Our Divided Political Heart
The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
America today is at a political impasse; we face a nation divided and discontented. Acclaimed political commentator E.J. Dionne argues that Americans can't agree on who we are as a nation because we can't agree on who we've been, or what it is, philosophically and spiritually, that makes us "Americans."
Dionne places our current quarrels in the long-standing tradition of struggle between two core values: the love of individualism and our reverence for community. Both make us who we are, and to ignore either one is to distort our national character. He sees the current Tea Party as a representation of hyper-individualism, and takes on their agenda-serving distortions of history, from the Revolution to the Civil War and the constitutional role of government. Tea Partiers have reacted fiercely to President Obama, who seeks to restore a communitarian balance - a cause in American liberalism which Dionne traces through recent decades.
The ability of the American system to self-correct may be one of its greatest assets, but we have been caught in cycles of over-correcting. Dionne seeks, through an understanding of our factious past, to rediscover the idea of true progress, and the confidence that it can be achieved.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dionne (Why Americans Hate Politics) Washington Post columnist, NPR commentator, and Georgetown University professor puts on his scholarly hat to offer a much-needed fact-based review of the Constitution, a realistic portrait of its creators, and a balanced history of the ongoing friction in the American psyche between desires for liberty and commonwealth. He suggests that America has nurtured "communitarian individualists and individualistic communitarians," and that "we often treat the Founders of our country not as the gifted statesmen and politicians they are, but as religious prophets." By accepting commitments to individualism and community, he argues, we can see government as a constructive force, an approach "far more consistent with the Founders' intentions and the broad trajectory of our history than are the alternatives promoted by the Tea Party and its allies that cast government as inherently oppressive, necessarily wasteful, and... damaging to... growth and prosperity." The book clarifies much misinformation swirling around controversies about the founding fathers, the validity of originalism, and the traditional and historic roles of government and the free market in U.S. society. Despite its sometimes academic tone, Tea Partiers and Occupiers alike may be surprised and enlightened by this lucid analysis, all the more convincing for its sympathetic treatment of both sides of the argument.
