Aliens in America: The Strange Truth about Our Souls
*Starred Review* Rather than another brief about burgeoning immigration or extraterrestrial visitation, this is an analysis of the two strains of American political philosophy usually called liberalism and conservatism. The thinkers Lawler analyzes and juxtaposes aren't culled from the yelling mouths of TV talk shows, however, but instead include, to mention the best known, Francis Fukuyama, Carl Sagan, and Richard Rorty on the left, Jesuit political theologian John Courtney Murray and novelist Walker Percy on the right, and, beyond them, Jefferson and Tocqueville. Classical philosophy and Christianity inform the entire discussion. As the book, more a loose continuum of essays than a continuous argument, proceeds, it becomes ever clearer that Lawler sees all Americans as aliens, in the Christian sense that all souls rightly belong to God and find their rest, their home, only in him. From the Christian perspective, liberalism's commitment to equality, the individual, and happiness against hierarchy, community, and reality seems so much vain perfectionism. Not that equality, the individual, and happiness are worthless; they simply aren't the highest goods. Thoughtfully discriminating what is questionable from what is noble and true in the thought of the figures he discusses, Lawler provokes serious thought about the philosophical and religious foundations of American politics.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved