22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Clarity without Conclusions, November 12, 2003
This review is from: Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World (Hardcover)
Jedediah Purdy has developed something of a reputation of a Generation X wunderkind. Thoughtful, observant, and intellectual, Purdy made his name with a call to earnestness as a counterweight to the rising tide of cultural cynicism in America. All well and good, but in his new book, Being America, Purdy's earnestness takes him close to the edge of an intellectual vacuum in which perceptions are expressed but conclusions are scrupulously avoided.
That is not to say that Purdy has not, with this book, rendered a service to his readers. Being America provides a wealth of analysis that is most useful in explaining to America how it got to where it is in the world. Ranging from the "branding of capitalism" to the curses and blessings of a free market, to the ambivalent anti-Americanism that exists in much of the post-September 11th world, Purdy grasps nuances and provides insights that would elude the reader of the daily newspaper. Summed up, Purdy seems to say, "Here is why you are hated, America, when all you think you are trying to do is spread the blessings of freedom and democracy."
Similarly, Purdy has an eye for distinctions that many Americans, including many American political leaders have lost sight of. For example, America as the land of liberty is not the same thing as America as the land of consumerism. Yet so intertwined have the two become in American culture, that it has almost become impossible for Americans to separate the two in their own minds. Ask an American what he most loves about his country and he will likely say "freedom." Ask him freedom to do what, and it will almost degenerate into a laundry list of purchases.
This is not new, and is an outgrowth of certain assumptions that have their roots in the progressive era, the New Deal and even in the libertarian conservatism of recent years. As the writer David Frum has noted, in order to make progressivism work, a paradigm shift was required. Man had to go from being defined as a social animal - as the Founding Fathers had seen him - to an individual consumer - first of government, later of the "economy," which was a thing that had never been previously quantified.
Purdy, unfortunately, fails to make the leap from observer to philosopher, leaving the reader to follow individual threads of his thinking without ever truly grasping the point. Purdy points to the anti-Americanism of several young Egyptians at an American-style shopping mall near Cairo as a paradox, but he never examines the merits of the paradox. Is it philosophically or morally defensible for people to express admiration for a mass murderer? Is that not the more relevant question than whether Egyptian kids act in ways that flatly contradict their thinking? Can Egypt, as a society, prosper so long as its culture fails to address this contradiction?
These are the meaty questions that Purdy never gets around to addressing. At most, he argues that America should not expect gratitude for its contributions to the world, should be more true to its ideals and acknowledge its past failings, and should not attempt to impose its worldview on others. This is all very pat, and very tidy, but it takes no account of the dynamics of global culture or of the simple blunt fact of power.
Arguably, America should not expect gratitude and deference for what it has brought to the world in terms of human rights, the expansion of freedom, and rising global prosperity. No more than Britain was given deference for having stood alone against the Axis Powers for a year during World War II. The wide-eyed bewilderment of many Americans after September 11 - "Why do they hate us?" - suggests an appalling societal failure to understand history.
However, Purdy's solution, which amounts to more earnestness and a truthful accounting of America's sins before the world, will just as likely discredit America in the eyes of the world as enhance it. Just as there is no gratitude for the indisputably good things America has done, a global gnashing of teeth and rending of garments by the United States before the world will likely result in greater contempt for it.
In any case, it is not clear what Purdy is advocating in practical terms. The quickest way America could be true to its ideals in the Middle East would be to withdraw from it, yet to do so would leave a void which extremists and tyrants would be tempted to fill, not only to the detriment of America, but of the people of the Middle East. Unfortunately, global affairs are less a philosophy seminar than an arena where battalions clash. Further, much of the American culture that has spread throughout the world and caused such a backlash, particularly in the Middle East, has done so without so much as a nudge from America's leaders. If simply "Being America" means antagonizing less successful cultures into acts of homicide and terrorism, it is not clear that there is much America can do about it short of defending itself and aggressively pursuing its own goals.
Beyond all of this, Purdy can be taken to task for mildly distorting those that he quotes. This is particularly true of Edmund Burke. Purdy approves of Burke's stance on the American Revolution and British India, but it is relevant that Burke was not the enemy of empire that Purdy implies. Indeed, Burke argued not for disbanding the empire, but merely that it be more wisely governed.
Without a doubt, Purdy deserves a lot of credit for making clear that which too many Americans, including sadly, too many American policymakers, have allowed to become muddled. However, clarity, while a virtue, should not and cannot be the end purpose of philosophy or American foreign policy. Direction, principles and a goal are also required, and mere observation from Olympian heights is no substitute for a sense of right and wrong.
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57 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Finest Book on Globalization Available, February 11, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World (Hardcover)
I read Jedediah Purdy's first book, For Common Things, with great interest and admiration a few years ago, so naturally I was intrigued to see what he would produce for his second work. Being America is a magnificent book, and by far the best single work on globalization that I've read. Purdy's depth and sophistication are outstandingly clear, and his observations on American empire, modernity, nationalism and reaction all bear close consideration and careful scrutiny. The book is particularly timely given the events of the moment, which Purdy does not address directly--I assume it was written well before the Iraq showdown--but which he can nevertheless help us think through. Needless to say, the focus of this book is much broader than these current issues, however, and Purdy analyzes deep, perennial concerns in a humane and insightful manner. With this second book, Purdy has shown that he is much more than the one-book wonder that some commentators took him to be during the media splash that accompanied the publication of For Common Things. Instead, Purdy has proven that he is a careful thinker, a beautiful writer, and a sensitive commentator whose maturity and insight are a welcome addition to the public discourse, and will remain so for many years to come.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
read with an open mind, April 30, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World (Hardcover)
I was hesitant to purchase this book because a) Purdy is often lambasted as the pseudo-intellectual soundbite guy of Gen X/Y, and b) savage reviews of his first book (which I have not read) implied that it was irredeemably awful.
After reading some of his articles in The Atlantic and other publications, I was convinced that Mr. Purdy wasn't an idiot, but I still wasn't completely sold. In shorter articles, I found his prose to be somewhat stilted.
Purdy's voice is much more suited to the longer format of a book. One adapts to his idiosyncratic syntax fairly quickly, and afterward the book flows quite well.
Purdy discusses liberalism in this book in a fairly broad and classical sense. While he is interested in exploring ideas, the book never becomes too dry or theoretical because the more philosophical musings are interspersed with descriptions of his encounters with people in various parts of the world.
While it would be specious to draw too many conclusions from such a limited sample, Purdy amply illustrates the dangers of oversimplification; the views of those he encounters are more nuanced and conflicted that one might expect, especially as they pertain to U.S. power.
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