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Sendy Arditira sendyardt — ‘Patriotism’ became a clarion call for conservative political commentators after 9/11. Conservatives used it to marginalize political competitors who expressed doubts about the prudence of national security policy. How did ‘patriotism’ have such rhetorical power in the aftermath of 9/11 when political debates in America are more commonly dominated by the language of individual rights? Why is patriotism a value in a political system founded to protect citizens against an abusive government? Paul Kahn writes Putting Liberalism in its Place to tackle just this problem: how can the American government both have the authority to exert a claim of sacrifice on its citizens and be founded to protect individual rights, most essential of all the right to life? A traditional response to this question would rationalize this seeming paradox by arguing that a state to protect individual rights cannot exist unless citizens are willing to defend it. Citizens should thus be willing to sacrifice their lives if they want to live in a state that protects their individual rights. Kahn instead avoids this rationalization and insists on a radical alternative. He argues that people understand the state as the popular sovereign, as the manifestation of a transcendental ideal of communal self-governance. Kahn understands this popular sovereign as a mirror in which citizens see themselves and thus understand themselves as part of larger, historical project that extends backwards and forwards into time. Through this self-identification, citizens become willing to sacrifice themselves for the state because they derive substantial meaning and purpose from the historical, state project. To the citizen, this derivation of her purpose from the state makes the state’s death worse than her own death. Kahn boldly refutes liberalism in its description of the American state as an entity separate from the citizenry that exists to protect individual rights and instead insists that the American state exists as the manifestation of the body politic; the American citizenry. Under Kahn’s explanation, patriotism, not individual rights, is the ultimate value of the American state. His theory argues that the American Constitution is valuable not because of any particular system of government or set of individual rights that it enumerates, but because it is the American Constitution; our Constitution. Kahn radically places the state above the individual by not merely equating the state with the individual, but by rendering the state as a source of ultimate meaning for the individual. In Putting Liberalism in its Place, Kahn subtly but dramatically argues that America is not a culture that places individualism above all other values. For Kahn, patriotism, love of self-governance by the popular sovereign, first defines American politics. The strength of Putting Liberalism in its Place rests in the multiple analytical frameworks that Kahn pulls together from historical, literary, biblical, philosophical, and legal sources to radically revaluate the practiced values of American politics. Although this approach results in a somewhat fragmented, non-linear argument, it also results in a series of thought-provoking re-castings of the American political experience. The book is highly recommended for anyone tired of the standard political speak of contemporary commentators and in search of a new lens to view American politics.

Louise Tunne luizezuksi0fc1 — Funny and well written. Very conversational.

Yeban Lee yeban — First of all, I usually enjoy the 'end of the world' disaster type books (Dies the Fire, Armageddon's Children) and movies (Mad Max, The Day After Tomorrow, Resident Evil) but this one I found unbearable. The premise was solid, but the characterization was awful. The author was obviously politically far right, which is fine, as a few of my favorite genre authors are quite conservative politically (S.M. Stirling, Brad Thor, possibly William R. Forstchen), but all of his characters were so far to either side that they were caricatures: The liberal president who has a breakdown after his friend dies; The tree hugging environmentalist who saves something small but causes mass destruction because of it. I will say that some of the ideas were quite unique and fresh, but the cliche characterization was just too much of a turnoff, especially with all the debilitating and infantile government partisanship that has been happening recently. Anyway, I made it halfway through the book before deciding that my time is too valuable to waste on this novel.