Awards
- Nominated for David Easton Award 2007
- Nominated for John H. Dunning Prize 2007
- Nominated for Littleton-Griswold Prize 2007
- Short-listed for President's Book Award 2006
- Short-listed for Social Science History Association President's Book Award 2006
- Shortlisted for Social Science History Association President's Book Award 2006.
Overview
This book argues that, more than any other factor, it was the encounter with totalitarianism that dissolved the ideals of American progressivism and crystallized the ideals of postwar liberalism. The New Deal began as a revolution in favor of progressive governance--executive-centered and expert-guided. But as David Ciepley shows, by the late 1930s, intellectuals and elites, reacting against the menace of totalitarianism, began to shrink from using state power to guide the economy or foster citizen virtues. All of the more statist governance projects of the New Deal were curtailed or abandoned, regardless of success, and the country placed on a more libertarian-corporatist trajectory, both economically and culturally. In economics, attempts to reorient industry from private profit to public use were halted, and free enterprise was reaffirmed. In politics, the ideal of governance by a strong, independent executive was rejected--along with notions of ""central planning,"" ""social control,"" and state imposition of ""values""--and a politics of contending interest groups was embraced. In law, the encounter with totalitarianism brought an end to judicial deference, the embrace of civil rights and civil liberties, and the neutralist reinterpretation, and radicalization, of both. Finally, in culture, the encounter sowed the seeds of our own era--the era of the culture wars--in which traditional America has been mobilized against these liberal legal advances, and against the entire neutralist, ""relativist,"" ""secular humanist"" reinterpretation of America that accompanies them.
Full Product Details
Author: David Ciepley
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.60cm
, Height: 3.20cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.703kg
ISBN: 9780674022966
ISBN 10: 0674022963
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 01 January 2007
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
Offers a thoughtful engagement and sketches out some interesting relationships between evolving liberal ideas and policy.--Judy Kutulas Journal of American History (09/01/2007)
Offers a thoughtful engagement and sketches out some interesting relationships between evolving liberal ideas and policy. -- Judy Kutulas Journal of American History 20070901
Offers a thoughtful engagement and sketches out some interesting relationships between evolving liberal ideas and policy. -- Judy Kutulas Journal of American History (09/01/2007)
Author Information
David Ciepley is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Denver.
