Abolishing states would not be the end of the matter; the country’s leaders would have to make a number of fundamental secondary decisions. Someone would ultimately have to decide which of the essential functions currently performed by state government should be nationalized, which ones should be localized, and, as to the latter, how the various local functions are to be further distributed among the many different species of local governments – municipalities, counties, townships, special purpose districts, and unincorporated areas. Who should select the decision-maker? Decisions would also be needed as to the processes and responsibilities for replacing the states’ current roles in national elections, in supplying the bulk of the country’s judges, and in the constitutional amendment process. This chapter considers the options for filling those voids. In the process, it offers a portrait of what a unitary American republic might look like without state government.

This introductory chapter articulates the main thesis and summarizes the arguments that support it. It lays out the reasons that the thesis is important, describes what the book adds to the existing literature, explains some critical terms and concepts, and adds necessary disclaimers.

This chapter contrasts the approach to nature taken by Alexander von Humboldt and Hegel. In particular, it focuses upon the notion of Naturphilosophie and how it is developed in the work of both thinkers. It gives details from the work of Schiller, Goethe, and Schelling in order to provide historical context to the discussion. To clarify some of the contrasts between Humboldt’s and Hegel’s approaches to nature, the chapter focuses upon their approaches to the landscape and people of America. The fate of natural beauty in the work of both thinkers is highlighted. It argues, by reference to Adorno’s critique of Hegel, that while Humboldt gives natural beauty autonomy by not limiting it to what the subject contributes to it, Hegel’s view of nature is as repressed natural beauty, eclipsing it with human reason and human subjectivity. Ultimately, Humboldt’s more empirical approach, balanced with a recognition of the role of freedom, allows nature to come into clearer focus than it does in Hegel’s work. Hegel’s more abstract, speculative approach keeps nature too far from the empirical realm. In the case of our understanding of nature, Hegel’s clean hands become a problem, resulting in a Naturphilosophie that does not bring us close enough to nature or its beauties.

Chapter 30 examines Goethe’s relationship with America. The country was for him an imagined space full of possibility, a historical frontier which opened onto modernity. The chapter considers the transatlantic network which, in the post-Napoleonic period, linked Harvard, Göttingen and Weimar, and would prove particularly important for Goethe’s geological studies. It also describes the – at times ambivalent – perspectives on American democracy that reached Goethe from Prince Bernhard, the son of Carl August, during his American travels, before moving to an analysis of American influences on and representations of America in Goethe’s literary work.

Key developments that began to affect international politics in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War – globalisation, humanitarian intervention at odds with previously unquestioned prerogatives of state sovereignty, and the development of multilateral institutions to manage emerging security and economic challenges – gained further momentum in the late 1990s. Paradoxically, the Australian–US relationship was both reaffirmed and tested in some very traditional ways over this period. The Howard government was elected in March 1996 with a pledge to ’reinvigorate’ that relationship, which it felt had been neglected by its Labor predecessors.

The closeness of the John Howard and George W Bush administrations is a commonplace of commentary on that era; one uncritical account even describes the relationship between the two countries and leaders as a ‘partnership’, although Howard only appeared three times in the former president’s memoirs, published in 2010. Prime Minister Howard’s invocation of the ANZUS (Australia New Zealand United States) Treaty in 2001, his determination to participate in the Iraq invasion and occupation, and his scepticism on anthropogenic climate change were all of a piece with the mood that prevailed in Washington. In February 2007, US Vice-President Dick Cheney visited Australia expressly to record Washington’s gratitude for Australia’s consistent role in the ‘global war on terror’. So close was Howard’s identification with Bush that his judgment of what bounds should be observed in commentary on domestic US politics was compromised. Thus in February 2007 he took the unprecedented step of criticising presidential candidate Barack Obama’s strategy on Iraq by claiming it served the interests of al Qaeda.

No country outside Britain has embraced Vaughan Williams’s music more warmly and extensively than the USA. The composer first visited in 1922 (extended stays followed in 1932 and 1954), but he had earlier developed a sympathy for American democratic ideals through intense involvement with Walt Whitman’s poetry. Vaughan Williams’s stature in America grew steadily from around 1920, when major works, most notably A London Symphony, began to be performed regularly, and it reached a zenith in the 1940s and 1950s, when he was widely regarded as a major international figure in the same league as Stravinsky or Bartók. While his American reputation echoed the deepening Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ that developed during the alliances of the Second World War and the Cold War, advocacy from a wide range of European émigrés such as Serge Koussevitzky and Bruno Walter indicates a broad appeal reaching well beyond any narrow notion of Anglo-Saxon kinship. Vaughan Williams’s profound engagement with folk song, modality, Whitman, and the symphony aligned particularly closely with prevailing trends in American music c. 1930–60, and his impact can be felt in the work of composers like Samuel Barber and Roy Harris; more recently, the admiration of John Adams, among others, indicates continuing relevance.

The complicated relationship between American and European cultural production, particularly in the nineteenth century, is the subject of this chapter. American essayists of this period were, on the one hand, greatly influenced by the literature and culture of Europe and sought to absorb its lessons into their own writing. On the other, these same essayists pushed back against the idea that European writing should be their primary influence. Instead, they frequently critiqued Europe from afar and sought to develop a new idiom and fresh form of expression unique to the United States. Writers like Washington Irving, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Henry James, and Henry David Thoreau explored the many tensions between the United States and Europe in their essays and used them to debate the extent to which America should remain in Europe’s cultural shadow.

This chapter examines Messiaen’s long involvement with the USA. It discusses commissions, his relationship with notable figures, his teaching there, and the genesis and performance of both the Turangalîla-Symphonie and Des canyons aux étoiles…, including Messiaen’s admiration for the mountains in Utah. It also explores Messiaen as a performer of his own music in America (he premiered the Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte-Trinité), the commissioning and performance of the Livre du Saint-Sacrement, and the orchestral éclairs sur l’Au-delà….

This chapter describes the emergence of a new kind of sacrificial military hero, rooted in Christian rather than classical precedents. This development appears in the context of wars involving supposedly savage peoples--the Scottish Highlanders encountered in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, and the indigenous peoples encountered as allies and enemies in North America and Canada. The figure of the devout Colonel Gardiner, killed at the Battle of Prestonpans, and looted by Highlanders, is compared with the brutal figure of the Duke of Cumberland (the victorious hero and butcher of Culloden). And responses to the death of General Braddock, killed in an ambush in the American wilds, and believed to have been left unburied, are compared with responses to the death of General James Wolfe, who died victorious at the Battle of Quebec (and who was sometimes represented as a Christian martyr). The hero-as-martyr was used to justify violence as part of a civilizing and Christianizing project.

An overview of testing and measurement in North America is provided, covering topics related to privacy laws and regulations, online proctoring, artificial intelligence, accommodations, accessibility, and the “opt out of testing” movement that are currently defining measurement in North America. This is not to say that these challenges are unique to North America; in fact, the challenges related to these topics are being faced all over the world in varying degrees and the same opportunities exist, but these topics are of particular importance when it comes to measurement and assessment in North America. Building on these observations, a discussion of how advances in technology and computing power provide an opportunity to challenge the status quo related to assessment; these advancements will allow assessment of skills in more authentic ways that will provide better insight into someone’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. The question we should be asking and attempting to answer is “How can assessment developers leverage the power of the cloud and technology to measure skills more accurately and create higher fidelity in the assessment process?”

This chapter considers the close interrelationship between theatre and cinema during the First World War. As well as looking at key examples of plays which were adapted into films such as The Better ‘Ole (1917) it looks at the relationship between the two modes of popular entertainment, emphasising, for example, how film screenings often incorporated or were incorporated into live performance, and how the two industries shared business practices. The chapter examines the economics and practices of cinema exhibiting, drawing parallels to the regional theatre circuits. It argues for the role of government-endorsed films such as The Battle of the Somme (1916) in establishing the respectability of cinema and demonstrates how from 1917 cinema could shift to being more of a source of entertainment: a shift which threatened the theatre industry. It examines this competition through a focus on the growth of the ‘Super film’ and through attention to the dominance of American films on British screens. The chapter ends with a focus on post-war films. Through discussion the factual war films produced in the 1920s, as well as the fictional dramas, it highlights the ways in which post-war cinema became a means for mediating memory on the war.

This chapter focuses on issues of objection and dissent. As well as examining the ways in which the theatre challenged or questioned the war - through works such as Drinkwater’s X=0 (1917) and Malleson’s banned Black ‘Ell (1917) - it considers the theatre’s representation of objectors to the war - through pieces such as Jones’ The Pacifists (1917) and Collins’ revue sketch The Consciensciousless Objector (1916). It contextualises the production of these works in relation to changes in wider attitudes towards the war, as well as considering how playwrights with pacifist leanings were constrained both by the censor and by cultural nationalism. It discusses the contribution of George Bernard Shaw to debates over the war and, as the final chapter in this part of the book, it also links to part III and the discussion of changing attitudes towards the war in the 1920s and 1930s.

This chapter examines the meanings of moderation in the American political tradition, beginning with George Washington’s Farewell Address, continuing with Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, and ending with Abraham Lincoln’s speeches.

This chapter examines the politics of postmodern metafiction. Starting from the widespread view that 1970s postmodernism was “politically abortive” and interested primarily in language games, the chapter sets out to rethink this position. Turning back to the coining of the term “metafiction” by William Gass and considering some major examples of the form (including work by Kurt Vonnegut, among others), the opening half of the chapter introduces the idea that there is a lurking sense of identity politics beneath much canonical metafiction. Tracing lines of continuity with the work of white male modernist authors, the model of metafictional “author gods” is critically examined. The chapter goes on to establish a counter-tradition, making use of the work of bell hooks and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to explore texts that use metafictional devices while resisting any illusion of supra-textual mastery. Samuel R. Delany’s metafictional science fiction epic Dhalgren is posited as the exemplar of this counter-tradition. The chapter makes the case that Delany’s text, overlooked by many scholars of the form, should sit at the center of any discussion of 1970s metafiction. The conclusion includes a brief survey of the implicit politics detectable in some recent examples of metafictional writing.

Propaganda narratives about international affairs are analytically distinct from those about domestic conditions, since citizens know less about life abroad. This has two implications. First, without a shared sense among citizens for which claims are implausible, what constitutes absurd propaganda is unclear. Second, propaganda apparatuses are able to “get away” with more negative coverage without undermining their neutrality. As a result, propaganda narratives about international news are relatively similar across autocracies. This chapter documents two common propaganda tactics: comparison sets and selective coverage. We pair our cross-country data with case studies from Russia and China. The Russian government confronts more binding electoral constraints than the CCP, but their coverage of Western democracies is similar. The Russian propaganda apparatus often lets Donald Trump speak for it, since he vindicates claims about the collapse of the European Union, the allegiances of Crimeans, the misadventures of America’s foreign policy, and the flaws of American democracy. The CCP’s propaganda apparatus is less fond of Trump, but covers similar issues, often with sophistication.

Throughout his life and many careers, Defoe engaged with and represented the Americas as the primary site for colonial activity and its attendant economic benefits. In many respects, the major novels that include substantial intervals in America – Robinson Crusoe and its first sequel, Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack – reflect and support Defoe’s colonialist vision. Yet these novels also represent colonial life in more nuanced, complex, and ambivalent ways. The protagonists’ success stories commence with and crucially depend upon resources from England. Relations with the other inhabitants of America unsettle some essentialist assumptions that commonly undergird colonialism. Most important, the protagonists encounter practical and psychological burdens in America, which compromise their agency and at times render them miserable. Defoe offers a final, implicit interrogation of the appeal of America by ending each novel with a return to England.

This chapter considers Rushdie’s columns, essays, and criticism to investigate the wider social, cultural, and political landscape with which his works engage. A prolific essayist, Rushdie has commented on key moments and events. These range from his own position as a diasporic Indian living in Britain to subcontinental politics, such as the assassination of Indira Gandhi, violence in Kashmir, and new emergent forms of racism in Britain. The chapter focuses especially on the collections, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991 and Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction, 1992–2002, and columns and pieces he has written subsequently, and considers Rushdie’s role in internationalizing British literature and academia and his contributions to debates on race in Britain.