Last Call for Liberty: How America's Genius for Freedom Has Become Its Greatest Threat

by Os Guinness

Overview

Logos Bookstore Association Award
World Magazine Book of the Year

The hour is critical. The American republic is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War. Conflicts, hostility, and incivility now threaten to tear the country apart. Competing visions have led to a dangerous moment of cultural self-destruction. This is no longer politics as usual, but an era of political warfare where our enemies are not foreign adversaries, but our fellow citizens.

Yet the roots of the crisis are deeper than many realize. Os Guinness argues that we face a fundamental crisis of freedom, as America's genius for freedom has become her Achilles' heel. Our society's conflicts are rooted in two rival views of freedom, one embodied in 1776 and the ideals of the American Revolution, and the other in 1789 and the ideals of the French Revolution. Once again America has become a house divided, and Americans must make up their minds as to which freedom to follow.

In the tradition of Alexis de Tocqueville, Guinness provides a visitor's careful observation of the American experiment. Discover here a stirring vision for faithful citizenship and renewed responsibility for not only the nation but also the watching world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781514009536
Publisher:	InterVarsity Press
Publication date:	11/07/2023
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Os Guinness (DPhil, Oxford) is the author or editor of more than thirty books, including Fool's Talk, Renaissance, The Global Public Square, A Free People's Suicide, Unspeakable, The Call, Time for Truth and The Case for Civility. A frequent speaker and prominent social critic, he has addressed audiences worldwide from the British House of Commons to the U.S. Congress to the St. Petersburg Parliament. He founded the Trinity Forum and served as senior fellow there for fifteen years. Born in China to missionary parents, he is the great-great-great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer. After witnessing the climax of the Chinese revolution in 1949, he was expelled with many other foreigners in 1951 and returned to England where he was educated and served as a freelance reporter with the BBC. Since coming to the U.S. in 1984, he has been a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was the lead drafter of the Williamsburg Charter, celebrating the First Amendment, and has also been senior fellow at the EastWest Institute in New York, where he drafted the Charter for Religious Freedom. He also co-authored the public school curriculum Living With Our Deepest Differences. Guinness has had a lifelong passion to make sense of our extraordinary modern world and to stand between the worlds of scholarship and ordinary life, helping each to understand the other - particularly when advanced modern life touches on the profound issues of faith. He lives with his wife, Jenny, in McLean, Virginia, near Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

Introduction—A New, New Birth of Freedom?
Question One: Do You Know Where Your Freedom Came From?
Question Two: Are There Enough Americans Who Care About Freedom?
Question Three: What Do You Mean by Freedom?
Question Four: Have You Faced Up to the Central Paradox of Freedom?
Question Five: How Do You Plan to Sustain Freedom?
Question Six: How Will You Make the World Safe for Diversity?
Question Seven: How Do You Justify Your Vision of a Free and Open Society?
Question Eight: Where Do You Ground Your Faith in Human Freedom?
Question Nine: Are You Vigilant About the Institutions Crucial to Freedom? A Republic or a Democracy?
Question Ten: Are You Vigilant About the Ideas Crucial to Freedom? Which Revolution Do They Serve?
Conclusion—America’s Choice: Covenant, Chaos, or Control?
Acknowledgments
Notes

What People are Saying About This

Shelby Coffey III

"Os Guinness has stood as a beacon of eloquence and insight. In a host of important books, he has chronicled the struggle of those who resist the modern world's descent into carnival culture. Last Call for Liberty is his masterwork—an urgent guide that leads out of the maze America has wandered into. For those who seek to understand the best of freedom's vital gifts, Guinness is the master class leader."

John Brandon

"If you care about the future of America—no matter where you are on the political spectrum—then do yourself a favor and read this book. I believe you will be encouraged to look at America in a new light, and hopefully all who love her will find a new energy to make her healthy again and keep her strong. Freedom-loving people everywhere will be grateful you did."

John Anderson

"It will be a tragedy of inestimable proportions for the American people if that great nation eats its own legendary commitment to freedom from within. Equally, to lose the leadership of the world's most powerful champion of liberty would be truly dangerous for non-Americans everywhere in these increasingly unsettled times. Os Guinness has gifted us magnificently with the insights and understanding of a lifetime in this book, which really needs to be read—urgently—across the length and breadth of the world."

Joseph Loconte

"With moral clarity and a deep sense of history, Os Guinness discerns the taproot of America's republican achievement as well as the forces that threaten to tear it asunder. In this penetrating critique of American democracy, Guinness emerges as the English voice of Alexis de Tocqueville—and not a moment too soon. Perhaps only an Englishman could deliver such a powerful reminder to Americans about why their revolution in human liberty has succeeded where others have failed. Against the prophets of gloom, Last Call for Liberty charts a pathway toward American renewal rooted in a bracing vision of human freedom."

Peter Feaver

"A timely and important book from one of the most insightful observers of American society and politics. Guinness argues that America's future depends on learning the right lessons from America's past. Provocative without being incendiary. Sobering without being gloomy. Inspiring without being glib."

Editorial Reviews

08/27/2018
British Evangelical firebrand Guinness (A Free People’s Suicide) raises the alarm about America’s declining freedom in this forceful, erudite polemic. He asserts that America contains two contradictory impulses: a striving to continue the Christian understanding of freedom found in the American Revolution, and the urge to collapse into the harmful, despotic, secularist version of liberty espoused in the French Revolution. In dense prose with frequently underdeveloped examples, he answers questions that he believes Americans should ask themselves about the country’s trajectory. These include how to define freedom (as increased capacity, rather than decreased restraint, in Guinness’s estimation), why freedom requires virtue, what methods of secularization opponents must fight, and why one must protect institutions to ensure freedom. Guinness also argues that non-Western religion cannot support freedom, the American Revolution was a truly conservative (not progressive) act, and civic education desperately needs resuscitation. In the end, the book becomes a call for return to what he views as the strong Christian morality of the Founding Fathers, grounded in restraint and respect for authority. Guinness’s impassioned tone, complex arguments, and dire warnings are sure to start conversations among readers interested in the intersection of politics and religion in America. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Os Guinness has stood as a beacon of eloquence and insight. In a host of important books, he has chronicled the struggle of those who resist the modern world's descent into carnival culture. Last Call for Liberty is his masterwork—an urgent guide that leads out of the maze America has wandered into. For those who seek to understand the best of freedom's vital gifts, Guinness is the master class leader."

Shelby Coffey III

"It will be a tragedy of inestimable proportions for the American people if that great nation eats its own legendary commitment to freedom from within. Equally, to lose the leadership of the world's most powerful champion of liberty would be truly dangerous for non-Americans everywhere in these increasingly unsettled times. Os Guinness has gifted us magnificently with the insights and understanding of a lifetime in this book, which really needs to be read—urgently—across the length and breadth of the world."

John Anderson

"With moral clarity and a deep sense of history, Os Guinness discerns the taproot of America's republican achievement as well as the forces that threaten to tear it asunder. In this penetrating critique of American democracy, Guinness emerges as the English voice of Alexis de Tocqueville—and not a moment too soon. Perhaps only an Englishman could deliver such a powerful reminder to Americans about why their revolution in human liberty has succeeded where others have failed. Against the prophets of gloom, Last Call for Liberty charts a pathway toward American renewal rooted in a bracing vision of human freedom."

Joseph Loconte

"A timely and important book from one of the most insightful observers of American society and politics. Guinness argues that America's future depends on learning the right lessons from America's past. Provocative without being incendiary. Sobering without being gloomy. Inspiring without being glib."

Peter Feaver

"If you care about the future of America—no matter where you are on the political spectrum—then do yourself a favor and read this book. I believe you will be encouraged to look at America in a new light, and hopefully all who love her will find a new energy to make her healthy again and keep her strong. Freedom-loving people everywhere will be grateful you did."

John Brandon