Interesting Comments from the NY Times
Kagan serves up an especially provocative image when he compares the United States and Europe to two men confronting a dangerous bear, one armed only with a knife and the other with a rifle. It is psychologically inevitable, he declares, that the one with the knife will choose to lie low, while the one with the gun will find greater security in trying to shoot the bear. ''This perfectly normal human psychology has driven a wedge between the United States and Europe,'' he asserts.
-Serge Schmenmann on Robert Kagan's "Of Paradise & Power"
''In the end,'' he writes, ''peoples cannot take responsibility for each other; but they serve each other when they take responsibility for themselves.'' Given the dangers we now face from international terrorism and nuclear proliferation, Purdy's stress on tending our own garden seems at least a little beside the point, and some of his readers may see in this a faint family resemblance to the ''blame America first'' mentality identified years ago by Jeane Kirkpatrick. But a closer relative is the strain of American Protestantism that in the face of external threats emphasizes personal purity and redemption from sin. When the towers fell, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson looked inward for the cause. Purdy's impulse takes the same form; it's the content that differs. Where Falwell and Robertson worry about school prayer and sex, Purdy worries about poverty and trees.
--Barry Gewen, on Jedeiah Purdy's book "BEING AMERICA: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World"
No comments:
Post a Comment