Bound To Change

Explains the origins and dynamics of enduring rivalries between countries

Richard Fenno first coined the term home style to describe the ways in which members of Congress cultivate the voters of their home constituencies. He suggested that incumbents were paying more attention to their constituents than they had in the past. In this book, Glenn Parker examines the relationship between activities at home and in Washington, asking specifically: Why and when did congressmen and senators begin to pay more attention to their constituents? And what are the institutional consequences of this change? Using data drawn from the travel vouchers filed by incumbent senators and congressmen between 1959 and 1980, Parker shows that since the mid-1960s incumbents have been placing greater emphasis on service to their state or district. Congress has facilitated this change in various ways, such as by increasing travel allowances and by scheduling that minimizes the conflict between legislative business in Washington and time spent with constituents. Parker's study includes both the Senate and House, and he draws distinctions between the home-style behaviors of senators and representatives. He also provides a historical context for understanding the dynamics of changes in home style. The time-series data generate explanations that specify relationships among historical conditions, individual behavior, and institutional structures.

Since everyone has a “god” that controls them, it is wise to ask who or what that is, how we choose it and how to respond? We must also ask how tradition, the Bible, church, family and other factors affect our beliefs and behaviors. Joseph C. Way wrestles with these and other issues and reaches some uncommon conclusions about God, Jesus, and Us. He affirms God is love. God acts from love and so do we! Other specific emphases include: how presuppositions (beliefs) dictate behavior; the profound significance of the human Jesus; the need to renounce, redefine and restore certain beliefs; why our future depends on what and how we love. The author seriously differs from the apostle Paul on who and what Jesus was. Our “salvation” depends not on the death of Jesus but on living by his two directives gleaned from Hebrew scripture. The author invites everyone to join him in proclaiming and practicing “appropriate love” so that we may reduce human and environmental discord for everyone, regardless of their nationality or religion.

How should we assess the social structures that govern human conduct and settle whether we are bound by their rules? One approach is to ask whether those social arrangements (e.g. our family structures) reflect pre-conventional facts about our nature. If they do, compliance will serve our interests because these rules are not just conventions. Another approach is to ask whether following a convention has desirable consequences. For example, the rule which makes the dollar bill legal tender is a convention and the great usefulness of having a medium of exchange ensures that we should follow that convention by accepting paper money in return for things of real value. This work argues that being bound by a convention can also be valuable for its own sake. People need meaning in their lives and conventions infuse acts and attitudes with normative significance, rendering them right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, required or forbidden. Such rules bind us not just in virtue of their usefulness but also because their absence would impoverish our social world. Appreciating this point is essential to a proper understanding of our cultures of neighbourliness and hospitality, family structures, systems of property rights, conventions around speech, the norms governing how we deport ourselves in public, and even the rules of a game.

Honneure Mansart, the orphaned child of a lowly servant, never dreamed that she would one day find herself servant to the lovely, young Marie Antoinette. But as France's political climate overheats, tragedy and a terrible secret threaten to lead Honneure to the guillotine in the footsteps of her queen. 0-9743639-1-X$6.99 / Medallion Press

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