Can Partisanship Be Fixed?
Investigate the debate over parties by examining their nature and role in American political life.
This course takes a close look at the two great rival partisan interpretations of liberal democracy in America. We trace the development of the left from the rise of progressivism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the implementation of FDR’s New Deal in the second third of the twentieth century, its expansion in LBJ’s Great Society programs, and President Barack Obama’s ambitious domestic agenda designed to further expand government’s reach and responsibilities. To understand the right, we concentrate on the emergence in post-World War II America of several strands of conservative thought—libertarianism, social conservatism, and neoconservatism—and then consider these various strands as they receive expression in the speeches of President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush.
Photo by “Campaign Buttons” by L. Allen Brewer | Flickr, CC BY 2.0
James Ceaser on Our Parties
Faculty
Peter Berkowitz
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He studies and writes about, among other things, constitutional government, conservatism and progressivism in America, liberal education, national security and law, and Middle East politics.
Peter Berkowitz
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He studies and writes about, among other things, constitutional government, conservatism and progressivism in America, liberal education, national security and law, and Middle East politics.
He is the author of Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation (Hoover Institution Press, 2013); Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War (Hoover Institution Press, 2012); Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999); and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Harvard University Press, 1995).
He is the editor of seven collections of essays on political ideas and institutions published by the Hoover Institution: Renewing the American Constitutional Tradition (2014); Future Challenges in National Security and Law (2010); The Future of American Intelligence (2005); Terrorism
He taught constitutional law and jurisprudence at George Mason University School of Law from 1999 to 2006, and political philosophy in the department of government at Harvard University from 1990 to 1999. He holds a J.D. and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University, an M.A. in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a B.A. in English literature from Swarthmore College.
James W. Ceaser
James W. Ceaser is Harry F. Byrd Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1976, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has written several books on American politics and political thought, including Presidential Selection and Liberal Democracy and Political Science.
James W. Ceaser
James W. Ceaser is Harry F. Byrd Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1976, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has written several books on American politics and political thought, including Presidential Selection, Liberal Democracy and Political Science, Reconstructing America, and Nature and History in American Political Development. He has also coauthored a series on American national elections since 1992, the most recent of which is entitled After Hope and Change: The 2012 Elections and American Politics.
Professor Ceaser has been a Fulbright teacher at the University of Florence and the University of Basel. He has held visiting professorships at Oxford University, the University of Bordeaux, Harvard University, Princeton University, and the University of Rennes. Professor Ceaser is a presidential appointee to the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. He is a frequent contributor to the popular press, and he often comments on American politics for Voice of America.
Professor Ceaser received his doctorate from Harvard University in the field of American politics.
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Roots of Left and Right: Reactions to the French Revolution
Readings:
- René Descartes, Excerpt from Discourse and Method (1637)
- Edmund Burke, Short Excerpts
- Alexander Hamilton, Selection from Federalist No. 1 (1787)
- Thomas Jefferson, Some Statements in Favor of Re-writing the Constitution
- James Madison, Selection from Federalist No. 49 (1788)
- Joseph de Maistre, Selections
- Declaration of Independence (excerpt)
- Tocqueville, Old Regime (excerpt)
- Edmund Burke, Excerpt on Rights and on the Contract
- Lincoln, Letter to Henry Pierce, April 6, 1859
- Roger Scruton, “Why I Became a Conservative” (2003)
Discussion Questions:
- Why might one want to build or reconstruct society on the basis of reason?
- Why might one want to respect the organic growth of societies and the wisdom embodied in tradition?
- How does constitutional government reconcile the claims of reason and tradition?
- Is America’s founding (the revolution, the claim of rights in the Declaration, and the writing of the Constitution) more rationalist than traditionalist? If so, how is the support of these often considered more “conservative” today? Does the American founding represent another kind of conservatism than the European form?
Progressivism: General Themes and Conservative Responses
Readings:
- Condorcet, “Sketch for an Historical Picture of Progress” (1795) (excerpt)
- Woodrow Wilson, “What is Progress?”
- Lester Ward, Presidential Address to Sociological Society (1906)
- Woodrow Wilson, On the US Constitution
- Theodore Roosevelt, “Who Is a Progressive?” (1912)
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Economic Bill of Rights (1944)
- Students for a Democratic Society, Port Huron Statement (1962)
- James W. Ceaser, “What Next for the Left?” (2016)
- Harvey Mansfield, “Our Parties: Part One” (2015)
Discussion Questions:
- What is the meaning of the idea that history progresses? Do you accept the proposition that things have gotten better? Does the record of the twentieth century provide evidence in favor of or against the idea?
- What, in terms of American politics, is progressivism?
- What is the progressive’s critique of the Founding? In what way was the Founding, especially the Constitution, inadequate?
- In what ways does the Port Huron statement capture the spirit of liberalism? In what ways does it depart from it?
- Compare and contrast progressivism with liberalism. How do both inform contemporary partisan debates?
Conservatism: Different Variants
Readings:
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, “What Kind of Despotism”
- Friedrich Hayek, Road to Serfdom, Chapters 1, 2, 3
- Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (excerpt)
- Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind, Chapter 1
- Friedrich Hayek “Why I Am Not a Conservative” (1960)
- Murray Rothbard, “What is Libertarianism?”
- Robert P. George, “Five Pillars”
- Peter Berkowitz, “Constitutional Conservatism,” Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2012
Discussion Questions:
- Is conservatism one thing or many? What are its different components?
- If it is one thing, what is its core principle? If many, what is their common denominator?
Conservatism: Foreign Affairs & Reactions to Trump & Populism
Readings:
- Irving Kristol, “The Neoconservative Persuasion” (2003)
- Ronald Reagan, Address to Members of the British Parliament (1982)
- George W. Bush, National Endowment for Democracy Speech (2003)
- George W. Bush, Second Inaugural (2005)
- Pat Buchanan, “Trump’s Foreign Policy America First” (2016)
- Ivan Eland , “Crazy Candidate has Sensible Foreign Policy Views” (2016)
- Robert Kagan, “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire” (2014)
- William Galston, “How Trump Killed Reaganism” (2016)
- Bobby Jindal, “I’m Voting for Trump” (2016)
- Bret Stephens, “Hillary: The Conservative Hope” (2016)
Discussion Questions:
- What distinguishes neoconservatism from the forms of conservatism that preceded it and the left-liberalism its founders rejected?
