Ignatieff in Shreds

Yesterday I read a piece by Michael Ignatieff (the Carr professor of human rights at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, so clearly someone worth reading, no?) in the NYT Magazine called "Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?" It seemed like a promising title, but the very first lines caused a giant question mark to appear over my head. He appeared to be positing, from the last letter he wrote before he died, that Thomas Jefferson saw the day when America would become the imperialist empire we have today, enforcing the spread of freedom and democracy around the world. What? Well, I read on. I wasn't always sure just what Ignatieff was saying, but there were entire sections that made me really really mad. I've been thinking about it ever since I read it, planning to reread it and try to make sense of it or perform surgery on it.

So, imagine my pleasure when I discovered that someone else has done this work for me. At a fine blog called Broken Window, I found this post: "Deconstructing Michael: Ignatieff on the Butcher's Block." The author of this blog was even madder than I was, and clearly had a lot more time to work on surgery. I think Ignatieff's piece should be read first, then Broken Window's hatchet job. Then pass along any thoughts of your own.

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