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Democracy Matters:
Winning the Fight Against Imperialism. by Cornel West. Penguin Books, 2004. 229 pages.
May 30,
2007. This the book my colleagues
and I recently discussed at
the new home of Professor and Mrs. Andy Lampkin here in Loma
Linda.
I
am impressed by
how intensely "American" it is in its great hopefulness.
Like so many of us who are also Americans, West apparently thinks that
people can "fix" things, that it is actually within humanity's
power to improve life for everybody all around the world. Not
everyone is convinced of this.
West's argument is that
the United States today is beset by economic, militaristic and religious
fundamentalism against which it must rally the resources of its "deep
democratic tradition," as seen in the legacies of Greek
Socratic questioning, Hebrew prophetic practice and "dark hope."
He claims that we can detect this "tragiccomic hope" in the
writings of Ralph Waldo Emmerson,
Herman Melville, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and that we can hear it in the blues, jazz and
hip-hop.
West writes with the learning and passion we
rightly expect from the foremost public theologian in America today.
He uses democracy matters as both a noun and a verb. He is a
Christian, but a fundamentalist.
As West sees them, the
three overlapping fundamentalisms that now threaten those of us who are Americans
compel us to face the sad plight of our nation that from its
beginnings has proclaimed the ideals of liberty and justice for all while imperialistically
denying these rights to millions of people within and beyond our
borders.
He pinpoints the issue of race as the clue by which to
understand our entire culture.
I admit without pleasure that as a
white middle class male American his emphasis upon race sometimes makes me
feel uncomfortable. This is what he rightly intends!
West's critiques are
actually even-handed. His assessment of the
Israeli/Palestinian struggle calls on both sides to act in their common
interests without either one losing its identity and security.
He criticizes philosophers John Rawls and Richard Rorty as well
as theologians Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank for stifling in different ways
the
public expression of religious moral convictions while acknowledging the positive
contributions each is otherwise making. His assessments of
blues, jazz and hip-hop are more judicious than many.
The examples of
this book's decency and fairness are numerous.
West comes across to me
as an American who calls upon all of us who are also Americans to live
more and more in harmony with our ideals rather than our imperialistic
impulses and practices. He does not write as an "outsider,"
a "former" or "anti" American ethically speaking, but as one
who who lives and moves and finds his being in our culture and in its
never-ending moral struggles.
We wondered in our
discussion if his celebration of our "precious democratic experiment" is
grounded in an optimistic or pessimistic view of human nature. Probably both.
In any case his confidence that we Americans can do
better cries aloud from every page.
Some might think that his
hopeful conviction
that we can make democracy work at home and gently (no shock and awe!) take root and flourish
in different cultural soils abroad is altogether too American. I
don't.
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