The Sunday Reading List for this week comes from the Editor Emeritus of Dissent Magazine, Michael Walzer. His recent article ‘Learning to Listen’ calls for leftists in America to listen to their comrades abroad in an effort to make ‘internationalism’ work. It is a proposal for change in the approach of the Big Powers’ (of the West) foreign policy.
Shouldn’t we also be listening to people on the other side, our opponents, all the men and women we have to argue with—and all the people in the middle, too? Yes, of course, but that’s a different kind of listening, more like studying, trying to figure out what they think, and why, what their grievances are, and their prejudices, and their hopes. We listen to comrades; we do our best to understand the people we want to persuade—and may need to defeat.
Walzer is a prominent leftist public intellectual in America and has been an editor and writer for Dissent Magazine ever since its inception. He is currently a professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey.
Click here to access the article.
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