The tragedy of U.S. foreign policy
Subtitle: how America's civil religion betrayed the national interest
By: Walter A. McDougall
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 408
ISBN-13: 9780300211450
Subjects: Civil religion; Foreign relations; History
Other titles: Tragedy of United States foreign policy
Description: Pulitzer Prize--winning historian Walter A. McDougall argues powerfully that a pervasive but radically changing faith that "God is on our side" has inspired U.S. foreign policy ever since 1776. The first comprehensive study of the role played by civil religion in U.S. foreign relations over the entire course of the country's history, McDougall's book explores the deeply infused religious rhetoric that has sustained and driven an otherwise secular republic through peace, war, and global interventions for more than two hundred years. From the Founding Fathers and the crusade for independence to the Monroe Doctrine, through World Wars I and II and the decades-long Cold War campaign against "godless Communism," this coruscating polemic reveals the unacknowledged but freely exercised dogmas of civil religion that bind together a "God blessed" America, sustaining the nation in its pursuit of an ever elusive global destiny.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-380) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : 9/11 in Parallax Vision :; title: 1. Why the Bush blunders?; title: 2. Why the imperial overstretch?; title: 3. Why the American heresies?; title: Washington's World : the Civil Church Expectant :; title: 4. A divine-right republic in the family of nations; title: 5. Washington's farewell address; title: 6. Thomas Jefferson and the utopian temptation; title: 7. John Quincy Adams and the problem of neighborhood; title: 8. Manifest destiny; title: 9. European revolutions and American civil war; title: 10. The gilded age : last years of orthodoxy; title: Wilson's World : the Civil Church Militant :; title: 11. ¡Cuba libre!; title: 12. The progressive social gospel; title: 13. Benevolent assimilation; title: 14. Twentieth-century trends; title: 15. Wilson's war; title: 16. Wilson's peace; title: Roosevelt's World : the Civil Church Agonistes :; title: 17. Modern explosions; title: 18. The progressive Republican denouement; title: 19. Roosevelt the isolationist; title: 20. Roosevelt the interventionist; title: 21. World War II : the great masquerade; title: 22. Roosevelt the failed high priest; title: Kennedy's World : the Civil Church Triumphant; title: 23. The cradles of cold war theology; title: 24. High priestly prayers; title: 25. Impossible dreams; title: 26. Age of Aquarius; title: 27. A purgatory in time; title: 28. The power of words; title: Obama's world? : the Global Civil Religion Aborts.