A brief but shimmering model of clear thinking and persuasive argument.
A father-and-son team reflect on two white-hot policy issues, torture and eavesdropping.
The elder Fried (Law/Harvard Univ; Modern Liberty: And the Limits of Government, 2006, etc.) and the younger (Philosophy/Suffolk Univ; Heidegger’s Polemos: From Being to Politics, 2000, etc.) acknowledge that post-9/11 controversy over these practices inspired their discussion, but they insist that the principles assembled here are applicable for the ages. Government agents, they argue, descend into torture and contrive to eavesdrop for the same reason—to fill in gaps in knowledge. There the similarity of these two unwanted impositions ends. Rejecting the ticking time-bomb scenario and the idea of “torture warrants” or merely “maintaining the façade of illegality,” the authors argue that torture is always and absolutely wrong. The desecration that accompanies the infliction of intense physical and psychological pain crosses a moral line that imperils the soul and degrades the torturer every bit as much as the victim. Privacy violations, about which Americans have many misconceptions, are different and permissible in some circumstances. The Constitution, after all, prohibits only unreasonable searches and seizures. Here the Frieds are particularly convincing, teasing out the strands of privacy claims and demonstrating that, if certain limits are observed, violations of privacy might be justified in emergency circumstances. The authors cram this slender volume with helpful and arresting illustrations drawn from philosophers, including Aristotle, Locke, Webber, Machiavelli and Wittgenstein; statesmen, including Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR; writers, including Shakespeare, Orwell, Conrad, Remarque and Beerbohm; and even films, including The Lives of Others, The English Patient and The Battle of Algiers. They also cite the Bible, the U.S. Army Field Manual and pertinent U.S. Supreme Court cases. The Frieds conclude by distinguishing private morality and political responsibility, by pondering the dangers of secret, executive lawbreaking and by disagreeing over whether public figures accused of torture should be prosecuted.
A brief but shimmering model of clear thinking and persuasive argument.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-393-06951-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.
Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account. Alongside all the metrics and estimates and reckonings of GDP, inflation, and the supply curve, he holds the great goal of economic policy to be the advancement of human dignity, a concept intangible enough to chase the econometricians away. Growth, the sacred mantra of most economic policy, “should never be considered an appropriate ultimate end goal” for it, he counsels. Though 4% is the magic number for annual growth to be considered healthy, it is healthy only if everyone is getting the benefits and not just the ultrawealthy who are making away with the spoils today. Defining dignity, admits Sperling, can be a kind of “I know it when I see it” problem, but it does not exist where people are a paycheck away from homelessness; the fact, however, that people widely share a view of indignity suggests the “intuitive universality” of its opposite. That said, the author identifies three qualifications, one of them the “ability to meaningfully participate in the economy with respect, not domination and humiliation.” Though these latter terms are also essentially unquantifiable, Sperling holds that this respect—lack of abuse, in another phrasing—can be obtained through a tight labor market and monetary and fiscal policy that pushes for full employment. In other words, where management needs to come looking for workers, workers are likely to be better treated than when the opposite holds. In still other words, writes the author, dignity is in part a function of “ ‘take this job and shove it’ power,” which is a power worth fighting for.
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7987-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York.
When advertising executive Schroff answered a child’s request for spare change by inviting him for lunch, she did not expect the encounter to grow into a friendship that would endure into his adulthood. The author recounts how she and Maurice, a promising boy from a drug-addicted family, learned to trust each other. Schroff acknowledges risks—including the possibility of her actions being misconstrued and the tension of crossing socio-economic divides—but does not dwell on the complexities of homelessness or the philosophical problems of altruism. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done. With the assistance of People human-interest writer Tresniowski (Tiger Virtues, 2005, etc.), Schroff adheres to a personal narrative that traces her troubled relationship with her father, her meetings with Maurice and his background, all while avoiding direct parallels, noting that their childhoods differed in severity even if they shared similar emotional voids. With feel-good dramatizations, the story seldom transcends the message that reaching out makes a difference. It is framed in simple terms, from attributing the first meeting to “two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams” that were “somehow meant to be friends” to the conclusion that love is a driving force. Admirably, Schroff notes that she did not seek a role as a “substitute parent,” and she does not judge Maurice’s mother for her lifestyle. That both main figures experience a few setbacks yet eventually survive is never in question; the story fittingly concludes with an epilogue by Maurice. For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4251-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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