Most Helpful Customer Reviews
53 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book America's Bipartisan Elite Does Not Want You to Read, March 4, 2002
This review is from: NEXT AMERICAN NATION: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (Paperback)
It is impossible to do justice to such a wide-ranging book in only a few paragraphs. Fundamentally, Lind provides a three-phase interpretation of American history. As he sees it, the U.S. has experienced three genuine "revolutions": the American Revolution which led to the era of "Anglo America" (1789-1860), the Civil War/Reconstruction which led to "Euro-America" (1876-1954) and the Civil Rights Revolution which led to "Multicultural America" (1970-present). The book's middle chapters are a devastating critique of today's status quo. Lind finds fault across the political spectrum. "Since the 1970s ... racial preference policies, associated with the political left, have been extended into one area of American life after another ... [Meanwhile] government policies unfavorable to labor, of the kind one thinks of as conservative, have been pursued under both Republican and Democratic administrations." However, "In reality there is no contradiction between left-wing civil rights policy and right-wing economics." Instead of threatening the system, multiculturalism is corporate America's secret weapon. In the early 1970s it was President Nixon who instituted the first great wave of affirmative action and school busing, with the intent of driving a wedge between the labor and civil rights movements. (The strategy worked.) After the 1990 census, the first Bush administration collaborated with the civil rights establishment to reapportion and create as many black and Hispanic congressional districts as possible, thereby pulling the rug out from under white Democrats in surrounding districts and making it easier for the GOP to win control of Congress in 1994. As Lind notes: "Tokenism provides suitably 'progressive' camoflauge for a system of divide-and-rule politics ... Without the political division of wage-earning white, black and Hispanic Americans along racial lines, it is doubtful that the white overclass would have been able to carry out its agenda of destroying unions, reducing wages, cutting employee benefits, replacing full-time workers with temps, and shifting the burden of taxation from the rich to the middle class, with so little effective opposition." Today there is no two-party system in the U.S. Rather, we have a one and a half party system -- a socially conservative corporate party (the Republicans) and a socially liberal corporate party (the Democrats). The "conservative" elites on Wall Street and the "liberal" elites in Hollywood both support outrageously high rates of immigration, affirmative action, and a dogmatic commitment to free trade. Lind puts forward a series of policy proposals that are an iconoclastic blend of conservatism and liberalism. Lind favors a system of "proportional voting" that would blow up the two-party duopoly and open the door to new parties and policy options. He would break the grip of special interests by banning all paid political advertising and replacing it with free and equal media time and mandatory debates. He would raise wages by banning unskilled immigrants (and potential terrorists) from entering the country and by repealing laws that encourage the use of temp labor. He similarly favors a "social tariff" on Third World imports. (Lind is not a knee-jerk protectionist; he opposes tariff barriers between First World countries.) He supports the repeal of affirmative action, not only for women and nonwhites but especially for wealthy white kids who secretly benefit from "legacy preference" in college admissions. He favors a "war on oligarchy" that would drastically reform the legal and medical professions too. This is an amazingly original and bracing book. Don't hold your breath waiting for Lind's ideas to be implemented any time soon. But he brilliantly spells them out, and that's the essential first step.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exploding myths, offering solutions, June 1, 2004
This review is from: NEXT AMERICAN NATION: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (Paperback)
Every so often, I come across one of those books that really makes me think. Michael Lind's penetrating look at modern America, "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution," is one of those books. I should elaborate a bit on that statement: books that REALLY make me think are ones that I will ponder at odd times during the day, or think about as I am falling asleep at night. I usually don't do that with a mass-market paperback or the latest popular novel. No, certain books on history, society, or philosophy sometimes find me puzzling out their theses while I engage in the mundane activities of daily life. Not every book has such an effect on me, but Lind's effort did. Written nearly ten years ago, "The Next American Nation" asks questions and puts forth conclusions imbued with intelligent insight and forceful conviction. It's iconoclastic, attacking the dogmas that presently govern every facet of our society. Despite the book's age, the issues Lind addresses continue to have relevance in the here and now. The author was once an editor at Harper's and The New Republic, as well as a contributor to The New York Times and The Washington Post. "The Next American Nation" probably falls under the category of American Studies, a once vaunted field of scholarship that fell on hard times once the multiculturalists took over academia. Lind's explorations borrow liberally from history, politics, sociology, and philosophy in a quest to put forth an overarching argument about where America should go in the future. According to the author, the United States has experienced three revolutions during its history, and it must experience a fourth one if it is to survive. Lind claims these revolutions birthed three distinct republics: Anglo-America (1789-1861), Euro-America (1875-1957), and Multicultural America (1972-present). Each republic put forth a national formula unique to its time. Anglo-America associated itself with Protestant Christianity flowing from a dominant Anglo-Saxon population. Euro-America embraced all white Europeans as authentic citizens while supporting a broader Judeo-Christian ethic. Multicultural America, which Lind despises for reasons he explains in minute detail, rejects the emphasis on Americans of European descent by elevating minorities to the status of autonomous nations within the larger society. Multiculturalists reject Christianity, replacing it with secular humanism as the new civic religion. Wars and other social turmoil led to the rise of these republics. Each republic survived due to grand compromises, extraconstitutional bargains that allowed the upper classes to thrive. Anglo-America's implicit agreement between the northern upper class and the southern planters allowed slavery to thrive until the Civil War. In Euro-America, the agreement was between white industrialists and poor white laborers to keep non-whites out of the work force. Multicultural America thrives on the repudiation of white supremacy while elevating five socially constructed race categories, which then compete for special favors from the government. Social classes, whether real or artificial, play a central role in Lind's analysis of American society. The author argues that a white overclass exists today, a class that thrives through credentials earned from top schools and nepotism at the highest levels of business and government. This overclass has taken control of both political parties, and uses multiculturalism to defuse resistance from minorities. Lind claims a black overclass, created through race-based handouts like affirmative action, relies on the white elites for power even as they condemn the white power structure. Meanwhile, the majority of the minority population languishes in slums across the country. In other words, multiculturalism is a tool of the elite designed to pit racial groups against one another while the upper classes rob the country blind. Michael Lind offers a solution to our problems. Scrap multiculturalism, the author avers, or else America will end up looking like a third world country (high crime rates and slums with the upper classes living in gated, privately protected communities). Liberal nationalism should become the Fourth American republic, nationalism based on a common language and shared social and psychological traits called Trans-America. Intermarriage will play a large role in this new nation, with the melting pot once again reasserting itself. Trans-America will abolish the nearly unchecked immigration of low skilled immigrants (they drive down wages for poor citizens), replace the current plurality election process with one of proportional representation, and ban political fundraising. Lind even offers a canon of Trans-American heroes from the past, from Alexander Hamilton to Frederick Douglass. Whew, is that a lot of material! I'm not even touching on key parts of his argument, but you get the idea. His solutions, however, do have many problems. Replacing the current way we elect officials, for instance, sounds like a solid plan. I would love to get rid of big money in politics. Proportional representation may not be the way to go since this form of government must rely on forming coalitions to elect leaders. Look at the difficulties in Israel and India, where the government is always collapsing as multiple parties duke it out for control. That's not the biggest problem in this book, though. Lind's ideas about class in America are solid, but how will he get people to think about class in a non-Marxist way? Class and Marxism go together like shoes and socks. Most people cannot even envision one without the other. Any effort to overcome the divides between social classes will have an uphill battle in a country that spent fifty years battling Marxism, to say the least. Still, Michael Lind's book is an effort to come up with some solutions to our current problems, one that goes outside the current dogmas in the process. The author is intelligent, a good writer, and truly seems to care about his country. A stellar read.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
lind develops a new view of American history and politics, June 4, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: NEXT AMERICAN NATION: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (Paperback)
Michael Lind provides a fantastic reinterpretation of American history while asserting a unique and contrarian vision for the future. He divides American history into three eras -- the first from before the Revolution through the Civil War, the Second from the Civil War to the early 60s, and the final one from the 60s to the current. He says the epochs differed from each other in that each one had its own informal (but very real) set of criteria that would determine whether a particular individual qualified as a "true" American citizen. To qualify for that title in the first era, one had to be white, Anglo-saxon, and Protestant. In the next era, a de facto American was considered to be anyone who was white and Christian. He describes the current era in overwhelmingly negative terms. First, he points out that affirmative-action programs have served to divide, rather than unite, the people of this nation by making individuals conceive of themselves as members of some artificial bureaucratically-invented ethnic group, rather than as members of an ethnically diverse America. Everyone except white males gets preferences these days, and Lind calls for the abolition of affirmative action by quoting the noble Martin Luther King, Jr. Despite taking a conservative stance on that one particular issue, (and, arguably, a few of his other stances are fairly conservative) Lind is no right-wing ideologue. In fact, he argues that the Republican and Democratic Parties (he used to be a Republican before changing his tune) are both dominated by the rich and influential through our campaign-finance system, which he likens to bribery. Lind writes extensively on the concentration of wealth in this country that has occurred over the last 25 years, and he blames conservatives who shifted the tax burden from the rich onto the poor. He proposes free college education for everyone, and a return to a progressive tax system based on one's ability to pay. Lind takes issue with the theory of free trade, whi! ch he asserts has worked only to the benefit of the rich and upper-middle class in this country. He also argues for a more restrictive immigration policy that is based on the admission of technically skilled foreigners into the country, asserting that such a policy would improve equality and efficiency in the economy. Lind addresses so many issues with such intelligence and insight that it is difficult to detail them all here. Lets just say he offers a brilliant and onorthodox view of history, and advances a comprehensive plan to get American past our current quagmire, and into our "fourth era." His policy prescriptions and social perspective are developed by taking the very best ideas from the right and left, and melding them together. (on the balance, he is slightly left of the center, but certainly unique even among people in that grouping) While I didn't agree with everything he said (i'm somewhat more to the left), I was very impressed with this book, and agreed overwhelmingly with the basic themes expressed therein. This book's advice will probably not be implemented into policy by our ruling elites, but that's a shame. Lind has alot to offer in this book, which is one of the very best (and most unusual) analyses of American politics and history to be written in quite some time.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
