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Zusatztext “For anybody who wants to understand the growing public role of American religion! [ The Theocons ] is a book to reckon with.”— The New York Times Book Review “Literate and reasonable. . . . One of the most enlightening critiques of the Religious Right to date.” — Booklist “ The Theocons constitutes a major step toward reclaiming the liberal heritage that has made America great.”—Alan Wolfe! author of The Transformation of American Religion “Invaluable. . . . Alarming. . . . Devastating as a critique of the theocratic ambitions of those who now control the Republican Party.”—Andrew Sullivan Informationen zum Autor Damon Linker is a Senior Writing Fellow in the Center for Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, National Review, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, The Public Interest, The Review of Politics, The Review of Metaphysics , and the American Behavioral Scientist . From May 2001 to February 2005, he worked under Richard John Neuhaus at First Things —first as associate editor of the journal, then as its editor. Prior to joining the magazine, he taught political philosophy at Brigham Young University and served as a speechwriter for New York’s Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Linker studied history, philosophy, and writing at Ithaca College, graduating with a BA in 1991. He went on to earn an MA in European history from New York University and a Ph.D. in political science from Michigan State University. Born in New York City, Linker currently lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two children. Klappentext An essential history of the influential men who have spearheaded the movement to erode the wall separating church and state.Beginning as far-left radicals during the 1960s, the theocons in Damon Linker's book (including Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Weigel) gradually transitioned to conservatism when they grew frustrated with the failures of the decade's revolutionary goals. Linker shows how, starting during the Reagan administration, they worked to forge a Christian alliance between Evangelical Protestants and Conservative Catholics. By injecting the language of faith into political life, this movement appealed to a wide swath of voters and ultimately played a central role in the election of George W. Bush. The Theocons is an absorbing and revelatory look at an ideological crusade that every American needs to know about. Leseprobe 1 THE ORIGINS OF AN IDEOLOGY Red state and blue state, conservative and liberal, pro-Bush and anti-Bush, prolife and prochoice, religious and secular--the culture war that divides America is about many things, but it is in large part about the legacy of the 1960s. Most "blue" Americans feel at peace with the cultural revolution that began roughly four decades ago, believing that for all of its excesses the decade of the 1960s made the country freer and more just than it once was. Others, however, are more troubled. Some of these "red" Americans feel deeply ambivalent about the profound cultural changes wrought by the 1960s, while still others take a more strident view, convinced that the decade inaugurated a period of moral decadence that continues to this day, diminishing the nation, coarsening its culture, corrupting its children. Theoconservative ideology has played a crucial role in legitimizing this last view--the outlook of those who take it as axiomatic that (in the words of founding theocon Richard John Neuhaus) the 1960s were "a slum of a decade."(1) But this highly tendentious account of the 1960s obscures the historical record, which shows that the theocons themselves were once enthusiastic participants in the very activities they now passionately decry. During the 1960s, Neuh...
