16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
cogent analysis of ( and for ) our troubled times, June 17, 2005
This review is from: The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America (Paperback)
It seems to be a fairly well-kept secret, especially from the self-insulated intelligentsia, but some of the most cogent 20th century critics of political chicanery, martial foolishness and cultural excess have been traditional ( as opposed to "neo" ) conservatives like T.S. Eliot, Richard Weaver and Russell Kirk, whose work is both considered in its reflective power and fiercely independent of what many assume (falsely) are virtual cognate "identifiers" (conservatism = big business + GOP ). The late and widely esteemed social theorist Robert Nisbet (1915-96) was a member of a small but august group, writing many well-received books: one of his last, "THE PRESENT AGE" (1988) is particularly apposite, offering as it does a critique of (in the words of his subtitle) "progress and anarchy in modern America".
Nisbet's analysis begins with that period of America's history that amounted to a sea change in governmental policy: President Woodrow Wilson's administration and America's entry into the hostilities of The Great War ( WW I ). As Nisbet writes in the first chapter:
"...the [ American ] people participated widely in a revolutionary upsurge of patriotism and of consecration to the improvement of the world in the very process of making `the world safe for democracy', as the moralistic President Wilson put it ..."
In the same chapter Nisbet makes a number of provocative comments on what he terms "the prevalence of war":
"...War is a tried and true specific when a people's moral values become stale and flat. It can be a productive crucible for the remaking of key moral meanings and the strengthening of the sinews of society ..."
***
"...All wars of any appreciable length have a secularizing effect upon engaged societies, a diminution of the authority of old religious and moral values and a parallel elevation of new utilitarian, hedonistic, or pragmatic values. Wars, to be successfully fought, demand a reduction in the taboos regarding life, dignity, property, family, and religion ... there must be nothing of merely moral nature left standing between the fighting forces and victory; not even, or especially, taboos on sexual encounters ... military, or at least war-born, relationships among individuals tend to supercede relationships of family, parish, and ordinary walks of life. Ideas of chastity, modesty, decorum, respectability change quickly in wartime ..."
***
"...in sum, in culture, as in politics, economics, social behavior, and the psychological recesses of America, the Great War was the occasion of the birth of modernity in the United States ..."
***
Nisbet goes on to describe ( and excoriate ) what he calls "The Great Myth" of American exceptionalism: the "Can Do", `Know How" and "No Fault" canards which accompanied such follies as Korea, Vietnam and (one can safely add ), Iraq. Consider the following:
"...The single most powerful cause of the present size and the worldwide deployment of the military establishment is the moralization of foreign policy and military ventures that has been deeply ingrained, especially in the minds of presidents, for a long time ... the staying power of the Puritan image of America as a `city on a hill' was considerable throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. American the Redeemer Nation was very much a presence in the minds of a great many Americans. American `exceptionalism' began in the conviction that God had created one truly free and democratic nation on earth and that it was to the best interests of all other nations to study America and learn from her ..."
What may surprise those on the Left with slight knowledge of history (a deficiency certainly endemic in modern America ) is how these debacles were set into motion as a direct consequence of policies carried out by "progressives", figures that are commonly claimed as part of the left-liberal heritage. Nisbet comments:
" .. thus the birth of 20th century moralism in foreign policy and war. From Wilson's day to ours the embedded purpose- sometimes articulated in words, more often not- of American foreign policy, under Democrats and Republicans alike oftentimes, has boiled down to America-on-a-permanent-Mission: a mission to make the rest of the world a little more like America the Beautiful. Plant a little `democracy' here and tomorrow a little `liberalism' there, not hesitating once in a while to add a pinch of American-style social democracy ..."
As Nisbet demonstrates, the *Great Myth* is a form of collective delirium, goading us in both our personal lives and our roles as citizens, to fall prey to hubristic delusions of grandeur, all the while overlooking the ugly and all too real elements of pride and conceit of which this myth is almost wholly comprised. Whether through the uniformly heretical forms of Christian belief ( "Religious Right" ), the nihilistic forms of self-deification and narcissism ( "Revolutionary Left" ) or the cynical strategies employed by amoral Machiavellians manipulating *all* groups, one theme holds as predominant: a sense of self-righteousness allied to political power is a very certain recipe for calamity. No, we are certainly not free from the "present age" Nisbet has so cogently ( if lamentably ) analyzed.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vintage Nisbet, June 24, 2003
This review is from: The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America (Paperback)
Commemorating, so to speak, the 200th anniversary of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, Robert Nisbet (1913-1996) asked what would strike the founders as the major surprises from the time of the founding to today. According to Nisbet, these are: the importance of war for America; the growth of government; and the "loose" (rootless) individual.
Nibset analyzes these changes from 1914-1989, providing a rapid historical and sociological overview of that time period. In discussing the growth of government, Nisbet shows that Burnham was correct that the U.S. government was in fact taken over by the "managerial elite" at the time of Wilson. America has adopted a Wilsonian foreign policy that has far outlasted any usefulness it may have had in the cold war. Nisbet is quite prescient in his prediction that this foreign policy would outlast the fall of Communism. "Take away the Soviet Union as a crucial, and . . . content of some kind will expand to relentlessly fill the time and space left." [p. 29.] This describes the motivation for the neocon New World Order perfectly.
I generally agree with Nisbet and found this working provoking. I don't quite understand why Nisbet was so hostile to Reagan; although Reagan wasn't the conservative or libertarian some hoped him to be. For example, Nisbet isn't correct in asserting that Reagan did not want "mandatory" prayer in the public schools, nor do I understand Nisbet's assertion that SDI was "utopian."
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2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
copyright 1988, old and inexpensive, December 2, 2007
This review is from: The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America (Paperback)
I've given a bunch of books to my uncle. He's not getting this one. This is a keeper. Following is a blurb from the copyright page that I thought important:
"The cuneiform inscription that appears in the logo and serves as a design element in all Liberty Fund books is the earliest-known written appearance of the word "freedom" (amagi), or "liberty." It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash."
It's a classic book because the cover pages are larger than the pages. Paperbacks are never creative like that. I went straight here to put 2 other Liberty Fund books on my wish list. I'm aware of Regnery Press but they're the corporate/fascist alternative to Liberty Fund.
The trouble started in WWI. America or the U.S. thanks to Woodrow Wilson, took an evangelical approach to foreign policy. The writer speaks of "the Great Myth." Nationalism coupled with righteousness that comes directly from the puritans who believed the new world was the city on a hill, and the new israel.
"where the church had been for so long the most widely accepted institutional base for reform of society, a constantly increasing number of social scientists, philosophers, and critics, in the 1920's and now, put full emphasis on the national state."
He includes that it was rousseau who came up with the idea of beaurocracy pushing the citizenry forward into sophistication. America just took it to new levels. New levels that cannot last in my opinion.
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