Bland Fanatics
Liberals, the West, and the Afterlives of Empire
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Narrated by:
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Derek Perkins
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By:
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Pankaj Mishra
About this listen
In America and in England, faltering economies at home and failed wars abroad have generated a political and intellectual hysteria. It is a derangement manifested in a number of ways: nostalgia for imperialism, xenophobic paranoia, and denunciations of an allegedly intolerant left. These symptoms can be found even among the most informed of Anglo-America.
In Bland Fanatics, Pankaj Mishra examines the politics and culture of this hysteria, challenging the dominant establishment discourses of our times. In essays that grapple with the meaning and content of Anglo-American liberalism and its relations with colonialism, the global South, Islam, and "humanitarian" war, Mishra confronts writers such as Jordan Peterson, Niall Ferguson, and Salman Rushdie. He describes the doubling down of an intelligentsia against a background of weakening Anglo-American hegemony, and he explores the commitments of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the ideological determinations of The Economist. These essays provide a vantage point from which to understand the current crisis and its deep origins.
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Well written, a refreshing voice of inspiration
- By Gabriel on 07-06-05
By: Cornel West
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This America
- The Case for the Nation
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Jill Lepore
- Length: 2 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time of much despair over the future of liberal democracy, Harvard historian Jill Lepore makes a stirring case for the nation in This America. Since the end of the Cold War, Lepore writes, American historians have largely retreated from the idea of "the nation", in part because the rise of political nationalism has rendered it suspect and unpalatable. Bucking this trend, however, Lepore argues forcefully that the nation demands scrutiny. Without an honest reckoning with America's collective past, we will be at the mercy of unscrupulous demagogues....
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Important
- By Shannon Caldwell on 01-27-20
By: Jill Lepore
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From the Ruins of Empire
- The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia
- By: Pankaj Mishra
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A little more than a century ago, as the Japanese navy annihilated the giant Russian one at the Battle of Tsushima, original thinkers across Asia, working independently, sought to frame a distinctly Asian intellectual tradition that would inform and inspire the continent's anticipated rise to dominance.
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Breathtaking Scale, Cohesion and Vision of Asian History
- By Oscar C. Huerta on 03-18-19
By: Pankaj Mishra
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The War on History
- The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past
- By: Jarrett Stepman
- Narrated by: Chris Abell
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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America is hopelessly divided, but more worryingly, the ideas and “mystic chords of memory” that rest at the cornerstone of our civilization and bind the generations are being severed, attacked, and forgotten. The left has set out to shatter these bonds with a war on American history - the fundamental concepts, institutions, and icons that make our country what it is. And we have failed to protect our history, allowing Hollywood, educators, and the media to rewrite the story of America. We have ignored the invaluable lessons of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.
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Culture war, not history
- By J. Pulton on 03-08-21
By: Jarrett Stepman
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A Thousand Small Sanities
- The Moral Adventure of Liberalism
- By: Adam Gopnik
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history.
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Erudite and entertaining!
- By D. A. Vail on 05-20-19
By: Adam Gopnik
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The Battle for God
- A History of Fundamentalism
- By: Karen Armstrong
- Narrated by: Lisa Armytage, Karen Armstrong
- Length: 22 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In the late 20th century, fundamentalism has emerged as one of the most powerful forces at work in the world, contesting the dominance of modern secular values and threatening peace and harmony around the globe. Yet it remains incomprehensible to a large number of people. In The Battle for God, Karen Armstrong brilliantly and sympathetically shows us how and why fundamentalist groups came into existence and what they yearn to accomplish.
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The most important book you haven’t read yet
- By D. A. Vail on 12-29-20
By: Karen Armstrong
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A Concise History of Modern Europe
- Liberty, Equality, Solidarity
- By: David S. Mason
- Narrated by: Charles Henderson Norman
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Highlighting the key events, ideas, and individuals that have shaped modern Europe, this fresh and lively book provides a concise history of the continent from the Enlightenment to the present. Drawing on the enduring theme of revolution, David S. Mason explores the political, economic, and scientific causes and consequences of revolution; the development of human rights and democracy; and issues of European identity and integration.
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ok
- By Cassandra on 04-11-16
By: David S. Mason
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Liberal Fascism
- The Secret History of the American Left
- By: Jonah Goldberg
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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"Fascists", "Brownshirts", "jackbooted stormtroopers" - such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?
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Great book
- By Mark on 05-10-08
By: Jonah Goldberg
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Heaven on Earth
- The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism
- By: Joshua Muravchik
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Socialism was man's most ambitious attempt to supplant religion with a doctrine claiming to ground itself in "science". Each failure to create societies of abundance or give birth to "the New Man" inspired more searching for the path to the promised land: revolution, communes, social democracy, communism, fascism, Arab socialism, African socialism. None worked, and some exacted a staggering human toll. Then, after two centuries of wishful thinking and bitter disappointment, socialism imploded in a fin de siecle drama of falling walls and collapsing regimes.
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A biased yet informative masterpiece
- By CodyPeacock12349 on 04-04-21
By: Joshua Muravchik
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American Exceptionalism and American Innocence
- A People's History of Fake News - From The Revolutionary War to The War on Terror
- By: Roberto Sirvent, Danny Haiphong, Ajamu Baraka - foreword, and others
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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American Exceptionalism and American Innocence examines the stories we’re told that lead us to think that the U.S. is a force for good in the world, regardless of slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, and the more than a century’s worth of imperialist war that the U.S. has wrought on the planet. Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong detail just what Captain America’s shield tells us about the pretensions of U.S. foreign policy, how Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates engage in humanitarian imperialism, and more.
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Still processing
- By D'Juan Eastman on 07-03-19
By: Roberto Sirvent, and others
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The Age of Entitlement
- America Since the Sixties
- By: Christopher Caldwell
- Narrated by: Christopher Caldwell
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A major American intellectual makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, instead left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled - and ready to put an adventurer in the White House. Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences. Even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high - in wealth, freedom, and social stability - and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations.
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Do laudable ends justify unconstitutional means?
- By LBJ on 02-08-20
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- Mehran Asdigha
- 11-13-20
Historical Liberalism on deathbed
Great collection of essays. The depth and breath of this short book makes you go over it periodically. Pankaj historical memory & his amazing feel for the thieving Anglo American pretenders of liberty is too much!
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