Front Porch Republic
The United States: A republic or a union of republics? This question has been addressed by Southern conservatives, paleoconservatives, and paleolibertarians before. I lack their ability to give a critique of this piece by Wilson Carey McWilliams, but if he is mistaken on this point, then might it not be the case that his representation of the Constitution and "the ideas behind it" might be wrong? Would McWilliams have considered himself a Straussian? One can endorse the communitarianism of McWilliams without accepting his account of American intellectual and political history. How relevant are the liberal sympathies of various delegates and framers of the Constitution to our understanding of that document? I might agree that there is nothing in the Constitution that hinders social fragmentation, especially in its treatment of citizenship--but is this shortcoming due to liberal assumptions, or just ignorance and uncrtical acceptance of what had come before (in particular, the easy physical mobility of Americans)?
A ETZIONI, Wilson Carey McWilliams's Conservative Communitarianism
The Active Society Revisited (Google Books)
Amitai Etzioni
In reaction to the recent "Tea Party" victories in recent Republican primaries --
Tea Party Nation? by Thomas Fleming
PJB, Rockefeller Republicans
No comments:
Post a Comment