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God and Race in American Politics: A Short History Mark Noll. Princeton, N,J.: Princeton Univesity Press, 2008. I have read Mark Noll`s book called America`s God which talks about how religion in this country has created its own idea of God, but that the most profound expression of the historic Christian understanding of God has not come from preachers in this country but from one outside the organized church, Abraham Lincoln. So I am looking forward to reading this more recent book by Noll on race and religion. This is from the Amazon website: "Religion has been a powerful political force More... 9/4/08 On Populist Reason Ernesto Laclau. London: Verso, 2005. In this book Laclau is creating a political theory not on the basis of any claim of univesal knowledge (Plato) nor on any social structure but on the basis of populist demands. He is interested in how political identities are formed and how the "people" can be constituted as a political actor. These are, indeed, central concerns of a political project for social democracy. More... 8/25/08 The Theory of Social Democracy Thomas Meyer. Cambridge UK: Polity Press, 2007. This appears to be a comprehensive theory of social democracy, a sort of summary of social democracy as a theory of governance more than a theory of politics. It talks about "social citizenship" and takes off from the United Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The latter has been signed by the United States in 1979 but it has never been ratified. Meyer sees in this covenant "the core of social democracy`s norm More... 8/23/08 The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity Slavoj Zizek. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003. I am taking a look at this book again because I want to dig into Walter Benjamin`s essay "On the Concept of History" where he tells a story of a puppet and a dwarf playing chess. That is, the dwarf is under the table pulling the strings of the puppet. The puppet is historical materialism and pulling its strings is the small and ugly dwarf under the table called theology. But, according to the first pages, Zizek is turning the tables on the dwarf and wants to make theology the puppet and histo More... 8/23/08 Democracy Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Spector of Inverted Totalitarianism Sheldon S. Wolin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Wolin`s Politics and Vision is a classic text in political theory. The above title is his most recent effort to alert the rest of us to what Robert B. Reich says on the back cover, "unconstrained capitalism." Wolin regularly uses the term "social democracy" for the system in this country and how corporate power is frantically trying to destroy it. More... 8/21/08 |