Download Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations 15581630 Michael Questier Books
Product details
|
~
- Hardcover 160 pages
- Publisher David Zwirner Books (January 21, 2020)
- Language English
- ISBN-10 1941701531
Download Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations 15581630 Michael Questier Books
By Sisca R. Bakara on Sunday, June 9, 2019
~
Read Sigmar Polke Eine Winterreise Sigmar Polke Vicente Todoli Katharina Schmidt Books
By Sisca R. Bakara
Read Sigmar Polke Eine Winterreise Sigmar Polke Vicente Todoli Katharina Schmidt Books
Product details |
~
Read The Legend of Safed Life and Fantasy in the City of Kabbalah Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology edition by Eli Yassif Haim Watzman Religion Spirituality eBooks
By Sisca R. Bakara
Read The Legend of Safed Life and Fantasy in the City of Kabbalah Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology edition by Eli Yassif Haim Watzman Religion Spirituality eBooks
Download As PDF : The Legend of Safed Life and Fantasy in the City of Kabbalah Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology edition by Eli Yassif Haim Watzman Religion Spirituality eBooks
In 1908, Solomon Schechter—discoverer of the Cairo Geniza and one of the founders of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America—published his groundbreaking essay on the city of Safed (Tzfat) during the sixteenth century. In the essay, Schechter pointed out the exceptional cultural achievements (religious law, moral teaching, hermeneutics, poetry, geography) of this small city in the upper Galilee but did not yet see the importance of including the foundation on which all of these fields began—the legends that were developed, told, and spread in Safed during this period. In The Legend of Safed Life and Fantasy in the City of Kabbalah, author Eli Yassif utilizes "new historicism" methodology in order to use the non-canonical materials—legends and myths, visions, dreams, rumors, everyday dialogues—to present these legends in their historical and cultural context and use them to better understand the culture of Safed. This approach considers the literary text not as a reflection of reality, but a part of reality itself—taking sides in the debates and decisions of humans and serving as a major tool for understanding society and human mentality.
Divided into seven chapters, The Legend of Safed begins with an explanation of how the myth of Safed was founded on the general belief that during this "golden age" (1570–1620), Safed was an idyllic location in which complete peace and understanding existed between the diverse groups of people who migrated to the city. Yassif goes on to analyze thematic characteristics of the legends, including spatial elements, the function of dreams, mysticism, sexual sins, and omniscience. The book concludes with a discussion of the tension between fantasy (Safed is a sacred city built on morality, religious thought, and well-being for all) and reality (every person is full of weaknesses and flaws) and how that is the basis for understanding the vitality of Safed myth and its immense impact on the future of Jewish life and culture.
The Legend of Safed is intended for students, scholars, and general readers of medieval and early modern Jewish studies, Hebrew literature, and folklore.
Read The Legend of Safed Life and Fantasy in the City of Kabbalah Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology edition by Eli Yassif Haim Watzman Religion Spirituality eBooks
""
Product details
|
Tags : The Legend of Safed Life and Fantasy in the City of Kabbalah (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology) - edition by Eli Yassif, Haim Watzman. Download it once and read it on your device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Legend of Safed Life and Fantasy in the City of Kabbalah (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology).,ebook,Eli Yassif, Haim Watzman,The Legend of Safed Life and Fantasy in the City of Kabbalah (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology),Wayne State University Press,HISTORY / Jewish
The Legend of Safed Life and Fantasy in the City of Kabbalah Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology edition by Eli Yassif Haim Watzman Religion Spirituality eBooks Reviews :
~
PDF The Cold War A World History Odd Arne Westad Books
By Sisca R. Bakara on Saturday, June 8, 2019
PDF The Cold War A World History Odd Arne Westad Books
Product details
|
The Cold War A World History Odd Arne Westad Books Reviews
- This is an ambitious but somewhat disappointing book. Odd Arne Westad is the author of an outstanding book, The Global Cold War, on the Cold War, as well as other work on this important topic. This book is a very ambitious attempt to produce a one volume overview of the Cold War and contains a good deal of fine narrative and analysis but suffers from some structural defects. It is neither a survey nor an introductory book. The structure is a series of loosely chronological chapters on important aspects of the Cold War. If you're not familiar with the overall narrative history, either from prior reading or (as with many individuals of my generation) by living through many of the events, a good deal of the discussion will be opaque. In addition, Westad makes no effort to fractionate different phases of the Cold War, which seems possible, and some kind of periodization would be useful in trying to understand the different aspects of the Cold War.
Westad does have an overall theme, which is the Cold War as an ideological conflict between global capitalism and a form of socialism that emerged from late 19th century industrialization. Many of the individual chapters are quite good. A strength of the book, reflecting his prior scholarship on the Cold War in the developing world, is the truly global perspective. While the critical American-Soviet relationship runs throughout the book, there are excellent chapters on other aspects of the Cold War such as the role of India, thoughtful analyses of the behavior of Mao's China, decolonialization, the behavior of the US in South America, and the often complex politics within Europe, both in Western Europe and Soviet dominated Eastern Europe. He is also very good on important aspects of the Soviet-American rivalry, including an even-handed assessment of Nixon's policies and highlighting the importance of Leonid Brezhnev. His description of the end of the Cold War and brief but cogent analysis of its consequences is good and highly relevant to our present situation.
Perhaps because of the broad canvas, I found some sections superficial. This includes, somewhat surprisingly, sections dealing with the background of the Cold War. The description of early 20th century socialism is a bit of a caricature and actually misleading. I don't think he sufficiently stresses that the American leadership of the 1940s and 1950s was bent on avoiding the errors of disengagement that followed WWI. I suspect that the sections on Korea and our early involvement in Southeast Asia don't give enough attention to economic factors, particularly our perception that these regions would be important for the Japanese economy. Again, not surprising in a book this ambitious, there are some factual errors. Its not correct, for example, that the British Mandate in Palestine was a negative for the emerging Zionist state, or that we achieved intelligence superiority over the Soviets in the 1960s. In the latter case, the Soviets benefited enormously from the fact that much valuable information about the US was in the public domain. His description of the outbreak of the Six Day - June War is superficial. He also doesn't discuss one of the most ironic features of the end of the Cold War. The collapse of Marxism resulted in a neoliberal world economic system that goes a long way towards restoring Marx's reputation as an analyst of capitalism.
Finally, there are significant production defects. The bibliography is scanty, there are no maps, and a modest amount of numerical data, such as economic outputs, in tabular or chart form, would have enhanced the discussions. - I enjoyed reading the book and its conclusion about the post Cold War errors in U.S. policy due to the distorting Cold War lens is original and worth debating. On the whole, the ideological position is perhaps too critical of the role of the U.S. in the Cold War, and it reminds me a bit of the theory of equivalency my middle school and Lyceum teachers were so proud to present “Communism and Capitalism are two ideology equivalent in their overall average between the Good and the Evil delivered to the citizenâ€. The author seem to forget the order of magnitude difference between the number of human lives cut short by the catastrophic Marxist Leninist ideology in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Eastern Europe, Vietnam and Cuba and the evil perpetrated by the “anti-communistâ€. Another interesting omission is any discussion of the historically curious and potentially fatal Chinese repudiation of the communist party even more than 20 years of joining the list of capitalist economies.
Overall, I do recommend this wonderful book, both as a reasonable detailed account of the Cold War and an essential springboard for those who wish to start a study in depth of the second half of the twentieth century. - I was disappointed. In my opinion, the organization is poor and the writing very ordinary. Nor was there anything very new here, especially for anyone who read the newspapers during the last half of the 20th century. Coverage is superficial and focuses mostly on the evils of the US.
- This is a definitive history of the period we call the Cold War. Westall sets the background of countries, events and key political personalities up in a way which explains how the tensions between the old Soviet Union and the US and Europe evolved and affected separate parts of the world. I highly recommend this for any one who wants to improve their knowledge about this 50+ period of world history.
- This book describes in some detail the period from 1945 to the fall of Soviet regime. The international struggle between the first and second world.
- Remarkable analysis of Post WWII history. Points in the direction that we are moving into a new into a new era.
- Mr. Westad does an outstanding job of showing both the global reach of The Cold War. How essentially what started out as a bipolar conflict between the US and USSR over control and domination of Europe spread to Asia, Latin America and Africa. He also shows its limitation while both the US and USSR saw everything in that prism. In most parts of the world that global conflict took a back seat to the end of colonization, the vast gaps between rich and poor in many parts of the world. The result was that both US and Soviet policy makers made decisions that severely negatively impacted those countries that became battlegrounds between the two competing ideologies. Some may not care for the layout of this book how Mr. Westad goes from country to country or region to region. It is not specifically a chronological order of The Cold War, though it does have that component. I found it interesting to see the Global reach of the Cold war and its limitations .
- In what concearns Latino America, its a beacon that puts light in how we came to be what we are. Great book
Ebook Women Who Dared 52 Stories of Fearless Daredevils Adventurers and Rebels Linda Skeers Livi Gosling 9781492653271 Books
By Sisca R. Bakara
Ebook Women Who Dared 52 Stories of Fearless Daredevils Adventurers and Rebels Linda Skeers Livi Gosling 9781492653271 Books
Product details
|
Women Who Dared 52 Stories of Fearless Daredevils Adventurers and Rebels Linda Skeers Livi Gosling 9781492653271 Books Reviews
- Love it! I was looking for a gift for a toddler girl and wanted to find something that could be empowering and inspiring. I’m always on a quest for gifts with an anti-princess sentiment and this was perfect.
- I love this book. Originally I got it for my little cousin, who is 5, but I thought that it was too advanced for her. I thought about keeping it for myself, because I love how they have women from all different countries and all different time periods. I ended up giving it to a different cousin who is 11 and it felt like it was an appropriate level for her.
- I got this as a gift for my friends daughters birthday and it was a hit.In the middle of the party after it was opened her Mom pointed to the book stating "See, it's not all princesses and rainbows!" towards the father of her daughter. I was later told the dad wanted to make sure she was well rounded and it was the perfect gift for them!
- I bought this book as a Christmas present for a young female family member (she's 10). She quickly started reading up on some of the women. The book came in great condition and is absolutely beautiful. It is filled with wonderful illustrations and easy to read synapses of the women depicted.
My only concern is the subject matter may not be the right choice for some families, considering this book is about adventurous and daredevil women in history, so if you or your family does not want to encourage "reckless" behavior (as some of my family members put it), I would recommend another book. However, I thought it has great examples of strong women! - I gave this to my 9 year old niece for Christmas and she loved it! She is a very strong reader, who also loves to learn new things when she reads, and she was very excited about the book. She told me she is reading about one person a day, and has learned a lot of things - plus she was excited to see it was all about daring women! She said she was telling her classmates about the women as well - that she thought they were very brave! I also enjoyed skimming some of the selections when I first obtained it. I highly recommend it!
- Great book for various ages. My daughter used it for a Girl Scout troop meeting (middle school level) about successful women and it was a huge hit. Many moms asked about the book and where to buy it.
- My daughter had Rebel Girls and I decided to switch for this one. She is 6 and love it. She is reading for weeks the same story then changed.
- Awesome young person's book. It's short and in really short, might take 5-10 minutes to read about a daring woman. It would be a perfect book for grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. to have on hand to read to both girls and boys. Teachers, either in the home setting or public school could read a daring woman's story and since the chapters don't tell all there is to know, but gives you a desire to go look them up and find out more it could lead to further research and stories written by the student about that daring woman.
Another of my favorite things about this book is Linda Skeers doesn't just have a certain age, type or daring woman but she has stories from the 18th century to the 21st century. There are young women and Senior Citizen women, married women, single women, single mom women. Performers, daredevils, flyers, astronauts, scientists, explorers in this book. They are from all over this great earth.
My favorite section was about Rebels.
Will be buying several more for friends with boys.
Read EagleSage LonTobyn Chronicle David B Coe Pete Cross Books
By Sisca R. Bakara
Read EagleSage LonTobyn Chronicle David B Coe Pete Cross Books
Download As PDF : EagleSage LonTobyn Chronicle David B Coe Pete Cross BooksSeven years have passed since Orris, a mage of Tobyn-Ser’s Order, returned from the violent chaos of Bragor-Nal. The threat of attack from Lon-Ser has been eliminated, but the establishment of trade between Tobyn-Ser and its western neighbor has brought new and disturbing changes to the land. Large tracts of woodland have been logged and sold off in exchange for more of Lon-Ser’s “advanced goods.†The Order and the League continue their struggle for supremacy, and a new force, a “People’s Movement,†has allied itself with so-called independent mages who claim no ties to either body.
In Lon-Ser, Melyor, the beautiful Gildriite who made herself Bragor-Nal’s Sovereign, is nearly killed in an assassination attempt. Her ally, Shivohn, matriarch of Oerella-Nal, is herself killed by a similar attack. Treachery and betrayal lie at the heart of a plot that endangers not only Lon-Ser but also Tobyn-Ser and its Mage-Craft.
When Jaryd, who has been unbound for months, finally binds to an eagle, he fears the worst, for, throughout the history of Tobyn-Ser, the binding of a mage to an eagle has always been a harbinger of war. When Cailin, a League mage, binds to a second eagle, Jaryd fears that his land teeters on the brink of Civil War. Crisis grips both lands. Can Melyor overcome an unseen enemy and a thousand years of prejudice to save Lon-Ser? Can Jaryd and Cailin bring peace to the mages of Tobyn-Ser in time to stop an old and emboldened enemy from destroying everything they hold dear?
Read EagleSage LonTobyn Chronicle David B Coe Pete Cross Books
"Rereading this book was amazing. I had forgotten how much more elaborate the plot was in this book versus the others. I highly recommend it."
Product details
|
Tags : Eagle-Sage (LonTobyn Chronicle) (9781974946884) David B. Coe, Pete Cross Books,David B. Coe, Pete Cross,Eagle-Sage (LonTobyn Chronicle),Dreamscape Media,1974946886,AUDIO,Juvenile Fiction,Juvenile Grades 7-9 Ages 12-14,United States,YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Fantasy / Epic,YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Fantasy / Wizards Witches,YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Magical Realism,Young Adult Fiction/Fantasy - Wizards Witches,Young Adult Fiction/Magical Realism
EagleSage LonTobyn Chronicle David B Coe Pete Cross Books Reviews :
EagleSage LonTobyn Chronicle David B Coe Pete Cross Books Reviews
- Rereading this book was amazing. I had forgotten how much more elaborate the plot was in this book versus the others. I highly recommend it.
Read Online Love Your Enemies How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt edition by Arthur C Brooks Politics Social Sciences eBooks
By Sisca R. Bakara on Friday, June 7, 2019
Read Online Love Your Enemies How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt edition by Arthur C Brooks Politics Social Sciences eBooks
Download As PDF : Love Your Enemies How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt edition by Arthur C Brooks Politics Social Sciences eBooksNow a National Bestseller.
To get ahead today, you have to be a jerk, right?
Divisive politicians. Screaming heads on television. Angry campus activists. Twitter trolls. Today in America, there is an “outrage industrial complex” that prospers by setting American against American.
Meanwhile, one in six Americans have stopped talking to close friends and family members over politics. Millions are organizing their social lives and curating their news and information to avoid hearing viewpoints differing from their own. Ideological polarization is at higher levels than at any time since the Civil War.
America has developed a “culture of contempt”—a habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect or misguided, but as worthless. Maybe you dislike it—more than nine out of ten Americans say they are tired of how divided we have become as a country. But hey, either you play along, or you’ll be left behind, right?
Wrong.
In Love Your Enemies, New York Times bestselling author and social scientist Arthur C. Brooks shows that treating others with contempt and out-outraging the other side is not a formula for lasting success. Blending cutting-edge behavioral research, ancient wisdom, and a decade of experience leading one of America’s top policy think tanks, Love Your Enemies offers a new way to lead based not on attacking others, but on bridging national divides and mending personal relationships.
Brooks’ prescriptions are unconventional. To bring America together, he argues, we shouldn’t try to agree more. There is no need for mushy moderation, because disagreement is the secret to excellence. Civility and tolerance shouldn’t be our goals, because they are hopelessly low standards. And our feelings toward our foes are irrelevant; what matters is how we choose to act.
Love Your Enemies is not just a guide to being a better person. It offers a clear strategy for victory for a new generation of leaders. It is a rallying cry for people hoping for a new era of American progress. And most of all, it is a roadmap to arrive at the happiness that comes when we choose to love one another, despite our differences.
Read Online Love Your Enemies How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt edition by Arthur C Brooks Politics Social Sciences eBooks
"It has been my conviction for a while now that social media and the daily phony outrages they help spur are rewiring our brains as we speak and make us more stupid. (Ever been on Twitter? Yeah.) Moreover, reading the drivel passing for political insight on our feeds makes us desperate to avoid the latest spat involving President Trump when we talk to these Facebook philosophers at an uncle’s birthday party. Better to change the topic to, say, the Patriots’ ‘Deflate Gate’. It’s bound to get some voices raised, but at the end of the day that feels better than having to battle accusations of secretly cherishing Nazi sympathies.
If you, like me, are more than fed up with the sad reality pictured above, Arthur C. Brooks’ new book, "Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt," must have received a warm welcome in your mailbox. The outgoing president of the American Enterprise Institute and a devout Catholic, Brooks should have a thing or two to say about our present culture of contempt, its roots, and its consequences.
The author makes the case that yours truly wasn’t imagining things when nervously resorting to Deflate Gate. In fact, “Political differences are ripping our country apart,†he writes. “Political scientists find that our nation is more polarized than it has been at any time since the Civil War.†Just one unfortunate result of this is that “one in six Americans … stopped talking to a family member or close friend because of the 2016 election.†In addition, we are now collectively sorting our “social life along ideological linesâ€, by avoiding places and media where we might find people who disagree with us and “seeking out the spaces … where [we] find the most ideological compatriots.â€
At the heart of our problem, Brooks argues, lies not hatred or anger, but contempt (defined as “anger mixed with disgustâ€): “Across the political spectrum, people in positions of power and influence are setting us against one another. They tell us our neighbors who disagree with us politically are ruining our country. That ideological differences aren’t a matter of differing opinions but reflect moral turpitude. That our side must utterly vanquish the other, even if it leaves our neighbors without a voice.†In fact, humans show literal signs of addiction to this sort of contempt, Brooks writes, like we would to alcohol or cigarettes, and the outrage industry in our media and broader culture takes advantage of this.
Psychological research demonstrates that contempt makes us unhappy as well as unhealthy. Those subjected to it “have poorer sleep quality, and their immune systems don’t function as well,†while those practicing it produce “two stress hormones, cortisol and adrenalineâ€, which have been linked to increased odds of premature death. Sounds lovely, if not exactly a recipe for individual, let alone societal, health.
As a diagnosis of our present perils Love Your Enemies is solid enough. Where it is lacking, however, is in 1) establishing the causes of our collective contempt and political bifurcation, and; 2) realistic steps to make a meaningful change: What to do about all this? To start off with the latter, Brooks found his inspiration in chatting with his friend the Dalai Lama: “‘Your Holiness,’ I asked him, ‘what do I do when I feel contempt?'†Responded His Holiness: “Practice warm-heartedness.†After pondering this little dose of Gelug wisdom, Brooks concluded: “He was not advocating surrender to the views of those with whom we disagree. If I believe I am right, I have a duty to stick to my views. But my duty is also to be kind, fair, and friendly to all, even those with whom I have great differences.â€
He sets forth some basic rules for our conduct with the other side that should be common sense to anyone with a decent bone in their body. Be kind in the face of contempt: “Treat others with love and respect.†“Don’t attack or insult. Don’t even try to win.†Never field an argumentum ad hominem in your political discussions. “Stand up to people on your own side who trash people on the other side.†“Escape the bubble.†You get the picture. The one buzzword dominating this book is “loveâ€. Brooks quotes Christ in the Gospel of Luke: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. … But love your enemies. … Then your reward will be great.†If these tactics won’t win over your hostile interlocutor, they will at least make you feel better.
What is needed in America today at the political level, Brooks proceeds to explain, is a new style of “authoritative†leadership: “What we truly require is a new vision from authoritative leaders for the purpose of our economy and public policy. By articulating a clear aim of restoring human dignity and expanding opportunity, authoritative leaders can create space for Americans to think about old problems in new ways.â€
If the above sounds noble and sympathetic, it’s also vague and, given the present state of our society, utter pie in the sky. What we have on our hand here is a classic prisoner’s dilemma. Kindness in the face of contempt can be perceived as weakness. Why should your side be the first to change its behavior? This is a serious problem, and it makes one pessimistic about the odds of this project of loving your enemies ever succeeding. Our national moral consensus has eroded, and the philosophical differences resulting from this are real. Liberals wish to reinterpret the Constitution to suit their political agenda and altogether banish religion to behind our front doors. And conservatives wish to stem this liberal tide by any legal means possible — which post-2016 means “Donald Trumpâ€.
This brings us to the other reason "Love Your Enemies" falls short: It has surprisingly little to say about the causes of the bifurcation of our society it details. And the few things it does say leave the reader wanting for more.
Brooks is an economist, and this background transpires when he takes a shot at explaining the trigger event which seems to have all but sealed our national divorce: the ascendancy to the presidency of Donald Trump. “For decades,†the author relates,
“conventional conservatives had emphasized issues such as entitlement reform, which is important for the solvency of the country but feels cold and remote to voters worried about losing their job and benefits. Meanwhile, the conventional political left focused on the “income gap†separating rich and poor. They contended that income inequality would ignite a new class struggle, causing unprecedented political turmoil. This was half right. There was indeed a gap in this country, but the relevant gap wasn’t income. It was dignity. … As the future fills with whiz-bang technologies, from artificial intelligence to driverless cars, one part of the population sees ingenuity, mobility, and progress. Another part hears, “We don’t need you anymore.†This is the dignity gap. … Even with strong economic growth, the United States has bifurcated into a nation of socioeconomic winners and losers, and this stratification is poisoning American culture.â€
Who are these losers? You guessed it: “Lots of people of all races and classes, but to an especially large extent, it is working-class men.†Echoing J.D. Vance’s "Hillbilly Elegy", Brooks relays how the mortality rate among members of this group has been on the rise since 1999. “The main reasons? Cirrhosis of the liver (up 50 percent since 1999 among this group), suicide (up 78 percent), and drug overdoses, primarily of opiates (up 323 percent).†It’s the by now familiar heart-wrenching tune lamenting the sad plight of our nation’s working classes, and it needs no further explanation that these are the people who voted for Trump.
That said, while I wouldn’t ignore the economic pains our working classes endure, I’d like to make the case that the battle is waged primarily over our culture, not economics. The problem is not just that these people feel like they’re no longer needed in our advanced economy, but that the cultural and political elites in our country disparage them as a sweaty bunch of gap-toothed, god-fearing and gun-toting yokels who are too dim-witted to acknowledge that, in order to save humanity from a climate change catastrophe, they’ll need to say bye-bye to their job on the oil rig in Texas or the coal mine in West Virginia. Another familiar theme is that politicians from Left to Right are consciously hurting the economic plight of the people they’re purporting to help by allowing hundreds of thousands of workers to enter the United States every year to work here, legally or not so legally.
In post-truth America, the media can get away with actively undermining a democratically-elected president in a concerted effort to undo an election the outcome of which wasn’t to their liking. Colin Kaepernick could, without much criticism from those same media, bring his political fight over an otherwise legitimate cause to a supposedly non-political arena — the NFL — which collects the majority of its revenues from the very working classes Kaepernick would disparage as a gang of racists exercising their ‘white privilege’. And when Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to fill Anthony Kennedy’s Supreme Court seat, the Left unleashed a barrage of dirty tricks and hysteria that was unprecedented even by its own abominable standards. Did the Right pull similar stunts with Sotomayor and Kagan?
Brooks is correct that contempt begets contempt, of course. It’s a vicious cycle, which explains why The Donald is our president today. The reason why the nastiness reached new lows during and after the 2016 campaign is because, unlike John McCain, Mitt Romney and all the others, Trump fought back and offered his base a sense of self-value; the prospect that, no, you are not obsolete, because we’re going to turn this thing around for you. And no, despite the well-nigh Orwellian claims to the contrary, Mexicans do not have a moral right to stampede our borders without consequences, and it’s not self-evident that ICE should be “abolishedâ€.
Looking at it from a different angle, these establishment attitudes on our culture didn’t emerge grass-roots in a cultural vacuum. They are the end result of ideas that originated on college campuses a long time ago. America isn’t torn apart by contempt. It’s torn apart by identity politics, which has pitted a thousand and one identity groups against white men as well as each other and so has unleashed a cold civil war that could usher in the end of the United States as we know it. But, since identity politics is the love child of Marxism and postmodernism (in other words, a product of the Left), Brooks is hesitant to broach this subject for fear of alienating half of his audience. So he resorts to boring generalities and offers up negative examples from both sides of the political spectrum in order to stay ‘balanced’.
Consequently, as an exercise in establishing the root causes of our societal stratification, Love Your Enemies falls remarkably flat. Brooks is so busy tiptoeing around the easily offended to both his left and his right, so obsessed with his on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other-hand illustrations supporting the argument he’s attempting to make, that it leaves the reader scratching his head in wonder if anything was deliberately left out beyond the author’s platitudes about Luke 6:32-35. It is obvious to any neutral observer, however, that the present cultural conflict is not symmetrical, but the result of an intellectual assault by the academic Left on institutions and ideas it deemed inhibitive of our individualism and rationality. We’re seeing liberalism coming to full fruition.
In conclusion, "Love Your Enemies" is as inane as it is disappointing. It’s disappointing because the problem the book purports to deal with is real and deserving of our attention. But the problem is real not because of social media and our collective contempt (though these don’t help), but because of other intellectual and political forces upon which Brooks barely even touches. It turns out that, for all his personal faults, The Donald is a keener observer of our beloved America than Arthur Brooks. Imagine that."
Product details
|
Tags : Love Your Enemies How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt - edition by Arthur C. Brooks. Download it once and read it on your device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Love Your Enemies How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt.,ebook,Arthur C. Brooks,Love Your Enemies How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt,Broadside e-books,CIVICS AND CITIZENSHIP,GENERAL,General Adult,Non-Fiction,POLITICAL SCIENCE / Civics Citizenship,POLITICAL SCIENCE / Commentary Opinion,POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Conservatism Liberalism,Polarization (Social sciences) - United States Polarization (Social sciences) - United States,Polarization (Social sciences);United States.,Political Science,Political Science/Civics Citizenship,Political Science/Political Ideologies - Conservatism Liberalism,Political Science/Political Process - General,Political culture - United States Political culture - United States,Political culture;United States.,Political participation - Moral and ethical aspects - UnitedPolitical participation - Moral and ethical aspects - United States States,Political participation;Moral and ethical aspects;United States.,Politics/Intl Relations,U.S. - CONTEMPORARY POLITICS,United States,United States - Politics and government - Moral and ethical United States - Politics and government - Moral and ethical aspects aspects,POLITICAL SCIENCE / Civics Citizenship,POLITICAL SCIENCE / Commentary Opinion,POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Conservatism Liberalism,Political Science/Civics Citizenship,Political Science/Political Ideologies - Conservatism Liberalism,Political Science/Political Process - General,POLITICAL SCIENCE Commentary Opinion,POLITICAL SCIENCE Civics Citizenship
Love Your Enemies How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt edition by Arthur C Brooks Politics Social Sciences eBooks Reviews :
Love Your Enemies How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt edition by Arthur C Brooks Politics Social Sciences eBooks Reviews
- Deplorables. The forty-seven percent. The fact that Americans have become increasingly divided is hardly breaking news. But Arthur Brooks is somewhat unique in finding the cause in an ethical/spiritual crisis as opposed to blaming one side or the other.
Brooks believes that each side is animated by a spirit of contempt. Dismissiveness, arrogance and close-mindedness have replaced love of neighbor. To return to a more temperate politics we do not need new leaders or new parties as much as a recommitment to commonly shared values and humanity.
Armed with impressive social scientific data, Brooks argues that such a transformation would be good not only for the country but for us as well. He also marshals the world’s philosophic and religious traditions to create arguments against tribalism, identity politics and shunning of the other side.
Most readers will fully support Brooks’ project but will probably wonder whether a real movement can be started across ideological lines. Recent social movements have started, however, around messages with similarly inspirational content (see Lean In). Like most readers I would welcome a return of a sense of national community and wouldn’t want to prognosticate that Brooks cannot launch such a cause.
But this same hope makes explicit one of the major assumptions of the book. Brooks assumes that the hard right and hard left have similar commitments to core enlightenment and humanistic values. We need only to be reminded of our better angels.
He does not take seriously the idea that those on the hard right who want to stop all Latino immigration or those on the hard left who think Enlightenment reasoning is a tool of oppression really envision mutually incompatible Americas. That at the root of the increasingly strong partisan divide is different understandings of what America is all about and not just a lack of humanistic virtue.
For my part, I hope Brooks’ more optimistic vision of mutually shared values is correct. But I cannot help but notice that the opposite notion is not so much debated as ignored.
Given that the core of the book is a personal message to transform ideological contempt into love this may be understandable. But, if the book is mostly an effort aimed not at making an argument but at achieving personal transformation, then ultimately its success is to be judged not on the relevance of its social scientific data, nor on its handling of the wisdom of the ages, nor even on its sales but on whether it achieves some success in changing the tone of political rhetoric. It certainly will be interesting to see whether it helps push Democrats and Republicans to unite around the good of the body politic once again. - It has been my conviction for a while now that social media and the daily phony outrages they help spur are rewiring our brains as we speak and make us more stupid. (Ever been on Twitter? Yeah.) Moreover, reading the drivel passing for political insight on our feeds makes us desperate to avoid the latest spat involving President Trump when we talk to these Facebook philosophers at an uncle’s birthday party. Better to change the topic to, say, the Patriots’ ‘Deflate Gate’. It’s bound to get some voices raised, but at the end of the day that feels better than having to battle accusations of secretly cherishing Nazi sympathies.
If you, like me, are more than fed up with the sad reality pictured above, Arthur C. Brooks’ new book, "Love Your Enemies How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt," must have received a warm welcome in your mailbox. The outgoing president of the American Enterprise Institute and a devout Catholic, Brooks should have a thing or two to say about our present culture of contempt, its roots, and its consequences.
The author makes the case that yours truly wasn’t imagining things when nervously resorting to Deflate Gate. In fact, “Political differences are ripping our country apart,†he writes. “Political scientists find that our nation is more polarized than it has been at any time since the Civil War.†Just one unfortunate result of this is that “one in six Americans … stopped talking to a family member or close friend because of the 2016 election.†In addition, we are now collectively sorting our “social life along ideological linesâ€, by avoiding places and media where we might find people who disagree with us and “seeking out the spaces … where [we] find the most ideological compatriots.â€
At the heart of our problem, Brooks argues, lies not hatred or anger, but contempt (defined as “anger mixed with disgustâ€) “Across the political spectrum, people in positions of power and influence are setting us against one another. They tell us our neighbors who disagree with us politically are ruining our country. That ideological differences aren’t a matter of differing opinions but reflect moral turpitude. That our side must utterly vanquish the other, even if it leaves our neighbors without a voice.†In fact, humans show literal signs of addiction to this sort of contempt, Brooks writes, like we would to alcohol or cigarettes, and the outrage industry in our media and broader culture takes advantage of this.
Psychological research demonstrates that contempt makes us unhappy as well as unhealthy. Those subjected to it “have poorer sleep quality, and their immune systems don’t function as well,†while those practicing it produce “two stress hormones, cortisol and adrenalineâ€, which have been linked to increased odds of premature death. Sounds lovely, if not exactly a recipe for individual, let alone societal, health.
As a diagnosis of our present perils Love Your Enemies is solid enough. Where it is lacking, however, is in 1) establishing the causes of our collective contempt and political bifurcation, and; 2) realistic steps to make a meaningful change What to do about all this? To start off with the latter, Brooks found his inspiration in chatting with his friend the Dalai Lama “‘Your Holiness,’ I asked him, ‘what do I do when I feel contempt?'†Responded His Holiness “Practice warm-heartedness.†After pondering this little dose of Gelug wisdom, Brooks concluded “He was not advocating surrender to the views of those with whom we disagree. If I believe I am right, I have a duty to stick to my views. But my duty is also to be kind, fair, and friendly to all, even those with whom I have great differences.â€
He sets forth some basic rules for our conduct with the other side that should be common sense to anyone with a decent bone in their body. Be kind in the face of contempt “Treat others with love and respect.†“Don’t attack or insult. Don’t even try to win.†Never field an argumentum ad hominem in your political discussions. “Stand up to people on your own side who trash people on the other side.†“Escape the bubble.†You get the picture. The one buzzword dominating this book is “loveâ€. Brooks quotes Christ in the Gospel of Luke “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. … But love your enemies. … Then your reward will be great.†If these tactics won’t win over your hostile interlocutor, they will at least make you feel better.
What is needed in America today at the political level, Brooks proceeds to explain, is a new style of “authoritative†leadership “What we truly require is a new vision from authoritative leaders for the purpose of our economy and public policy. By articulating a clear aim of restoring human dignity and expanding opportunity, authoritative leaders can create space for Americans to think about old problems in new ways.â€
If the above sounds noble and sympathetic, it’s also vague and, given the present state of our society, utter pie in the sky. What we have on our hand here is a classic prisoner’s dilemma. Kindness in the face of contempt can be perceived as weakness. Why should your side be the first to change its behavior? This is a serious problem, and it makes one pessimistic about the odds of this project of loving your enemies ever succeeding. Our national moral consensus has eroded, and the philosophical differences resulting from this are real. Liberals wish to reinterpret the Constitution to suit their political agenda and altogether banish religion to behind our front doors. And conservatives wish to stem this liberal tide by any legal means possible — which post-2016 means “Donald Trumpâ€.
This brings us to the other reason "Love Your Enemies" falls short It has surprisingly little to say about the causes of the bifurcation of our society it details. And the few things it does say leave the reader wanting for more.
Brooks is an economist, and this background transpires when he takes a shot at explaining the trigger event which seems to have all but sealed our national divorce the ascendancy to the presidency of Donald Trump. “For decades,†the author relates,
“conventional conservatives had emphasized issues such as entitlement reform, which is important for the solvency of the country but feels cold and remote to voters worried about losing their job and benefits. Meanwhile, the conventional political left focused on the “income gap†separating rich and poor. They contended that income inequality would ignite a new class struggle, causing unprecedented political turmoil. This was half right. There was indeed a gap in this country, but the relevant gap wasn’t income. It was dignity. … As the future fills with whiz-bang technologies, from artificial intelligence to driverless cars, one part of the population sees ingenuity, mobility, and progress. Another part hears, “We don’t need you anymore.†This is the dignity gap. … Even with strong economic growth, the United States has bifurcated into a nation of socioeconomic winners and losers, and this stratification is poisoning American culture.â€
Who are these losers? You guessed it “Lots of people of all races and classes, but to an especially large extent, it is working-class men.†Echoing J.D. Vance’s "Hillbilly Elegy", Brooks relays how the mortality rate among members of this group has been on the rise since 1999. “The main reasons? Cirrhosis of the liver (up 50 percent since 1999 among this group), suicide (up 78 percent), and drug overdoses, primarily of opiates (up 323 percent).†It’s the by now familiar heart-wrenching tune lamenting the sad plight of our nation’s working classes, and it needs no further explanation that these are the people who voted for Trump.
That said, while I wouldn’t ignore the economic pains our working classes endure, I’d like to make the case that the battle is waged primarily over our culture, not economics. The problem is not just that these people feel like they’re no longer needed in our advanced economy, but that the cultural and political elites in our country disparage them as a sweaty bunch of gap-toothed, god-fearing and gun-toting yokels who are too dim-witted to acknowledge that, in order to save humanity from a climate change catastrophe, they’ll need to say bye-bye to their job on the oil rig in Texas or the coal mine in West Virginia. Another familiar theme is that politicians from Left to Right are consciously hurting the economic plight of the people they’re purporting to help by allowing hundreds of thousands of workers to enter the United States every year to work here, legally or not so legally.
In post-truth America, the media can get away with actively undermining a democratically-elected president in a concerted effort to undo an election the outcome of which wasn’t to their liking. Colin Kaepernick could, without much criticism from those same media, bring his political fight over an otherwise legitimate cause to a supposedly non-political arena — the NFL — which collects the majority of its revenues from the very working classes Kaepernick would disparage as a gang of racists exercising their ‘white privilege’. And when Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to fill Anthony Kennedy’s Supreme Court seat, the Left unleashed a barrage of dirty tricks and hysteria that was unprecedented even by its own abominable standards. Did the Right pull similar stunts with Sotomayor and Kagan?
Brooks is correct that contempt begets contempt, of course. It’s a vicious cycle, which explains why The Donald is our president today. The reason why the nastiness reached new lows during and after the 2016 campaign is because, unlike John McCain, Mitt Romney and all the others, Trump fought back and offered his base a sense of self-value; the prospect that, no, you are not obsolete, because we’re going to turn this thing around for you. And no, despite the well-nigh Orwellian claims to the contrary, Mexicans do not have a moral right to stampede our borders without consequences, and it’s not self-evident that ICE should be “abolishedâ€.
Looking at it from a different angle, these establishment attitudes on our culture didn’t emerge grass-roots in a cultural vacuum. They are the end result of ideas that originated on college campuses a long time ago. America isn’t torn apart by contempt. It’s torn apart by identity politics, which has pitted a thousand and one identity groups against white men as well as each other and so has unleashed a cold civil war that could usher in the end of the United States as we know it. But, since identity politics is the love child of Marxism and postmodernism (in other words, a product of the Left), Brooks is hesitant to broach this subject for fear of alienating half of his audience. So he resorts to boring generalities and offers up negative examples from both sides of the political spectrum in order to stay ‘balanced’.
Consequently, as an exercise in establishing the root causes of our societal stratification, Love Your Enemies falls remarkably flat. Brooks is so busy tiptoeing around the easily offended to both his left and his right, so obsessed with his on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other-hand illustrations supporting the argument he’s attempting to make, that it leaves the reader scratching his head in wonder if anything was deliberately left out beyond the author’s platitudes about Luke 632-35. It is obvious to any neutral observer, however, that the present cultural conflict is not symmetrical, but the result of an intellectual assault by the academic Left on institutions and ideas it deemed inhibitive of our individualism and rationality. We’re seeing liberalism coming to full fruition.
In conclusion, "Love Your Enemies" is as inane as it is disappointing. It’s disappointing because the problem the book purports to deal with is real and deserving of our attention. But the problem is real not because of social media and our collective contempt (though these don’t help), but because of other intellectual and political forces upon which Brooks barely even touches. It turns out that, for all his personal faults, The Donald is a keener observer of our beloved America than Arthur Brooks. Imagine that. - This book's ideas are really no different from commercials put on TV by corporations trying to convince you that everyone who is in the corporation is part of a happy family, filled with love, and not a conniving outfit which the government needs to regulate. Let's stipulate that loving your neighbor in general is a great idea. But Arthur Brooks' whole long-standing approach, now on display for years, is all about telling people that somehow we shouldn't look all that carefully into the actual operations of business in the country, and instead concentrate on problems that are harder to pin down in society. Keep busy with that folks, while the business goes on and on unimpeded, no matter what they want to do. His writing shows a deadly shrewd sense of how to appear just-so in terms just enough sops to notions like welfare and human rights, yet all along basically creating a false sense of current society by averting eyes from the essentially coercive takeover of an authentic culture by big business. Asserting religious notions has long been a way keep people away from what one really wants to do, by people who really want to do it, and make money. Love it ain't. Further, the notions of toleration in this country never were based on vaunted religious notions, even when the country was more religious overall that it was today. It was, since the start of the Republic, based on Enlightenment notions that made more clear that civility was a better course than enmity. In fact, an argument can well be made that it is precisely because religious notions have been substituted in current society, that the actual civility of the Founders' vision has been jettisoned. Arthur Brooks' approach is thus part of what is leading people away from that Founding vision.
