Review of Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious (Zondervan, 2025), by Ross Douthat

I don’t usually write about religion here. But I think there are several good reasons for engaging with Ross Douthat’s new book on religious faith. First, because I share Douthat’s assessment that religious practice and belief are of great sociological importance, their decline in recent decades has had at least mixed results, and the fact that there seems to be something of a cultural shift in which people are groping for more meaning than is offered by an ethos of secular liberalism on the left or individualistic capitalism on the right.

In addition, as a self-critical leftist, I am trying to better understand the world, and understand where both liberals and lefties may have gone wrong in recent years. More broadly, I firmly believe that the left needs to be more open and welcoming of religious belief in its many forms. Just as it is not healthy for American politics to be divided into white and non-white political tribes, it will profit no one for America to be divided between a religious right and an atheist left.

And finally because Douthat, as a public intellectual, embodies many of the virtues I aspire to: he is humble, open-minded, respectful of alternatives and the inevitably incomplete nature of our individual (or tribal) assessments of the world, and he is interested in big ideas. The fact that he is a conservative Catholic, while I am neither of those, only makes engaging with this book more valuable.

In his book Believe, Douthat, a New York Times columnist, makes a case for general religious belief. He notes that Americans are in a different place culturally than, say, 20 years ago, which saw the publication of aggressive “new atheist” tracts from the likes of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris. The percent of Americans who are religious has continued to decline (though there is some evidence that it has leveled off this past year) and there is now maybe more yearning for, and even nostalgia for, a more believing time.

Moreover, concerns about an empty, secular individualism becoming the dominant public culture are neither new nor confined to the right. In the 1980s, for instance, political theorists debated between communitarian and liberal perspectives. The communitarians, some of whom were more leftist than the liberals, argued that a shallow secular liberal culture was too hollow to sustain itself. Furthermore, there is pretty clear evidence that things have not gotten uniformly better as America has become less religious. While we have thankfully become more culturally open and pluralist on issues like gay marriage, we have also become more lonely, divided, angry, and dysfunctional. Of course there are many contributing factors to that (Think that neoliberal capitalism is a key contributor? Welcome to the left!). But it is plausible that the decline of religious practice is one of them.

In Douthat’s words, “relative to twenty years ago there is more discussion of the obvious sociological importance of institutional religion, its crucial shaping role in human culture, and its foundational place in the development of the modern democratic order. And there is more fear that a post-Christian or post-religious future might yield not liberal optimism and leaping scientific progress but tribalism, superstition, and despair.” (2-3). As Derek Thompson in The Atlantic notes, religion exiting the public sphere may leave a massive, unfilled void in its place, rather than a more enlightened alternative. For those interested, Thompson has a nice interview with Douthat on his Plain English podcast at The Ringer.

On the scholarly side, a detailed study of the sociological role played by religion in American life can be found in Robert Putnam’s American Grace. And various figures and writers on the left, like United Automobile Workers President Shawn Fain, Reverend William Barber, public intellectual Cornel West, and political theorist William Connolly (the latter not conventionally religious but a political theorist who is very critical of secularism) have discussed the centrality of their religious faith and/or problems with a wholly secular worldview. I mention these people just to reiterate that there is nothing strange or problematic about being on the left and being interested in religion.

Okay, on to Douthat’s arguments for why everyone should choose some form of religion. He begins by saying that he doesn’t want to make a case that you should shush your doubts and just jump into religious practice and then belief will follow (the fake-it-til-you-make-it approach), nor does he insist that if we engage in the most abstruse rational argumentation that this will prove religion’s veracity.

Rather, he is going to use evidence and arguments that appeal to the everyday reason and commonsense that we all possess and use to make sense of our world. As he says, he wants to not merely invoke the spiritual but “to think rationally about it” and to hopefully show that religion “offers wisdom and protection that in today’s spiritual landscape are in dangerously short supply.” (10). His argument “is that the basic justifications for a religious worldview are readily accessible to a reasonable human being.” (111).

The first topic he tackles is physics. Douthat’s main point, which rings true, is that the basic history and structure of the universe seems to suggest some kind of creator. The elegance of the mathematical equations that describe the movements of the cosmos at least raise the question why the universe is not merely a void of random chaos. But the second, and to me more powerful point, is that the big bang surely feels like an act of creation. If the universe was created by some sort of deity or higher power, is this not what it would look like? This deity snaps their fingers and the universe explodes into existence? At a precise point in time that we can measure, no less.

This takes us to ideas that go back to the Ancient Greeks, that to explain the beginning of the universe requires some sort of prime mover, or first cause, to get everything else going. I generally call myself agnostic. But if there is an argument for deism, the belief that there is some higher entity who created existence, this is it. This doesn’t take you all the way to accepting any particular religious faith of course. It will, however, get many, myself included, to concede that some form of deism might be the best explanation for how the universe came to be.

The second, and fascinating point of argument, concerns consciousness, the mind, and neuroscience. In Douthat’s interpretation, when we consult the latest findings of neuroscience, not to mention reflections from the best philosophers, we still don’t understand consciousness. Self-awareness, what it is, how it comes to be, continues to be something of a black box.

For all the advances in neuroscience, consciousness remains a miraculous mystery. Consider its existence throughout the animal kingdom: consciousness in a crow, a jaguar, an orca, is a truly stunning feat, let alone in human beings. Now consider our computer age: generative AI like ChatGPT has no more consciousness than a pocket-watch, in part because we have no idea how consciousness works or how it is created. Here again I generally  agree with Douthat—we have no idea how consciousness operates and simple material explanations don’t seem adequate. (On this topic I am looking forward to reading David Bentley Hart’s All Things Are Full of Gods). 

If you are committed to the idea that consciousness is not mere delusion, not just something produced and determined by chemicals in the brain, if you believe humans and other animals have something like free will, you are stuck in a weird place. It is not at all clear that we can account for these things through a purely material explanation—we may need something like the old mind/body dualism to make sense of them. And if there is something in us, a mind perhaps, that doesn’t reduce to mere brain matter, what are the implications? I’ll leave this question hanging.

In political terms could this make room for strange bedfellows on this issue? Humble people on the left and right, religious and non-religious, who don’t want us to merge with AI, who see humans as embodied mammals, who don’t want a techno-futurist singularity to emerge, and who see natural life, of humans and animals, as sacred? Perhaps such people might agree on various regulations and strong norms regarding big tech, AI, etc., though the stumbling blocks are substantial and that is a topic for another time…

The next chapter concerns miracles and evidence of the supernatural in the world today. The common disenchantment story says that as modern science came to explain more of the world, human life became “disenchanted” and we stopped seeing supernatural hands and actors behind every event. A medieval world full of spirts came to be replaced by a modern world full of mechanistic laws. This argument, which has plenty of truth to it, is explored brilliantly in Charles Taylor’s lengthy A Secular Age.

However. As Douthat observes, “when intellectuals stopped taking mystical experiences seriously, actual human beings kept on having the experiences.” (69). Here I am much more skeptical—not that such experiences happen, for they clearly do, but that we can draw any clear metaphysical conclusions from them. Crazy coincidences, UFO sightings, a broken record player that mysteriously turns on during a wedding. These things do happen. Douthat strenuously argues that such experiences have not gone away in our more scientific and disenchanted age. This is an interesting point, no doubt, though we might still dismiss many of them as confirmation bias or things conjured up by “the power of the human mind to generate what it wants to hear or see” (84), (Douthat’s words). I frankly think this, combined with simple mistakes of interpretation, can account for most of these uncanny experiences, though it is fascinating that some of these experiences come unbidden. The same goes for the sheer strangeness of near death experiences. I guess, for me, there is no clear takeaway. Things happen that defy explanation, yes. But what to make of them? Much less certain.

In my life, as with Douthat himself, the miraculous tends to assume more prosaic forms: falling in love, becoming a father, developing lifelong friendships, growing up in a loving home with two amazing parents. Of course, from my own gut perspective, these are far more rich and meaningful than an encounter with the uncanny. Perhaps I am mistaken.

The book then makes the case for joining a religious practice/tradition, not just experimenting alone. This is because, as Douthat argues, it is harder to commit to something solo, and because the major faith traditions of the world are likely to have endured because they each, in their own way, connect to some features of the divine. Any is better than none, he suggests. A lot more could be said here but I don’t want the review to get too unwieldy. Let me just say that if more Americans participated in religious institutions, as well as all sorts of other civic organizations, from bowling leagues to yoga groups, our political culture would likely be in a healthier state.

How about possible criticisms? There are at least three that stand out to me, one cosmological, one scientific, and one moral. First the cosmological: the arguments Douthat points to, many of which I think have merit, seem to argue at most for deism, not to the much more specific theological claims of the real religions of the world, many of which advocate a very active, personal, theistic God. This is a big leap and one that he tackles. His argument, in short, is that all the major faith traditions are likely to get at some truths about the divine and so it makes sense to follow one’s gut and go where one is drawn. Anywhere is better than nowhere, to reiterate his claim. So I suppose he would suggest I look into practices within the major faiths that are most aligned with my own leanings about the nature of the universe. Perhaps versions of Buddhism, a unitarian Church, maybe the immanent Christian explorations of Tolstoy, though the latter don’t fit as well with collective engagements.

The second point concerns the scientific method. To simplify, the modern scientific method works, more or less. It gives us life-saving medicines, planes that fly, and deep insights into the nature of the cosmos. Any religious turn that saw a widespread abandonment of this would be a massive loss, for the insights into reality that have been uncovered in modernity are truly stunning. Douthat largely concedes this point, indeed his argument centers around the claim that modern scientific knowledge suggests a world ordered by a divine hand.

The third point is the moral one, namely the problem of pain and suffering. This is a standard stumbling block for many people of good will and a classic issue for religious believers to wrestle with.

As for the problem of pain, not to be hyperbolic, but how can there be an all-powerful, loving God and the Holocaust? This isn’t just a moral intuition, a gut-feeling. This question is probably the most damning challenge to theism imaginable—far more so than the misplaced claims of the new Atheists that religion is the source of most evil in the world. As an atheist friend of mine correctly pointed out in grad school, nationalism as an orienting force has probably killed more people than all the world’s religions combined. Which is to say, the reason to be skeptical of religion isn’t because of the claims of Harris or Hitchens. (Ben Burgis points out, in a thoughtful book on Hitchens, that Hitchens’ God Is Not Great is filled with pretty bad arguments against religion).

And Douthat rightly criticizes the lazy atheist argument that religion is the cause of most wars, or more broadly, most evils in human history. As he says, “there is no good evidence that religion has been a special source of violence in human history, as compared to the entirely worldly and secular aims of conquest or resource control that drive most warfare between countries and peoples.” (161). Agreed.

As for the problem of pain, Douthat recognizes it as a key debate and challenge that believers, especially Christians, have been wrestling with as long as we have had these religions. It doesn’t have easy answers. Rather, he tries to show that it doesn’t defeat all claims to belief. 

He also ends with an admirable and honest discussion of how he came to his own faith. I don’t have the historical knowledge to assess discussions on the veracity of the gospels, though I shared his experience of being blown away by the Gospels when I read them in their entirety for the first time. For some time in college I was more or less a Tolstoyan pacifist Christian, and maybe still am. I certainly have never lost my interest in Christian writers on the left.

Let me conclude on some strong points—I agree with Douthat that a fully materialist account does not seem able to explain the entirety of the world, especially consciousness and free will (both of which I believe exist among animals, most obviously humans, but also among mammals and birds), and that the very existence of the universe and its seeming laws suggests the hand of a prime mover. Thinking big picture, what does that tell you? I’m not sure. 

For more on this topic, see the following:

Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos. A philosopher, he rejects both materialism and theism, arguing for a third way of viewing the universe and its purpose.

David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind. This is a long, dense book that delves into the most complex questions and problems of consciousness. Perfect if you want a philosophical deep dive.

Meghan O’Gieblyn, God, Human, Animal, Machine. A thoughtful book on related topics, discussing the connections between religion, AI, human consciousness, animal life, and more. I reviewed it in an earlier blog post.

David Bentley Hart, All Things Are Full of Gods. Next on my reading list. Hart is a thoughtful theologian discussing in detail the materialist worldview.

Alternative Perspectives on Work: David Frayne, The Refusal of Work (Bloomsbury: New York, 2015)

David Frayne, a sociologist, has written a fascinating book on the nature of work, titled The Refusal of Work. In the book Frayne engages with a number of theorists who have criticized contemporary work culture and then interviews a number of people who, for various reasons, chose to either reduce their work hours or completely leave the world of paid employment. The book is worth engaging with because it is a well-written provocation arguing for a fundamental rethinking of the nature of work. 

In Frayne’s words, “work represents a highly naturalized and taken-for-granted feature of everyday life.” Yet “consider the woeful failure of today’s labour market to keep pace with the desire for jobs that allow for self-expression and creativity.” (p. 5) Frayne goes on to say that “the world of paid employment” is often defined by “drudgery, subordination, and exhaustion.” (p. 5).

As Frayne asks simply, “What is so great about work that sees society constantly trying to create more of it?” (p. 13). This leads to the following question.

Why do people work? For many reasons. “The social system of advanced industrial societies is constructed so that working is often the only way that most people can meet their needs. This includes material needs—for food, clothing, shelter—and also more complex psychological needs, such as the need for social recognition and esteem.” (p. 21).

Frayne rightly says that we shouldn’t be criticizing workers as dupes or idiots. Work can be very meaningful and rewarding at its best. Even mediocre jobs bring some forms of meaning and pleasure, as well as social recognition and camaraderie. Rather, what is needed is a “critique of work, and specifically not a critique of workers, i.e. what is offered is a critique of the moral, material, and political pressures that bear down on the worker, and not a set of judgments about the attitudes of workers themselves.” (p. 22).

Frayne considers other societies where work was less central and the many transformations in law, cultural norms, and economic need that led to work taking such a prominent place within capitalism (he mentions key works by Max Weber and E.P. Thompson). “Work has not always been at the center of society’s moral, cultural, and political life” and so the question becomes whether we can move towards a future in which people work much less than they do now” (29). The goal in reducing work time is to increase time for “autonomous self-development.” (p. 29).

Drawing on social critic Andre Gorz, Frayne suggests that there could be multiple benefits to everyone working less. More time with friends and family, more time for self-development and pursuit of whatever projects we happen to find interesting as individuals, more time outdoors, and more time not under the direction of someone else. In addition, Gorz thought that more time under our own control would improve conditions at work—workers would demand more democratic control of their workplaces and would also likely be happier and more productive during shorter days. This rings true. Anyone who has worked eight hour shifts, day after day, knows that there can be enormous lulls in energy and productivity.

Shorter work, shared more equally, could also help relieve unemployment. “One of the goals of a policy of shorter working hours would be to remedy the maldistribution of work by sharing the available work more equitably among the population. Everyone should work less so that everyone may work, and so that all may benefit from an increase in free-time.” (p. 38). 

If such steps could reduce the experience of unemployment they would mark a dramatic improvement in the quality of life for many. In an economy and culture where work is necessary, both materially and symbolically, the costs of unemployment can be enormous. As Frayne says, “in the context of a work-centered society, unemployment represents a kind of no-man’s land: a dead time, degraded by financial worries, social isolation, and stigma.” (p. 38).

Why doesn’t this just happen by default as technology advances and the economy becomes more productive? In other words, what happens to savings in work time, i.e. productivity increases in capitalism? They are reabsorbed “into the economy via the creation of more work. Free-time in which citizens are neither producing nor consuming commercial wealth is useless to capitalism.” (p. 39).

Another key reason to shift how we think about work and how it is structured is the hyper-competitive, ineffective labor market found in wealthy countries today. As Frayne points out in this lengthy, depressing passage: “For those attempting to insulate themselves from the shifting currents of the labor market by investing in education, the old guarantee that educational credentials ensure a future of secure, well-paid  and interesting work is also being eroded. An extensive analysis…suggests that a combination of factors—the rapid expansion of higher education, the globalization of job competition, and the deskilling of work—are leading huge numbers of graduates into an opportunity trap, as they fail to find a home for their specialized skills in the labor market.” (p. 42). Indeed, in wealthy countries like the United States or United Kingdom there are far more educated college graduates seeking favorable employment than there are good jobs available.

This is depressing. Let’s move on to the more positive aspect of the book. What would more genuine work look like? “We can define true, meaningful work as work in which people are allowed to carry out tasks in accordance with their own technical, aesthetic, and social criteria, i.e. to work in accordance with their own ideas of efficiency, beauty, and usefulness.” (p. 63). But too few people find work that lives up to this ideal.

Frayne notes that the corollary of a work-focused society is that we have little genuine leisure time. The number of self-help books on how to slow down and enjoy life combined with the constant reporting on how to achieve work-life balance suggest that people want more leisure and a slower pace. And when does work end? When so much of our time outside of work is spent traveling to and from work, preparing for work, doing chores, etc, when are we truly free to just slow down and enjoy life? As Frayne asks, when do we “become truly free to experience the world and its culture?” (p. 69).

To reiterate, what are some valuable things we can do if we work less, i.e. why would it be good to work less? If we have more free time we have more time for activities that “are intrinsically valuable, i.e. because they develop our personal capacities, or enrich our friendships, or simply because we love to do them.” (p. 75).

The second half of the book then shifts to interviews with people who have intentionally reduced the role of paid work in their lives. Some of them moved from full time to part time jobs, others left the workforce completely. Why? The answers of course varied but in general “the purpose of switching to a part-time role was to feel less exhausted, and hopefully rediscover a thirst for creative activities.” (p. 123).

“In each case the interviewees expressed a strong desire to live with intention.” (p. 128). “People were motivated by a sense of genuine utility: a desire to create, help others, and avoid ethically dubious work…all balked at the idea that the most noble way to contribute to the wider community is to perform paid work.” (p. 155). The profiles are fascinating as are the communities that people found as they moved away from work-centered life and the professional rat race.

Frayne says a goal of his book, and one of its accomplishments, I would add, is to “dispel the false dichotomy which says that a person is either working or doing nothing of any value.” (p. 233). His interviews demonstrate that people often chose to work less so that they had more time to do a range of other things they found valuable, from volunteer work to time with friends and family to writing and other creative endeavors. They certainly didn’t reduce their hours of paid work so that they could “do nothing.” 

In The Refusal of Work Frayne is not attempting to provide a detailed, technical blueprint for how to construct a world with far less (but more meaningful) work. Rather, he is offering a provocation and a guide for thinking big. And in this he succeeds dramatically. 

Perspectives on Foreign Policy Part Two: Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson, The Myth of American Idealism (New York: Penguin Press, 2024)

Let me restate what I’m doing here. My last blog post was a review of Walter Russell Mead’s Special Providence. Today I will discuss Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson’s The Myth of American Idealism. Why bring together Mead and Chomsky-Robinson? To facilitate a discussion between different perspectives and hopefully produce some insight. Mead represents the thoughtful articulation of a more or less mainstream, relatively positive appraisal of American foreign policy, while Chomsky-Robinson offer a thoughtful leftist critique. 

For those unfamiliar with him, Noam Chomsky is a famous linguist, philosopher, and critic of American foreign policy, whose major works date back to the 1950s and 1960s. Nathan Robinson is the editor in chief of Current Affairs, a left-leaning magazine. Why did they write this book? In the preface to The Myth of American Idealism, Robinson explains the origins and purpose of the book, namely to coauthor a work that would bring together “into a single volume” Chomsky’s “central critiques of U.S. foreign policy.” (Preface, xii). Chomsky’s lifetime of commentary can be daunting, as it ranges across decades of books, articles, and interviews. For those unfamiliar with Chomsky’s critique of American foreign policy it is worth the time to set out the basic principles guiding his argument. This is what Chomsky and Robinson set out to do.

As a starting point, and contrary to what many critics of Chomsky think, he does not claim that the U.S. is uniquely bad or oppressive. Far from it. Rather, the U.S. acts in a manner similar to previous dominant powers. “The United States is very much like other powerful states. It pursues the strategic and economic interests of dominant sectors of the domestic population.” (4-5).

This lack of uniqueness is key to the Chomsky and Robinson critique. Yes, leaders in the US often use the language of Wilsonian idealism (as Mead discusses in his book). But consider the British Empire. Does anyone doubt that its leaders often used lofty, benign, and sweeping rhetoric to defend their decades of global rule? And how seriously do we take those proclamations now?

Many imperial actors, and even leaders of aggressive states actively making war, declare benign intentions—witness Putin today or the heads of the Axis powers during World War II. The authors run through a gamut of world leaders offering lofty language to defend acts of violent conquest. Thus, declarations of benign intent are almost universal and should therefore be seen as largely meaningless. As Chomsky and Robinson bluntly put it, “sensible people pay scant attention to declarations of noble intent by leaders, because they are a universal. What matters is the historical record.” (4).

As Chomsky and Robinson suggest, once you look beneath the public rhetoric and dive into the archive of classified conversations among American statesmen you generally find appeals not to high-minded ideals but to that concept known as the “national interest.” It is a fairly vague concept but one that mainstream accounts tend to take for granted. Again, the authors argue that this is a universal trait of powerful states, both now and in the past.

According to the authors this is precisely where we should start asking questions. For the “term national interest is itself a euphemism, for what is usually meant is the interest of a small sector of wealthy domestic elites.” (7).

This is an essential part of their analysis. Mead, representing a more mainstream perspective in my previous blog, doesn’t really offer a detailed account of how American foreign policy gets made. He discusses prominent policy-makers and gestures as national security elites, but his overall account generally presumes that American democracy works more or less as it should and thus policy tends to reflect the diverse mix of perspectives among the American public. In an insightful chapter late in his book Mead suggests that the foreign policy elite are becoming disconnected from the wider public. What for Mead is a concerning new development is for Chomsky and Robinson a basic, longstanding feature of American politics.

What exactly has this elite-dominated foreign policy looked like? Chomsky and Robinson focus primarily on American foreign policy in the past century, especially since World War II when the U.S. fully embraced its role as successor to the British Empire. Starting during World War II and continuing to today the United States has sought global “military and economic supremacy.” (10).

Why might this be a problem? They note that “discussions of foreign policy are often cool, abstract, and antiseptic.” (12). Yet in practice the stakes are often life and death for real human beings. This is a valuable contribution of the book. By focusing on American interventions abroad, whether overt wars or covert CIA actions, they draw our attention to the real, lived consequences of these policies. A coup in Guatemala leads to decades of brutal military dictatorship and civil war. Real human beings die by the thousands.

But why focus on the United States? Because, “as the global superpower, the U.S. poses unique risks; it is more consequential if a powerful country departs from a moral standard than if a weak one does” (16). This connects to the basic moral standard guiding their analysis: We should focus on American crimes because a) the United States is the global hegemon, so its actions have major consequences, b) we should hold ourselves to the same or higher standards that we hold others, and c) because as Americans we have the most ability to effect the actions of our own government. In their words, “it is helpful, when assessing U.S. conduct, to ask a simple question: How would we judge a given act  if it were performed by a rival power rather than ourselves?” (17).

Their guiding argument is that as Americans we should focus on our own policies. As Americans, we can exercise the most influence on our own government. Yes, we should unequivocally condemn the tyranny of the Chinese Government as it suppresses dissent, and likewise the grotesque imprisonment of anti-war protesters in Russia. But the government we have the most ability to influence is our own. Though oligarchic, America is remarkably free and we have the ability and responsibility to focus our attention on its actions.

In Mead’s typology this is a very Jeffersonian impulse and one that I fundamentally share. We should focus on making America more democratic and draw down our imperial commitments abroad. Unfortunately, as Mead notes in his book, the Jeffersonian perspective is not a dominant one in American foreign policy.

Internal policy documents also reveal a hubristic mindset that should be horrifying in any democracy—namely the assumption that we have the right to interfere anywhere, anytime, for any reason, all across the world. “It is simply assumed that it is U.S. prerogative to decide which leaders we will put up with.” (30). The book is replete with examples of Presidents and Senators simply assuming that we have to right to invade any country we want, whenever we want.

Chomsky and Robinson then provide detailed examples of key moments and elements in the history of American foreign policy. The chapter on the Vietnam War is a horrifying and damning example of what an unjust war looks like. There are also chapters on the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Latin American intervention. These chapters in Part One of the book serve as a series of case studies in empire—this is what empire actually involves when you get past anodyne phrases about “intervention” and “regime change.”

Chapter nine examines the domestic power structure in the US and how it produces foreign policy. As they say, “the broad American public has little influence over U.S. foreign policy. In fact, divergence between public opinion and state action is frequently sharp.” (235).

Why? According to Robinson and Chomsky, “in highly unequal countries, the public’s role in decision-making is limited. In the United States, as elsewhere, foreign policy is designed and implemented by small groups who derive their power from domestic sources.” (239). Indeed, there is considerable social science literature on how a small set of wealthy, well-connected elites have the most domestic power. This research ranges from Mills and Domhoff writing in the mid-century to Gilens and Page, Winters, Hacker and Pierson, Ferguson, and other mainstream scholars writing today. It is all well-worth reading. 

The most simple way of stating the principle is that “concentration of wealth yields concentration of power” and, as Piketty and many others have demonstrated, the US is an extraordinarily unequal society with massive concentrations of private wealth. (239). Therefore, public opinion tends to be far removed from foreign policy.

This is a strength of Robinson and Chomsky relative to Mead’s account—they have a much more clear, explicit theory for how foreign policy gets made. It is of course contestable. But compared to Mead’s work, which is vague and impressionistic on this score, Chomsky and Robinson are remarkably concrete and cogent.

Chapter 11 deals with media coverage of American foreign policy. They note that in the US we have tremendous freedom to say what we want. Unfortunately, mainstream media coverage does not actually give voice to a particularly wide range of perspectives. “Major media corporations…reliably reflect the assumptions and viewpoints of U.S. elites. They contain spirited criticism and debate, but only in line with a system of presuppositions and principles.” (272). This is merely a brief introduction to the media critique Chomsky offers in other works like Necessary Illusions and Manufacturing Consent (coauthored with Edward S. Herman). 

The kind of critique undertaken by Chomsky and Robinson can be grim work. They realize that “to ask serious questions about the nature and behavior of one’s own society is often difficult and unpleasant.” (293). But it is necessary, as they argue at the outset of the book. The more common path, however, is just the opposite. “It is cheap and easy to deplore the crimes of others, while dismissing or justifying our own. An honest person will choose a different course.” (294). Chomsky has in other interviews and essays mentioned a famous passage from the New Testament to defend this perspective, in which Jesus says that we should focus on removing the “mote” from our own eyes rather than pointing out the “stick” in someone else’s eye. This is, frankly, a very different impulse from that which tends to guide mainstream foreign policy debate. But in its humility and decency, it is the right one.

Connecting to the previous post on Mead’s Special Providence, are Chomsky and Robinson Jeffersonians, in Mead’s sense? Overall, yes, not in the mild sense that Mead himself endorses but in the more radical Jeffersonian tradition dating back to Mark Twain. Chomsky and Robinson think that Americans, both statesmen and citizens, should focus on making American democracy more democratic, more peaceful, and more humane, setting a positive example for the rest of the world. This is how you promote and improve democracy, not by attempting to impose order on the rest of the world. 

One key point of difference between Mead and Chomsky-Robinson is that Mead thinks the American public is fairly hawkish. I’m skeptical of this point, as are Chomsky and Robinson. Indeed, they cite a large number of opinion polls that demonstrate widespread public support for diplomacy, negotiation, resolving disagreements through the UN, and so on. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that American policymakers pursue wars because they are under intense public pressure to do so. The truth seems to be closer to the opposite, which is exactly what Chomsky and Robinson argue. Namely, politicians engage in concerted publicity campaigns in an effort to drum up popular support for war. And this “support” is often very shallow. In the run up to the Iraq War in 2003 polls showed that a majority of Americans supported military action. But as soon as the war became costly, and the reasons for war were exposed as deceptive, this support collapsed. The lasting unpopularity of the Iraq War not only impacted the elections of 2006 and 2008 but continues to exercise a substantial influence over both parties and the broader culture in America. 

Chomsky and Robinson’s book can make for depressing reading and there are many more components that could be examined. But they end on a hopeful note, that democratic movements, led by ordinary citizens, can change the world for the better. In the case of US foreign policy this would involve a radical rethinking of our role in the world, one that serves the cause of democracy not by force but by example.