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In this article, the author examines the relationship between the integration of people and peace from the perspective of the planetary republics of the century of lights and the consolidated experiences of the United States and the European Union. The methodology use is a documentary and bibliographical review and critical analysis, through which the author discusses the evolution of integrationist ideas related to peace and to the possibilities of its universalization through public international law. The main conclusion is that the consolidated experiences show that the harmonious integration of nations entails the foundations of perpetual peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the relationship between American multiculturalism and the rise of conservative Christianity in the late 20th century U.S. through a discussion of the novel "The Poisonwood Bible," by Barbara Kingsolver. Focus is given to Kingsolver's critique of American fundamentalism and promotion of universalism, which it is argued is undermined by her cultural relativism. The possibility that Kingsolver's relativism was influenced by author Alice Walker is proposed.

The article focuses on the 18th-century religious disputations in the Baptist Church over the doctrine of Universalism, or universal salvation, espoused by Baptist minister Elhanan Winchester of the Baptist Church of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It considers the parallel growth of Universalism in New England compared to Universalists in Pennsylvania and the mid-Atlantic states, the impact of the Great Awakening on American religious practices, the use of pamphlets to sway public religious opinion, and Baptist church governance practices.

Christian monotheism and universal salvation are the religious root of universalism in American culture. The localization of universalism in the U.S. involving two ideas of crucial importance: the Chosen People and Manifest Destiny. Under the theory of Chosen People, the Americans pose themselves as people selected by God while Manifest Destiny encourages American expansion. In the foreseeable future, faced with various challenges at home and abroad, American universalism will keep making adjustment to meet the need of the changing social, political and economic reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication originated in the United States increasingly became into an "universalism" discourse spread through the world rapidly. However, as a theory leave its matrix and be introduced into other countries or areas, the conflicts will appear between the theory and the culture, values and customs of the local society. So the "localization" is necessary for a theory. The asiacentric of communication being put forward just during the process of its "localization", whose purpose is not to build up a new discourse hegemony but to talk to the West, to form a situation of harmonious development between the Asia and the West. With the guide of this purpose, the approach of Asian communication should discard the contention between "centralization" and "pluralism" to construct a new research paradigm ground in the Asian culture and social reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an examination of deism in the U.S. in the years following the the American Revolution. The author relates the story of merchant and deist William Beadle who murdered his wife and children in 1782 and the reaction this crime had on public opinion towards deism in the U.S. The author explores how deism challenged Americans' religious views and the role deism played in shaping American religious common sense. The author discusses the religious atmosphere of the U.S. in the years following the Revolutionary War and the popularity that Christianity and Evangelicalism experienced during those years.

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The article discusses the emergence of Asian American Campus Church (AACC) relative to Christian universalism and multiculturalism. It examines how the AACC is transforming from an exclusive Korean American organization to an Asian-American led multicultural church, by probing on the relationship between the church's two largest ethnic groups the Korean Americans and the Chinese/Taiwanese Americans. Moreover, the authors cite their observations on the activities of the AACC and asserts that AACC's dedication to Christian universalism reflects the basic tenets of U.S. central dogma that are race neutrality and the universal doctrine of humanity.

No country has been more closely associated with the practice and ideology of "the liberal peace" than the United States. Indeed, the prominence of the concept is in major part the result of America's rise to global power. As this article sets out, the ideological history of the United States has wedded it to a brand of internationalism that rests for its integrity, in American eyes, on the pursuit of liberal universalism. Those who favour interventionist solutions to conflicts within and between states must make their peace with this characteristic of US political culture or they risk attacking the political basis for significant US international engagement of any kind. Given the absolute necessity of American involvement for the success of any regime of global interventionism, the latter would be a move of dubious wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US foreign policy is hypocritical in various ways, as this article demonstrates in the course of an extensive empirical review. The question is whether such hypocrisy provides grounds for opposing US interventions abroad, in particular those which might yield locally desirable outcomes at an acceptable human cost. This article examines the question from the standpoint of a non-pacifist liberal universalism and concludes (on consequentialist grounds) that the hypocritical character of US foreign policy cannot constitute sufficient grounds for rejecting all US interventions. Nevertheless, the hypocrisy of the US remains noteworthy and deserving of criticism even in such cases because of the wider damage hypocritical behaviour can do. Moreover, US foreign policy hypocrisy sometimes sets in motion reactions that confound the benign purposes of particular interventions and so undermine the case for them. Such an effect is at work in the case of recent US intervention in the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay presents some preliminary thoughts about the linkages between current human rights universalism and the practice of violence in the form of wars and interventions. I draw three parallels that may help us think about the current wars on terror and in Iraq. The first parallel concerns the progress of liberal universalist thought from the Enlightenment period in which a concern for rights coexisted with the justifications for imperialism. In the current era the succeeding line of universalist thought is that of human rights which similarly coexists with the overt and tacit support for violence that deprives some humans of their lives. The second parallel concerns the use of national identity. In the imperial era, the justification for rights either given or withheld was closely linked to constructions of national identity. Similarly, today there is a resurgence of nationalist discourse in which the construction of U.S. national identity is used to justify the violence that is done against Iraqi citizens. This discourse which constructs the U.S. as ontologically civilized and the Iraqis as barbarians is used to justify the violence that is done to them. Finally, the last parallel concerns violence in general. During imperialism, the scrutiny for acts of violence was borne largely by the native. Because he was constructed as a barbarian, his violence was made far more obvious as further evidence of his lesser development. In the present circumstances, a similar scrutiny is borne by the Iraqi insurgent while the violence of the coalition forces remains veiled beneath euphemisms like collateral damage. The torture scandal at Abu-Ghriaib presented an opportunity to reverse the gaze but because of its interpretation as an aberration that falls squarely outside the "normal" and the failure to widen the debate to other violence, this opportunity was largely lost. These three parallels taken together suggest that the old liberal hegemonic order of imperialism with its conflicting narratives of rights and oppression has been carried forward and sublimated into a human rights regime. And human rights is now deployed to justify violence against "human rights abusers". Because of this continuity, there is a need to create a new universalism born organically from the struggles of subordinated peoples that eliminates old-order imperialist justifications for the oppression of Others while claiming to support human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research identifies major personal values among American university students that predict organ-donation registration with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Participants responded to a factual test of their knowledge about organ donation, indicated whether or not they had registered as posthumous donors, and filled out a personality inventory measuring their personal values (Schwartz, 1992, 1994). The data indicated a high level of factual knowledge about organ donation; and the greater the level of knowledge, the more likely participants were registered to donate their organs. Also, participants higher in benevolence, universalism, achievement, and stimulation were more likely to have registered to donate their organs. The results are discussed in terms of the need to develop more effective health-communication campaigns by using specific health-education messages tailored to students majoring in different disciplines or to people in various occupations as a means of increasing their willingness to donate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of conservative attempts to scale back Social Security and Medicare, by limiting the program's universality through means testing and drastic benefit cuts, have failed. Thus, after numerous unsuccessful attempts at dismantling the U.S.'s universal old-age welfare state, or even meaningfully restraining its growth, conservative critics have developed a new approach. They are wrapping promarket "privatization" policy proposals in the popular universal framework of Social Security and Medicare. What is fundamentally different about privatization is that it embraces (or at least acquiesces to) key aspects of universalism, including broad-based eligibility and benefits that "maintain accustomed standards of living," which leave universal programs with rock-hard public support. Proponents argue privatization will "save" these programs. What distinguishes this approach from past retrenchment efforts is that promarket privatization policies, while supporting key universal tenets, will retrench Social Security's and Medicare's redistributive facets. Instead of limiting the most popular features of universalism, privatization proposals limit the redistributive elements of our large social insurance programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the private enforcement of customary international law and the cultural relativism and universalism in treaty organizations. Under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) of the U.S., district courts have jurisdiction over cases arising under the law of nations. However, American courts have different interpretation of the applicability of ATCA. Under the ATCA, a substantive right of action for violations of the law of nations is provided by the majority of courts to plaintiffs. On the other hand, the ATCA is interpreted by smaller group of courts as a purely jurisdictional statute providing a forum, but not a cause of action, for aliens suing in tort. In the cultural relativist approach, individual rights are not truly international, but relative.

Argues the concept of David Carr's relativism against Husserlian's non-relative truths in the U.S. Clarification of 'in principle' requirements as non-relative truths; Presentation of universals and its universally veridical truths; Confusion about universal governance, universal veracity and knowledge.

Analyzes the features of cosmopolitanism and its doctrinal position between universalism and pluralism, focusing on the case of the U.S. in the development of a cosmopolitanism responsive to contemporary global conditions. Issues related to label "cosmopolitanism"; Distinction between universalist and cosmopolitan idea of humankind; Comment on the liberal style of cosmopolitanism vis-a-vis conservative approach of pluralism.

Focuses on the military construction policy to test the relative effect of general benefit and distributive benefit considerations on the size of floor support coalitions in the U.S. House of Representatives. Modifications of extant universalism theories; Patterns of allocation of distributive benefits; Size of floor coalitions supporting distributive benefit programs.

Individuals such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. successfully employed nonviolent strategies to attain significant political goals. Despite the implications of their achievements, psychologists have rarely studied predispositions to nonviolent behavior empirically. The purpose of this article is to link the current literature on human values with the literature on nonviolence from a Gandhian perspective. This study investigates the relations among nonviolent personality predispositions (via the Nonviolence Test; Kool & Sen, 1984) and values (via the Values Questionnaire; Schwartz, 1992, 1994) in adolescents and adults in the western United States. The theoretical case is made that nonviolent predispositions are positively related to the value types of universalism, benevolence, and conformity. Some empirical support for these relationships is provided, and recommendations are made for future research on nonviolent personality predispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the difference between pluralism and universalism. The original prospect of the U.S. in world affairs, first outlined in the Monroe Doctrine, presupposed pluralism, not universalism, despite a unilateral assertion of U.S. power in the Western Hemisphere. The doctrine recognized the actuality and necessity of drawing political lines and formulating political concepts. But early in the twentieth century, liberal-economic distortion of clear political thinking contributed to the further dissolution of international law that was already under way since the late nineteenth century. At the same time, a democratic-liberal distortion of the true universalism of humanity already inherent in U.S. imperialism resulted in pseudo-universalism, that is, political universalism.

The article discusses the role of civic education in an uncivil culture. Many U.S. citizens argued that civic education is the true policy of republican regimes and attempting, albeit incoherently, to make citizenship architectonic in the curriculum, the measure of other crafts and skills. The demand for quality in the schools does not refer to the development of excellent citizens, but of skilled individuals with aptitudes that contribute to public life only indirectly, if at all. Speech, action and self-rule are inseparably linked in citizenship. claims. Citizens share in ruling as well as in being ruled and must be able to evaluate such speeches, if not to give them. Always uncomfortable with politics, people in the U.S. are likely to find such an argument disconcerting. They have always been tempted to deny the importance of civic education by identifying individualism and universalism, private morals and natural right.

Focuses on universalism and minority culture in the United States. Characterization of minority culture; Behavior of a universally-minded being; Relation of the minor to the universal.

Ideal science should conform to certain criteria or goals, among them the goals of universalism and communality. Realization of these goats may be limited, however, through the dividing up of researchers in terms of geographical borders. In this study the general hypothesis is tested that there isa segmentation of the society of management researchers into a North American (US) and a European (E) segment, a segmentation which is furthered by differences in incentive schemes and in paradigms. Four leading management journals from North America and from Europe, respectively, and the 242 articles they contained published in 1993 were selected to represent the different geographical segments. The results provide: support for the existence of two such segments; support for differences in incentive schemes influencing the articles; support for their being paradigm differences between the two segments; and support for a paradigm effect being stronger in US-journals than in E-journals, US-authors are more willing, however, to conform to the E-paradigm than vice versa. We argue for methodological pragmatism in order to reduce the presumed counter-productive effects of paradigmatic rigidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the media and public opinion polls suggest that the state of business ethics is declining, surveys of corporate managers on the subject are less than conclusive. This study presents results of a survey of 487 adult, MBA, and undergraduate business students on the business philosophies of Machiavellianism, Darwinism, Objectivism, Relativism, and Universalism. The findings were consistent with earlier research which showed prospective managers to be less ethical than practicing ones and that women and those reporting a strong religious conviction tend to be more ethical. Explanations and several recommendations for improving the situation are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]