Henri-Levi (wikipedia), in the footsteps of De Tocqueville, toured the United States in 2006 to write his book American Vertigo. As McLemee puts it, he penned a piece in ‘The Nation’ diagnosing the American left:
…as suffering from a sublime desolation. We were trapped in “a desert of sorts, a deafening silence, a cosmic ideological void.”
To his credit, he has the potential to point out problems and confront issues with moral courage:
“…for one of the two very worst forces in the world, by Lévy’s account, is anti-Americanism. The other is anti-Semitism.”
They could be quite serious. And:
“…the future menaced by the prospect of barbarism. He is right to worry. But amid his soliloquies, he makes gestures of warning in the wrong direction.”
Barbarism seems like a threat to civilized society pretty much all the time, from within and without. So where does McLemee suggest Henri-Levy is headed?
“…the legacy of antitotalitarian radicalism. He treats it almost like a family heirloom. But he avoids embracing that tradition’s hostility to capitalism.”
Related On This Site: -Was Bernhard Henri-Levy actually influencing U.S. policy decisions..the old French liberte…which was too interventionist for the current administration? From New York Magazine: ‘European Superhero Quashes Libyan Dictator’
Perhaps we simply aren’t ready for Henri-Levy’s more libertine, radical, French liberalism, which he displayed by coming over in the spirit of Tocqueville and pissing on the sides of our highways.