By Charles Derber - Morality Wars: How Empires, the Born Again, and the Politically Correct Do Evil in the Name of Good

by Charles Derber

Is patriotism a good thing in an empire? Did General Petraeus betray us or did moveon.org? Does morality often serve immoral purposes? This book offers a new way to approach these questions, which lie just beneath our increasingly poisoned political conversation today. Derber and Magrass show that the problem today is not just lying but immoral morality, doing evil in the name of good. America is suffering an epidemic of immoral morality where elites in a new American empire use lofty moral values and religious rhetoric to justify immoral wars and policies. This book shows how to end our disastrous politics of empire carried out in the name of goodness and God. The British preached the White Man's Burden to show empire was a moral obligation. Neoconservatives today proclaim that the United States must occupy Iraq to spread liberty. Although the right today has recrafted historic arguments that empires bring peace and that fundamentalists battle moral decay, the authors show that the Democratic Party and the left have their own IM, with the Democrats supporting empire and the left its own political correctness. America's political divide today is a backlash to the progressive revolution of the 1960s and 1970s-secular, antiwar, and feminist-that created a radical break from traditional values and set the stage for current morality wars. In the spirit of de Tocqueville, this powerful book offers a rich and vivid portrait of the U.S. political landscape, definitively exposing American immoral morality and exploring ideas that can help move the nation to a new morality and politics.

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published February 1, 2008

About the author

Charles Derber is Professor of Sociology at Boston College and has written 17 books - on politics, economy, capitalism, war, the culture wars, culture and conversation, and social change. He writes for and has been reviewed in the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Truthout, and other leading media. His books are translated into Chinese, Korean, Tamil, German and Polish- and he is a bestseller in South Korea, done extended book tours in German bookstores and blues coffee houses, and has lectured in Italy in June for seven years. Derber is a public intellectual who believes that serious ideas should be written in an accessible and entertaining style.His most recent book is Sociopathic Society: A People's Sociology of the United States. He is also a life-long social justice activist and a terrific public speaker - so contact him and try to lure him to a public talk. Check out his Youtube presentations. He is married and has a beautiful Wheaten Terrier dog named Mojo, who lives up to his name.

Reviews

[Charlie Byers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really care for this one. The authors' vision of the American left seems like a relic of the Bush era, and the book deals in pretty shallow readings of other people's motives. They do make the point that high-minded moral justifications can conceal very dark hypocrisies, with plenty of examples, but I was left feeling like they'd stretched a few good articles worth of material into a whole book.

Talking about other people's moral inconsistencies is easy. If you want to impress me, get me to examine my own.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using moral values to justify empire, war and exploitation or to make mockery of everything Jesus would do, has become America’s dominant religion. For those of us still in touch with our hearts, Charles Derber calls this “Immoral Morality” and in this book he explains in detail how and why it exists. Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn love Charles’s works and you will too.

Great Derber facts:
Other empires did the same thing; Britain of course spent it’s time undermining the economies of each culture it meanwhile pretended it was elevating. But we Americans took the idea and ran with it. Jackson and others learned the positive lesson of every morally bankrupt loser bully everywhere – namely push undesirables (Native Americans, uppity slaves, Mexicans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, etc. looking to be left alone) and when they push back first feign shock – then label their resistance as aggression and now your aggression is only self-defense. Control the framing and the media to keep the populace continuing to think so, et voila! – Polk introduces the concept of national security which when combined with manufactured fear creates the modern state with it’s foundation of violence abroad and repression at home. Immoral Morality is the perfect tool to keep such a state functioning smoothly with it’s populace quietly in check.Protection of the weak and inferior has long been the moral cloak for control.During Jim Crow did you know that white motorists had right of way over blacks? Southerners are a conquered people and they saw their way back as through rebirth (more than shades of Nazism) through fusing Wall St and a very un-Jesus centered view of the Bible. Suddenly through immoral morality, the South replaced the Democrats as the moral party. ☺ Why intellectuals in the White House? Because they historically provide moral cover for war crimes of the state: usually aggression. The game is for corporate Democrats and Republicans to continue to subvert the traditional values of America’s Heartland and make anyone interested in non-violent solutions, United Nations, or even International Law to appear to be at best naïve and appeasing America’s enemies. ☺ A perfect example of immoral morality is “prosperity theology” – inverting the message of the New Testament. The premise of this book is that we all encouraged as Americans to rather harshly rate whether OTHER countries are “good” or “bad” often without evidence however even questioning the same about our country (even with clear evidence in hand) brands us only as unpatriotic and even immoral. That’s Right PC. Because we are the only country with “good” intentions we can be hegemonic and it’s fine so back off. In the same way, we can brand people and countries as terrorists impulsively but while much of the world sees us as the leading terrorist state we see ourselves only fighting terrorism. We must do so because they (the Native Americans, the uppity slaves, the Mexicans, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Vietnamese defending their farmlands and villages against the US, etc.) 1. started it 2. didn’t fight fair so we had to take off the gloves 3. are subhuman therefore it’s ok 4. They don’t feel pain or care about life like we do. 5. They hate us for us freedoms ☺ Derber shows how Liberals probably have more in common with the Right they do with the Left. So few people have the balls to say this. Remember, the American Left has never had state power. The Enlightenment was supposed to help people think for themselves instead of assigning that power to the church which held its power through faith and obedience – The People now assign that power once assigned to the church now to the Right and the hegemonic Democratic Elite who now demand the same blind faith and obedience.

On the Left: Left PC contradicts the Left’s commitment to free speech. The natural position of the Left is to include everyone but therein lies it’s demise – either it then unwittingly attracts infiltrators and agent provocateurs or it’s lack of hierarchy leaves it prone to authoritarian takeover where PC becomes the New Left. So we are left with a world where the hegemonic Democratic elite is long been moving in the opposite direction from its base. Luckily for us, as Paul Kennedy says, Empires fall on their own swords. The message to those who still prefer to think for themselves is clear: hegemonic winners are moral losers. Great Book…

[Tommy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was amazing! Charles Derber is one of the best social and political writers of our time. He is insightful, inquisitive, challenging, and always well thought out.

This book makes some pretty interesting comparisions with an overall theme of immoral morality.

The first section describes how empires operate using immoral morality and uses the Roman, British, and American Empires as examples and ties them together very well despite different times and tactics.

The second section describes how religion has historically been used (specifically Christianity) to justify immoral morality in the cases of the Slave South, Nazi Germany, and the Religious Right in America today. The comparison may initially seem shocking but it makes a lot of sense when Derber and Magrass explain the similarities.

The third section takes aim at different forms of political correctness on the American Right and Left and how it sneaks into many groups (both hegemonies and smaller, less powerful groups). I found this section the least compelling, although it was still interesting. I felt that this may have been better if it went first.

Every American should read this book and understand it, especially those on the Left and particularly active member of the netroots movement.

[Claire S]

Looks interesting.. the word 'morality' is so troublesome, additional related tools are very welcome!

Plus I love things that go to the 'big picture,' that relate patterns, that create synthesis.