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Tainted Legacy: 9/11 and the Ruin of Human Rights (Nation Books) Paperback – September 29, 2003
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherNation Books
- Publication dateSeptember 29, 2003
- Dimensions5 x 1 x 7.5 inches
- ISBN-101560254890
- ISBN-13978-1560254898
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What I do very much appreciate is an author whom is objective, fair, authoratative, and is not afraid to be critical when needed. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, is such an author. His writing in this worthwhile book include thought provoking arguments questioning the cost (and I don't mean just financial) of a nation's security. It's a book that you may not easily put down once you open the pages to begin reading.
Yet it is flawed, perhaps fatally so--regretably, to be sure, but flawed none the less.
The fact is that the people this book hopes to convince will not read it, and the people who do read it will nod their heads in agreement throughout the sections they already agreed with and self-consciously skim over those parts that hit too close to home. Many in the human rights community (of which I am involved as a student activist) fit the mold that Schulz criticizes in "Tainted Legacy"--so caught up in their own moral purity that they forget the higher goal of helping people.
We see this right now in the opposition movement to the Iraq War. I opposed the US invasion on the grounds that it was not sanctioned by the UN and that the US government lied to persuade the American people to support it. Yet many of those who I agreed with last year have now abandoned all reason and demand that coalition troops be withdrawn from Iraq--this is, to be frank, stupid, considering the political and economic situation in the country. They have let their purity get in the way of common sense.
If such people read and absorb "Tainted Legacy" in vast numbers, Schulz might get his hoped-for change in the popular view of human rights. This I doubt; it is far too easy to ignore ideas, however valid, that clash with out preconceived notions of truth, and "Tainted Legacy" will hit that barrier. While I wish this were not the case, as I agree with Schulz wholeheartedly, I find it hard to believe that either those in power or the people who put them there will read and assimilate this work; it's audience will be made up of people--like myself--who already agree with him and are willing to accept a challenge to our views. Those he needs to reach will not read the book. It's a tragedy, as they need to if the human rights movement is to retain its effectiveness, but "Tainted Legacy" will die an undeserved death, remaining only in libraries and in the personal collections of individuals, like myself, who care enough about the state of this world to base our actions and views on reason and not principle.
Not only criticizing conservatives, Schulz isn't afraid to point out the flaws in the liberal argument. He asks that the activist community reexamines itself in the wake of 9/11. Bill Schulz shines as a leader within the human rights community. This book is a must for any socially conscious individual.
