Last Call for Liberty, by Os Guinness

For many decades Os Guiness, a resident alien living in the U.S., has offered insightful and prophetic commentary on the state and direction of his adopted nation.  In Last Call for Liberty: How America's Genius for Freedom Has Become Its Greatest Threat he returns to themes he has addressed before, bringing his assessments up to date.

The United States is in a struggle between conflicting visions of freedom.  "A false and cancerous 'freedom' has started attacking healthy freedom."  From a historical perspective, Guinness characterizes it as a struggle between the ideals of the revolutions of 1776 in the United States and 1789 in France. The modern left in the U.S. is heir more to 1789 than 1776.  "The seismic shifts accompanying the 1960s counterculture, and in particular the shift from the older classical liberalism to the new Left/liberalism, were deliberate.  They represented a powerful counterrevolution that at numerous points has shown itself the true heir of 1789 . . . than 1776."

American liberty, Guinness writes, is built around covenant and community, not libertinism and communalism.  Unlike the French Revolution, the United States is built on free expression of religion, not on the rejection of religion.  The creeping influence of 1789 has had an impact on political life in the U.S.  "There are many partisans and few statesmen" in American public life.  As the last few years have shown, political divisions are deep.  "The 'Never Trumpers,' both Democrats and his fellow Republicans, and politicians, journalists, academics, as well as celebrities, have developed such a manic obsession about the president that they cannot see straight or talk of much else."  This "crisis," though, is less a reflection of one man's flaws, but of society's crisis of understanding of freedom.

Guinness doesn't leave the reader completely without hope.  But the wrong view of freedom, the "striking genius for freedom has become [America's] Achilles' heel and now threatens [America's] premature and quite unnecessary decline."  We can still "stay true to the better angels of [our] founding promise" but it seems like the decline into 1789 seems powerful and perhaps irreversible.  We need voices like Guinness's to keep us heading in the right direction.



Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!