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Sohrab Ahmari: The Unbroken Thread (Hardcover, 2021, Convergent Books) 3 stars

As a young father and a self-proclaimed “radically assimilated immigrant,” opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari realized …

Closest You'll get to a Conservitive Catholic wanting to tear down Capitalism

3 stars

This is fundamentally a Catholic book. And how do i put this gently Ahmari suffers from no Reformist, or Liberal theological impulses. He makes an antitrans dig in the introduction. I almost put it down right there and then. But something about his writing style made me continue and I don't regret doing so. The author thesis basically boils down to the assertion that the capitalist, consumerist definition of Freedom is eating us alive. He would tries to weasel his way around just saying that directly, and he throws queers and the sexual revolution under the bus as causes but this is otherwise masterfully subversive. The author makes a forceful case for the Abrahamic conception of Freedom, "to be free is to serve God and thy Neighbor". By painting vivid bibliographic portraits of people from all different religions who he thinks exemplify this virtue. And oh man does he have …

@piusbird Thanks for the review. I read this book too though I did not write a review (I might soon). I felt like Ahmari gets the diagnosis but does not get the cause. Many of his critiques of economy and society are spot on. But, as you point out, he leans on many well-worn hobby horses of the Catholic right. My biggest critique is that he posits that there is is this monolithic, insidious, singular "liberalism" at the heart of all our disfunction. Frankly, I think that classical liberalism is so damn divided that the thought of them being in some vast, unified, vaguely anti-Catholic conspiracy is laughable. Still, I have always had a fascination with Catholic Social Teachings and have learned a lot about a nuanced view of ethics from it. For example, you can't be pro-life (against abortion) without also being against the death penalty and for poverty relief.