On her book Political Vocabularies: FDR, the Clergy Letters, and the Elements of Political Argument
Cover Interview of May 27, 2018
Lastly
Members of the clergy were both members of an elite and also
very closely connected with local communities. Some were relatively prosperous,
while others were struggling, so they had a unique set of perspectives on the
political changes and challenges associated with the New Deal. And those
perspectives add to our understanding of that important moment in time.
We live in different political worlds, constructed
through rhetoric. Our understandings of the kinds of authority that are
appropriate for a democracy differ. Our understandings of the kinds of people
who make good citizens and the hierarchies among those citizens differ.
How we justify our beliefs, and, as a result, which policies we prefer, differs.
This book, which examines those differences in the 1930s, helps us better understand
our own times. We can’t begin to solve the problems associated with political
polarization until we have understood its roots. I hope that this book
contributes to that endeavor.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
Lastly
Members of the clergy were both members of an elite and also very closely connected with local communities. Some were relatively prosperous, while others were struggling, so they had a unique set of perspectives on the political changes and challenges associated with the New Deal. And those perspectives add to our understanding of that important moment in time.
We live in different political worlds, constructed through rhetoric. Our understandings of the kinds of authority that are appropriate for a democracy differ. Our understandings of the kinds of people who make good citizens and the hierarchies among those citizens differ. How we justify our beliefs, and, as a result, which policies we prefer, differs. This book, which examines those differences in the 1930s, helps us better understand our own times. We can’t begin to solve the problems associated with political polarization until we have understood its roots. I hope that this book contributes to that endeavor.