Thursday, October 14, 2004

Posted here Thursday, October 14, 2004 at 11:24:24 PM     The New New York Review of Books Volume 51, Number 17 · November 4, 2004 The Election and America's Future For what has been called "the most consequential election in decades," we have asked some of our contributors for their views. With K. Anthony Appiah, Russell Baker, Ian Buruma, Mark Danner, Ronald Dworkin, Michael Ignatieff, Anthony Lewis, Norman Mailer, Edmund S. Morgan, Thomas Powers, Alan Ryan, Brian Urquhart, Steven Weinberg, and Garry Wills. The View from the Heartland By Joseph Lelyveld Eau Claire, Wisconsin: These are battleground wards, of a battleground district, in a battleground state that's supposedly being scoured by canvassers in pursuit of the few remaining undecided voters. I've landed here, a week before the first presidential debate, on a less frenetic mission. I want to listen, one by one, to a cross-section of Wisconsin voters, hoping to discover what I can about how Iraq is registering, especially among Bush voters, not only as a campaign issue but as a portent of what the country may face in the years ahead. The Truth About Muslims By William Dalrymple The tortuous and complex relationship of Western Christendom and the world of Islam has provoked a wide variety of responses from historians. Some take the view that "our civilization has grown" out of "the long sequence of interaction and fusion between Orient and Occident." Others have seen relations between Islam and Christianity as being basically adversarial, a long-drawn-out conflict between the two rival civilizations of East and West. Dreams of Empire By Tony Judt Talk of "empire" makes Americans distinctly uneasy. This is odd. In its westward course the young republic was not embarrassed to suck virgin land and indigenous peoples into the embrace of Thomas Jefferson's "empire for liberty." Millions of American immigrants made and still make their first acquaintance with the US through New York, "the Empire State." From Monroe to Bush, American presidents have not hesitated to pronounce doctrines whose extraterritorial implications define imperial authority and presume it: there is nothing self-effacing about that decidedly imperious bird on the Presidential Seal. And yet, though the rest of the world is under no illusion, in the United States today there is a sort of wishful denial. We don't want an empire, we aren't an empire—or else if we are an empire, then it is one of a kind. ********

Posted here Thursday, October 14, 2004 at 9:49:35 AM     The increasing subtlty of analysis is good. The question of what kind of scoiety we are moving towards, a choice each day between yellow or red, or getting on with the more interesting aspects of life, love, learning, inventing, creating. Friedman is intersting to track, having ben a supporter of the war to this. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/opinion/14friedman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op% don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear the president and vice president slamming John Kerry for saying that he hopes America can eventually get back to a place where "terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." The idea that President Bush and Mr. Cheney would declare such a statement to be proof that Mr. Kerry is unfit to lead actually says more about them than Mr. Kerry. Excuse me, I don't know about you, but I dream of going back to the days when terrorism was just a nuisance in our lives. If I have a choice, I prefer not to live the rest of my life with the difference between a good day and bad day being whether Homeland Security tells me it is "code red" or "code orange" outside. To get inside the Washington office of the International Monetary Fund the other day, I had to show my ID, wait for an escort and fill out a one-page form about myself and my visit. I told my host: "Look, I don't want a loan. I just want an interview." Somewhere along the way we've gone over the top and lost our balance   ********