The founders of the American republic did not, by and large, like political parties. Their whole political tradition taught them to identify “faction” and “party” with the irrational and disruptive tendencies in human life, with “passion” and “interest.” Against this they set constitutions, first the British Constitution, then the written American Constitution of 1787 as rational artifices or constructions designed to thwart “the spirit of party and faction.” Yet the very men who left their political testaments against party were also the creators of the first American party system, the heroes whose rites the parties celebrate down to the present.

Since the events of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in Communist China, a crucial question has been whether the structures of the state can survive intact after the passing of Mao Tse-tung from the scene. The emergence of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) as a strategic political force and the reconstitution of the Chinese Communist Party in 1969 point to the possibility that China has entered into a new phase of political development insofar as institutional arrangements are concerned. Hints that the National People's Congress may be reconvened can also be taken as indications that major changes will have to be ratified. In short, something of a constitutional crisis or its equivalent has occurred on the Chinese mainland. The future direction of Peking policy may well be determined by the way in which this crisis is settled.

Almost from the time that the Spanish-American republics achieved their independence in the 182O's, there has existed a movement known as hispanismo, hispanoamericanismo and panhispanismo. For sake of simplicity, this movement is referred to as hispanismo throughout the present paper. What is hispanismo? This can best be answered by describing some of the fundamental beliefs of those men who have shaped and guided the movement. Although divided on innumerable matters of detail and even on some issues of fundamental significance, the champions of hispanismo, generally referred to in Spain as hispanoamericanistas, shared an unassailable faith in the existence of a transatlantic Hispanic family, community or raza.

There is a living theology abroad in Latin America, with its own characteristics, its own conditions and its own needs. The development of this theology is of interest for what it means to our Church and our continent, and what it may provide as reflection upon the efforts of the Church in the only predominantly Catholic area of the so-called “third world.”

From 1950 to 1954 American politics were dominated as never before by one man, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and by the phenomenon of “McCarthyism.” Yet many of the questions raised by those years of turmoil and controversy remain unanswered. What was the source and nature of the power that McCarthy wielded over the United States Senate? Why did the members of that body acquiesce, for nearly five years, in his continued abuse of the democratic process? Beyond this, were the McCarthy years aberrational? Did they represent some malfunction in our political machinery? Or were they the natural and inevitable by-product of that system itself?

Few periods in history have left observers more unsettled and anxious than our contemporaries about the sufficiency of prevailing moral and political diagnoses. The din of public debate drowning out quiet thought and reflection may explain some of the confusion. Yet the strident clashes that break out between right and left, and with increasing frequency and fervor between radicals and liberals, compound but have not created the problem. Instead, the core of the problem appears to be a widespread questioning sweeping across society and sowing seeds of doubt about the sufficiency of all past and present social and political doctrines. For the first time in their lives more and more people express uncertainty that any prevailing doctrine meets our needs and on this there is less of a generational gap than is sometimes assumed.

While a few years ago there was a great deal of discussion of the “end of ideology” (or at least its “decline”) among politically-minded intellectuals, today the more interesting topic appears to be the “end of liberalism” (or at least its condition of extreme “poverty”). Any intellectual case for liberalism may seem a bit out of fashion. The perspectives on liberalism that may be gathered from the thought of Morris Cohen constitute, however, a particularly important case. The eminent philosopher and historian of ideas, John Herman Randall, Jr., recently claimed that “Morris Cohen was the most critical analytic mind among all American philosophers. … Yet his voice of critical intelligence seems to have been almost completely forgotten in our present intellectual crises.” Concerning Cohen's book on The Meaning of Human History, Randall suggests that its author's “insight could clarify the confusions of our own revolutionary feelings and passions.” An examination of Morris Cohen's political thought appears to be timely.

Increasingly alone as a stable republican nation in Latin America, Chile has long been a favorite subject for North American scholars and journalists. Every six years, as it faces a presidential election, the world press breathlessly rediscovers that this long slim country confronts its public problems within the framework of a developed, democratic political system. When in 1964 Chile placed a young idealistic party in power behind Eduardo Frei, an unquestionably intelligent figure of austere but charismatic bearing, this country became a favorite model for the advocates of democratic reformism in Latin America and soon was receiving the highest United States foreign aid per capita in Latin America. Thus it came as a shock that the Chilean electorate could turn its back on Frei's administration in 1970 by favoring the rightist and Marxist candidates. For those who saw in the government of Frei a basic alternative to Marxist models for Latin America, the free election of an avowed Marxist as the President of Chile presents additional problems.

Philippe buchez is best known for his work as a founder of social Catholicism and as an advocate of workers' associations. As a man of varied interests Buchez brought to the consideration of industrial problems a knowledge of contemporary ideas and a theory of history to support his own solutions. His Introduction à la science de l'histoire provides an example of what has been called the “Idolization of History”:

It is no mean paradox that the idolization of HISTORY should have been the outcome of and sequel to the collapse of concrete historic continuity embodied in organized religion, national tradition, local custom and social hierarchies of long standing.

Whenever Americans have gone to war, the problem presented by the conscientious objector (CO) has always arisen. Various solutions have been tried but until the present war in Vietnam the problem has always focused on men who were opposed to bearing arms in any war. Today, as in the past, there is no dearth of such men, but in addition to the traditional pacifist, a new type of CO has arisen—the selective conscientious objector (SCO) whose scruples do not extend to all wars, but only to particular wars that fail to meet certain moral norms. These norms are usually derived from the just war doctrine.2 The SCO has figured prominently in several important cases in the federal courts. He raises the interesting constitutional question of whether the government's present policy of exempting from military service only those conscientious objectors who oppose all wars is not a violation of the free exercise of religion of the “just warriors” who oppose only certain wars.

What gives consistency to Madame de Staël's thought from 1795 to 1800, and makes it interesting today, is her sense that a new era has begun, in which art, philosophy and politics alike will become vehicles of integration. Beyond the creation of republican constitutions, institutions or authorities, she wanted to create new habits of respect and obedience. She saw that social and political control in the democratic era meant the control of the minds and feelings of the population. This insight gives coherence to her diverse and unsystematic works: an essay and a book on politics, Réflexions sur la Paix Intérieure (1795) and Des Circonstances Actuelles qui Peuvent Terminer la Révolution … (1799); a treatise on happiness, De l'Influence des Passions sur le Bonheur … (1796); and an essay and major study on literature, Essai sur les Fictions (1795) and De la Littéture Considéréé dans ses Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales (2 volumes, 1800). The unifying element of all these works is her focus on social control.

In March, 1939, less than two weeks after Hitler marched into Prague, betraying the desperate hope of Munich and crushing the forlorn Czech republic, Franco marched into Madrid, concluding the grim Civil War and extinguishing the last faint hope for the survival of the Spanish Republic. With war clouds gathering over Europe, it seemed only too clear that Nationalist Spain was little more than an Axis satellite, for as Hitler himself a year later observed, without German and Italian aid during the Civil War, “there would today be no Franco.” Yet there was far less gratitude in Spain than there might have been, had the Germans not so avidly sought economic and political returns on their investment in goods and manpower. By the end of the Civil War, German economic interests had penetrated Spain and Spanish Morocco as never before, thanks to a ruthless policy of exacting contractual concessions from the Nationalists as the price of continued support. Moreover, there had been bitter dissension between Hitler and Franco over the latter's declaration of neutrality during the Sudeten Crisis, and an acrimonious discussion over his reluctance to publicize Spain's accession to the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was only brought to an end when the matter was leaked to the press without Spanish approval.

Existentialism, for some of its severe critics, represents a temporary outburst of the dark side of man which is indicative of a passing phenomenon of our age and particularly of the postwar angry generation living on the morbid edges of death, anxiety and the absurdity of human existence. They contend that existentialism is not a philosophy or at least not a serious and disciplined philosophy. Professor Henry S. Kariel characterized existential psychology as “negativism,” and its counterpart, behavioral psychology, as “positivism”; and similarly Professor Eugene J. Meehan describes the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl as having sought to find philosophical certainty “in feeling rather than in thought,” an assessment that falsely indicts phenomenology as an irrationalism. I have singled out these two political theorists as representatives of a widespread misconception of existential philosophy and phenomenology, held as well, I suspect, by many American political theorists. This article is not designed as a direct rebuttal to these misunderstandings and criticisms; it is rather an attempt to show what I consider to be the significant and positive contributions of existential philosophy and phenomenology to the foundation of political theory.

During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Europe witnessed the development and spread of major innovations in the structures and practices of politics which were to reach their fruition during the l900's. It was a revolutionary epoch whose major theme was increased participation by the people in governing themselves: the traditional aristocratic authoritarianism was in the process of fighting and losing its last battles, while liberal democratic political institutions seemed to be riding the crest of the wave of the future.

When the American people wrote and ratified the Constitution they were the heirs of a tradition of opposition to a standing army. The tradition was derived from tales of Stuart tyranny and was strengthened by the recent victorious contest with the professional soldiery of Great Britain and Germany in the War for Independence. This attitude was carried into the Constitutional Convention and the ratification controversy. Even the friends of the Constitution were doubtful of the military power it granted to the Congress and where friends of the Constitution had reservations, enemies had hostility. Opponents of the Constitution almost unanimously attacked the army clause. Some attacked the power to raise and support an army because they preferred to rely upon the state militia. Others accepted the necessity of a national force but thought of it as a dangerous tool which should be fenced about with legal limitations.

The contemporary position of Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland (Ulster), is inextricably entwined in historical origins of religious, political, economic and social webs. Depending upon one's knowledge of history or emotional disposition, it can be traced back to Strongbow in the tenth century, or to the defeat of James II in 1690. For the more pragmatic and less academic, the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 and the London Agreement of 1925, which divided Ireland into the North and South, will suffice. While many will disagree, it seems that most Irish, North or South, if pressed long and hard enough, admit that the basis of the conflict is partition of the six counties in the North (Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Donegal, Fermanagh and Tyrone) from the 26 counties in the South.

Congress in 1971 will again turn to the renewal and extension of the much-amended and much-contested Sugar Act. Certain changes from the last go-round are worth noting. A new administration is in the White House and Harold Cooley, to whom a journalist once attributed “princely power” in the area, no longer presides over the House Agriculture Committee. But in this area, as in so many others, the changes are not nearly as striking as the continuities. Cooley has been succeeded by the likeminded W. R. Poage, and turnovers in the Department of Agriculture have scarcely reached the Sugar Policy division of the Stabilization and Conservation Service. More importantly, the groups and decision-making bodies in the area have changed little in their interests, their relative power, or their modes of interaction. It is the intention of this essay to tell the story of the 1965 renewal of the Sugar Act in such a way as to illumine the nature of this policy-making situation, with particular attention to the lawmaking roles of the congressional committees that handle sugar legislation, House Agriculture and Senate Finance. A by-product of the analysis should be an understanding of the form in which the Act comes up for renewal in 1971 and of how and why it got that way.

Most of the historical analysis of the American fight for a League of Nations in 1919–1920 centers strictly on the struggle between Wilson and Lodge. In such a narrow approach, certain vital forces at work during this epic struggle have been overlooked or largely ignored. One such case is the story of the Anglo-French attempt to help the American nation out of the partisan deadlock that developed around the League issue. This episode takes on added dimensions as an Allied intervention in the internal affairs of the United States that in the end had a dynamic effect. Additionally, the effort came very close to providing the means for compromise. The story properly began with the signing of the German Treaty in Paris and the departure of most of the American delegation.

Bruno bauer (1809–1882) took an active part in the Young Hegelian movement, which developed in the eighteenthirties, some years after Hegel's death. He is generally regarded as the outstanding representative of left Hegelianism until Marx, who occupied a central place in the group, had reached philosophical maturity. By then the movement had completely disintegrated, and the rise of Marx, who detached himself from the group, symbolizes its end.