WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015), professor at Claremont McKenna College and distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute, was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. His hundreds of students have reached positions of power and prestige throughout the intellectual and political world, including at the Supreme Court and the Trump White House. Jaffa authored Barry Goldwater’s famous 1964 Republican Convention speech, which declared, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” William F. Buckley, Jaffa’s close friend and a key figure in shaping the modern conservative movement, wrote, “If you think it is hard arguing with Harry Jaffa, try agreeing with him.” His widely acclaimed book Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1959) was the first scholarly work to treat Abraham Lincoln as a serious philosophical thinker. As the earliest protégé of the controversial scholar Leo Strauss, Jaffa used his theoretical insights to argue that the United States is the “best regime” in principle. He saw the American Revolution and the Civil War as world-historical events that revealed the true nature of politics. Statesmanship, constitutional government, and the virtues of republican citizenship are keys to unlocking the most important truths of political philosophy. Jaffa’s student, Glenn Ellmers, was given complete access to Jaffa’s private papers at Hillsdale College to produce the first comprehensive examination of his teacher’s vast body of work. In addition to Lincoln and the founding fathers, the book shares Jaffa’s profound insights into Aristotle, William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, and more.

Discusses breakdown and political impasse, and argues for social justice and responsibility

Reading Nietzsche's works as the "political biography of his soul," Leslie Thiele presents an original and accessible essay on the great thinker's attempt to lead a heroic life as a philosopher, artist, saint, educator, and solitary. He takes as his point of departure Nietzsche's conception of the soul as a multiplicity of conflicting drives and personae, and focuses on the task Nietzsche allotted himself "to make a cosmos out of his chaotic inheritance." This struggle to "become what you are" by way of a spiritual politics is demonstrated to be Nietzsche's foremost concern, which fused his philosophy with his life. The book offers a conversation with Nietzsche rather than a consideration of the secondary literature, yet it takes to task many prevalent approaches to his work, and contests especially the way we often restrict our encounter with him to conceptual analysis. All deconstructionist attempts to portray him as solely concerned with the destruction of the subject and the dispersion of the self, rather than its unification, are called into question. Often portrayed as the champion of nihilism, Nietzsche here emerges as a thinker who saw his primary task as the overcoming of nihilism through the heroic struggle of individuation.

Fighting fascism at home and abroad begins with the consolidation of a progressive politics Seventy-five years ago, Henry Wallace, then the sitting Vice President of the United States, mounted a campaign to warn about the persisting "Danger of American Fascism." As fighting in the European and Japanese theaters drew to a close, Wallace warned that the country may win the war and lose the piece; that the fascist threat that the U.S. was battling abroad had a terrifying domestic variant, growing rapidly in power: wealthy corporatists and their allies in the media. Wallace warned that if the New Deal project was not renewed and expanded in the post-war era, American fascists would use fear mongering, xenophonbia, and racism to regain the economic and political power that they lost. He championed an alternative, progressive vision of a post-war world-an alternative to triumphalist "American Century" vision then rising--in which the United States rejected colonialism and imperialism. Wallace's political vision - as well as his standing in the Democratic Party - were quickly sidelined. In the decades to come, other progressive forces would mount similar campaigns: George McGovern and Jesse Jackson more prominently. As John Nichols chronicles in this book, they ultimately failed - a warning to would-be reformers today - but their successive efforts provide us with insights into the nature of the Democratic Party, and a strategic script for the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The “unrivaled” history of America’s divided politics, now in a fully updated edition that examines the rise of Trump—and what comes next (New Republic). When it was published in 2015, Andrew Hartman’s history of the culture wars was widely praised for its compelling and even-handed account of how they came to define American politics at the close of the twentieth century. But it also garnered attention for Hartman’s declaration that the culture wars were over—and that the left had won. In the wake of Trump’s rise, driven by an aggressive fanning of those culture war flames, Hartman has brought A War for the Soul of America fully up to date, detailing the ways in which Trump’s success, while undeniable, represents the last gasp of culture war politics—and how the reaction he has elicited can show us early signs of the very different politics to come. “As a guide to the late twentieth-century culture wars, Hartman is unrivalled . . . . Incisive portraits of individual players in the culture wars dramas . . . . Reading Hartman sometimes feels like debriefing with friends after a raucous night out, an experience punctuated by laughter, head-scratching, and moments of regret for the excesses involved.” —New Republic

Understand the problems facing America and learn how Jesus would respond to them. New York Times bestselling author and Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson exposes the destructive nature of American politics and calls on Christians to actively participate in advancing the Kingdom of heaven on earth. We live in a fractured country, a country in which identity politics, creeping socialist policies, toxic social media, and the vast partisan divide threaten the very fabric of America. After decades of political decay and of losing sight of our first principles, the American people are suffering from runaway debt, increased rates of depression, broken families, moral decay, and more. In Jesus Politics, Phil Robertson provides an alternate path: a radical call for Christians to use their freedoms to advance the agenda of the King and win back the divided soul of America. Exploring the problems facing our country and how Jesus would respond to each, Robertson offers a clear strategy, showing us how to do good by King Jesus, bringing the kingdom of heaven to our homes, neighborhoods, churches, communities, and country. Robertson also gives you the tools you need to apply the lessons of Jesus Politics in the voting booth and in our everyday lives, reminding us that above all, we're called to: Love God Love our neighbors Do whatever it takes to bring, maintain, and protect his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven Join Robertson as he takes a closer look at the problems facing America and shares how we can use our time, talents, resources, and votes to solve them as members of the kingdom. Explore a new way of thinking and acting, a way that protects and advances the policies of the King. And, if enough of us do, maybe we can become a nation that proclaims, "In the King we trust."

The Lost Soul of American Politics is a provocative new interpretation of American political thought from the Founding Fathers to the Neo-Conservatives. Reassessing the motives and intentions of such great political thinkers as Madison, Thoreau, Lincoln, and Emerson, John P. Diggins shows how these men struggled to create an alliance between the politics of self-interest and a religious sense of moral responsibility—a tension that still troubles us today.

This book examines the relationship between Plato's views on psychology and his political philosophy, focusing on his reflections on the spirited part of the tripartite soul, or thumos, and spirited motivation over the course of his career. Spirit is the distinctively social or political part of the human soul for Plato, in the sense that it is the source of the desires, emotions, and sensitivities that make it possible for people to form relationships with one another, interact politically, and cooperate together in and protect their communities. Such emotions prominently include not only the aggressive or competitive qualities for which thumos is well known, but also the feelings of attachment, love, friendship, and civic fellowship that bind families and communities together and make cities possible in the first place. Moreover, as spirit is the political part of the soul in this sense, two social and political challenges that occupy Plato throughout his works--namely, how to educate citizens properly in virtue and how to maintain unity and stability in political communities--cannot be addressed and resolved, on his view, without proper attention to the spirited aspects of human psychology.

To understand Latin America's political culture, and to understand why it differs so greatly from that of the United States, one must look beyond the political history of the region, Howard J. Wiarda explains in this comprehensive book. A highly respected expert on Latin American politics, Wiarda explores a sweeping array of Iberian and Latin American social, economic, institutional, cultural, and religious factors from ancient times to the twentieth century. He illuminates the distinctive political attitudes and traditions of Latin America as well as the unique--and not widely understood--features of present-day Latin American models of democracy. While Ibero-American and Western liberal traditions draw from the same classical thinkers, they often emphasize different ideas and reach different conclusions, Wiarda contends. He traces the influences of Rome, Islam, medieval Christianity, the Reconquest, and Iberian feudalism, and the powerful but largely unacknowledged effects of the Counter-Reformation on Iberian and Latin American civilizations. The author concludes with a discussion of recent changes in political culture and an assessment of the strength of democracy's hold in the nations of Latin America.

Avoiding the easy definitions and caricatures that tend to celebrate or condemn the "hip hop generation," Hip Hop Matters focuses on fierce and far-reaching battles being waged in politics, pop culture, and academe to assert control over the movement. At stake, Watkins argues, is the impact hip hop has on the lives of the young people who live and breathe the culture. He presents incisive analysis of the corporate takeover of hip hop and the rampant misogyny that undermines the movement's progressive claims. Ultimately, we see how hip hop struggles reverberate in the larger world: global media consolidation; racial and demographic flux; generational cleavages; the reinvention of the pop music industry; and the ongoing struggle to enrich the lives of ordinary youth.