Power and the Idealists

During the 1960s, political protest erupted on continental Europe and in America. Protesters opposed the morally corrupt capitalistic system of democratic governments and the evil of military interventions. Yet thirty-five years later, many of these protesters had become conventional politicians: for example, Bill Clinton and Joschka Fischer favored NATO-led military intervention in the Balkans. In WHY THE LEFT HATES AMERICA, Paul Berman masterfully traces the intellectual and moral evolution of an impassioned generation—and gives an acute analysis of what it means to go to war in the name of democracy and human rights.