Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity
A few pages into this slim manifesto, it’s clear that Jenson’s latest offering is a heavy critique of the U.S.’s post 9/11 policy, the war on terror and George W. Bush. It would be remiss, however, to reduce this work to mere complaint. Jensen, a journalism professor at the Univ. of Texas, Austin, delivers a concise, telling, first-person account of what he argues is the "alienation and isolation that so many feel in the face of the triumphalism common in the country" since the attacks. He questions why America has developed such "an incredibly degraded political culture" and criticizes U.S. academic institutions for their "unwillingness to take seriously their role as centers of knowledge and their refusal to create space for debate and discussion." It is up to the citizens of the empire, Jensen says, to "build movements that can transform people’s opposition into political power." That sounds like a tall order, but Jensen’s use of personal anecdotes, analogies and in-your-face common sense makes the reading easy and his request sound doable, even logical. Jensen’s premise gains momentum as he correlates the increase of American civil liberties to decreased public participation, reminding readers that the "degree to which a society is democratic also can be judged by how extensive and active are citizens’ attempts to participate in the formation of public policy." He couples his opinions with a solution for those progressive thinkers who want to help, making the book a sort of handbook for people who are looking for new ways to engage fully in the democratic process of citizenship.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.