The United States: An Experiment in DemocracyRoutledge, 17/04/2018 - 333 páginas According to Carl Becker "if the framers of the Constitution could come back to earth and see what the federal government is doing to-day, they would all agree that this monstrous thing was no child of theirs; for to-day the federal government exercises as a matter of course powers which they never dreamed of." This prescient statement rings as true today as it did when Becker wrote An Experiment in Democracy nearly eighty years ago. This American classic is an engaging, gracefully rendered piece of historical literature as well as a non-ideological meditation on the "meaning of America." Carl Becker's ruminations are invariably provocative, notably wise, and remarkably enduring. He clearly believed in what has been called a "living Constitution," one that must be adapted to changing circumstances and imperatives in America life, and his faith in democracy seems to have strengthened as the decades progressed. In his new introduction, Michael Kammen places this American classic in historical perspective. Kammen sees Becker as more than an archival historian, but rather as a master of the "creative synthesis" looking at familiar sources in fresh ways and developing new points of view that were frequently revisionist and, on occasion, radically arresting. Much has changed between 1920 and the present; but Carl Becker's sagacity persists, just as his expository prose will continue to please a new generation of historians and students of American social history. Carl Becker was the author of "Kansas"; The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas; Modern History: The Rise of a Democratic, Scientific, and Industrial Civilization; "Benjamin Franklin"; "Everyman His Own Historian"; The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers; How New Will the Better World Be?; and Freedom and Responsibility in the American Way of Life. |
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... never have had if they had been left to rely wholly upon the blessed principle of Individualism. What was the public-land policy of the federal government, by which millions of acres of the public domain ... were virtually given away to ...
... never doubts that the remedy for democracy is more democracy.” And then, “the whole history of the United States has been a process of trying to get more democracy” (pp. 85-86). Was Becker being idealistic or perhaps rhetorical for ...
... never could agree,” which is also exceedingly reductive—too blithe a throwaway line for a mind as subtle as Carl Becker's (p. 66).3 In a weak attempt at humor on the subject of woman suffrage—the Nineteenth Amendment was proposed by ...
... never been only France, but always something European—the source and the exemplar of fruitful ideas. The United States has likewise had its meaning for the Occidental world; in its own eyes and in the eyes of Europe it has stood for the ...
... never known before. This feeling of emancipation was due not only to the fact that the Colonies had aided in winning the war, but also to the fact that for the first time they had acted together for a common end. The Colonies had always ...
Índice
DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNMENT | |
NEW WORLD DEMOCRACY AND OLD WORLD INTERVENTION | |
DEMOCRACY AND FREE LAND | |
DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY | |
DEMOCRACY AND IMMIGRATION | |
DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION | |
DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY | |