Liberal Outlook Research Articles

The Explorer and the President

The Explorer and the President Jan Golinski (bio) Sandra Rebok Humboldt and Jefferson: A Transatlantic Friendship of the Enlightenment charlottesville: university of virginia press, 20l4 ix + 220 pages; isbn: 9780813935690 if, as president kennedy famously suggested, the White House witnessed an extraordinary collection of talent when Thomas Jefferson dined alone, then how much more splendid the occasion when he entertained as his guest Alexander von Humboldt? Humboldt was widely regarded as the universal genius of his age, a man who impressed Goethe (no less) as having “no equal in information and lively knowledge.” He arrived in Washington in June 1804, at the end of five years’ journey through the Spanish colonies in the Americas, and in the course of a week’s stay in the capital visited President Jefferson several times. Many people must have wished to be present at those scintillating dinners. It is not surprising that Sandra Rebok was attracted by the intellectual magnetism of these two men and inspired to map the contours of their relationship. When he arrived, Humboldt told Jefferson that he had a “moral interest” (144) in visiting the American republic after his extensive travels in the lands still under Spanish rule. He brought with him the most accurate maps anyone had compiled of the territories he had visited, which later became Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico. He also shared his astonishing wealth of knowledge of the colonies’ botanical, miner-alogical, and climatic resources. For the Jefferson administration, the information was timely in the extreme. The Louisiana Purchase had been concluded a few months earlier, but knowledge of the still-disputed borderlands of the United States and the Spanish Empire was scanty. Jefferson was hungry for knowledge of the natural resources of the North American continent and had just dispatched Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their epic westward trek to find out more. He had many scientific [End Page 189] interests in common with Humboldt, and the two men shared the liberal outlook of enlightened intellectuals, but the geopolitical imperative behind their exchanges should not be overlooked. Unfortunately, there were no note-takers at the meetings, nor did either participant write an account of their conversations. Rebok relies on third-party reports of the visit and also reprints the fourteen letters that passed between the two men, a correspondence that began when Humboldt had just landed in Philadelphia and wrote to the president to get himself invited to the capital, and resumed sporadically after his return to Europe. In his introductory letter, the German explorer offered to bring his host information about the astronomical and meteorological observations he had made in his travels, and the remains of prehistoric animals and pre-Columbian civilizations he had excavated. It is a fair assumption that these topics featured in the conversations in Washington, which may well have ranged widely across social and political topics as well. Rebok compares the two men’s attitudes to a variety of questions that they might have discussed, including the fraught issue of slavery, to which Humboldt was fiercely opposed. As is well known, Jefferson had a more ambivalent attitude toward the peculiar institution; he claimed to oppose it in principle but did not foresee comprehensive emancipation of African American slaves in the near future. But perhaps slavery was too touchy a subject to be dwelt on at the White House dinner table? We are also told that Jefferson and Humboldt had different attitudes toward the Haitian Revolution, which had recently led to a declaration of independence by the formerly enslaved population, but we don’t know whether that topic came up in their meetings, either. In fact, although a great deal has been written about these two individuals, there is relatively little evidence about their relationship. Thus, Rebok faced the dilemma of how to give her book an overall shape after she had decided on its focus. She ends up comparing the views of her two principals on a wide range of subjects and sometimes wanders off the track, as when she contrasts their opinions of the seventeenth-century German geographer Bernhard Varenius, about whom Humboldt wrote little and Jefferson nothing at all. Rebok succeeds in illuminating the relationship...

The Impact of Liberalism on the Idea of Militarism according to the Doctrine of Zeev Jabotinsky

From the late 1970s, there was a debate on Jabotinsky’s approach to the idea of militarism. The argument revolved around two different opinions on the topic. The first opinion among the researchers saw his idea of militarism as an active concept that expresses correspondence between his opinions and the fascist ideas in Europe. It is certainly possible to see that the findings are commensurate with the opinions of the researchers who argue that according to Jabotinsky, the liberal outlook pertains to the person’s natural rights as a person, in contrast to classic and pure liberalism, which acts in the name of the free society. According to examination of his writings, it is safe to assume that, for Jabotinsky, the liberal values were more dominated than the militaristic values.

Heidegger on the Struggle for Belongingness and Being at Home

In 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville coined the term “individualism” to refer to the tendency for Americans to withdraw into their own desires and interests, thus weakening and diminishing the “habits of the heart” that bind a generation to the customs of their forebears and contemporaries. A problem, though, is that modern individualism undermines the very ideals—i.e. autonomy, equality, and freedom—that motivated it in the first place. Understood as a way of life, liberal individualism is permeated by alienation, estrangement, and thoughtless patterns of conformism. In what follows, I hope to show that hermeneutic phenomenology as developed by Martin Heidegger marks an important break from the modern liberal individualistic outlook. The point is to undercut the contrived interpretations of our current historical tradition in order to demonstrate that belonging to and sharing in the struggles of a generation are conditions for being human at all. This critique does not provide a panoptic or definitive account of the basis of a genuine community, but does give us a richer sense of place and purpose, beyond even what the current polis /political community designates (though it certainly includes it).

Founding Visions: The Ideas, Individuals, and Intersections That Created America by Lance Banning

Founding Visions: The Ideas, Individuals, and Intersections That Created America. By Lance Banning. Edited and with an introduction by Todd Estes. Foreword by Gordon S. Wood. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014. Pp. [x], 361. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8131-5284-4.) Founding Visions: The Ideas, Individuals, and Intersections That Created America is an anthology of thirteen fine essays by prizewinning historian of the American Revolution Lance Banning. In the years before Banning's death in 2006, he had considered bringing together his pieces from a variety of publications into one volume. Todd Estes, one of Banning's many Ph.D. students at the University of Kentucky, eventually completed the project. Estes has organized the essays that Banning had considered into five thematic parts. Estes has also provided useful introductions to each part that set the stage and offer guidance concerning the historians mentioned and the historiographical context. Gordon S. Wood's foreword serves as an encomium to a scholar whom Wood sometimes disagreed with but always respected. All published previously from 1983 to 1995--five of them in journals, the other eight in edited collections--the well-turned pieces chosen for this volume trace Banning's interventions in the prevailing historiography concerning ideology during and after the American Revolution. As Estes explains in his cogent introduction to the volume, Banning's main historiographical contributions came in three general thrusts. The first was to take issue with previous interpretations of late-eighteenth-century Jeffersonian thought, arguing that Jeffersonians were far more genuinely invested in republican ideology than historians had given them credit for. The second was to referee the surprisingly bitter debates among scholars in the 1970s and early 1980s concerning whether Americans continued to look at the world through republican lenses in the early national period, as many had before the Revolution, or whether they adopted a more liberal outlook; Banning judiciously suggested that both strands were discernible even within the thoughts of individuals. Finally, Banning untangled the previously knotty problem of James Madison's apparent about-face from a nationalist stance in the 1780s to one defending states' rights in the 1790s and beyond. Banning explained that Madison's thought indicated consistency on a variety of issues that transcended what might have appeared to be a major transition in Madison's views. In each of these areas, while no one can claim to have the last word, Banning's contentions are the ones often taken as the most authoritative. …

The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad by Joseph Conrad

Reviewed by: The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad by Joseph Conrad Cedric Watts (bio) Joseph Conrad. The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad. Edited by Laurence Davies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 553 pp. ISBN: 9780521191920. Obliged to "declare an interest," I necessarily begin with some reminiscences. In 1964 I submitted to the Examinations Office at Cambridge University my PhD thesis entitled "Joseph Conrad and R. B. Cunninghame Graham: Their Friendship in Its Literary Aspects." Part of that thesis was an edition of eighty-one letters from Conrad to Graham. In 1969, that section of the thesis was published by Cambridge University Press as Joseph Conrad's Letters to R. B. Cunninghame Graham. In my edition, I criticised G. Jean-Aubry's twovolume Joseph Conrad: Life & Letters, which at that time was the standard edition of Conrad's "collected letters." Of course, that Jean-Aubry edition, which did not purport to be complete, lacked thousands of letters. And, alas, the correspondence in Jean-Aubry's two volumes was badly edited. His transcriptions were often inaccurate, and so were his annotations. He had censored some of the letters without giving the reader any indication that censorship had taken place. My own edition had its flaws, of course. Since Conrad's French was comprehensible to me (although I had no formal qualifications in French), I deemed a translation unnecessary; but American reviewers soon persuaded me that a translation of the French would have been helpful. There was also an error in dating, and there were some proof-errors. But the reviewers were, on the whole, kind and even enthusiastic. [End Page 100] At that time, Professor Frederick R. Karl in New York had started to assemble the materials for a "Collected Letters." In view of the response to Joseph Conrad's Letters to R.B. Cunninghame Graham, in 1970 Cambridge University Press asked me to join Professor Karl in editing that new big collection. After discussion with Karl, and due reflection, I declined to do so. One reason was that, in the time available, I wished to write about numerous authors in whose works I found intriguing puzzles: Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Keats, Ibsen, and Graham Greene, for example. I recommended that, instead of me, the Press should employ Laurence Davies. At that time, I was supervising Laurence's Sussex University PhD thesis, "R.B. Cunninghame Graham and the Concept of Impressionism," and I had been greatly impressed by Laurence's range of abilities. To put it frankly: I believed he would do a better job on the "Collected Letters" than I could. He had a globe-trotter's energy, a lucid intelligence, a wide range of knowledge, a liberal outlook, and linguistic sensitivity. Time has vindicated my belief in his abilities. I looked on with growing admiration and, indeed, wonder, as the great sequence of volumes gradually emerged over the following thirty-seven years up to 2007. Laurence, at first collaborating with Fred Karl, emerged as the main editor of the immense series. At various times, he has been aided by numerous able co-editors: Owen Knowles, Gene M. Moore, and the late J.H. Stape, with the late Hans van Marle as a wise advisor, heading a large team of assistants. Nevertheless, Laurence has been the central figure in this immense project. And with every volume, his command has become more assured. He is immensely resourceful and energetic. He is formidably intelligent, and his cultural knowledge has such range and depth that anyone, however well qualified, should be able to learn from his introductions and annotations. His urbanity and scholarly acumen are leavened by a sense of humour and an appreciation of irony. Of course, in so vast an undertaking there were plenty of local errors. Usually these were corrected in a subsequent volume. At the same time, the Cambridge edition of Conrad's novels, tales, essays, and autobiographical writings has been proceeding. That Cambridge edition is indispensable, since it has yielded many valuable new readings, but it has been marred by the decision to remove house styling which Conrad generally accepted. The result is a Conrad whose style often seems under-punctuated, and sometimes, indeed, seems illogical or uncouth. To take...

A MAN AND HIS RIGHTS IN THE CONCEPTS OF ANCIENT REPRESENTATIVES OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND LEGAL THOUGHT

Emergence of the idea of human rights in V— VI centuries BC in ancient policies and emergence of the principle of citizenship became a major step on the way of humanity towards freedom and progress. The idea and practice of freedom and human rights was given to the world by the most famous of all ancient civilizations — Athens in the views of Heraclitus, Democritus, Protagoras, Antiphont, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, etc. Ancient Greek ideas about human rights formed as a part of mythological views that the polis or the citystate and its laws are of divine origin and are based on divine justice. Further development of sociophilosophical and political-legal concepts of human rights in Ancient Greece occurred in search and substantiation, along with the divine origin, of objective natural-legal basis for the existence of the polis, its laws and social existence of people. Natural-legal ideas of ancient Greek thinkers about freedom and equality of all human beings further developed in Ancient Rome, and especially in the philosophical and legal views of the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero, the ancient Roman thinker, philosopher and orator. In their teaching on human rights, the natural-legal idea of freedom and equality was extended beyond the narrow polis and ethnic framework and was expanded to all members of the humankind as fellow citizens of a single cosmopolitan state. According to the results of the conducted research, the author notes that the ancient thinkers, prominent representatives of philosophical, legal, and political thought of that time laid the foundations of the doctrine of human rights, which was further developed in the medieval beliefs of medieval representatives, especially in the views of the authors of the liberal world outlook of the New times. The English and American Age of Enlightenment, French bourgeoisdemocratic revolution have become a new important milestone and a new stage in theoretical development and practical realization of the centuries-old aspirations of people about their rights, freedom and equality of all people on the Earth.

Disenchantment with Liberalism in Post-Soviet Societies

In post-Soviet societies, liberalism has come to be perceived as contradictory to the rule of law and norms of decency, even as the antithesis of order and associated with chaos. However, it may be accurate to talk about disenchantment with misperceived liberalism and a defensive reflex by societies that are struggling with their post-totalitarian burdens in the face of misrepresented liberal ideas. It is important to analyze the reasons for, implications of, and ways to overcome this awkward phenomenon, since the major problems of the region cannot be solved without recourse to liberal ideas.The paper argues that the methods used to bring liberalism to a number of post-Soviet societies, particularly Russia, proved to be wrong. Nonetheless, we have to be optimistic about the prospects for developing liberal ideas in the region. For one thing, contrary to what is usually stated, the seeming disenchantment with liberalism does not follow from the civilizational underpinnings of contemporary post-Soviet societies. The basic ideas of liberal philosophy are not something unwanted by or alien to the great majority of post- Soviet people. Their disenchantment with liberalism is not a matter of general principles, but rather a collateral result of abuses of liberalism and systematic disinformation.It seems proper to assert that, after the collapse of the totalitarian system, post-Soviet societies have returned to their natural path of developing liberal values, which had been seriously interrupted by the Soviet system. A liberal outlook is indispensable to finding durable solutions to most problems and difficulties that have befallen post-Soviet societies. In the examples of Russia and Kazakhstan, it can be argued that a post-Soviet society will inevitably transition to a society with a more liberal outlook, if the internal demands for achieving this goal can be maintained. However, robust internal demands for liberalization can emerge only through promoting a kind of liberalism that is acceptable to the minds and hearts of the people and elites of post-Soviet countries, which takes into account the peculiarities of their economic and social structures.

Thinking Like an Economist: The Neoliberal Politics of the Economics Textbook

This article surveys 10 introductory economics textbooks to examine whether and how economics contributed to the rise of neoliberalism. It defines neoliberalism as a political rationality characterized by market constructivism. In contrast with conventional liberal approaches that view limited government as legitimized by the failure of naturalist markets, neoliberalism constructs the market as norm and means of government. Economics textbooks overall have a liberal outlook, as exemplified by Samuelson's classic, however, with three liberal subgenres: the imperfect market view, the free market view, and an institutionalist view. While the introductory textbook cannot be construed as an instruction manual for neoliberalism, the article nevertheless identifies two important neoliberal moments: the discussion of market-based forms of government and the rise of a new genre of principles textbook that urges students to “think like an economist.” The article concludes with novel insights on how economics may have contributed to the spread of neoliberalism.

Nigel Leask Robert Burns and Pastoral: Poetry and Improvement in Late Eighteenth-Century ScotlandRobert Burns and Pastoral: Poetry and Improvement in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland. Nigel Leask. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xiv+368.

<i>Nigel Leask</i> Robert Burns and Pastoral: Poetry and Improvement in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland<i>Robert Burns and Pastoral: Poetry and Improvement in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland</i>. Nigel Leask. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xiv+368.

Handling Diversity with Absolute Civility

Despite many advances in recent scholarship, a good deal of Mughal cultural historiography—not to mention the popular memory of the Mughal era—is still dominated by attention to the patronage and liberal outlooks of two figures, the Emperor Jalal al-Din Muhammad Akbar (r. 1556–1605) and his great-grandson, Prince Dara Shukoh (1615–1659), both of whom are viewed as having been especially, even heroically, tolerant toward the non-Muslims in their midst. However, while both of these men are certainly worthy of the attention they have received, the emphasis on their individual contributions to the Mughal attitude of ‘universal civility’ (ṣulḥ-i kull) has in some ways obscured the broader cultures of everyday tolerance that pervaded Mughal life in the seventeenth century. This article aims to present a preliminary—though far from exhaustive—survey of evidence for this broader and continuing Mughal approach to handling India’s diversity in the post-Akbar period and to try and connect it, via the suggestive comments of several influential European commentators of the early Enlightenment, to the larger connected histories of tolerance in global early modernity.

‘Herr Hitler's Nazis Hear an Echo of World Opinion’: British and American Press Responses to Nazi Anti-Semitism, September 1930–April 1933

Based on contemporary press articles and applying a comparative methodology, this study examines the responses of important British and American quality papers to the unfolding of Nazi anti-Semitism from September 1930 until April 1933. Besides reconstructing and comparing the press coverage, the study seeks to explain the patterns beneath the journalistic perceptions and interpretations of Nazi anti-Semitism in the liberal democracies. During the final years of the Weimar Republic the papers reported fully and critically on Nazi anti-Semitism, yet they underestimated its radical nature. The extent of the assault on the Jews following Hitler's seizure of power therefore surprised British and American observers. Between 30 January 1933 and the anti-Jewish boycott of 1 April 1933 the journalists struggled to grasp the nature of Nazi anti-Semitism and the role of Hitler therein. Ultimately, their reading of events in Germany was preconditioned by their own liberal democratic outlook. Even if they reached differing conclusions, they were united in their conviction that Hitler and the Nazis would not dare to continue their anti-Semitic campaign in the face of adverse ‘world opinion’.

Trust and Fiduciary Law

How can it be that the fiduciary relationship has trust at its core if trust is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the existence of such a relationship? My aim in this article is to make some arguments that I think might assist in solving that puzzle. First, I argue that fiduciary relationships are likely to be characterized by relatively ‘thick’ interpersonal trust. Secondly, I argue that moral duties referring to trust play a role in the justification of fiduciary duties, but that the role of trust in the underlying moral duties is contingent, yielding only a contingent connection between trust and fiduciary duties. Finally, I argue that a goal of fiduciary law should be enabling and supporting trusting relationships, but that this goal should be viewed within a broader liberal outlook according to which fiduciary law also enables and supports relationships on terms of detachment.

U.S. Social Work Practitioners’ Attitudes Towards Immigrants and Immigration: Results From an Online Survey

The purpose of this work was to survey social work practitioners regarding their attitudes towards immigrants, and to develop a multidomain scale measuring these attitudes. A convenience sample of 1,124 practitioners in 47 states participated in the survey, which was administered online. The 28 attitude questions were designed as Likert scale items probing five domains: immigrant assimilation, perceived threat, immigration policy, receipt of social services, and responsibilities of social workers towards immigrants. The practitioners exhibited positive attitudes towards immigrants in general, but were less favorable towards undocumented immigrants, reflecting the bifurcation of immigrants into deserving and undeserving populations, a problematic trend evident in society at large. Scale scores for the five domains were all strongly intercorrelated and did not appear to tap into different underlying domains around which attitudes varied. Thus, data from the five domains were collapsed into a single attitudes scale that had a test−retest reliability of 0.97 and a Cronbach's alpha of 0.95. More favorable attitude scales scores were predicted by Hispanic ethnicity, a liberal political outlook, higher income, and more community and professional contact with immigrants. Those working at organizations with “don't ask, don't tell” policies regarding client's documentation status and at agencies that provide services to undocumented immigrants had more favorable attitude scale scores. This study illustrates the need for social work to better address the impact of immigrant policies on access to services and clarify the professional ethics towards both legal and undocumented immigrants.

Liberal constitutionalism, constitutional liberalism and democracy

The tension that is often seen to exist between the ideals of liberalism and of democracy is examined in this paper in light of the distinction between two liberal outlooks at constitutional regimes, namely, on the one side, a liberal constitutionalism that focuses on the need to provide institutional safeguards of individual liberty as private autonomy and, on the other hand, a constitutional liberalism that focuses on the need to respect the freedom of individuals to choose the constitutional environment in which they wish to live. It is argued that a liberalism that consistently extends its fundamental ideal of individual sovereignty to the level of constitutional choice can be reconciled with the basic democratic ideal of citizen sovereignty.

The influence of American television programs on university students in Kuwait: a synthesis

This study used a synthesis of media gratification and cultivation perspectives to investigate the influence of American television programs on endorsement of equal gender roles and liberal attitudes to life in Kuwait. Analysis of the response of 364 university level students indicated four areas where programs could support the development of perceptions: presentation quality, utility, trans-cultural knowledge and information about American popular culture. Of these four areas, only the perception of utility predicted the development of a liberal outlook on life, while failing to predict approval of equal gender roles. Viewers of large amounts of American television are more likely to endorse equal gender roles and a liberal outlook on life.

Flatliners: Ideology and rational learning in the adoption of the flat tax

AbstractWhat factors explain the wave of adoption of the flat tax in Eastern Europe? It is argued in this article that, once the first few successes were underway, governments with liberal outlooks toward taxation adopted the reform through a process of rational learning: an often radically new government will tend to adopt the policy based on successful implementation of its neighbours. The issue of policy diffusion is approached by explicitly modeling the different mechanisms that might underlie the process. Little evidence is found for pure ‘bandwagoning’ in the adoption of the flat tax – the presence of other market‐minded reforms do not predict adoption of the flat tax, and contagion measures do not capture the dynamics of the adoption of the reform. Instead, rational learning, where economically right‐wing governments evaluated the success of the reform (as measured by their ability to attract foreign investment) in the medium term, plays the largest role. Rational emulation in a shorter time period contributes to the probability of adoption as well, as does a change to an economically liberal ideology.

The “Failure” Of Radical Nationalism and the “Silence” Of Liberal Thought in the Arab World

In the intellectual history of the Arab world, there is a remarkable dearth of literature on liberal thought. In comparison, nationalism and Islamism have attracted much more attention and molded our image of the Middle East. This essay takes a new look at liberal thought by arguing that scholars should not confine themselves to searching for an Arab “liberalism” in the form of intellectuals or organizations that describe themselves as “liberals.” It would be more fruitful to investigate the rise and decline of liberal ideas within the framework of ideologies that seem at first glance not to be liberal. Here, liberal ideas rarely develop by adopting Western liberal traditions but, rather, are the result of political struggles and experiences. Hence, liberal thought emerges from the criticism of authoritarian rule, even though some intellectuals may have advocated authoritarianism at an earlier stage. In the empirical part of this essay, I analyze four autobiographies of former radical nationalist activists from Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Although the authors still identify themselves as nationalists, they derived a more liberal outlook by reviewing their concrete political experiences.

Toward an Aesthetic Marine Biology

When I began teaching an introductory course on the biology of marine organisms for marine-science majors, it was with the conviction that these first-year students must be exposed not only to the scientific core of their discipline, but also to its relationship to the broader liberal arts and how these in turn have viewed the oceans and marine life. Such used to be the norm. For example, in 1872 John Ruskin, while the professor of fine art at Oxford University, viewed it as his responsibility to provide an appreciation of art to those who did not intend to practice it, as part of a liberal education that included the sciences.1 But a mid-twentieth-century editorial, “Education for Science” in Endeavour, indicated how the growth and specialization of science, together with the increasing expense of higher education, already had dimmed this vision since the Victorian era: “A return by modern men of science to the more liberal training and outlook of former days might be to their advantage, and the advantage of their work.”2

For better or for worse: Vietnamese international marriages in the new global economy

A tremendously important contribution to the study of gender and migration with its focus on the oft-ignored topic of masculinity. -Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, author of Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes This book should be required reading for anyone with an interest in transnationalism, migration, cross-border marriages, or postwar Vietnamese diaspora.-Nicole Constable, author of Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and Mail Order Marriages A beautifully conceptualized and fascinating book.-Barrie Thorne, University of California at Berkeley Marriage is currently the number-one reason people migrate to the United States, and women constitute the majority of newcomers joining husbands who already reside here. But little is known about these marriage and migration streams beyond the highly publicized and often sensationalized phenomena of mail-order and military brides. Less commonly known is that most international couples are immigrants of the same ethnicity. In For Better or For Worse, Hung Cam Thai takes a closer look at marriage and migration, with a specific focus on the unions between Vietnamese men living in the United States and the women who marry them. Weaving together a series of personal stories, he underscores the ironies and challenges that these unions face. He includes the voices of working-class immigrant men speaking about wanting traditional wives and young Vietnamese college-educated women, who express a preference for men of the same ethnicity but with a more liberal outlook on gender-men they imagine they will find in the United States. Thai captures the incompatible viewpoints of the couples who appear to be separated not only geographically but ideologically. Hung Cam Thai is an assistant professor of sociology and Asian American Studies at Pomona College.

On the ethics of war and terrorism

This book describes and explains the basic tenets of just war theory and gives a precise, succinct, and highly critical account of its present status and of the most important and controversial current debates surrounding it. Rejecting certain traditional, in effect medieval assumptions of just war theory and advancing a liberal outlook, it argues that every single individual is a legitimate authority and has, under certain circumstances, the right to declare war on others or the state. It also argues that just cause cannot be established independently of the other criteria of ius ad bellum (the justification for entering into war), except for right intention, which the book interprets more leniently than is traditional. Turning to ius in bello (which governs the conduct of a war) the book criticizes the doctrine of double effect and concludes that insofar as wars kill innocents, albeit as ‘collateral damage’, they cannot be just, but at best justified as the lesser evil. The book gives particular attention to the question why soldiers, allegedly, are legitimate targets and civilians not. Discussing four approaches to the explanation of the difference, it is argued that the four principles underlying them should all be taken into account and outlines how their comparative weighting can proceed when applied to concrete cases. The resulting approach does not square the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets with that between soldiers and civilians: this has extremely important consequences for the conduct of war. Finally, the book analyses the concept of terrorism, arguing that some forms of ‘terrorism’ are not terrorism at all and that, under certain circumstances, even terrorism proper can be justified.