- Paperback: 279 pages
- Publisher: Liberty Fund Inc; New Ed edition (1 Jan 1981)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0913966924
- ISBN-13: 978-0913966921
- Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,305,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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..".an important political treatise of timely relevance today, providing sound perceptions into our present government."
Product Description
When "The American Democrat" was first published in 1838, Cooper's position as America's first major novelist obscured his serious contribution to the discussion of American principles and politics.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Equality as virtue and vice...
30 Sep 2001
Format:Hardcover
Whereas, Alexis de Tocqueville offers his perspective on America as an outside observer, the literary genius James Fenimore Cooper offers his assessment of culture, politics and society in 19th century America. He doesn't hold democracy to be sacrosanct like we do today, but rather like any other system of government with its advantages and disadvantages. His look at the nature of liberty and its relation with equality is particularly intriguing.
He is cognizant of the dangers posed to American self-government, which values legal equality. Equality, is a virtue, only insofar as it pertains to equal rights and equality before the law. Any effort at establishing equality of outcome is tantamount to tyranny and opposed to liberty. Cooper illustrates the precarious relationship between liberty and equality. Unless, tradition, custom, the rule of law and the Constitution are revered and upheld- the American Polity could easily collapse into majoritarian tyranny under a demagogue.
One gains an appreciation of the system of government established by the American founding fathers after reading this book... They established a constitutionally-limited federal republic, with limits not only on the power of government, but with limits placed on the power of majority rule, so as to limit the fundamental role of government to protecting the rights of its citizens. This constitutional republic sought to balance out monarchial, democratic, and aristocratic elements...
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
A classic critique of American government and culture
21 Oct 1998
Format:Paperback
First published in 1838, The American Democrat is a wide-ranging series of essays, many of them couched in theoretical terms, about the historical and cultural bases of American democracy, and an informed critique of many aspects of American politics, society, and culture in the 1830s.. Cooper wrote the book shortly after returning to Jacksonian America after a seven-year sojourn in Europe, and it reflects much of his discontent with what he found. As a cogent and informed commentary on 19th Century America it belongs with a book with which it has often been compared -- Toqueville's Democracy in America.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Masterpiece about basics of American social system.
5 April 1998
Format:Hardcover
Cooper was an acute commentator on the strengths and weaknesses of American society as it developed during the first half of the 19th century. Like a number of other observers Cooper came to be fearful that a society built upon the ideas of self-government, along with legal equality ("democracy" in the social sense), unless it is strongly bound by law and custom and unless such fundamentals as property rights remain sacrosanct, would come to be transformed into some sort of popular tyranny. Source: Literature and Liberty, The New American March 17, 1997.
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