On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:49 AM, Doug Henwood <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Aug 26, 2009, at 11:33 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: > > Here's Thomas Frank of "What's the Matter with Kansas" fame giving Obama >> advice that he should be more like Harry Truman: >> >> >> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574373000964995482.html >> >> In response to the article, I wrote him: >> >> Whatever happened to the Baffler radicalism? >> > > Tom Frank blurbed Peter Beinart's book, The Good Fight. Frank's blurb: > "Peter Beinart takes us on a vigorous and entertaining search for a usable > past. His reasoning must be heard." > > And what's this book about? Publisher's Weekly's review, via Amazon.com: > > This stimulating manifesto calls for a liberalism that battles Islamist >> totalitarianism as forthrightly as Cold War liberals opposed Communist >> totalitarianism. Former New Republiceditor Beinart assails both an >> anti-imperialist left that rejects the exercise of U.S. power and the Bush >> administration's assumption of America's moral infallibility. America >> shouldn't shrink from fighting terrorism, despite civilian casualties and >> moral compromises, he contends, but its antitotalitarian agenda must be >> restrained by world opinion, international institutions and liberal >> self-doubt, while bolstered by economic development aid abroad and economic >> equality at home. Beinart offers an incisive historical account of the >> conflicts straining postwar liberalism and of the contradictions, hubris and >> incompetence of Bush's actions. He's sketchier on what a liberal war on >> terror entails—perhaps a cross between Clinton's Balkan humanitarian >> interventions and the Afghanistan operation, with U.S. forces descending on >> Muslim backwaters to destroy jihadists and build nations. The tragic >> conundrum of a fighting liberalism that avoids enmeshment in a Vietnam or >> Iraq (the author now repudiates his early support of the Iraq war) is never >> adequately addressed. Still, Beinart's provocative analysis could stir >> much-needed debate on the direction of liberal foreign policy. >> > are we sure this post isn't about Hitch? It's The New Reasonableness. You mistake it for crankiness until you see that they're just cranky about unreasonable cranks. j
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