Achieving our country
Subtitle: leftist thought in twentieth-century America
By: Richard Rorty.
Series: The William E. Massey, Sr. lectures in the history of American civilization ;; 1997
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 159
Subjects: Radicalism -- United States -- History; Radicals -- United States -- History; Right and left (Political science) -- History
Description: How have national pride and American patriotism come to seem an endorsement of atrocities - from slavery to the slaughter of Native Americans, from the rape of ancient forests to the Vietnam War? Achieving Our Country traces the sources of this debilitating mentality of shame in the Left, as well as the harm it does to its proponents and to the country. At the center of this history is the conflict between the Old Left and the New that arose during the Vietnam War.

Richard Rorty describes how the paradoxical victory of the antiwar movement, ushering in the Nixon years, encouraged a disillusioned generation of intellectuals to pursue "High Theory" at the expense of considering the place of ideas in our common life.

In the absence of a vibrant, active Left, the views of intellectuals on the American Right have come to dominate the public sphere. This galvanizing book, adapted from Rorty's Massey Lectures of 1997, takes the first step toward redressing the imbalance in American cultural life by rallying those on the Left to the civic engagement and inspiration needed for "achieving our country."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [141]-151) and index.