different ways of thinking about how leaders address moral problems in politics. The ethic of moral conviction was what propelled Garrison; it is the point of view that says one must be true to one’s principles and do the right thing, at whatever cost. It has a purity about it that is admirable. The ethic of responsibility takes a different view. It guides moderates (and, as we shall see, Lincoln himself) to the belief that leaders must take responsibility for the totality of effects arising out of their actions. It takes into account the tragic character of history, the fact that one can easily do the right thing at the wrong time, in the wrong way, and do an immense amount of damage to good and innocent parties in the process. Such a distinction does not decide the question, but it does clarify it.

Chapter 8: The Old South and Slavery

141 Nothing was more distinctive about the South than the fact that southerners believed their region to be distinctive. So too did other Americans – and such a belief, when widely shared, becomes a fact in itself, a fact of culture.

Chapter 9: The Gathering Storm
Chapter 10: The House Divides

173 For Lincoln, the restoration and preservation of the Union was the chief goal of the war. All other objectives were subordinated to that one. It is important to stress this. It was not until well into the war that the overthrow of slavery became an important part of the Northern agenda. There could be no doubt that the existence of slavery was a central cause of the war; but there also can be no doubt that, as the war began, opposition to slavery was not the central reason why the North embraced a war against secession.
186 We need to remember that this is generally how history happens. It is not like a Hollywood movie, in which the background music swells and the crowd in the room applauds and leaps to its feet as the orator dispenses timeless words and the camera pans the roomful of smiling faces. In real history, the background music does not swell, the trumpets do not sound, and the carping critics often seem louder than the applause. The leader or the soldier has to wonder whether he is acting in vain, whether the criticisms of others are in fact warranted, whether time will judge him harshly, whether his sacrifice will count for anything. Few great leaders have felt this burden more completely than Lincoln.

Chapter 11: The Ordeal of Reconstruction
Chapter 12: A Nation Transformed
Chapter 13: Becoming a World Power
Chapter 14: The Progressive Era
Chapter 15: Woodrow Wilson and the Great War

259 But some of the greatest events in human history are also among the most unfathomable. Today, more than a century later, there is no clear consensus among historians about the deepest causes of this devastating conflict that changed Europe and the world forever, ending a long period of unparalleled optimism and confidence and replacing it with persistent anxiety and doubt about the very idea of progress itself. Even today, the world has not fully absorbed and digested it all.
268 Such a substitute would be the holy grail for Progressives. From Edward Bellamy’s captivating vision of America in Looking Backward as a marching industrial army to present-day attempts to cast economic, social, public health, or environmental problems as the moral equivalents of war, the linkage of war imagery with the cause of social reform has popped up too often in the history of reform to be dismissed as a fluke.

Chapter 16: From Boom to Bust

289 Recent historians of the trial, such as Edward Larson, have noted a complicating factor, however, in the textbook Scopes used in his class. George William Hunter’s A Civic Biology was indeed an openly and unapologetically racist text, in line with Bryan’s claims. It argued that “the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America” were the “highest race type of all” and that eugenics should be used to improve “the future generations of men and women on the earth,” which meant the elimination of such forms of “parasitism” as “feeblemindedness” and other features of a “low and degenerate race.” The Scopes trial does not yield today the same easy lessons that an educated observer might have drawn from it at the time.
292 But there was far more to Coolidge than that, and when the occasion demanded, he could be both eloquent and profound. His speech delivered at Philadelphia commemorating the 150th anniversary of the American Revolution in July 1926 was a speech for the ages. It was a defense of America’s founding principles against those, like Wilson and the Progressives, who believed that the massive social and economic changes that had taken place in American life had invalidated those founding principles and required that modern theories of government be introduced to take their place. It was a speech that stands in the line of great presidential speeches from Jefferson to Lincoln, a reminder to Americans then and now of the exceptional character of their own revolution and of the enduring importance of liberty and equality as natural rights. Here is a portion of it:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Chapter 17: The New Deal

310 However variable its measures were in the extent of their measurable success, the Roosevelt administration’s amazing flurry of activity had produced one indisputable good effect: it lifted the nation’s spirits, convincing Americans that their government cared about them and was determined to address the plight of its more vulnerable citizens. This was no small thing. The art of governing well is not only a matter of satisfying material needs but also one of supplying hope. The New Deal had done that, and the Democrats

were accordingly rewarded with gains in the midterm elections of 1934, an unusual feat for any midterm presidency. But the hope began to give out when the Depression still showed no signs of lifting by the end of 1934. Roosevelt began to face more stringent criticism from critics both Right and Left, berating the ineffectiveness or wrongheadedness of his reforms.

Chapter 18: The Finest Hour: World War II

339 “Forty summers have passed,” said President Ronald Reagan in his speech to the veterans of Pointe du Hoc gathered once again at the windswept French cliffs on June 6, 1984, “since the battle that you fought here.”

You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge – and pray God we have not lost it – that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

Chapter 19: All Thoughts and Things Were Split: The Cold War

358 Yet no American president has seen his reputation rise more steadily in the years since his time of service. Over time, the American people have come to understand and appreciate the fact that Truman’s actions prevented another world war, whereas MacArthur’s preferred path would have embraced one, with consequences beyond imagination. Truman had the burden, a burden he shouldered honorably and wisely, of shepherding the nation through times of great changes, and many of the results were unwelcome or unsatisfying in the short term. Statesmanship is often like that, as many previous episodes in American history, such as the controversy associated with Jay’s Treaty at the nation’s beginnings, or with Lincoln's leadership in the Civil War, serve to illustrate.
364 As in the case of Alexis de Tocqueville, the insights of a foreign observer proved especially helpful to Americans’ ability to see themselves more clearly. The Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, in a massive and highly influential 1944 study called An American Dilemma, formulated it in this way: there was a deep contradiction at the heart of American society, a contradiction between American ideals and American practices. Myrdal introduced the idea that there was what he called the “American Creed,” a set of informal but binding affirmations that holds Americans together and defines their social and political order. The Creed was based on a belief in universal human equality, freedom, and opportunity; but the condition of American race relations stood in glaring contradiction to that belief. In this respect, too, America at midcentury was a time when all thoughts and things were split.
But Myrdal did not counsel despair, because the struggle was not an unfamiliar one. In fact, “America,” he concluded, “is continuously struggling for its soul.” The struggle was the burden imposed by the nation’s outsized aspirations; being a land of hope meant always being willing to shake off the weight of fatalism and push ahead. Myrdal read American history hopefully, as “the gradual realization of the American Creed” that defined the nature of American society. One or the other had to give; either the Creed had become empty, or the practice of racial subordination had to come to an end. Which would it be? Finding the answer would be one of the most important items on the American agenda in the second half of the twentieth century.

Chapter 20: Out of Balance: The Turbulent Sixties
Chapter 21: Fall and Restoration: From Nixon to Reagan

396 As the novelist John Dos Passos wrote, “in times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present.” Sometimes it is important to look back, in order to be able to look forward.
In fact, the Bicentennial was a great success. But one event in particular stole the show: the Parade of Ships organized by Operation Sail, an international gathering of magnificent tall-masted sailing ships in New York Harbor on Independence Day (and then in Boston about one week later). OpSail 76, as it was called, was the creation of Frank Braynard, a museum curator and ship enthusiast from New York who also was involved in planning the city’s South Street Seaport project, which transformed the derelict East River waterfront into a vibrant historical showcase and festival marketplace.
400 Or perhaps we had the wrong kind of people serving in the office. The liberal political scientist James MacGregor Burns, in a 1978 book Leadership, posited that there were two kinds of leaders, “transactional” ones and “transforming” ones. Jimmy Carter (he said) was the first kind, someone who merely dealt with the exchange of existing goods, playing the game within the existing boundaries, rather than speaking to the deeper needs of people, and calling forth fresh political possibilities for the realization of those needs. Burns’s book was a clear call for a different kind of Democratic politician, one perhaps more in the vein of Franklin Roosevelt or the late Robert Kennedy. Ironically, though, the leader who best fit Burns’s prescription turned out not to be a Democrat at all. It was Ronald Reagan.
402 On the two critical issues driving the election – the economy and America’s standing in the world – it was Reagan who conformed most closely to Burns’s definition of a transforming leader, someone who was willing to speak to the whole person and present the problems of the economy and the world in terms that ordinary people can grasp, and grasp hold of in their lives.

Chapter 22: The World since the Cold War

413 If the invasion of Kuwait was a blatant violation of the terms of the emerging new world order, then the work of Desert Storm was a model for the proper response. In many ways, the action reflected a world picture that corresponded to the influential musings of political scientist Francis Fukuyama, who wrote in 1989, at the very time that the Cold War was ending, that its end marked an “end to history.” By this startling phrase, he meant not that all historical events were about to cease but that the long, steady process of historical progress, by which human institutions had moved through various

phases of development, had now reached a terminal point, and that with the failure of Communism, all the possible alternatives to Western-style liberal-democratic capitalism had been exhausted.
It was appropriate, therefore, that America was taking the lead in Kuwait, not as sole actor but as organizer of an impressive “coalition of the willing” enforcing the rules of the new world order that was aborning. But this view, envisioning Western modernity on a steady march of global triumph, was far from being the only view of the emerging post–Cold War world order. In 1993, a much more detailed and far less optimistic view was put forward by Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington in an article in Foreign Affairs called “The Clash of Civilizations?” In it, and in a more detailed book that would follow, Huntington argued that the end of the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, which he understood as an ideological conflict, would likely be followed by conflicts, not between ideas or countries, but between civilizations. “The most important distinctions among peoples are [no longer] ideological, political, or economic,” he wrote. “They are cultural,” by which he meant that they are conflicts between distinctly different ways of life, historically rooted and religiously motivated. The chief conflicts in the future, he posited, were likely to be between Western civilization (meaning the United States, Europe, the British former colonies, and Israel), the Muslim world of the Middle East and Asia, and the Sinic world of China and its ancillaries.

Epilogue: The Shape of American Patriotism

423 I cannot pretend to be neutral when the larger cause of America and American history is involved. This is part of what it means to say, as we did at the outset, that history always begins in the middle of things. Those who write about history are also in the middle of it.
This book is offered as a contribution to the making of American citizens. As such, it is a patriotic endeavor as well as a scholarly one, and it never loses sight of what there is to celebrate and cherish in the American achievement.
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
keithhamblen | Aug 9, 2022 |
Started off slow, but became more interesting. Overall, it's too philosophical for my taste. It was assigned reading for my US History class and while I did learn some things, I felt like I was reading a philosophical/sociology text. Definitely not what I expected. However, for someone majoring in History, I can see its worth.
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
lmsmith7677 | 1 muu arvostelu | Jul 5, 2022 |
This is a very brief guide to U.S. history. It is from a series by a frankly conservative but the content is not highly polemical. The opening 20 pages or so are an extremely general discussion of the nature and value of history in general with very little reference to the U.S. I liked this both for nits philosophy and its writing style. Then there are some chapters about how American history in general can be approached. The last broad section, "Windows" does give brief descriptions of specific themes in U.S,. history -- frontier, liberty, etc. The only regional one is "the South" --I should think "the West" also deserves one in terms of the basic American historical myths. Some of the book choices are more polemical than the overall tone of the writing --Whittaker Chambers' Witness as a book every student should read, for example. I think it is a valuable source for the early Cold War era, but not one of the all-time greats. His section on capitalism also leans heavily toward the pro-capitalist side. The only anti-capitalist book he mentions is Josephson's The Robber Barons, and while it is fair to say that is outdated, it is hardly the last word from that side of the argument.… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
antiquary | 1 muu arvostelu | Jun 19, 2018 |

Palkinnot

You May Also Like

Associated Authors

Tilastot

Teokset
11
Also by
5
Jäseniä
576
Suosituimmuussija
#43,502
Arvio (tähdet)
4.0
Kirja-arvosteluja
3
ISBN:t
28

Taulukot ja kaaviot