scholarly journals A Brief Comment on American Exceptionalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 291-294
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Varacalli ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Radical Feminism ◽  
Adequate Treatment ◽  
Outright Rejection ◽  
American Experiment

This Comment concerns itself with the concept of “American Exceptionalism.” More specifically, following Stephen M. Krason, this Comment lays out the different variations of American Exceptionalism (religious, secular, utopian, and realistic) and provides a preliminary critique of these options from the perspective of the Natural Law and Catholic social science. It also addresses its outright rejection by such modern worldviews as Marxism and radical feminism. This Comment also includes a brief discussion of the long range viability of the American Experiment and the prospects of American civilization developing and sustaining a realistic version of American Exceptionalism. This Comment is intended as an initial foray into the topic, hopefully leading eventually, I hope, to a fuller and more adequate treatment.

The Chácobo Indians of the Amazon

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-164
Author(s):  
Gilbert R. Prost ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Social Experiment ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Tribal People ◽  
Ground Plan ◽  
Long Range Planning

This essay is about a life-affirming social revolution grounded in what theologians call Natural Law or the Orders of Creation, that innate universal Ground Plan within us which informs men everywhere how to live. It is about a social experiment in communicating a meta-culture of meaning and life to a dying monolingual, semi-nomadic Amazonian tribe living on the edge of extinction. As the Bolivian command culture slowly impinged on every aspect of the Chácobo lifestyle, this primitive, egalitarian, command-less, duty-based structured society, like so many other tribes before them, would eventualty disappear into the fabric of the dominant culture within a generation. The Chácobo would cease to exist as a tribal people. To prevent this, the society had to restructure itself from a defensive culture designed to reduce anxiety over existence in isolation to a pro-active culture designed to maximize human freedom within a universal moral order. Following the Plan of the Maker, Chácobo society, within a span of twenty-five years, moved from the edge of extinction to vigor and health, and from day-to-day existence to long-range planning while experiencing a five to six-fold irncrease in population growth.

The Verdict on the Founding

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Kenneth L. Grasso ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Public Order ◽  
American Founding ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The World ◽  
American Experiment ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
Historical Trajectory

Robert R. Reilly’s America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding argues that the intellectual roots of the founders’ political theory are found in the Christian understanding of man, society and the world, and in the tradition of natural law thinking that emerged under its aegis. The American founding, he concludes, must be understood as an attempted “re-establishment” of “the principles and practices” of medieval constitutionalism. While finding the broad outlines of Reilly’s argument persuasive, the author worries that Reilly does not adequately take into account the eclectic character of the founders’ thought, the influence of the Enlightenment and Reformation on it, and the long-term implications of the latter influences for the historical trajectory of public order they created. The contrast between Reilly’s understanding of the founding and John Courtney Murray’s more nuanced account (which recognizes the predominant influence of Christian natural law tradition on the American experiment, while acknowledging the presence of less wholesome influences as well), the article argues, underscores both the strengths and weaknesses of this book. While both Reilly and Murray would agree that the founding was “good,” Murray, unlike Reilly, recognizes that “the seeds of dissolution” were present from the beginning and worries whether it is ultimately “good enough” to sustain the American experiment in self-government and ordered liberty.

Adams, Wilson, and the American Res Publica

2021 ◽  
pp. 187-220
Author(s):  
Michael C. Hawley
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Final Stage ◽  
John Locke ◽  
The Self ◽  
Original Formulation ◽  
American Founding ◽  
John Adams ◽  
American Experiment ◽  
Res Publica

This chapter considers the final stage of the Ciceronian tradition: the American founding. Insofar as the American founding is influenced by John Locke, it is indirectly indebted to Cicero. However, John Adams and James Wilson recognize the profoundly Ciceronian character of American liberal republicanism. Both argue that the prevailing understandings of natural law, justice, liberty, and what it means to be a republic derive from Cicero’s formulation. Moreover, Adams and Wilson see the American experiment as proving Cicero right, that a republic tethered to natural law could be realized. They also see the American Founding as contributing its own innovation to this tradition: written constitutionalism. The self-conscious writing of a regime’s constitution enables the principles of a natural law republic to be fixed and formalized in a way that Cicero’s original formulation did not provide for.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Murray ◽  
Maria Feeney
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Empirical Approach ◽  
Empirical Social Research ◽  
Institutional Politics ◽  
Planning Project ◽  
Scholastic Philosophy

Underlying the institutional politics of the Irish university question was the clash between scientific rationalism a papal-championed revival of the scholastic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. But in social science, as the growth of a Catholic social movement and a succession of Irish-published sociology textbooks illustrate, a natural law perspective long went unchallenged by secular alternatives. It was Catholic clerical academics who first embraced an empirical approach to social science in the Ireland of the 1950s but in the succeeding decade they found themselves marginalised by a new breed of state technocrats who perceived empirical social research as a useful tool for their planning project.

Social Science and US Foreign Affairs

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joy Rohde
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social

Since the social sciences began to emerge as scholarly disciplines in the last quarter of the 19th century, they have frequently offered authoritative intellectual frameworks that have justified, and even shaped, a variety of U.S. foreign policy efforts. They played an important role in U.S. imperial expansion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Scholars devised racialized theories of social evolution that legitimated the confinement and assimilation of Native Americans and endorsed civilizing schemes in the Philippines, Cuba, and elsewhere. As attention shifted to Europe during and after World War I, social scientists working at the behest of Woodrow Wilson attempted to engineer a “scientific peace” at Versailles. The desire to render global politics the domain of objective, neutral experts intensified during World War II and the Cold War. After 1945, the social sciences became increasingly central players in foreign affairs, offering intellectual frameworks—like modernization theory—and bureaucratic tools—like systems analysis—that shaped U.S. interventions in developing nations, guided nuclear strategy, and justified the increasing use of the U.S. military around the world. Throughout these eras, social scientists often reinforced American exceptionalism—the notion that the United States stands at the pinnacle of social and political development, and as such has a duty to spread liberty and democracy around the globe. The scholarly embrace of conventional political values was not the result of state coercion or financial co-optation; by and large social scientists and policymakers shared common American values. But other social scientists used their knowledge and intellectual authority to critique American foreign policy. The history of the relationship between social science and foreign relations offers important insights into the changing politics and ethics of expertise in American public policy.

Community Management of Young and Disabled Children

1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-30
Author(s):  
John F. Irvine
Keyword(s):  
Health Education ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Community Management ◽  
Disabled Children ◽  
Community Network ◽  
Or Management ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Resource Families

AbstractCommunity management is proposed as a sound, economical and demonstrably successful alternative in the management of young and disabled children. The author seeks to go beyond the health-education debate in this matter towards a welfare oriented model based upon principles drawn from a diversity of disciplines. One such principle incorporates the natural law of utilising forces to counterbalance forces – a principle fundamental to most areas of science but one which is rarely extrapolated for use within social science generally, or management of the disabled specifically. In the Darling Downs project in Queensland, Australia, resource families are deployed to counterbalance or assist “disabled” families with the support of professionals in the community network. The paper sets out the variously derived principles underlying the Darling Downs project and then provides a detailed description of other aspects of the framework including funding, administration, services, procedures and current developments. The programme is then analysed in terms of its anticipated directions, strengths/weaknesses, limitations and applicability to the other situations.

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