Hollander - The only super power: reflections on strength, weakness, and anti-Americanism

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HOLLANDER

Current Events Sociology

Paul Hollander, one of our most distinguished political sociologists, has written a wide-ranging, personal, and trenchant set of essays about America and its adversaries, at home and abroad. With reflections on his own fascinating journey from Hungary to America, Hollander provides unique and thought-provoking perspectives.

Norman J. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute

The distinguished Hungarian-born sociologist Paul Hollander has a uniquely Central THE ONLY

European perspective on the foibles of American life and especially on its intellectual milieu.

These fast-paced essays are smart, provocative, and sometimes amusing snapshots of our wonderfully imperfect universe.

Norman Naimark, Stanford University

THE

Paul Hollander is one of the few critics who seriously address how celebrity culture has deeply altered the role and function of intellectuals. He reexamines his ideas about SUPERPOWER

Americas adversary culture, born of the 1960s, and provides ample illustrations of its continued vitality in new forms and voices.

Jonathan Imber, Wellesley College

ONL

In this beautifully written, understated, and powerful collection, Paul Hollander brings his acute powers of observation and analysis to bear on a variety of important themes in American culture and society, including the discontents of modernity, the cult of celebrities, the pervasive entertainment orientation of mass culture, and the responses to global anti-Americanism and the manifestations of Islamic fanaticism. His observations illuminate recent trends and contain wise and sobering insights for the present and future of our Y

country.

Jeffrey Herf, University of Maryland, College Park

In this fine collection of essays Paul Hollander continues his lifework of documenting the SUP

misperceptions and misrepresentations of ideologues and those under their influence. He shows time and again how peddlers of anti-Americanism are bent on undermining the political system whose advantages they enjoy and abuse. By juxtaposing their claims and Paul Hollander

plain facts he exposes their indifference to truth and reason.

John Kekes, author of The Art of Politics

ERPO

I have been reading Paul Hollander for many yearsoften agreeing with him, sometimes disagreeing, and always profiting from his knowledge and acuity.

Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism and Power and the Idealists REFLECTIONS ON STRENGTH, WEAKNESS,

Paul Hollander is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a center associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at WER

AND ANTI-AMERICANISM

Harvard University. He is the author of Soviet and American Society: A Comparison, Political Pilgrims, Anti-Americanism, Political Will and Personal Belief: The Decline and Fall of Soviet Communism, and The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries, and Political Morality.

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2543-4

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The Only Superpower

The Only Superpower

Reflections on Strength, Weakness,

and Anti-Americanism

Paul Hollander

L E X I N G T O N B O O K S

A d i v i s i o n o f

R O W M A N & L I T T L E F I E L D P U B L I S H E R S , I N C .

Lanham Boulder New York Toronto Plymouth, UK

LEXINGTON BOOKS

A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200

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Copyright 2009 by Lexington Books

The acknowledgments section of this book constitutes an official extension of the copy-right page.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hollander, Paul, 1932

The only super power : reflections on strength, weakness, and anti-Americanism / Paul Hollander.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2543-4 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-7391-2543-5 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-3133-6 (electronic)

ISBN-10: 0-7391-3133-8 (electronic)

1. United StatesCivilization21st century. 2. United StatesSocial conditions

21st century. 3. United StatesRelationsForeign countries. 4. Political culture

United States. 5. Anti-Americanism. I. Title.

E169.12.H637 2009

973.931dc22

2008029077

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction: The Pleasures of Hate and the New Anti-Americanism 1

PART I: THE NEW ANTI-AMERICANISM

Anti-Americanism and a World-Class Hate Crime

Anti-Americanism: Murderous and Rhetorical

The Politics of Envy

Anti-Americanism and Moral Equivalence

PART II: AMERICANA

Our Society and Its Celebrities

Watching Celebrities

Michael Moore: The New Political Celebrity

SUVs and Americans

The Chronic Ailments of Television News

Stereotyping and the Decline of Common Sense

Tawana Brawley and the Exotic Dancer at Duke

An Islamic Requirement on Campus

Rehabilitating the Great Books: Literature and Life

v

vi

Contents

The Counterculture of the Heart

Old and Busier Than Ever

PART III: FOREIGN MATTERS

American Travelers to the Soviet Union

Alexander Yakovlev

Violence of Higher Purpose

The North Korean Gulag

Admiring North Korea

The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution 170

Crossing the Moral Threshold: The Rejection of Communist Systems in Eastern Europe

Ambivalent in Amsterdam

Travel in the Peloponnesos

PART IV: THE SURVIVAL AND REPLENISHMENT OF

THE ADVERSARY CULTURE

The Resilience of the Adversary Culture

The Chomsky Phenomenon

The Banality of Evil and the Political Culture of Hatred 225

The Left and the Palestinians

The Personal and the Political in Lessings Fiction

Haven in Cuba

Demystifying Marxism

Public Intellectuals and the God That Failed

PART V: IN CONCLUSION

From a Builder of Socialism to Free-Floating Intellectual: My Politically Incorrect Career in Sociology

Index

About the Author

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Bradley Foundation, longtime supporter of my work, in contributing to the expenses associated with the creation of this volume. Erika Pfaff, (formerly of Smith College) was an exem-plary research assistant and performed with exceptional competence a variety of tasks required for collecting and producing these essays. Raquel Man-zanares (also of Smith College) was similarly helpful in the preparation of the index.