The New York Review of Books: The New World Order

I have included this essay by Tony Judt because it caused me unprecedented grief. We are watching our Republic being taken over by the twin riders of despotism: religion and militarism. The constraints of religious belief are being sold to us under the guise of freedom to exercise any religion, and the blind conformity of militarism as the supreme form of patriotism. And this is happening on our watch, to increasingly hollow-sounding huzzahs and traditional, beloved patriotic songs. Remember the film Cabaret, that sequence showing the pristine, angelic face of a blond teenager singing longingly of his homeland while the melody slowly morphs into a thumping, syncopated, and deafening Prussian march? These are thoughts for the Fourth of July.
The New York Review of Books: The New World Order