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2013 Logos Book of the Year in Christianity/Culture
"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
Abraham Lincoln
Nothing is more daring in the American experiment than the founders' belief that the American republic could remain free forever. But how was this to be done, and are Americans doing it today?
It is not enough for freedom to be won. It must also be sustained. Cultural observer Os Guinness argues that the American experiment in freedom is at risk. Summoning historical evidence on how democracies evolve, Guinness shows that contemporary views of freedom--most typically, a negative freedom from constraint-- are unsustainable because they undermine the conditions necessary for freedom to thrive. He calls us to reconsider the audacity of sustainable freedom and what it would take to restore it.
"In the end," Guinness writes, "the ultimate threat to the American republic will be Americans. The problem is not wolves at the door but termites in the floor." The future of the republic depends on whether Americans will rise to the challenge of living up to America's unfulfilled potential for freedom, both for itself and for the world.
- Sales Rank: #327453 in eBooks
- Published on: 2012-07-11
- Released on: 2012-07-11
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"A Free People's Suicide challenges each and every citizen concerned about America's diminishing role as a beacon of liberty not only to comprehend the urgency, but also to participate comprehensively in freedom's preservation." (Albin Sadar, The Washington Times, washingtontimes.com)
"Dr. Guinness' book is rich in its explorations of Lincoln's words and their import for us today. As an expatriate friend of America, Guinness, like de Tocqueville, has a rare gift for helping us see our better selves. He casts a discerning eye at our modern institutions, and habits of the heart―as reflected in the broader culture. He freely concedes that there are worrying signs on the horizon, but then, having thoughtfully set out the challenges we face in our historical moment, he brings us back to the best things the founders gave us. On the whole, it's a fascinating perspective from a British citizen." (Kevin Belmonte, Huffington Post Religion Blog, September 1, 2012)
"Os Guinness enlightens, cheers, chastises and informs with this latest contribution to our civic discourse. Guinness here solidifies his reputation as one of the most nimble voices from the Christian community as he surveys our history and our present with appreciation as well as deep concern. Highly recommended for all interested citizens, whatever their political or faith commitments." (Jean Bethke Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago, author of Sovereignty: God, State and Self)
"A Free People's Suicide is an inside view from the outside. Os Guinness has a clear eye, a quick mind, a profound grasp of political philosophy and an eloquent pen. His analysis of American freedom, what it has been, now is and is likely to become, is a clarion call for renewal of the founders' vision for a free people." (James W. Sire, author of The Universe Next Door and Václav Havel: The Intellectual Conscience of International Politics)
"Sometimes a book is so important and so timely that not to have read it is to embarrass oneself. This is such a book. Its message is so crucial and so clear that all Americans are obligated to read it and have a national conversation on its themes. No cultural commentator or politician who has not read this book should ever be taken seriously again. Let this book be the new litmus test. If you are serious about America, be familiar with its themes and expect to discuss them and to be tested on them. Rest assured that you will be, because America is now herself being tested on them. Alas, we will not be graded on a curve. This book's clarion call is both piercing and full of hope. May God help us to hear it and to take action." (Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery)
"With passion and urgency Os Guinness gives a sweeping historical account of America's past and her prospects for the future. He urges us to pay serious attention to a deeper understanding of freedom and makes a compelling case for why freedom requires virtue. Weaving together a wide-ranging knowledge of classical, constitutional and contemporary history, Guinness warns of America's decline but charts a course for America's renewal. It is a straight-shooting and sober volume, yet in the end it is a hopeful book." (Michael Cromartie, vice president, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, DC)
"In a passionate work that blends historical-cultural analysis with moral exhortation, Os Guinness finds at the heart of America's culture wars something different than what many observers have seen. He identifies a 'freedom war,' a struggle over the very concept of freedom itself. As the Founders well understood, it is not enough for Americans to invoke endlessly the name of 'freedom' when they no longer agree as to what it means or what ends freedom is meant to serve. Guinness warns that freedom cannot long endure unless it is consecrated to purposes beyond itself. It is a warning worth heeding." (Wilfred M. McClay, SunTrust Chair of Excellence in Humanities, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America)
About the Author
Os Guinness (DPhil, Oxford) is the author or editor of more than thirty books, including Fool's Talk, Renaissance, The Global Public Square, A Free People's Suicide, Unspeakable, The Call, Time for Truth and The Case for Civility. A frequent speaker and prominent social critic, he has addressed audiences worldwide from the British House of Commons to the U.S. Congress to the St. Petersburg Parliament. He founded the Trinity Forum and served as senior fellow there for fifteen years. Born in China to missionary parents, he is the great-great-great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer. After witnessing the climax of the Chinese revolution in 1949, he was expelled with many other foreigners in 1951 and returned to England where he was educated and served as a freelance reporter with the BBC. Since coming to the U.S. in 1984, he has been a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was the lead drafter of the Williamsburg Charter, celebrating the First Amendment, and has also been senior fellow at the EastWest Institute in New York, where he drafted the Charter for Religious Freedom. He also co-authored the public school curriculum Living With Our Deepest Differences. Guinness has had a lifelong passion to make sense of our extraordinary modern world and to stand between the worlds of scholarship and ordinary life, helping each to understand the other - particularly when advanced modern life touches on the profound issues of faith. He lives with his wife Jenny in McLean, Virginia, near Washington, D.C.
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121 of 124 people found the following review helpful.
"The problem is not wolves at the door but termites in the floor."
By George P. Wood
At the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got--a Republic or a Monarchy?" To which Franklin replied: "A Republic, if you can keep it." That question and Franklin's reply cut to the heart of Os Guinness's new book, A Free People's Suicide.
According to Guinness, any society that wishes to be free must accomplish three tasks: win its freedom, order is freedom, and sustain its freedom. Americans commemorate the winning of our freedom on July 4, 1776, even though peace with Britain was not formalized until 1783. We commemorate the ordering of our freedom with the adoption (1787) and ratification (1789) of the Constitution. But sustaining our freedom is an unfinished and ongoing task.
Unfortunately, Guinness argues, "freedom has a chronic habit of undermining and destroying itself." He notes three instances:
* "When freedom runs to excess and breeds permissiveness and license."
* "When freedom so longs for its own security that its love of security undermines freedom."
* "When freedom becomes so caught up in its own glory that it justifies anything and everything done in its name, even such things as torture that contradict freedom."
He then notes that "the last decade has displayed clear examples of each of these corruptions writ large in American culture and in American foreign policy."
Now, Guinness is a Brit, so it's easy--too easy--for freedom-loving patriots to dismiss his analysis as so much anti-American twaddle. But Guinness is an America-loving Brit. He doesn't critique America in order to defame it but to improve it. Indeed, he argues that the sustainability of our freedom depends on our ability to appropriate the wisdom of the Founders for the present day.
A crucial component of that wisdom is what Guinness calls "the Golden Triangle of Freedom": "Freedom requires virtue, which in turn requires faith of some sort, which in turn requires freedom." The Constitution cannot secure American freedom in the absence of the character of its citizens. A government for free people requires self-government. But the source of self-government transcends the self and cannot be appropriated by means of coercion. Freedom requires virtue requires faith requires freedom. These qualities are symbiotic and mutually reinforcing.
Like Abraham Lincoln, Guinness doubts that America can be conquered by external foes. In Lincoln's words, "As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." Rather, the real threat to the American experiment in ordered liberty is internal. In Guinness's pithy words, "The problem is not wolves at the door but termites in the floor." Sustainable freedom begins with renewal at the level of our nation's moral foundation.
If I have any criticism of this otherwise excellent book, it is that Guinness, like the American Founders before him, is vague about the faith that virtue requires. Freedom requires virtue which requires faith of some sort. Those last three words should remind Christian readers--Guinness himself is an evangelical, and IVP Books is an evangelical publishing house--that Americans have always viewed religion in terms of social utility and been hesitant in the face of exclusive truth claims or spiritual practices. Christians in America, then, can contribute to the sustenance of their nation's freedom, but must beware lest their Kingdom agenda be sacrificed upon a national altar.
42 of 45 people found the following review helpful.
The Slavery of "Freedom"
By E. Ritzema
We Americans love to talk about freedom.
We call ourselves "the land of the free"; our Declaration of Independence talks about liberty as an "inalienable right"; there are few things that can get an American riled up like the threat of a loss of freedom.
But our freedom is in jeopardy, says Os Guinness. Guinness doesn't find the primary threat to our freedom in an external source, like another nation, or even "big government" or "big business" or special interests. No, the enemy is us. Freedom cannot be won for all time and then left alone; it needs to be sustained. And, Guinness writes, Americans are failing to sustain the freedom our nation's founders worked so hard to win: "The problem is not wolves at the door but termites in the floor. Powerful free people die only by their own hand, and free people have no one to blame but themselves" (37). The vision of freedom we Americans are pursuing is "short-lived and suicidal" (29).
(Side note: The title A Free People's Suicide might seem bombastic, but it comes from a quote from Abraham Lincoln: "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.")
The problem with our vision of freedom is that the freedom we love to talk about and claim for ourselves focuses exclusively on freedom from external constraints. There are two kinds of freedom: freedom from constraint (negative freedom) and freedom for cultivating virtue and becoming the people we ought to be (positive freedom). Modern Americans are only interested in negative freedom. We claim rights and entitlements for ourselves, but do not care about duty, virtue, character, or pursuing excellence. Negative freedom alone is unsustainable. Freedom from external restraint, without self-restraint, undermines itself.
What can be done? Guinness argues that we need to return to the founders' vision of freedom, which he calls the "Golden Triangle of Freedom." He demonstrates that the founders did not have a vision of freedom that stopped with freedom from constraint. Rather, their vision of freedom was part of an interdependent triangle: freedom requires virtue; virtue requires faith; faith requires freedom.
Perhaps the most controversial part of this triangle of freedom in our time is faith. The point for Guinness, and I agree, is not necessarily that the founders were Christians (though some were). Rather, the point is that the founders (even the Deists) were unanimous in their approval of faith of any kind, because faith fosters virtue, and only a virtuous people can remain free.
Guinness' book is intended not just for Christians or religious people, but for all Americans who care about freedom. For that reason, I understand his arguing for faith as part of the golden triangle of freedom on pragmatic grounds (he follows the founders in adopting this tactic). Nevertheless, I think his argument ought to have particular force for Christians. The Bible also understands freedom as not merely freedom from constraint.
Seven times in the book of Exodus, God (through Moses) says, "Let my people go so that they may serve me." (Exod 5:1; 7:16; 8:1, 20; 9:1, 13; 10:3). Jesus said, "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:36), but he also said, "Take my yoke upon you" (Matt 11:29). One of the earliest Christians' favorite self-designations was "slave of Christ" (Rom 1:1; 1 Cor 7:22; Gal 1:10; Phil 1:1; Titus 1:1; Jas 1:1; 2 Pet 1:1; Jude 1; Rev 1:1). Freedom, for the Christian, can never be merely about freedom from external constraints. It begins with freedom from constraint, but doesn't stop there. Christian freedom is not just freedom from, but freedom for: freedom to serve God and others. From a Christian perspective, those who begin by thinking freedom is merely the absence of external constraints end by becoming slaves to their own appetites: greed, lust, and desire for power.
I applaud Guinness' effort to prod Americans to do the hard work of sustaining freedom. I hope his argument gains a wide hearing. In particular, I hope his argument gains traction among Christians, who are just as prone to only care about negative freedom as anyone else, but who have the least reason for doing so.
Note: Thanks to InterVarsity Press for a review copy.
34 of 38 people found the following review helpful.
Wanted to love it, and did for awhile... but it contained too many tropes
By B. A. Wilkins
Os Guinness is obviously an intellectual giant, and in "A Free People's Suicide," he demonstrates some clear, provocative thinking on American culture and ordered liberty. That is, the current world view of Americans, if not renewed, will lead to the demise of the American republic. Particularly, his explication of freedom (winning, ordering and sustaining freedom) was compelling and something he obviously has spent a good deal of time researching and formulating. Within this framework, I found him teasing out ideas and ideals not found in other solid books I've read on American liberty (notably M. Stanton Evans's "The Theme is Freedom" and Matthew Spaulding's "We Still Hold These Truths") - and that gives these analyses great explanatory power. Likewise his sections on the compact between Americans and our government, the interconnection of freedom, virtue, and faith and the recommendations on how it can be recaptured. Frankly, had he stopped there and avoided the ad hominem political generalizations in the later sections, I would have given this book 5 stars.
So, on the negative side, whenever Guinness wanders outside of his philosophical-theological wheelhouse, namely into politics and statecraft, his product suffers. Meaningfully. He takes the apolitical tack... at times... but then frequently meanders back into generic political commentary and prescriptions. The unspecific terms he employs undermine his arguments here. For example, he cries out again and again about how America cannot sanction torture and remain free (agreed), but then fails to define what he means by torture, trying to make the point based on assumptive agreement by his readers (after all, who could be against any kind of torture?). He also essentially labels America an imperial power, but without defining again how this should be filtered - power projection, neocolonialism, defense welfare for Europe (against Germany, then the USSR) or does this include S. Korea, Grenada and Nicaragua as well? Too generic again. Instead he gives some unspecific examples - without analysis - that purport to demonstrate his case, along with one silly line about how America has essentially made jihadism what it is today, glossing over the essential contribution in the middle east by European empires in the early 1900s, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (and their hate for the US as early as the 1920s based primarily on world view differences, not US colonialism) and the rise of powerful, intelligent ideologues who actually welcome the 12th Mahdi (e.g., Iran's Ahmadinejad). In doing so, he displays a basic ignorance of what propels jihad and, in a strange way, places the blame for jihadists' goals for a worldwide caliphate on increased US presence in the post WW1 era. For a Christian theologian-philsopher, this is rank illogic. As biblically understood, evil's cause is never located in someone else's actions - it is a choice by a moral agent. [And yes, jihadism is as evil as naziism or communism.]
Guinness also has an ax to grind with George W. Bush as merely a "freedom exporter," but does not give specific examples to bolster his argument. While he references Iraq/Afghanistan as examples, he fails to contextualize either war, give a fair reading to the doctrine being used to fight terrorism at its root (e.g., Hussein aided terrorist attacks against US targets in the Bali and Philippines attacks, among others), or recognize the sign-off by Western intelligence agencies (and Blair, Clinton(s), Gore, UN, Congress, et al) on the belief in WMDs in Iraq. Oddly, though, he gives Barack Obama a foreign policy pass as concerns the Arab Spring but fails to criticize our interventions (Libya, Egypt) or non interventions (Iran, Syria). Bill Clinton and his response (or lack of) is also a non factor for some reason. He mentions Obama as an aside - by saying he has had many things to occupy his time and therefore is kind of above criticism for his first 3+ years- but avoids the obvious consistencies of his foreign policy vis a vis Bush: rendition, Guantanamo, drone strikes against jihadi leaders, spec ops missions into foreign lands. But the most surprising omissions, which may be a fuller indication of his lack of a consistent political philosophy, were the exclusion of Ronald Reagan entirely and the inclusion of Woodrow Wilson only briefly in the book. I found this odd as Reagan was the intellectual/ideological foil to FDR, and Wilson was the first statist/socialist to occupy the oval office. On the humanist-progressive side, Wilson was the first to try a command economy (during and post WW1), attempt to "make the world safe for democracy" through US intervention, and had his postmaster shut down periodicals that did not comport with his views of WW1 involvement. Wilson only warrants 2 brief mentions, and deserves more given his intellectual foundation laying. In contrast Reagan arguably rolled back more of US statism (and thus sustained American freedom) than any President in modern history, and vigorously fought our most formidable political/philosophical enemy of the 20th century (communism), living to see the liberation more than 80 countries from under its yoke. Guinness does go after Margaret Thatcher pretty hard for some reason, but again does not say why. My suspicion is she is an easier target for a US audience, and that he avoids Reagan for fear of perturbing his book's audience, which is likely largely conservative. If that is the case, avoiding Reagan's legacy is intellectually weak as he is the best exemplar of the sustenance of American liberty in the last 100+ years.
So, all this to say, 3 out of 5 seems about right. ~ WW
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