American Awakening
Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time
Published on 31. December 2020
Book
Hardback
296 pages
978-1-64177-130-6 (ISBN)
Description
America has always been committed to the idea that citizens can work together to build a common world. Today, three afflictions keep us from pursuing that noble ideal. The first and most obvious affliction is identity politics, which seeks to transform America by turning politics into a religious venue of sacrificial offering. For now, the sacrificial scapegoat is the white, heterosexual, man. After he is humiliated and purged, who will be the object of cathartic rage? White women? Black men? Identity politics is the anti-egalitarian spiritual eugenics of our age. It demands that pure and innocent groups ascend, and the stained transgressor groups be purged.
The second affliction is that citizens oscillate back and forth, in bipolar fashion, at one moment feeling invincible on their social media platforms and, the next, feeling impotent to face the everyday problems of life without the guidance of experts and global managers. Third, Americans are afflicted by a disease that cannot quite be named, characterized by an addictive hope that they can find cheap shortcuts that bypass the difficult labors of everyday life. Instead of real friendship, we seek social media "friends."
Instead of meals at home, we order "fast food." Instead of real shopping, we "shop" online. Instead of counting on our families and neighbors to address our problems, we look to the state to take care of us. In its many forms, this disease promises release from our labors, yet impoverishes us all. American Awakening chronicles all of these problems, yet gives us hope for the future.
The second affliction is that citizens oscillate back and forth, in bipolar fashion, at one moment feeling invincible on their social media platforms and, the next, feeling impotent to face the everyday problems of life without the guidance of experts and global managers. Third, Americans are afflicted by a disease that cannot quite be named, characterized by an addictive hope that they can find cheap shortcuts that bypass the difficult labors of everyday life. Instead of real friendship, we seek social media "friends."
Instead of meals at home, we order "fast food." Instead of real shopping, we "shop" online. Instead of counting on our families and neighbors to address our problems, we look to the state to take care of us. In its many forms, this disease promises release from our labors, yet impoverishes us all. American Awakening chronicles all of these problems, yet gives us hope for the future.
Reviews / Votes
"Mitchell's American Awakening has arrived on the scene to shake things up. No one has looked as deeply into the twisted soul of today's 'identity politics.' Yet Mitchell is also outspoken in arguing that reconciliation with the descendants of America's slaves must be at the heart of the nation's political agenda. An original and mesmerizing book."-Yoram Hazony, author of The Virtue of Nationalism
"Joshua Mitchell looks at what everyone else is looking at and sees what no one else sees. It's an extraordinary gift, and thanks to it this book amounts to a kind of key to the times we are living in. It reveals that the problems we face run even deeper than we might imagine, but also highlights some surprising reasons for hope."
-Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs
"American Awakening is a tour de force, the sort of book that forever changes the way one looks at the subject. It is the most important book on American politics of the past several years. Joshua Mitchell argues persuasively that America's political crisis has a religious origin, and that the extremes of identity politics are an expression of a dislodged Protestantism. This is a bold and deeply convincing alternative to conventional thinking that combines a subtle grasp of theology with profound insights into American political process and deep knowledge of history. So skillful a writer is Mitchell that the reader has the sense of remembering something that was always known, while learning something that was never imagined."
-David Goldman, "Spengler" columnist at Asia Times and author of You Will Be Assimilated: China's Plan to Sino-Form the World
"American Awakening is essential reading. Joshua Mitchell exposes
the spiritual disorders that are paralyzing public life. An ersatz politics of innocence has replaced our liberal politics of competence." -R. R. Reno, editor of First Things
"At last-a sophisticated and articulate theological/philosophical/political critique of the intellectual incoherence, bad faith, and internal contradictions that mark today's identity politics. Its appropriation of a religious rhetoric of transgression and innocence makes a civil politics of liberal competence impossible. Allied to a new and schizophrenic world of national administrative elites, global economic managers, and isolated 'selfie' individuals, the future
of American democratic social and political life is at stake."-Eldon J. Eisenach, professor emeritus of political science, the University of Tulsa, author of Sacred Discourse and American Nationality
"There is no more trenchant analyst of postmodern democracy and its discontents than Joshua Mitchell. This courageously argued manifesto is spring water in the desert of an American politics reduced to fusillades of sound-bitten and tweeted idiocy. Read it and be chastened. Read it and find hope."-George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
"If you, like so many others, are bewildered by what is taking place in our streets today, American Awakening is for you. It will provide you with the tool kit needed to sift through the wreckage. It will also be good for your soul."- Mike Gonzalez, Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of The Plot to Change America
"From identity politics and the Alt-Right to the opioid crisis and coronavirus lockdown, Joshua Mitchell is the master diagnostician of the philosophical and spiritual errors behind our country's critical condition. And best of all, he shows us how to correct them."-Daniel McCarthy, editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review
"American Awakening is a tour de force: it is the deepest and yet the most accessible analysis of the political and intellectual movement which may yet undermine our civilization, identity politics. Mitchell has a capacious and original mind, and his book is an unmatched resource for understanding our confused and confusing times."-Arthur Milikh, executive director, Center for the American Way of Life, the Claremont Institute
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 238 mm
Width: 164 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
569 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-64177-130-6 (9781641771306)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Joshua Mitchell is a professor of political theory at Georgetown University and a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Center for the American Way of Life. The author of numerous journal articles and four books, most recently, Tocqueville in Arabia, Professor Mitchell's research focuses on Western political philosophy and theology. In 2005, he was part of the team responsible for founding Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar. From 2008-10, while on leave from Georgetown, Professor Mitchell served as acting chancellor of the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. He lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore.