Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt
by Arthur C. Brooks. Broadside Books (March 12, 2019)
| I had high hopes for Arthur C. Brooks “Love your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt,” (and was reading it as a book club selection) but was disappointed. First of all, I was put off by the tone. I think the author was attempting a breezy and conversational, but it came off flippant in parts and condescending in others. More importantly though, Mr. Brooks asks us to forgive and forget too much. One example, Mr. Brook gives equal weight to Hillary Clinton’s use of the phrase “basket of deplorables” in describing some of Donald Trump’s supporters — and Trump’s pandering to the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic words and actions of these supporters — and to Trump’s leading chants at his rallies of “lock her up.” Mr. Brooks sets up a false equivalency in comparing these two incidents. Sometimes, both sides are not equally to blame, Mr. Brooks never makes this distinction. If everyone is wrong, then no one has to take responsibility. And nothing really changes. I have to admit, one big stumbling block for me is that Mr. Brooks spent 10 years at the American Enterprise Institute and remains an advocate for a distorted free enterprise system that is inherently unfair and unequal. The policies that he and his organization has promoted over the last 40 years is, in my political opinion, the cause of much of what has made civil discourse today uncivil. In pursuing the agenda of that organization and its allies, Mr. Brook has taken advantage of the alienation of the poor and working classes of this nation. I can’t forget and forgive that. And he doesn’t own up to that. I really wanted to believe that Mr. Brooks was offering a way forward for civil discourse, but I found instead a book of platitudes. |
Dennis Coday 