"In Love with America", a book review

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Book review by Thomas Sowell

June 30, 2000

IN LOVE WITH AMERICA

Love stories are special. And stories about loving America are extra special. Norman Podhoretz's new book, "My Love Affair with America" is one of those extra special stories. Seldom has so much wisdom been packed into such a small book -- part autobiography, part editorial, part history, part grand philosophy and all American. If one gave gifts on the Fourth of July, this would be the kind of gift to give. Perhaps it would be an appropriate gift to some young person heading off to college, where clever but shallow academics will try to convince him or her that this is a terrible country.

This book even contains a word seldom used among today's intellectuals -- or non-intellectuals: "gratitude." It closes with a recitation of all the good things that came Podhoretz's way because of being an American, beginning with the English language and its cultural riches that helped shape his life.

Norman Podhoretz has been so long identified as the editor of "Commentary" magazine that some may find it surprising to discover that he did not create this premier intellectual publication himself. Now retired and approaching the biblical threescore and ten years, Podhoretz looks back on his life and on the life of the country to which his parents immigrated early in the 20th century century.

Born in a Brooklyn tenement during the Great Depression, Norman Podhoretz grew up in what would today be considered poverty, though he never realized that he was poor until long after the time when it might have soured or crushed his spirits. Instead, as his life unfolded, he marveled and gloried in the things that a poor boy with immigrant parents could do in this country.

As he went out into a wider world, especially as an enlisted man in the army, Podhoretz marveled at the American people themselves. And he defended them fiercely against shallow and arrogant intellectuals in other countries -- or at home. Although "My Love Affair with America" celebrates this country, its author does not confuse the United States with Utopia. On the contrary, he regards the pursuit of Utopian ideas as contrary to the whole spirit of American society and the American system of government.

A politically active intellectual, Podhoretz took part in the civil rights struggles and the anti-war movement of the 1960s, as well as publishing in his magazine many critics of American society whose views led them ultimately to an anti-Americanism that he could not share.

Podhoretz's love of America is like the love for members of one's family -- a love that denies none of their blemishes, but cherishes them nevertheless as human beings dear to one's heart. His book, however, is also an intellectual defense of the United States as entitled to "a place among the very greatest of human societies."

The way he makes this comparison speaks volumes about how different his moral framework is from that of most intellectuals. Podhoretz compares America to other societies of human beings -- not to some abstract ideal. His comparison recalls another book by another son of the Brooklyn ghetto -- black talk-show host Ken Hamblin, whose book was defiantly titled "Pick a Better Country."

"My Love Affair with America" is not just a backward-looking book. It is passionate about the present as well.

Podhoretz argues fiercely that today's immigrant children should have the same opportunity he had to learn the English language and have the whole vast world of its intellectual treasures open to them, from science to literature, rather than being trapped in a linguistic ghetto misnamed "bilingualism" for the benefit of ethnic hustlers.

Equally fiercely, "My Love Affair with America" argues against the role of the Supreme Court in dismantling the Constitution for the sake of its own pet policies. Nor are today's American people spared, for "gratitude went out of fashion" and "its opposite, constant complaining, which had formerly been regarded as unseemly, took its place as a virtue."

He quotes black novelist Ralph Ellison, who said that his people were heirs to an "American tradition which abhors as obscene any trading on one's anguish for gain and sympathy." Describing himself as a "cheerful conservative," Norman Podhoretz refuses to let the things that have gone wrong in this country discourage him about its future. He is himself one of the many things that have gone right.



-- Lars (lars@indy.net), June 30, 2000

Answers

GREAT POST LAR,S--GOD bless[help]america!!

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), June 30, 2000.

Nice, Lars. Thanks.

GBA

-- (retired@nd.happy), July 01, 2000.


Thanks for posting this review Lars. I've personally experienced the migration dislocation and the opportunity offered by a generous country. In three weeks I'm invited to a 'consultation' with a Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission. Your posting adds an interesting theme to my presentation plan. Thanks again for the input, it's appreciated and helpful. Amazing how these things stream in at unusual moments...

Regards from OZ

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), July 01, 2000.


Pieter--

Thanks. Your situation has always interested me. I think you said once that you were a native of Northern Europe. I bet many people here would like to know more of your story. How did you vome to Australia?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), July 01, 2000.


Lars,

My story isn't really that important, arriving in Australia late 1966 on the second to last migrant ship of the great post-WW2 migration wave. We solicited to go to Australia because it was a point on the globe equi-distant from Europe.

Needless to say Europe was a place to leave. Many did so, travelling to America and Canada. The New Zealand and Australian British dominions were often a destination of second choice because they were so terribly far away from any support left behind.

We were free Frisian migrants paying our own fares. This was a minority situation because most migration was government subsidized and migrants were labour indentured for two years. Labour forces were dispatched all over the country but the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electricity Scheme and the National Railway Infrastructure featured highly, as did the Irrigation Schemes that built the cities of the Murray River fruit-blocks and the extensive rice farms.

It is not wrong to say that Australia today owes it depth and diversity to the post-war migration.

Migrants at first arrived in a British Colony that was a 'closed economy' made incredibly wealthy on wool and the Korean War situation for example.

By 1966 things were changing to a 'mixed' more global economy with the Vietnam War bringing even more change. This was a TV war and the world beamed into the lounge. My father was deeply disturbed by these images and resolved to migrate once again. Another war experience was something he didn't want. By 1972 things really did change for OZ and we settled in for the long haul, assimmilating into the local community.

In many ways the migration tales of OZ are those of America. Uprooted souls cast on a tide that drifted around the world and adapting to strange new world rituals and poignant differences. Then comes the time when you look at the family and the world you embraced to see a fusing by osmosis. Today I am Australian first with a Euro-centric core that'll not be denied. I once tried to toss it away while travelling OZ and found the value systems within came from a chemistry that traces its roots to the Middle Ages. I am Australian and yet there's more inside.

I have an interest in migration issues. The most important issue I believe is that of loneliness. Migrants who assimmilated so well as to become almost indistinguishable from the OZ born retire and find their support mechanisms gone. Once, many years ago, these young migrants distainfully disgarded their contacts to strike out for a new life. Now, growing old, they linger around in a place that's changing once more. There's no program here that considers these issues.

Every migrant I know feel immense gratitude for the freedoms given. In return they gave also. Now unforseen issues that might seem minor to others pop up. These issues are pronounced in the Northern European migrant groups especially.

There are so many stories here. Some people tell them. Try this Link

Regards from OZ

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), July 01, 2000.



Pieter--

Thanks for the details and for the interesting link. I had never thought about the difficlties of an immigrant growing old in his adopted land. Heck, I even find it hard to grow old in a city where I have no roots.

BTW, are you sick of Frisian-frisbee jokes?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), July 02, 2000.


Lars,

Sounds like a great idea for a new thread...hehe...there are no Frisian-frisbee jokes in OZ. True. There are so few of us nobody ever notices our real origin. Most Frisians went over to America anyway and the jokes do fly there I believe.

Regards from Down Under

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), July 02, 2000.


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