Still the Redeemer Nation

At The Wilson Quarterly, Wilfred M. McClay contemplates “the ceaseless quest for redemption in [American] politics and culture.” McClay finds this need for a redemption story prevalent among politicians, citing the examples like Michael Bloomberg, Jimmy Carter, and Mark Sanford. McClay writes, “We are not only intensely fascinated by these episodes of political theater, but fully in the grip of them, as far more than mere onlookers.” He continues, “For an allegedly secular society, the United States seems to be curiously in thrall to ideas, gestures, emotional patterns, nervous tics, and deep premises that belong to the supposedly banished world of religion.”

Read at The Wilson Quarterly

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