| Edition |
First edition. |
| Description |
xxix, 304 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Note |
Includes index. |
| Summary |
William Safire, one of America's most influential political columnists, applies the Book of Job to the politics of today. In The First Dissident he shows how modern heroes have reshaped authority and history - and how individual citizens can, too - by following the courageous example of Job. The Bible's Book of Job is the story of a good man who dares to challenge God's judgment. Job's search for the answer to apparent injustice in God's design has stirred religious controversy and inspired readers for 2,500 years. Tennyson called the Book of Job "the greatest poem of ancient and modern times." D. H. Lawrence described it as "the story of your own soul." Safire's provocative exploration interprets Job - the innocent, angry sufferer - as the original dissenter. He shows how the biblical story can serve as inspiration and instruction manual for modern leaders and citizens, a primer on effective protest - when to dissent, how to force authority to listen, what kinds of persuasion work, why it is important for leaders to avoid isolation. He illuminates the timeless role of dissent in shaping power and influencing even the highest authority. And he draws modern-day parallels in the struggles of such human rights leaders as Mustapha Barzani, Martin Luther King, Jr., Natan Sharansky, Vaclav Havel, and others. The First Dissident is written in William Safire's insightful style of informal scholarship and is studded with anecdotes and examples drawn from Safire's wide-ranging political experience in the White House as speechwriter and in covering global politics for The New York Times. The First Dissident reaches across the millennia to show how any person, armed with a sense of righteousness, can engage with higher authority to protest unfair treatment - and thereby change the world. |
| Contents |
Introduction: The Job of the Bible and the News of the Day -- Pt. I. The Book and Its Impact. 1. The Story of Job. 2. The Dismaying Compromise. 3. Silencing the Rebel. 4. Prototype of the Dissident -- Pt. II. The Verdicts in Job v. God. 1. What Believers Take from Job. 1. Don't ask God to do you a favor. 2. God is not a just God or an unjust God; he is just God. 3. God's ways are not Man's ways. 4. Don't blame the victim; suffering is no evidence of sin. 5. Misery has company. 6. Analogy of the animals: The order of nature symbolizes the moral order. 7. Suffering may be a blessing in disguise. 8. Christianity's secret weapon. 2. The Message to Skeptics -- Pt. III. Bridges to Joban Politics. 1. The Value of Joban Loyalty. 2. Meditations by Lincoln and Job -- Pt. IV. What Leaders Can Learn from Job. 1. Use it or lose it. 2. "Close" counts only in horseshoes and hand grenades. 3. Losers keepers. 4. Not even God can be the judge in his own case. 5. Be kind to the jaywalking wounded. 6. A little hobgoblin is the fooler of consistent minds. 7. Nobody but nobody is perfect -- Pt. V. Pursuing the Joban Life. 1. Maintain your Joban ways. 2. If access is what you need, find a go-between. 3. Beware consensus. 4. Don't let disputes with Authority grow into challenges of its legitimacy. 5. Persuade yourself that no need is more urgent than the need to know. 6. Play God for a day. 7. The center should not hold. 8. Make higher laws -- Conclusion: The Sparks Fly Upward -- Appendix: The Book of Job, New English Bible Translation. |
| Subject |
Bible. Job -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
|
|
Dissenters.
|
|
Political participation.
|
| Other Form: |
Online version: Safire, William, 1929-2009. First dissident. 1st ed. New York : Random House, c1992 (OCoLC)606465336 |
| ISBN |
0679417559 (acid-free paper) |
|
9780679417552 (acid-free paper) |
|
067974858X |
|
9780679748588 |
|
