BOOKNOTES

Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman (C-SPAN, June 22, 2003, 8 & 11pm)

A manifesto for an aggressive liberal response to terrorist attacks.

Paul Berman is one of our most brilliant writers on the impassioned and unpredictable life of ideas especially the doctrines that lead masses of people to try to change the world. The Terror War is nothing new or unprecedented. It is the same battle that tore apart Europe during most of the twentieth century-the battle between liberalism and its totalitarian enemies. Islam is not the cause of this war. Islam is the arena in which the war is presently being fought.

Berman shows how a genuine spiritual inspiration can be twisted into a fanatical demand for murder. He offers remarkable insights into the trends and conflicts influencing Islamic radicalism. He illuminates the surprising connections between very different political movements, and he reveals the several ways in which Islamic extremism resembles some all-too-familiar episodes in American and European experience. He is the historian of good intentions gone awry.

Berman draws on sources that range from Albert Camus's The Rebel to the Book of Revelations; from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to the Islamist scholar Sayyid Qutb's magisterial In the Shade of the Koran. Berman condemns the foreign policy "realism" of the political right, and he diagnoses the na?vet? of the political left. He calls for a "new radicalism" and a "liberal American interventionism" to promote democratic values throughout the world-a vigorous new politics of American liberalism. Berman's ability to shine a spotlight of history and philosophy on the present era makes him a peerless interpreter of today's events. This short book of original argument and dazzling prose will remain a guidepost for discussion for years to come.

MORE:
-ESSAY: Terror and Liberalism (Paul Berman, 10.22.01, American Prospect)
-ESSAY: Resolves: What Lincoln Knew About War (Paul Berman, 02.21.03, The New Republic)
-ESSAY: Why Germany Isn't Convinced: Joschka Fischer is wrong to resist the Iraq war. But he's not evil. (Paul Berman, February 14, 2003, Slate)
-ESSAY: The Philosopher of Islamic Terror (PAUL BERMAN, March 23, 2003, NY Times Magazine)
-ESSAY: Swastika School: The impious piety of the Jewish Museum's Nazi art show (Paul Berman, March 15, 2002, Slate)
-ESSAY: Labor and the Intellectuals (Paul Berman, American Prospect)
-ESSAY: Simple Math and Dimpled Chad (Paul Berman, December 12, 2000, Slate)
-ESSAY: About Those Ads: A Reply to Chatterbox (Paul Berman, November 15, 2000, Slate)

-REVIEW: of JUST WAR AGAINST TERROR: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World. By Jean Bethke Elshtain and THE GREAT TERROR WAR By Richard Falk (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of KOBA THE DREAD: Laughter and the Twenty Million By Martin Amis (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of THE LAST EMPIRE: ESSAYS 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America. By Hasia R. Diner (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World's Most Famous Passion Play By James Shapiro (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of WILD FRUITS: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript By Henry David Thoreau (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of A COVERT LIFE: Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster. By Ted Morgan (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of God & the American Writer By Alfred Kazin (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century. By Donald Sassoon (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of In Defense of Affirmative Action By Barbara R. Bergmann; Ending Affirmative Action The Case for Colorblind Justice. By Terry Eastland; and The Affirmative Action Fraud Can We Restore the American Civil Rights Vision? By Clint Bolick (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of American Pastoral By Philip Roth (Paul Berman, Slate)
REVIEW:of Latin America at the End of Politics by Forrest D. Colburn (Paul Berman, Spring 03, Dissent)
-INTERVIEW: Paul Berman on What the Left Should Want From the War (SARAH GOLD, 3/25/2003, Publishers' Weekly)
-ARCHIVES: Paul Berman (Slate)
-ARCHIVES: The New York Review of Books: Paul Berman
-ARCHIVES: "paul berman" (Find Articles)
-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman (Gary Rosen, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism (Martin Bright, The Observer)
-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism (Stephen Schwartz, FrontPageMagazine.com)
-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism (Jonathan Sumption, The Spectator)
-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism (Adrian Karatnycky, National Review)

-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism (Suzy Hansen, Salon)
-REVIEW: of A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968 By Paul Berman (Alan Ehrenhalt, Slate)
-REVIEW: of A Tale of Two Utopias (Nick Cohen, New Statesman) Posted by Orrin Judd at June 22, 2003 8:07 AM