Political Moderation in America's First Two Centuries

In this book political moderates emerge as complex, thoughtful, and sometimes deeply flawed human beings.Political Moderation in America's First Two Centuries corrects the popular misconception of moderation as timidity and caution. The author examines the structure of moderate political thought; analyzes moderate apprehensions, values, and visions of the future; and depicts moderation, not as a lifelong conviction, but as a journey from other political stances toward the moral center of more >>

In this book political moderates emerge as complex, thoughtful, and sometimes deeply flawed human beings.Political Moderation in America's First Two Centuries corrects the popular misconception of moderation as timidity and caution. The author examines the structure of moderate political thought; analyzes moderate apprehensions, values, and visions of the future; and depicts moderation, not as a lifelong conviction, but as a journey from other political stances toward the moral center of politics.Political Moderation in America's First Two Centuries corrects the popular misconception of moderation as timidity and caution. The author examines the structure of moderate political thought; analyzes moderate apprehensions, values, and visions of the future; and depicts moderation, not as a lifelong conviction, but as a journey from other political stances toward the moral center of politics.Political Moderation in America's First Two Centuries corrects the popular misconception that moderates are timid and cautious. Robert M. Calhoon examines the structure of political moderation; he characterizes moderation as a compound of principle and prudence; he defines it as humility in the face of the past; and he classifies it as historically grounded political ethics. From its origins in the Peloponnesian War and its early modern recovery during the French Wars of Religion, this book recounts the popularization of political moderation in American history from John Locke in the 1680s to the Mugwumps in the 1880s. The first comprehensive history of this subject, this book draws on more than a hundred books published over the past half-century and extensive research on religion and politics in America to demonstrate that moderates were creatures of circumstance ýýý made, not born.1. Augustan moderates: 'The precariousness of genuine civilization'; 2. Revolutionary moderates and the development of political character; 3. Ordered liberty in the Southern backcountry and the middle West; 4. Moderating moderation: denominational and primitive Christianity.ýýýRaymond Chandler observed that there are no dull subjects, only dull minds. Political moderation must seem the dullest of subjects, but in the hands of Robert Calhoon, a gifted historian, it emerges not only as illuminating history but as imperative for an understanding of our own tortured times.ýýý -Eugene D. Genovese, author of Roll, Jordan, Roll and Mind of the Master Class, with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, (Cambridge University Press, 2005)ýýýThis is a wise, humane, and learned book. In the midst of an era torn by conflict and locked, some say, in cultural ýýýwars,ýýý Calhoon has illustrated the power of moderation in Americaýýýs past. No tepid ýýýcentrists,ýýý the politicians, preachers, and pedagogues who advocated moderation in unlikely places and inconvenient times followed a model of civil action that has roots in ancient Athens and Sparta. Calhoon gives us a view of British governance, the American Revolution, and the era of the Civil War from the perspective of the men and women who combined principle and prudence in a struggle against zealotry and extremism. The book opens us to resources in the American tradition that can serve us well.ýýý -E. Brooks Holifield, Charles Howard Candler Professor of American Church History, Emory UniversityýýýRobert M. Calhoon restores political moderation to its rightful place in American history. Through deft and searching biographical portraits of principled moderates who resisted radical and reactionary appeals, Calhoon illuminates the deeper commitments to custom, tradition, and faith that have made America moderate. Thoughtful and provocative, Political Moderation makes us reconsider the assumptions that have shaped our national narrative.ýýý -Peter S. Onuf, University of VirginiaýýýFor three decades Robert Calhoun has produced a steady catalogue of major scholarship on such diverse topics as Loyalists in the American Revolution, << less