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Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy | 
| Author: Natan Sharansky
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: EBooks
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $17.23
You Save: $9.72 (36%)
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 16606
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Dewey Decimal Number: 321.8
ASIN: B001C6GUHI
Publication Date: March 24, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
If the history of the twentieth century can be seen as a successful struggle to expand personal freedoms, then the history of the twenty-first century will be seen as a contest to assert cultural, ethnic, or religious identities. From the crisis in Europe where identity is seen as inimical to democratic freedoms, to the threats to identity posed by postmodern relativism and Marxism, to the corrosive dullness of identity-less cosmopolitanism, Sharansky conducts a philosophical tour of nations, regions and cities whose futures rest precariously on the struggle for identity. His purpose throughout is to recover this most valuable and essential political emotion, one that can reaffirm and underpin democratic societies. Together, identity and democracy assert a powerful and benign sense of purpose; divided, at odds with each other, they invite fundamentalism and rootlessness.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
If the bad guys fight for their identity, shouldn't we fight for ours? September 13, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
"Identity without democracy can become fundamentalist and totalitarian. Democracy without identiyt can become superficial and meaningless." Spain is one of those countries that has lost both. We're practically inviting our islamist north-african neibors to come take over. A balcanized peninsula in the making.
But this essay by a former political prisoner of the Soviet gulag, and reborn Jewish Israeli is an eye opener to all the world who has not lost its senses yet, in common-sense, plain language.
A good advice on how to break the cycle of relativism and cultural decadence in the West: the fear of God. Sharansky describes this fear in a way I had never been able to describe myself, and beautifully. You don't have to be a believer to understand it at all. He explains how he became aware of this fear (which, as you should know from the bible, is the beginning of knowledge).
Countries with strong identities (supposing they are also strong democracies) are good "not because of their particular identities but because of their strrong identities, because they each had things that were more important to them than their physical existence." Just as a Christian man can find in another Christian from across the world a brother.
The author's experience in political prison camps in Russia taught him that "those with the strongest identities were the least likely to succumb to tyranny, those who retained a sense of the value of history, of tradition, of community, those who saw a purpose in life beyond life itself proved the ultimate bulwark against Soviet evil." Then comes a description of what Lenin himself called those "useful idiots" in the West, like H.G.Wells or G.B.Shaw, who played into the hands of totalitarian comunism. The story I didn't know and that really terrified me was that of American singer Paul Robeson, whom I don't expect to see in Heaven.
Why isn't multiculturalism both ways? "Multiculturalists call on European societies to weaken their own national uniqueness ... in the name of peace, equality and justice; groups without democratic experience or traditions have flooded into Europe. And these groups do not have the slightest qualms about the supremacy of their identities."
Sharansky's book is not only a description of the decayed state of European societies, to the point of social suicide, it also brings in hope, a spirit of challenge and encouragement: we are still in time to change the tide.
"The hypocrisy of double standards of the international human rights organizations ... its refusal to distinguish democratic from nondemocratic regimes ... becomes a tool of undemocratic powers."
"In such a world the enemies of democracy have a great advantage. They are prepared to fight and die for their twisted beliefs. Identity is the only force that will give us the strength to resist and ultimately to defeat them." This book tells you basically why Israel and the USA -as long as it stands up for Israel- are to be strongly supported by freedom loving democratic countries all over the globe.
After all, Israel still is God's apple of His eye. God save America, and the US Forces.
First review September 1, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Defending Identity by Natan Sharansky
The concept of "Identity" was an usual one for me to grasp at times but Mr. Sharansky continued to explain and elucidate. His idea became not only understandable but important.
A Fascinating Read August 29, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Social/political books are often dense and hard to read, but this one is fascinating. An eye-opening analysis of modern ideologies and their paradoxical effects, e.g., the support by liberals for terrorist movements. Through examples from societies across the globe, Sharansky makes a convincing case that embracing the various identities (religious, national, etc.) of its constituents makes a democracy much stronger.
This should be required reading for every American August 28, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Sharansky opens the book talking about his time in The Gulag and the type of character it takes to survive the brutality and torcher despensed at the hands of the KGB. He talks about the current utopian world vision that seeks to undermine the West and what it will take to defeat it. He wrote this book to America to inspire American's to live up to the ideals that beat back and defeated Communism and Natzism. Today we face the new ideology of Post Nationalism, an old idea dressed up in new clothing, couched in new retoric, but whose mission reamins the same.
Timely publication August 25, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The importance of the nation state as opposed to 'world government' cannot be overemphasized. The great thinker Nathan Sharansky has written another great book, now dealing with this urgent issue.
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