The City and Sex
Private Vice and Public Scandal in the American Republic
By (author) Mary Beth McConahey
Not available to order
Publication date:
08 October 2015Length of book:
188 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498518291
The City and Sex examines American political sex scandals at the national level. Studying these events over time with an emphasis on the evolving responses of both statesmen and citizens reveals the republic’s deteriorating moral health and illuminates the country’s dangerous tendency toward servitude. Using scandals as a window through which to glimpse our deterioration, the book identifies a trajectory of decline beginning in the twentieth century, by which Americans became less tutored in virtue, less spirited in citizenship, less agreed on questions of moral significance, and ultimately less dexterous in exercising the skills of self-government. It seeks to show that the freedom from virtue won through the collapse of moral standards has produced an American citizenry increasingly prone to the kind of dependence and enslavement Alexis de Tocqueville cautioned against in the 1830s.
Ever since Bernard Mandeville famously argued that private vice leads to public benefit many have been tempted to view the ‘private sins’ of America’s leaders as having no bearing on their capabilities in political office or on our cultural wellbeing. Mary Beth McConahey blows this thesis out of the water in this magnificent book. McConahey returns to the vision of our Founding Fathers to show that private virtue leads to public virtue, and private vice leads to the destruction of republican self-government. In writing this book McConahey has performed a great service for the entire nation.