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Dangerous Convictions : What's Really Wrong with the U. S. Congress

ISBN: 9780199931989 | 0199931984

Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Pub. Date: 1/17/2013

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Summary Author Biography

The debt-ceiling debacle of 2011 was clear evidence of the dangerous polarization of American politics. Heedless of the warnings of economists, a majority of Republicans in the House refused to allow the Treasury to borrow enough money to pay for spending already ordered by Congress. The government avoided a catastrophic default only by unprecedented legislative contortions. The debt ceiling fight also showed that the two parties simply don't understand each other. In Dangerous Convictions, former Democratic Congressman Tom Allen, explains how ... MOREbeneath the surface of our political debates, the incompatible world views of the two parties have turned Congress into a dysfunctional body. "Years of listening to what seemed to me to be preposterous arguments in committee, on the House floor, or in private conversations," he writes, "changed my mind about ourcapacity to find bipartisan agreement on the most fundamental topics." Likewise, most Republican Members of Congress gave no credence to Democratic arguments on budget and tax issues, health care, and climate change. Allen argues that "smaller government, lower taxes" in all times and circumstances is not aneconomic policy, but an ideological barrier to meaningful debate and the simplest compromises. In the last thirty years, he suggests, Republicans and Democrats have been speaking different languages; GOP Members increasingly see government as a threat to personal liberty, while Democrats continue to believe it can be a vehicle to expand opportunity and serve the common good. Combining personal experience with the insights of George Lakoff, Norman Ornstein, Robert Bellah, Isaiah Berlin, and many others, Allen explains why we need to understand the ideological conflict and escape its grip--and allow Congress to work productively on our 21st century challenges.

By virtually all measures, polarization in Congress has increased dramatically over the course of the past two decades. Former Democratic Congressman Tom Allen lived through this era, serving six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Drawing from his own experiences in the Congressional trenches, he tackles the root cause of why Democrats and Republicans arrived at a point where they barely speak to each other. In this book, he shows that they now embrace fundamentallydifferent worldviews that distill two central impulses in American history: individualism and the longing for community. He stresses throughout that while it takes two sides to polarize, one bears more blame for the divide than the other. Whereas the Democrats' emphasis on community is relatively open-endedand conditional, the Republicans' adherence to individualism has become more radical and rigid over time. In essence, Democrats are relatively pragmatic and willing to change their views if the evidence calls for it. Republicans, on the other hand, prioritize ideological goals above all else and regard facts that contradict their worldview as minor inconveniences whose importance pales in comparison to their long-term aims. The problem for the Democratic Party is that in America, the language of individualism is primary and the language of community secondary. Hence the Republican Party has a built-in rhetorical advantage. While journalists and academics have offered variations of this thesis before, Allen's deep knowledge of the political system's actual workings make Dangerous Convictions a powerfully original work on how and why Congress has become so dysfunctional.

Tom Allen is President and CEO of the American Association of Publishers. He is former U.S. Congressman representing Maine's 1st District from 1997 to 2009.

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