The present age : progress and anarchy in modern America /

"The Present Age, Robert Nisbet's analysis of the United States in the period after 1914, provides an original take on "the American century." This learned, elegantly written essay extends the analyses of Tocqueville and Bryce of the threats that bureaucracy, centralization, and...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Nisbet, Robert A.
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Indianapolis : Liberty Fund, [2003]
Series:Online library of liberty.
Subjects:
Online Access: Full text (Wentworth users only)
Local Note:ProQuest Ebook Central
Description
Summary:"The Present Age, Robert Nisbet's analysis of the United States in the period after 1914, provides an original take on "the American century." This learned, elegantly written essay extends the analyses of Tocqueville and Bryce of the threats that bureaucracy, centralization, and creeping conformity post to liberty and individual independence in the Western world. Nisbet depicts the unprecedented "militarization" of American life in the decades after 1914 as a tragedy - the necessary resistance to National Socialist and Communist totalitarianism that fed into and reinforced the profound tendencies toward centralization in modern society."
"Nisbet criticizes Woodrow Wilson's moralistic and militaristic foreign policy and desire for "progressive" social democracy and social engineering at home. His critique of the American "itch to intervene," rooted in "pious universalism," is quite relevant to contemporary debates about humanitarian intervention. And his discussion of the "despotic" character of the modern state raises the question whether republican self-government can survive the relentless expansion of the state's concerns and responsibilities."--Jacket
Item Description:Originally published: New York : Harper & Row, 1988.
Includes index.
Physical Description:1 online resource (viii, 149 pages)
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9781614878445
1614878447
0865974098
9780865974098
Source of Description, Etc. Note:Print version record.