Camus did it better. ( )

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Title: The Irony of American History
Series: ----------
Author: Reinhold Niebuhr
Rating: Unrated
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: DNF
Words: DNF

Synopsis:

DNF during the intro by Andrew Bacevich.

My Thoughts:

I am not rating this book because I couldn't even get past the introduction by a scumbag named Andrew Bacevich who appears to be a damned communist and someone I'd gladly kill. Thus, since I didn't even make it to Niebuhr's own words it isn't fair to judge his book.

Maybe someday I'll read this book but from what was in the introduction, I am extremely hesitant and doubtful. The fact that a lying scumsucking twatwad like Bacevich wrote what he did in the intro doesn't bode well for the book itself. I hope Bacevich burns. I am sorry that Niebuhr's book was saddled with an introduction like that. Nobody deserves that, not even if what is in the intro is indicative of the writing itself.

Because of this, I won't be including this in my ratings score for the month.

This is the book rescued from out-of-print obscurity by Boston University Professor for International Relations Andrew J. Bacevich, who bought a copy for 10¢ at a yard sale, read it, and proclaimed it the most important work in its field. It gained further fame when candidate Obama planted a reporter with the question of who his favorite philosopher was. Add to this the fact that I enjoyed and profited from Niebuhr’s central work, the two-volume Nature and Destiny of Man, it is no surprise that I was predisposed to like this. And I did, to a degree.
The book preserves a series of six lectures held a few years after World War 2, bookended by introductory and concluding chapters. It was a time when the United States held greater power, both in absolute and relative terms, than any nation in history. Yet paradoxically, it was confronted by an implacable foe in the form of Soviet communism, whose avowed goal was also world domination. When the lectures were first given, the Nationalist Chinese government had recently fled to Taiwan, and China joined the communist orbit. By the time the lectures were repeated, the Korean War was underway, and the French empire in Southeast Asia was crumbling in the face of a peasant insurgency, also aligned with the communists. This situation gave rise to one of the ironies discerned by Niebuhr: At the zenith of its power, the U.S. felt more insecure than ever.
A mere four decades later, it was the Soviet Union that crumbled, its satellites in Europe aligning with the west. A unified Russian-Chinese axis by that time already belonged to the past. One could argue that this turn of events resulted, in part, from heeding the warnings issued by Niebuhr. So why read this book, when so many other books from the height of the Cold War can be left to gather dust on the shelves, or be deacquisitioned by libraries short of space?
The reasons are well outlined by Bacevich in the introduction he wrote for the reprint edition. Although Niebuhr wrote with the West's conflict with ascendant communism in mind, much of what he wrote applies, mutatis mutandis, to the current struggle with radical Islam.
On the face of it, this is clearly the case, and Bacevich’s advocacy of the book is rooted in his own conviction that four consecutive U.S. administrations, from Reagan through the second coming of the Bush dynasty, ignored the warnings embedded in this book, with consequences that have destabilized the world order and weakened the position of the U.S. in it. Many of the tendencies in U.S. policy Niebuhr decried have again been in even greater evidence in the post-9/11 world. And it is bittersweet to read his confidence that a democracy could not engage in a preventive war.
At times while reading this, I felt it should be added to my short list of books every person should read to understand the U.S., alongside the state papers, the Federalist, two of Lincoln’s immortal speeches, and the observations of non-Americans such as de Tocqueville and Lord Bryce. If I hesitate, it’s because the book is a bit of a slog to read at times. One reason are the repetitions; this probably helped when these texts were delivered as lectures, but now they irritate. Then again, Niebuhr favors the abstract over the concrete. While more specific examples might have dated the text, without these, as well as a certain poetic concretion in the language, the text challenges the mind, but at times failed to engage this reader emotionally. Yet it would have been a mistake not to read on, both for the sake of the argument the author spells out, but also for the nuggets strewn throughout, honed like timeless aphorisms (see the quotes on the right column of the GR screen). So I reluctantly withhold that fifth star, but remain glad to have discovered the book. ( )

Astounding in it's prescience. The danger of failing to heed Niebuhr's prophetic words is as great today, if not greater, than when he wrote in the opening years of the Cold War. Like then we are today faced with a fanatical enemy convinced of the eternal rightness of his struggle, the existential threat is an equally self-righteous destructive tendency from within our own ranks, a reflexive hatred from the far Right. His economic analysis of internal dynamics of rich and poor within the Western system couldn't be more timely. ( )

In 2007, David Brooks interviewed candidate Obama and almost randomly asked him if he'd ever heard of Reinhold Niebuhr. Obama replied "I love him," and proceeded to give him a detailed summation of Niebuhrian thought. This was rehashed again in January when NPR's Speaking of Faith hosted a forum on the subject. You can download the discussion and other Niebuhr-related info.

I was apparently oblivious to all of this at the time. When Obama gave his Nobel acceptance speech, the media pundits all noted its Niebuhrian themes and that piqued my curiousity. The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr seems to be the book most often referred to when speaking on the philosopher/theologian.

To quote Obama via Brooks:

“I take away,” Obama answered in a rush of words, “the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away ... the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism.”

This is a good summary. In short, Irony is about the ways America grew from post-colonial free-market isolationism to a reluctant superpower. Published in 1952 at the beginning of the Cold War, I find Niebuhr to be quite prescient. He is also very informed about microeconomic principles, which I found impressive. Either everyone was back then (as opposed to now), or Niebuhr is just special.

Here are points that stick out to me:

1. Americans tout their higher standard of living as a sign of their superiority over Communism, while Marxists tout that high standard as evidence of their guilt. Marxists/Communists assume that property rights are the cause of all economic ills and that if a nation has rich people they only became rich on the backs of the poor.

2. Americans have always been pragmatic about government. While personal liberty has always been the predominant goal of our society, we're pragmatic about the limits of it. Hence, we are always balancing growth with regulation.

3. Calvinists (Puritans) and Jeffersonians both (at least eventually) saw prosperity as evidence of God's favor. The prosperity of America makes it somewhat prideful in the eyes of the world, something useful to be mindful of.

4. America as the "Arsenal of Democracy" is one of the ultimate Niebuhrian ironies. We have to maintain a military force but beware of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex" as Eisenhower would soon note.

5. Newly independent, developing nations are poor simply because their economies aren't developed and their land not yet productive. These countries need Western support but mostly time. But Marxists point to these countries as evidence of Western exploitation. The gap between poor and rich is always seen as a result of the rich exploiting the poor.

6. Communist countries uphold justice for the poor as the ultimate ideal, and yet their oligarchy oppresses the poor and always make them always worse off--another irony.

7. We can't export democracy or eradicate all evil in the world through it. Many countries just don't have the culture or mindset for it to flourish.

8. From #7, Niebuhr would have opposed the 2003 Iraq war while probably supporting the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

9. Niebuhr feared that America would engage in a fatal "preemptive war" against Communism that would destroy the world rather than simply wait for history to take its toll on Communism. Glad he was not proved right here.

10. Niebuhr looks down on "American Exceptionalism," the idea that America has a unique, world-enlightening role to play in history. He points out that most countries & civilizations have a history of that same belief. Obama has also stated that he does not believe in American Exceptionalism any differently then the French believe in French Exceptionalism, etc.

David Brooks argues that Niebuhr (and Obama) are wrong on this point, as would most conservatives I know.

In all, I give the book 3.5 stars out of 5. Having read it, I feel a little more caught up with other "bourgeois" people. ( )