A Power Line Christmas, part 2
We continue with out list of notable books published this year by friends of Power Line, followed by the authors' messages summarizing their books or with my own comments. We posted part 1 last night. This post begins with a previously unpublished message from Melanie Phillips, whose superb book was issued with a new afterword for the paperback edition published earlier this year
Londonistan, by Melanie Phillips:
The mocking term "Londonistan" was bestowed upon the UK by the French secret service which was aghast that during the 1990s Britain allowed itself to become the hub of al Qaeda. In my book, however, I use "Londonistan" to describe a frame of mind in which the British elite has absorbed some of the very ideas and beliefs of the Islamist enemy that has targeted it. Although Britain's security service is now monitoring no fewer than 2000 known British Muslim terrorists, 200 terror networks and 30 major terrorist plots, the UK still refuses to acknowledge that it is fighting principally on a battleground of ideas. In the confusion provoked by multiculturalism and sheer funk, its political and security establishment is not only failing to counter those ideas and the spread of extremism but has allowed Islamism to infiltrate all levels of British society, turning itself into a weak link in the defence of the west.Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religions, by David Gelernter:
My book defines Americanism as a creed (liberty, equality and democracy for all mankind) in the context of "American Zionism" (which asserts that, having been blessed far beyond what it deserves, America has an obligation to promote this creed within in its borders and throughout the world). The book explains why the Bible and Christianity (especially the Old Testament and Puritan Christianity) were fundamental to the creation and shaping of Americanism.God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, by Walter Russell Mead:It tries to explain why Americanism arouses such passionate love and hate--because it is no mere "civic religion"; it is a biblical religion in the Judeo-Christian tradition. (For Jews and Christians, Americanism is merely an extension of Judaism or Christianity--an application of old principles to new problems, in no sense a separate and competing religion. But many others, devout atheists included, have been passionate believers in Americanism too; for them it is a religion in its own right.)
Many secularists believe that this sort of talk is a form of intolerance or a call to theocracy. This is nonsense; they should give it up. Practicing Jews and Christians invented religious tolerance. (The great novelist Tolstoy wrote: "The Jew is the pioneer of liberty.... The Jew is the emblem of civil and religious toleration. `Love the stranger and the sojourner,' Moses commands, `because you have been strangers in the land of Egypt.'") And the Bible is firmly opposed to theocracy, and so are Judaism and Christianity--and Americanism.
When secularism merely seeks to sweep the public square free of religion, to drive it (like smoking) into places where the unwary are guaranteed not to stumble into it, it's merely intolerant. But when it treats the creation of Americanism as a purely (or mainly) secular event, it warps the truth and seeks to replace history with propaganda. We ought not to let it succeed.
The conventional wisdom says that the history of the last 300 years is the story of the rise and fall of Europe. I think that is wrong. The main trend in world history has been the development and continuing growth of a global system of power, finance, culture, ideology and trade based first on the power of Britain and then on that of the United States. Since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Britain has only been defeated in one major great power war – the war of the American Revolution. To put that another way, since the seventeenth century, either Britain or the United States or both together have been on the winning side in every great power war in which they have participated.Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization, by Diana West:God and Gold is a book about this Anglo-American world system. Why have the British and the Americans established the most powerful and influential international power system in the history of the world? What does history teach us about the dangers we now face from the conflicts in the Middle East and from other challenges of the 21st century such as the rise of Asia? Are the best days of Anglo-American power already behind us, or do we still have an important role to play in world history?
In God and Gold I argue that capitalist dynamism and the peculiarly individualistic and forward looking religious culture of the Anglo-Americans are the foundation of this system. The British and the Americans have liked capitalism more than other people, and they have had less trouble bridging the gap between capitalist change and religious tradition than other societies.
These characteristics make us strong, but they do not always make us loved. Catholic Spain, Jacobin France, Wilhelmine Germany, the Nazis, the communists, and Osama bin Laden all denounced the English-speaking peoples as cruel, greedy, hypocritical and vulgar. The Inquisition placed The Wealth of Nations on the Index of Forbidden Books. Napoleon reputedly denounced the British as a “nation of shopkeepers.” For over a century, hatred of capitalism, hatred of Jews and hatred of the Anglo-American world has been a powerful ideological force. Since the Boer War, significant elements in European opinion have seen the Anglo-Saxon powers as allied with Jewish plutocrats in a plot to control the world. Churchill and Roosevelt were denounced as puppets of the Jews; today figures like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez speak for a powerful tradition of hatred and suspicion of the Anglo-American world and its Jewish allies.
More than 300 years ago, Oliver Cromwell summoned the English to a war against Catholic Spain using arguments we still hear today. Who are our enemies, Cromwell asked in 1656. His answer: the league of evil men throughout the earth. And why do they hate us? Because the evil that is in them sees and hates the good that we do here in England. Or in Cromwell’s own words, “through that enmity that is in him against all that is of God, that is in you…” What are we fighting for? The future of liberty all over the world. Why will we triumph? Because God is on our side.
These are essentially the arguments of Ronald Reagan’s famous "evil empire" speech; they are the arguments that Tony Blair and George W. Bush made after 9/11. They are the arguments Churchill and Roosevelt made in World War II, the arguments Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson made in World War I, the arguments that British ministers and intellectuals made during the wars against Napoleon, the Jacobins, and against Louis XIV.
This isn’t just rhetoric. God and Gold chronicles the centuries-long war between the Anglo-Americans and their enemies and argues for the importance of understanding the cultural, religious, and financial roots of the English-speaking peoples because they form the foundation of America’s global position. Today we face a new kind of enemy. With American society divided over the nature of the threat and even in some quarters the existence of the threat it is more important than ever to understand what makes America strong, why others hate us, and what are the qualities that have enabled the Americans and the British to prevail in the contests that shaped our world.
Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, childhood was a phase, adolescence did not exist, and adulthood was the fulfillment of youth's promise. No more. The Death of the Grown-up, Why not? Where have all the grown-ups gone? And, Why is the world without grown-ups such a dangerous place?America: The Last Best Hope (Volume 2): From a World At War to the Triumph of Freedom, by William J. Bennett: Bill Bennett is not a historian; he is a public intellectual, a man of politics and public affairs. Yet he is an avid reader, a gifted teacher, and an advocate of America’s cause. All these qualities are on display in his overview of American history from World War I to the end of the Cold War. Bill bases his narrative on the best secondary sources and spins them into a compelling story. He writes in the spirit of a "loving critic." This is a book by a voracious reader who loves our country and wants us and our children to know why we should too.We're all familiar with Baby Britneys, Moms Who Mosh, and Dads too "young" to call themselves "mister," but what my book does is link these same behaviors -- shaped by a social bias against "maturity" that's still relatively new -- to our cultural and political behaviors as a people, as a nation. In other words, if we are a society of perpetual adolescents who can't say "no," it follows that we are also a politically correct nation that can't tell right from wrong. If, during the so-called culture wars, we sophomorically retreated from the lessons of Western civ, it follows that in the "real" culture war on Islamic terror, we fight on without understanding our own identity -- or our enemy's.
From the rise of rock ‘n’ roll to the rise of multiculturalism, from the loss of identity to the discovery of “diversity,” from the emasculation of the heroic ideal to the “PC”-ing of “Mary Poppins,” The Death of the Grown-up makes the case that it is our own childishness that is our greatest weakness as we confront jihadist Islam in a mixed-up post-9/11 world, arguing that there is something about our past that we might better appreciate -- not just to enhance our future, but to help us survive.
A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every American Should Know About Mitt Romney, by Hugh Hewitt: The infomative book by our long-time friend and leading advocate of the prominent candidate for the Republican nomination.
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