Standpoint: nova e altamente recomendável revista

Num post em que cita a revista Dicta&Contradicta, André Azevedo Alves, no sempre excelente O Insurgente, dá uma ótima dica de leitura:

Entretanto, ontem foi-me gentilmente oferecido um exemplar da Standpoint (confesso que, por uma combinação de falta de tempo e de nos dias que correm adquirir cada vez menos jornais e revistas em papel, ainda não tinha comprado a versão offline da revista). Fiquei bastante bem impressionado com o formato e o grafismo – muito texto, boa arrumação e poucas concessões – que julgo combina bem com uma publicação que visa marcar terreno à direita e tem obrigatoriamente de se distinguir do carácter mais light e popular da Spectator.

Estão de parabéns Daniel Johnson e, em especial, a Social Affairs Unit e os vários patrocinadores e mecenas que apostam na revista.

Ainda não vi a Standpoint nas bancas de Lisboa. Vou encomendar meu exemplar. Enquanto isso, fiquem, como eu, bisbilhotando o site da revista. Vai a dica de alguns textos que já li:

American Revolution

GERARD BAKER
July 2008

To the happy congregation in Barack Obama’s church of fervid believers, the presumptive Democratic nominee for US President is like none that has ever come before him. The soaring oratory, delivered at vast rallies that can seem unsettlingly fascistic at times, hails a new dawn in American politics.

“We are the change we have been waiting for!” he cries. To which the multitudes respond repeatedly with idolatrous passion, if not much of an ear for grammar: “Yes We Can!”

Outro:

How Kosovo Created its Own Liberal Islam

MICHAEL J. TOTTEN FROM PRISTINA
July 2008

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. Some are concerned about what NATO, the United Nations, and the European Union have nurtured there since the military and humanitarian intervention in 1999. James Jatras, a U.S.-based advocate for the Serbian Orthodox Community, put it bluntly last year when he said Kosovo was a “a beachhead into the rest of Europe” for “radical Muslims” and “terrorist elements.” It’s an assertion without evidence. “We’ve been here for so long,” said United States Army Sergeant Zachary Gore in Eastern Kosovo, “and not seen any evidence of it, that we’ve reached the assumption that it is not a viable threat.”

E mais outro:

Reclaiming the Intellectual Life for Posterity

ALAIN DE BOTTON
July 2008

If you went to any university in the country and said that you had come to study “how to live”, you would be politely shown the door – if not the way to an asylum. Universities see it as their job to train you either in a specific career (law, medicine) or to give you a grounding in “the humanities” – but for no identifiable reason, beyond the vague and unexamined notion that three years studying the classics or reading Middlemarch may be a good idea.

The contemporary university is an uncomfortable amalgamation of ambitions once held by a variety of educational institutions. It owes debts to the philosophical schools of Ancient Greece and Rome, to the monasteries of the Middle Ages, to the theological colleges of Paris, Padua and Bologna and to the research laboratories of early modern science. One of the legacies of this heterogenous background is that academics in the humanities have been forced to disguise both from themselves and their students why their subjects really matter – for the sake of attracting money and prestige in a world obsessed by the achievements of science and unable to find a sensible way of assessing the value of a novel or a history book.

E para encerrar:

Democrats v Autocrats

PAUL WOLFOWITZ
July 2008

Robert Kagan’s latest book is a short but powerfully written argument about the return of great power conflict and the danger of believing that history is moving towards a world of liberal democracies living at peace with one another. The prospect of “a new era of international convergence” has faded. “History has returned,” he announces, and — however embattled the democracies may be — they “must come together to shape it, or others will shape it for them”.

Kagan somewhat overstates his case when he suggests that great power competition has been on the increase in recent years and that a 19th-century diplomat would instantly recognise the “elaborate dances and shifting partnerships” of today’s great power competition. Great power competition did not disappear with the end of the Soviet Union, but it is not clear that it is getting worse in recent years.