The ideal of the autonomous individual spawned a rights revolution that continues. Identity is diffuse, capable of being molded and remolded. The risk of Friedman's essay is a certain looseness. As the book proceeds, his sharper propositions too often blur into clouds of abstraction. After a strong start, he crams a great many bland ideas about nationalism, ethnicity and migration into his bag in order to demonstrate that the concept of the horizontal is, in fact, compendious.
Repetition takes over.
We get oft-told tales about assimilation, immigration and language. Straining to demonstrate the universal applicability of horizontality, Friedman frequently stretches his concept to the breaking point. Still, despite the overreaching, Friedman is onto something important. Because of technology, relentless horizontal momentum is irreversible. The vertical cannot hold.