Hmm. The Case Against John Lennon
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121305349075558959.html?mod=todays_columnists
"Mr. Sharansky has a new book, titled "Defending Identity." It would be equally accurate to call it "The Case Against John Lennon."
Or, more specifically, the case against "Imagine," Lennon's anthem to a world with "no countries . . . nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too." For Mr. Sharansky, a nine-year resident of the Perm 35 prison camp, that's a vision that smacks too much of the professed beliefs of the ex-Beatle's near namesake, Vladimir Ilyich.
Mr. Sharansky's argument is that man's quest for identity - for the human and communal particulars that set him apart from others - cannot be separated from his quest for freedom - the universal set of values to which he and everyone else lay an equal claim. He argues that a freedom that "does not include the freedom to be significantly different" is no freedom at all. And he believes that while a politics that expresses itself purely through identity is bound to be tyrannical, a democracy that ignores its own identity - or attempts to suppress the various identities within it - betrays its deepest principles and puts its long-term survival at risk.
Is this true? Woodrow Wilson championed the idea of "national self-determination," as if it were a synonym for human liberty. Yet too many liberation movements have merely replaced the despotism of empires with whatever tinpot dictator - Yasser Arafat, Robert Mugabe - happened to assert the right to speak for "the people." We've also learned that not all cultures are created equal; that identities that make a fetish of masculine "honor," for instance, don't lend themselves easily to the practices of a free society.
Mr. Sharansky knows all this, and insists that the claims of identity must, when there is no other option, yield to those of democracy. Case in point: Mormon polygamists at the Texas ranch.
But he also knows that the cause of freedom cannot easily be sustained without calling on a set of moral and communal resources that go beyond the needs of individual liberty. "All the people living for today," as Lennon put it, means, of course, nobody living for tomorrow.
"
I don't agree.
"Mr. Sharansky has a new book, titled "Defending Identity." It would be equally accurate to call it "The Case Against John Lennon."
Or, more specifically, the case against "Imagine," Lennon's anthem to a world with "no countries . . . nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too." For Mr. Sharansky, a nine-year resident of the Perm 35 prison camp, that's a vision that smacks too much of the professed beliefs of the ex-Beatle's near namesake, Vladimir Ilyich.
Mr. Sharansky's argument is that man's quest for identity - for the human and communal particulars that set him apart from others - cannot be separated from his quest for freedom - the universal set of values to which he and everyone else lay an equal claim. He argues that a freedom that "does not include the freedom to be significantly different" is no freedom at all. And he believes that while a politics that expresses itself purely through identity is bound to be tyrannical, a democracy that ignores its own identity - or attempts to suppress the various identities within it - betrays its deepest principles and puts its long-term survival at risk.
Is this true? Woodrow Wilson championed the idea of "national self-determination," as if it were a synonym for human liberty. Yet too many liberation movements have merely replaced the despotism of empires with whatever tinpot dictator - Yasser Arafat, Robert Mugabe - happened to assert the right to speak for "the people." We've also learned that not all cultures are created equal; that identities that make a fetish of masculine "honor," for instance, don't lend themselves easily to the practices of a free society.
Mr. Sharansky knows all this, and insists that the claims of identity must, when there is no other option, yield to those of democracy. Case in point: Mormon polygamists at the Texas ranch.
But he also knows that the cause of freedom cannot easily be sustained without calling on a set of moral and communal resources that go beyond the needs of individual liberty. "All the people living for today," as Lennon put it, means, of course, nobody living for tomorrow.
"
I don't agree.