Dissent from the Homeland: Essays After September 11 Volume 101

There are many people who believe that America is now facing the greatest enemy in its history. I am one of the them; the difference is that I don't think that enemy is some vague dark cloud called "terror" enveloping everything outside the borders of the United States. The greatest enemy we faces is ourselves. The events of September 11 should have incited an awakening. Americans should have begun to realize how the United States, in its relentless pursuit of its own happiness, has trampled on all of the people of the rest of the world. In America's blind selfishness, American has inflicted unbelievable pain. In the wake of September 11, the American public should have begun to see its own pride, assumed responsibility for the atrocities it has caused, and made changes. Instead, America managed to become even more supercilious, enveloping itself in self-serving lies (most propagated by the Bush administration and the media), lies that America is "good" and "they" are "evil," lies encouraging Americans to thrash out against the world blindly and violently. Thank God, there are still some people who can see and who can hear. Thank God, they have the courage to say the truth even when the masses don't want to hear it. In Dissent from the Homeland, religious scholars and theologians have analyzed America's abhorrent response to September 11 and are fighting back with words against the forces of lovelessness and lawlessness threatening America.Dissent from the Homeland is the most eye-opening book I have read in a longtime. These essays approach the response to September 11 from historical, aesthetic, sociological, and ethical perspectives, and the insights they offer are really astounding (my favorite essays are those by Wendell Berry and Stanley Hauerwas). American life is certainly in peril, and if the United States wants to save itself, it should begin here.