America: Danger Close!: (will it be) Revival or Revolution?
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Customs of civility and courtesy, the governing norms of life in the colonies, were set aside in favor of a more quarrelsome age. Practices and mind-sets were changed by the Awakening like never before. Revivalism in the colonies did not form around a complex theology of religious freedom, but nevertheless the ideas it produced opposed the notion of a single truth or a single church. As preachers visited town after town, sects began to break off larger churches and a multitude of Protestant denominations sprouted.
The older groups that dominated the early colonies — the Puritans and the Anglicans — eventually began a drastic downward trend in popularity. The effect of Great Awakening unity was an attitude that went against the deferential thinking that consumed English politics and religion.
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The chain of authority no longer ran from God to ruler to people, but from God to people to ruler. The children of revivalism later echoed this radicalism and popular self-righteousness in the American Revolution, when self-assertion turned against the tyrannical ways of George III. Another effect of the Great Awakening on colonial culture was the growth of the notion of state rule as a contract with the people.
Parishioners during the revival gained an understanding of covenants with their churches as contractual schemes; they argued that each believer owed the church their obedience, and the churches in turn owed their congregants the duty to be faithful to the Gospel. Parishioners therefore reserved the right to dissolve the covenant and to sever ties with the church without prior permission.
This notion of covenant was a popular one in Puritan society and reflected a common biblical understanding of association. Present in the Mayflower Compact and later forming an ideological basis for breaking from Great Britain, the notion of covenant grew to link religion and politics in the colonies. With the frequency by which believers broke away from larger churches to form splinter groups, the colonists must have been accustomed to separating themselves from larger institutions. Perhaps the greatest fuel added to the revolutionary fire that began burning in the latter half of the 18th Century was religious pluralism within the colonies.
Unlike England, which after the Glorious Revolution of had become spiritually stagnant under the Church of England, the colonists adhered to no single denomination. The splits in churches that revivalism had caused prevented uniformity in religion from becoming a reality.
Historian Patrick Allitt expresses the difference between liberal and conservative in terms not of policy but of attitude:. No American party has advocated European ideals of "conservatism" such as a monarchy, an established church, or a hereditary aristocracy. American conservatism is best characterized as a reaction against utopian ideas of progress.
Since the s, conservatives have emphasized an identification with the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. Historians of conservative political thought "generally label John Adams as the intellectual father of American conservatism. Here was no lover of government by plutocracy, no dreamer of an America filled with factions and hard-packed cities. Here was a man who loved America as it was and had been, one whose life was a doughty testament to the trials and glories of ordered liberty. Owen Aldridge places Adams, "At the head of the conservative ranks in the early years of the Republic and Jefferson as the leader of the contrary liberal current.
Government as Contract
He held that in society all men have a right to equal laws and equal treatment from the government. However, he added, "no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity, and virtue. President Ronald Reagan set the conservative standard in the s; in the s, the Republican leaders typically claim fealty to it. For example, most of the Republican candidates in "claimed to be standard bearers of Reagan's ideological legacy. The s and beyond became known as the " Reagan Era.
Other modern conservative beliefs include skepticism of the theory of man-made global warming and opposition to government action to combat it, which conservatives contend would do severe economic damage, and ultimately more harm than good even if one accepts the premise that human activity is contributing to climate change. Most conservatives support the death penalty for particularly egregious crimes. The "law and order" issue was a major factor weakening liberalism in the s.
Bush stressed cutting taxes and minimizing regulation of industry and banking, while increasing regulation of education. Although the study does show some distinction between the concentration of moderates and conservatives or liberals between the Republican and Democratic parties. Conservatism appears to be growing stronger at the state level. The trend is most pronounced among the "least well-off, least educated, most blue collar, most economically hard-hit states.
Conservatives generally believe that government action is not the solution to problems such as poverty and inequality.
Many believe that government programs that seek to provide services and opportunities for the poor actually encourage dependence and reduce self-reliance. Most conservatives oppose affirmative action policies, that is, policies in employment, education, and other areas that give special advantages to people who belong to groups that have been historically discriminated against. Conservatives believe that the government should not give special benefits to people on the basis of group identity and oppose it as " reverse discrimination ". Conservatives typically hold that the government should play a smaller role in regulating business and managing the economy.
They typically oppose high tax rates and programs to redistribute income to assist the poor. Such efforts, they argue, do not properly reward people who have earned their money through hard work. However, conservatives usually place a strong emphasis on the role of private voluntary charitable organizations especially faith-based charities in helping the poor. As conservatives value order and security, they favor a small but strong government role in law enforcement and national defense. On social issues, many religious conservatives oppose changes in traditional moral standards regarding sexuality and gender roles.
They oppose abortion, same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws against homosexuals. Business-oriented conservatives oppose the social conservatives if state laws limiting gay rights threaten to hurt business. The National Review reported in that, "as evangelical forces have become less unified Stearns finds a polarization since the s between conservatives, who believe that the humanities express eternal truths that should be taught, and those who think that the humanities curriculum should be tailored to demonstrate diversity.
Conservatives typically favor a "melting pot" model of assimilation into common English-speaking American culture, as opposed to a "salad bowl" approach that lends legitimacy to many different cultures. In the United States, the Republican Party has been the party of conservatism since the s, although there was a strong Eastern liberal wing. Since , the conservatives largely took control. Meanwhile, the conservative wing of the Democratic Party , based in the South and strongly opposed to Civil Rights , grew weaker. The most dramatic realignment took place within the White South, which moved from 3—1 Democratic to 3—1 Republican between and In addition, some American libertarians, in the Libertarian Party and even some in the Republican Party, see themselves as conservative, even though they advocate significant economic and social changes—for instance, further dismantling the welfare system or liberalizing drug policy.
They see these as conservative policies because they conform to the spirit of individual liberty that they consider to be a traditional American value. However, many libertarian think-tanks such as the Cato Institute , and libertarian intellectuals such as David Boaz describe libertarianism as being "socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
Conservatism in the United States - Wikipedia
On the other hand, some conservatives tend to oppose free-market trade policies and support protectionism instead. They want government intervention to support the economy and protect American jobs. They oppose free trade on the ground that it benefits other countries especially China at the expense of American workers. However, in spite of their support for protectionism, they tend to support other free-market principles like low taxes, small government and balanced budgets.
Conservatives are strongest in rural America because the demographic population caters more towards the Republican Party: Thus, within each state, there is a division between urban, suburban, exurban, and rural areas. Russell Kirk developed six "canons" of conservatism, which Gerald J. Russello described as follows:. Kirk said that Christianity and Western Civilization are "unimaginable apart from one another" [95] and that "all culture arises out of religion.
When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief. In later works, Kirk expanded this list into his "Ten Principles of Conservatism" [97] which are as follows:. One stream of conservatism exemplified by William Howard Taft extols independent judges as experts in fairness and the final arbiters of the Constitution. In , Theodore Roosevelt broke with most of his lawyer friends and called for popular votes that could overturn unwelcome decisions by state courts.
Taft denounced his old friend and rallied conservatives to defeat him for the GOP nomination. Taft and the conservative Republicans controlled the Supreme Court until the late s. Roosevelt , a liberal Democrat, did not attack the Supreme Court directly in , but ignited a firestorm of protest by a proposal to add seven new justices. While the liberals did take over the Court through replacements, they lost control of Congress. That is, the Court no longer overthrew liberal laws passed by Congress, but there were very few such laws that passed in — Conservatives' views of the courts are based on their beliefs: It came under conservative attack for decisions regarding redistricting, desegregation, and the rights of those accused of crimes.
This position goes back to Jefferson's vehement attacks on federal judges and to Abraham Lincoln 's attacks on the Dred Scott decision of A more recent variant that emerged in the s is " originalism ", the assertion that the United States Constitution should be interpreted to the maximum extent possible in the light of what it meant when it was adopted. Originalism should not be confused with a similar conservative ideology, strict constructionism , which deals with the interpretation of the Constitution as written, but not necessarily within the context of the time when it was adopted.
In modern times, the term originalism has been used by Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia , former federal judge Robert Bork and some other conservative jurists to explain their beliefs. In the past, conservatives have supported conservation efforts, from the protection of the Yosemite Valley , to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Conservative think tanks since the s have opposed the concept of man-made global warming ; they challenged scientific evidence, publicised what they perceived as beneficial aspects of global warming, and stated their strong beliefs that proposed remedies would do more harm than good.
In recent times, American conservatives have generally supported deregulation of pollution and reduced restrictions on carbon emissions. As for President Trump's administration, he had rolled-back over 76 rules that President Obama had put in place. Ranging from air pollution and emissions, drilling and extracting oil, infrastructure and planning, wildlife protections, toxic substances and safety, and water pollution. The term "socialist" has been used as a "rhetorical weapon" against the Left by conservatives. By the s, the conservative press had discovered that the word 'socialism' "proved to be a successful derogatory epithet rather than a descriptive label for a meaningful political alternative.
Kennedy and the "blueprint for socialism presented by the Democrats. Conservatives gained a major new communications medium with the resurgence of talk radio in the late s. This enabled them to spread their message much more effectively to the general public, which had previously been confined to the major Big Three television networks.
Rush Limbaugh proved there was a huge nationwide audience for specific and heated discussions of current events from a conservative viewpoint. Other major hosts who describe themselves as conservative include: One popular Jewish conservative, Laura Schlessinger , offers parental and personal advice, but is outspoken on social and political issues.
In , the largest weekly audiences for talk radio were 15 million for Limbaugh and 14 million for Hannity, with about nine million each for Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Mark Levin. The audiences overlap, depending on how many each listener dials into every week. Fox News features conservative hosts. Liberal and leftist viewpoints have dominated higher education faculties since the s, according to many studies, [] [] [] whereas conservatives are better represented in policy-oriented think tanks.
Conservative self-identification is higher in two-year colleges than other categories of higher education but has been declining overall. A study found that liberal views had increased compared to the older studies. In business and engineering, liberals outnumber conservatives by a 2: The study also found that more women, practicing Christians, and Republicans taught at lower ranked schools than would be expected from objectively measured professional accomplishments.
This varied depending on the political views of those asked. On the other hand, liberal critic Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times that this phenomenon is more due to personal choice than some kind of discrimination or conspiracy, noting that, for example, vocations such as military officers are much more likely to be filled by conservatives, rather than liberals.
Postmodernism is an approach common in the humanities on campus that greatly troubles conservative intellectuals. Ellen Grigsby says, "Postmodern perspectives contend that any ideology putting forward absolute statements as timeless truths should be viewed with profound skepticism. Against postmodern and liberal relativism, cultural conservatives have argued for values of universal truth and absolute standards of right and wrong.
Neoconservative historian Gertrude Himmelfarb has energetically rejected postmodern academic approaches:. Here is a representative summary of postmodern literary studies of the sort that antagonize conservatives, written by Jay Stevenson:. Conservative intellectuals have championed a "high conservative modernism " that insists that universal truths exist, and have opposed approaches that deny the existence of universal truths.
His book was widely cited by conservative intellectuals for its argument that the classics contained universal truths and timeless values which were being ignored by cultural relativists. Historians in recent years have agreed that they need to rethink the role of conservatism in recent American history. Labor historians Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore argue the New Deal was a short-term response to depression and did not mark a permanent commitment to a welfare state, claiming that America has always been too individualistic and too hostile to labor unions to ever embrace liberalism for any extended period of time.
This new interpretation argues that conservatism has largely dominated American politics since the s, with the brief exceptions of the New Deal era —38 and the Great Society — The movement was as fragile as the New Deal coalition that it replaced Policy change has thus proved to be much more difficult than conservatives hoped for.
He concludes, "The fact is that liberalism survived the rise of conservatism. American conservatives typically promote American exceptionalism , the idea that the United States is inherently different from other nations and has a duty to take the lead in spreading democracy and free markets to the world. Reagan especially articulated this role and many liberals also agree with it. Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and other American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense.
Scholars have argued that British and European conservatism has little or no relevance to American traditions. According to political scientist Louis Hartz , because the United States skipped the feudal stage of history, the American community was united by liberal principles, and the conflict between the "Whig" and "Democratic" parties were conflicts within a liberal framework. Clinton Rossiter , a leading expert on American political history, published his history of Conservatism in America and also a summary article on "The Giants Of American Conservatism" in American Heritage. He wrote, "The Right of these freewheeling decades was a genuine Right: Calhoun , Elihu Root , and Theodore Roosevelt.
He added that Washington and Lincoln transcend the usual categories, but that conservatives "may argue with some conviction that Washington and Lincoln can also be added to his list. Rossiter went to note the importance of other conservative leaders over the past two centuries. Among the fathers of the Constitution, which he calls "a triumph of conservative statesmanship", Rossiter said conservatives may "take special pride" in James Madison , James Wilson , Roger Sherman , John Dickinson , Gouverneur Morris and the Pinckneys of South Carolina.
In the decades around , Rossiter finds that Grover Cleveland , Elihu Root , William Howard Taft , and Theodore Roosevelt "were most successful in shaping the old truths of conservatism to the new facts of industrialism and democracy. Writing in Rossiter suggests that Robert A. Eisenhower may someday be added to the list.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the magazine, see The American Conservative. For related and other uses, see Conservatism disambiguation. Brooks Pat Buchanan William F. James Burnham George H. Bibliography American nationalism Libertarianism List. Christian right Christian fundamentalism Jewish right Islamic fundamentalism Traditionalist Catholic. Social conservatism in the United States.
Financiers Turgot and Necker warned war would be very expensive for France's wobbly system of taxation and finance. The Americans argued that an alliance of the United States, France, and Spain would assure a rapid defeat of the British, but Vergennes, waiting until his navy was ready, hesitated. On July 23, , Vergennes decided that it was time to decide either total assistance, with war, or abandonment of the new nation. The choice, ratified by the king, was war. The British had taken Philadelphia in , but American victory at the Battle of Saratoga brought back hope to the Patriots and enthusiasm in France.
The army of Burgoyne surrendered to American forces after Saratoga and France realized that the United States could be victorious. The king directed Vergennes to negotiate an alliance with the Americans. France formally recognized the United States on February 6, , with the signing of the Treaty of Alliance.
Myths of the American Revolution
Hostilities soon followed after Britain declared war on France on March 17, The British naval force, then the largest fleet afloat, and French fleet confronted each other from the beginning. The British avoided intercepting a French fleet that left Toulon under the comte d'Estaing in April for North America, fearing the French fleet at Brest might then be used to launch an invasion of Britain.
France had kept the Brest fleet to protect commercial shipping in European waters, and it sailed out only after a British fleet was confirmed to have left in pursuit of d'Estaing, thus weakening the British Channel fleet. In spite of this reduction, the British fleet still outnumbered the French fleet at Brest, and Admiral d'Orvilliers was instructed to avoid combat when he sailed in July.
D'Orvilliers met the fleet of Admiral Augustus Keppel in the indecisive Battle of Ushant on July 27, after which both fleets returned to port for repairs.
France did consider the landing of 40, men in the nearby British Isles but abandoned the idea because of logistical issues. On the continent, France was protected through its alliance with Austria which, even if it did not take part in the American Revolutionary War, affirmed its diplomatic support of France. Other nations in Europe at first refused to openly join the war but both Spain and the Dutch Republic gave unofficial support to the American cause.
Vergennes was able to convince the Spanish to formally enter the war in and, in , Britain declared war on the Dutch Republic over claims of Dutch violations of neutrality. French participation in North America was initially maritime in nature and marked by some indecision on the part of its military leaders. In , American and French planners organized an attempt to capture Newport, Rhode Island , then under British occupation. The attempt failed , in part because Admiral d'Estaing did not land French troops prior to sailing out of Narragansett Bay to meet the British fleet.
He then sailed to Boston after his fleet was damaged in a storm. In , d'Estaing again led his fleet to North America for joint operations, this time against British-held Savannah, Georgia. About 3, French joined with 2, Americans in the Siege of Savannah , in which a naval bombardment was unsuccessful.
An attempted assault of the entrenched British position was repulsed with heavy losses. Support became more notable when, in , 6, soldiers led by Rochambeau landed at Newport, itself abandoned in by the British, and then established a naval base there. These forces were largely inactive since the fleet was closely watched by the British fleet from its bases in New York and eastern Long Island. By early , with the war dragging on, French military planners were finally convinced that more significant operations would be required in North America to bring a decisive end to the war.
That year's West Indies fleet was commanded by the comte de Grasse , and specific arrangements were made to coordinate operations with him. De Grasse asked to be supplied with North American pilots and to be informed of possible operations in North America to which he might contribute. Rochambeau and Washington met in Wethersfield, Connecticut in May to discuss their options. Virginia was also seen as a potent threat that could be fought with naval assistance.
These two options were dispatched to the Caribbean along with the requested pilots. Rochambeau, in a separate letter, urged de Grasse to come to the Chesapeake Bay for operations in Virginia. De Grasse received these letters in July at roughly the same time Cornwallis was preparing to occupy Yorktown, Virginia. De Grasse concurred with Rochambeau and subsequently sent a dispatch indicating that he would reach the Chesapeake at the end of August but that agreements with the Spanish meant he could only stay until mid-October.
The arrival of his dispatches prompted the Franco-American army to begin a march for Virginia. De Grasse reached the Chesapeake as planned and his troops were sent to assist Lafayette's army in the blockade of Cornwallis's army. A British fleet sent to confront de Grasse's control of the Chesapeake was defeated by the French on September 5 at the Battle of the Chesapeake and the Newport fleet delivered the French siege train to complete the allied military arrival.
The Siege of Yorktown and following surrender by Cornwallis on October 19 were decisive in ending major hostilities in North America. Other important battles between the French and the British were spaced out around the world, from the West Indies to India. Kitts , but losing St. Lucia at the beginning of the war. A planned Franco-Spanish invasion of Jamaica was aborted after the decisive Battle of the Saintes in At the end of the war.
In European waters, France and Spain joined forces with the entry of Spain into the war in An attempted invasion of Britain failed due to a variety of factors. French and Spanish forces besieged Gibraltar from to , but were unsuccessful in either storming the site, or preventing repeated British relief of its garrison. Allied with the French, the Mysoreans for a time threatened British positions on the east coast, but that war ended status quo ante bellum in