Left Hand of God

THE LEFT HAND OF GOD

Taking Back Our Country From Religious Right

By Michael Lerner

This is a timely book to the American audience who will be going for election for a new President in 2008. The author is a liberal minded Rabbi of Jewish faith. He has prepared an elaborate treatise say a long manifesto to bring our basic changes in the present American administration thru implementing a kind of spiritual awakening as against the material interests.

The author has given a factual history of the political changes that came in the American minds during the last so many decades since the end of world war I thru world war II Roosevelt to Bush. The running after material gains and consequent formation of commercial and business conglomerates have subverted the original constitutional processes. Both Republican and Democratic parties have taken the people for ride thru. Of late the political right has aligned with the religious right and dominating the national politics.

The author finds both left and liberal Democratic Party and greens having missed the real issues that are bothering the American people. According to the author the momentum created in the 50s and 60s by the anti-war movements and the feminist debates all did not cross the threshold of spiritual and thus did not had a lasting effect.

The book finds fault with the left and progressives for their obsession with explaining everything from the point of material and economic base. It also assumes that the youth and feminist movements of 50s and 60s consciously or not were articulating the lack of spiritual needs of the people and therefore successful in their aims. They succeeded in focussing of the futility of wars and also male domination of females. The awareness installed in the minds of people did change the age old dogmas and contentions of the political right. Even parts of the religious people came over to the movements.

Some of the programmes suggested here are very much radical from point of the present American positions.