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The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and Bush’s belligerent response fractured the American left—partly by putting pressure on little-noticed fissures that had appeared a decade earlier. In a masterful survey of the post-9/11 landscape, renowned scholar Michael Bérubé revisits and reinterprets the major intellectual debates and key players of the last two decades, covering the terrain of left debates in the United States over foreign policy from the Balkans to 9/11 to Iraq, and over domestic policy from the culture wars of the 1990s to the question of what (if anything) is the matter with Kansas. The Left at War brings the history of cultural studies to bear on the present crisis—a history now trivialized to the point at which few left intellectuals have any sense that merely "cultural" studies could have something substantial to offer to the world of international relations, debates over sovereignty and humanitarian intervention, matters of war and peace. The surprising results of Bérubé’s arguments reveal an American left that is overly fond of a form of "countercultural" politics in which popular success is understood as a sign of political failure and political marginality is understood as a sign of moral virtue. The Left at War insists that, in contrast to American countercultural traditions, the geopolitical history of cultural studies has much to teach us about internationalism—for "in order to think globally, we need to think culturally, and in order to understand cultural conflict, we need to think globally." At a time when America finds itself at a critical crossroads, The Left at War is an indispensable guide to the divisions that have created a left at war with itself.
Publisher Description
Confronting the major debates in the world today-about national alternatives and alternative globalizations-Unger shows that there is a set of initiatives that we can begin to develop with the materials at hand. Fully updated with a new preface, The Left Alternative equips the Left with the ideas that it needs to overthrow the dictatorship of no alternatives.
In all countries, labour has war stories" to tell, but none are so violent as those of American labour. Since the 1870s at least 700 workers have been killed and thousands seriously injured in labour disputes. Nowhere but in this country have employers so actively fought back against strikes through the use of scabs," surveillance, and mercenary armies.Although much of the violence occurred decades ago, author Patricia Sexton contends that this rich history sheds light on questions that still plague observers of the American political system: Why has the United States been more conservative in its domestic policies than other Western democracies? Why is it almost alone among them in lacking a mass labour or democratic socialist party,or the kind of social policies favoured by such parties? And why has American labour unionism been in serious decline in recent decades?The most familiar answers to these questions involve consensus explanations of what has come to be known as American exceptionalism. America is conservative, observers say, because its citizens have loved" capitalism and supported its political policies wholeheartedly or because the nation's open frontier and early voting rights reduced dissent and class consciousness. Other explanations focus on various internal constraints said to be unique to the American working class or its organizations, such as conflict among diverse immigrants, the sectarianism and blunders of leftist groups, and the conservatism or incompetence of labour union leadership. All of these are said to have prevented labour from carrying out successful conflicts with employers and economic leaders.According to Sexton, these arguments ignore the remarkable record in American history of labour-left struggles: the violent suppression of industrial unionism prior to the 1930s, legal and forceful repression of trade unionism, and destruction by various means of left-leaning unions and political organizations. Her book explores instead a neglected explanation of American conservatism,that of a literal war on labour, waged by unusually powerful economic entities using repressive strategies, often backed by police and sometimes by federal forces.The details of this violent history, familiar to labour historians, are recounted here in a new perspective emphasizing the impact on workers of conflict sustained over many years. But the book is much more than a reinterpretation of this history. Patricia Sexton shows how the use of power and repression has played out as well in our institutions of law and government, in economic policies, and in the media. Making these links and showing how America's conservatism is unique among other Western democracies is the contribution of this ambitious book. For only by coming to terms with this history of repression and its legacy can we fully understand America's conservatism today.
This book exposes the truth behind the real war on women--the one being waged by Democrats. This book goes beyond the Democratic Party's rhetoric and exposes its shocking and sustained assault on American women that has lasted for generations. And in some cases, the word,assault is quite literal. Katie Pavlich thinks the Democrats have run the conversation for too long and is out to debunk the sacred cows of the so-called Republican War on Women. This book exposes the truth about the Democratic stance toward women on every major current issue and in every liberal stronghold, including: abortion, self-defense, the myth of the women's vote, Hollywood, academia, and more. Using original reporting and interviews, Pavlich deftly exposes the liberal heroes of the women's movement to show us the frauds they really are including such revered figures as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, often called the most pro-woman president in history.
Current debate over the motives, ideological justifications, and outcomes of the war with Iraq have been strident and polarizing. A Matter of Principle is the first volume gathering critical voices from around the world to offer an alternative perspective on the prevailing pro-war and anti-war positions. The contribu-tors—political figures, public intellectuals, scholars, church leaders, and activists—represent the most powerful views of liberal internationalism. Offering alternative positions that challenge the status quo of both the left and the right, these essays claim that, in spite of the inconsistent justifications provided by the United States and its allies and the conflict-ridden process of social reconstruction, the war in Iraq has been morally justifiable on the grounds that Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant, a flagrant violator of human rights, a force of global instability and terror, and a threat to world peace. The authors discuss the limitations of the current system of global governance, which tolerates gross violations of human rights and which has failed to prevent genocide in places such as Bosnia and Rwanda. They also underscore the need for reform in international institutions and international law. At the same time, these essays do not necessarily attempt to apologize for the mistakes, errors, and deceptions in the way the Bush administration has handled the war. Disputing the idea that the only true liberal position on the war is to be against it, this volume charts an invaluable third course, a path determined by a strong liberal commitment to human rights, solidarity with the oppressed, and a firm stand against fascism, totalitarianism, and tyranny.
Sir Michael Howard traces the pattern in the attitudes of liberal-minded men and women in the face of war, from Erasmus to the Americans after Vietnam, and concludes that peacemaking is a task which has to be tackled afresh every day of our lives.
Twenty-third century Earth, ravaged by climate change, looks backwards to the holy ideal of a pre-industrial Eden. Political power has been grabbed by a few powerful families and their green saints. Millions of people are imprisoned in teeming cities; millions more labour on Pharaonic projects to rebuild ruined ecosystems. On the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the Outers, descendants of refugees from Earth's repressive regimes, have constructed a wild variety of self-sufficient cities and settlements: scientific utopias crammed with exuberant creations of the genetic arts; the last outposts of every kind of democratic tradition. The fragile detente between the Outer cities and the dynasties of Earth is threatened by the ambitions of the rising generation of Outers, who want to break free of their cosy, inward-looking pocket paradises, colonise the rest of the Solar System, and drive human evolution in a hundred new directions. On Earth, many demand pre-emptive action against the Outers before it's too late; others want to exploit the talents of their scientists and gene wizards. Amid campaigns for peace and reconciliation, political machinations, crude displays of military might, and espionage by cunningly wrought agents, the two branches of humanity edge towards war...
The “unrivaled” history of America’s divided politics, now in a fully updated edition that examines the rise of Trump—and what comes next (New Republic). When it was published in 2015, Andrew Hartman’s history of the culture wars was widely praised for its compelling and even-handed account of how they came to define American politics at the close of the twentieth century. But it also garnered attention for Hartman’s declaration that the culture wars were over—and that the left had won. In the wake of Trump’s rise, driven by an aggressive fanning of those culture war flames, Hartman has brought A War for the Soul of America fully up to date, detailing the ways in which Trump’s success, while undeniable, represents the last gasp of culture war politics—and how the reaction he has elicited can show us early signs of the very different politics to come. “As a guide to the late twentieth-century culture wars, Hartman is unrivalled . . . . Incisive portraits of individual players in the culture wars dramas . . . . Reading Hartman sometimes feels like debriefing with friends after a raucous night out, an experience punctuated by laughter, head-scratching, and moments of regret for the excesses involved.” —New Republic