Liberalism Becomes the American Creed

2018 ◽  
pp. 245-264
Keyword(s):  
American Creed

ONCE MORE BEYOND CONSENSUS: THE “TRANSNATIONAL TURN” AND AMERICAN LIBERAL NATIONALISM

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 673-685
Author(s):  
CARL J. GUARNERI
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary History ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Liberal Nationalism ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Reagan Revolution ◽  
American Creed ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Louis Hartz

“It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies,” Richard Hofstadter famously wrote, “but to be one.” Defining that “American ideology” or “American creed” obsessed scholars of the consensus era, who celebrated (and occasionally lamented) Americans’ allegiance to a limited liberal vocabulary of rights, freedoms, and markets. The cultural transformations begun in the 1960s seemed to question the very idea of a unitary culture or creed, but some historians responded by exploring alternative ideological founding myths to the liberal consensus. Over the ensuing decades scholars mounted formidable efforts to support republicanism or millennial Christianity as challengers, but liberalism proved a resilient foe. And it seemed to have contemporary history on its side: during the Reagan revolution of the century's final decades the classic liberal combination of scaled-down government and free markets carried the day as Americans’ ideal if not their reality. The Lockean liberal tradition that Louis Hartz described a half-century earlier still appeared the only game in town, although scholars continued to argue over its terms, history, and boundaries.

An American Creed

1917 ◽  
Vol 86 (24) ◽  
pp. 651-651
Keyword(s):  
American Creed

The American Creed

2001 ◽  
pp. 71-98
Author(s):  
Melvyn L. Fein
Keyword(s):  
American Creed

The Great American Myths and a Different American Future

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Richard T. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Real Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
American Myths ◽  
American Creed ◽  
Christian Nation

The Great American Myths are the commonly accepted stories that, along with the American Creed, convey to most Americans the meaning of their nation. The first edition of Myths America Lives By identified five of those myths: the Chosen Nation, Nature’s Nation, the Christian Nation, the Millennial Nation, and the Innocent Nation. The second edition adds a sixth: the myth of White Supremacy. This chapter introduces the two primary arguments of this book—first, that the myth of White Supremacy is the primal American myth that informs all the others and, second, that one of the chief functions of the other five myths is to protect and obscure the myth of White Supremacy and assure us that we remain innocent after all. Most blacks understand that white supremacy is the primal American myth since they live with its real-life consequences. But those in positions of power are not forced to live with the consequences of this myth. As a result, for most American whites the myth of White Supremacy is like the air they breathe: it envelops and shapes them but does so in ways they seldom discern.

Conclusion: The American Creed

2021 ◽  
pp. 233-248
Author(s):  
D. G. Hart
Keyword(s):  
Business Leaders ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
American Creed ◽  
The Way

The Conclusion sums up how, after Franklin’s death, his reputation rested on contemporaries and then historians and other writers. He had limited appeal to prominent Protestants even as business leaders and pastors later embraced Franklin’s understanding of religion in relation to the way to wealth. Historians recognized his remarkable career even while granting other American statesmen, no more devout than Franklin, were more profound than the Founder in their interpretations of divine providence. Franklin did not produce a set of reflections on the tragic aspects of human existence the way that other notable Americans did with the help of Protestant teaching. But he was no less a Protestant culturally than these other figures.

American Creed: Philanthropy and the Rise of Civil Society, 1700-1865

2003 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 617
Author(s):  
Amy S. Greenberg ◽  
Kathleen D. McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
American Creed
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