How California Turned Blue

2020 ◽  
pp. 109-128
Author(s):  
Kenneth P. Miller

This chapter describes California’s transformation into a deep blue state. For many years, the Republican Party was the dominant force in California politics. Yet the state was never overwhelmingly conservative. It was a leader of the national Progressive movement of the early twentieth century and for decades continued to support a range of liberal policies even under Republican governors. Democrats began to gain ground in the 1950s and the two parties were highly competitive in the four decades between 1958 and 1998. In the 1990s, California began to shift from a competitive two-party system to Democratic control. Changes in the state’s demographics, economy, and culture contributed to this transformation. Once the parties polarized along ideological lines, California more naturally aligned with the party of the left. Democrats have now gained near total control over California, making it the nation’s most consequential blue state.

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glen Gendzel

When Professor Benjamin Parke De Witt of New York University sat down to write the first history of the progressive movement in 1915, he promised “to give form and definiteness to a movement which is, in the minds of many, confused and chaotic.” Apparently it was a fool's errand, because confusion and chaos continued to plague historians of early twentieth-century reform long after Professor De Witt laid his pen to rest. The maddening variety of reform and reformers in the early twentieth century has perpetually confounded historians' efforts to identify what, if anything, the progressives had in common. Back in the 1950s, Richard Hofstadter charitably allowed that progressives were “of two minds on many issues,” whereas Arthur Link argued that “the progressive movement never really existed” because it pursued so many “contradictory objectives.” In the 1960s, Robert Wiebe concluded that the progressives, if they constituted a movement at all, showed “little regard for consistency.” In the 1970s, Peter Filene wrote an “obituary” for progressivism by reasserting Link's claim that the movement had “never existed” because it was so divided and diffuse. In the 1980s, Daniel Rodgers tried to recast the “ideologically fluid” progressive movement as a pastiche of vaguely related rhetorical styles. By the 1990s, so many competing characterizations of progressivism had emerged that Alan Dawley wondered if “they merely cancel each other out.” In 2002, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore declared emphatically that “historians cannot agree” on progressivism. In 2010, Walter Nugent admitted that “the movement's core theme has been hard to pin down” because progressivism had “many concerns” and “included a wide range of persons and groups.”


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert J Van Klinken

During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jewish mission became an established branch of Protestant mission in general. As the Jewish converts to Protestantism remained fairly few in numbers, these converts were expected to engage in missionary efforts too, among their fellow Jews. One of the results of the ensuing polarization was the exclusion of baptized Jews from the citizenship of the State of Israel, where they were considered traitors by a majority of society. This article argues that programmes for Jewish-Christian dialogue in the State of Israel came under pressure to bar the Jewish Christians from taking part, and explores the question whether the ensuing policies can be ranked as examples of discrimination against this group.


Author(s):  
Meredith Martin

This chapter looks closely at the rise of state-funded English education to uncover the disciplinary role that poetry played. It shows how the naturalization of English “meter” was a crucial part of the English literary curriculum. “Meter” is placed in quotation marks because the “meter” that emerges in the state-funded classroom has little to do with the prosody wars going on outside its walls. Educational theorist Matthew Arnold's cultural metrics, in which poetry by Shakespeare, for instance, will subtly and intimately transform a student into a good citizen, is replaced by a patriotic pedagogy wherein verses written in rousing rhythms are taught as a naturally felt English “beat.” It suggests that poet and educational theorist Henry Newbolt's figure of the “drum” performed a naturalized rhythm that brought England together as a collective. The collective mass identification with (and proliferation of) patriotic verses created an even sharper divide between the high and low, elite and mass, private and public cultures of poetry in the early twentieth century.


2004 ◽  
Vol 77 (195) ◽  
pp. 98-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eamon Duffy

Abstract In this article A. G. Dickens's writings about late medieval religion are located in the context of early twentieth-century English historiography, in particular the controversies between Cardinal Aidan Gasquet and Dr. G. G. Coulton. The article argues that despite his desire for judicious objectivity, and despite also his innovatory use of hitherto neglected types of archival material, Dickens's essentially negative assessment of the state of the late medieval Church was shaped by his own early religious formation, and by a Protestant/whig outlook which he shared with Coulton. As a consequence, he understood some mainstream Tudor religious emphases and convictions as ‘medieval’, by which he meant backward-looking minority concerns.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Hawkins

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the development of marketing practice in Britain from the ancient to the early twentieth century. It builds upon the author’s chapter in the 2016 Routledge Companion to the History of Marketing. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on a review of secondary history and archaeology literature supplemented by digitised historic newspaper and magazine advertising. The literature is frameworked using a modified version of Fullerton’s 1988 periodization which has been extended to include the medieval and Roman eras. Findings One of the significant findings of this paper is the key role the state has played in the development of marketing practice in Britain, the construction of pavements being a good example. Originality/value Apart from Nevett’s 1982 history of British advertising and the author’s Routledge Companion to the History of Marketing chapter, this is the first survey of the historical development of British marketing practice. It assembles and presents in a useful way important information. This paper will be of interest to marketing historians, especially students and researchers new to the subject.


Author(s):  
Loren King

States see the world in a particular way, simplifying their domains to better rule them. By the early twentieth century, these ordering imperatives coincided with progressive ideals grounded in hopes that scientific and technological progress could shape the world for good. That conceit—that we should use the formidable power of the state to forge grand rational schemes for human improvement—blinded planners to the critical importance of local, cumulative, practical knowledge. This is Scott’s core thesis in Seeing Like a State, which he supports with a rich (if selective) body of evidence. If we defend Scott’s book as political theory, then we might worry that he has simply rediscovered skeptical themes (specifically, worries about coercive power and rational planning) long-evident in counter-enlightenment, anarchist, libertarian, and postcolonial thought. These worries, while reasonable, should not obscure the great value of Scott’s book as grounded political theory: there are lessons here, both methodological and substantive, for political theory.


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