Political Doctrines Books - Page 17

Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism

Sean Hannity

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Total reviews: 1672 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Nearly three years have passed since that tragic day in September. Since then, our wounds have healed, but our senses and memories have dulled.

At first, the nation rallied behind its leader. But by the time the confrontation with Iraq presented itself, our courage and moral certainty seemed to fade in the face of partisan bickering and posturing.

Now the political left and the Democratic Party are trying to use the demanding aftermath of the war to exploit our national cause for their own political advantage.

How could we allow ourselves to forget so soon?

--from Deliver Us from Evil

Sean Hannity's first blockbuster book, the New York Times bestseller Let Freedom Ring, cemented his place as the freshest and most compelling conservative voice in the country. As the host of the phenomenally successful Hannity & Colmes on the Fox News Channel and The Sean Hannity Show on ABC Radio, Hannity has won a wildly devoted fan base. Now he brings his plainspoken, take-no-prisoners style to the continuing War on Terror abroad -- and liberalism at home -- in Deliver Us from Evil.

"Evil exists," Hannity asserts. "It is real, and it means to harm us." And in these pages he revisits the harsh lessons America has learned in confronting evil in the past and the present, to illuminate the course we must take in the future. Tracing a direct line from Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin through Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, he reminds us of the courage and moral clarity of our great leaders. And he reveals how the disgraceful history of appeasement has reached forward from the days of Neville Chamberlain and Jimmy Carter to corrupt the unrepentant leftists of the modern Democratic Party -- from Howard Dean and John Kerry to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

As Americans face the ongoing war against terrorists and their state sponsors around the world, Sean Hannity reminds us that we must also cope with the continuing scourge of accommodation and cowardice at home. With his trademark blend of passion and hard-hitting commentary, he urges Americans to recognize the dangers of putting our faith in toothless "multilateralism" when the times call for decisive action. For only through strong defense of our freedoms, at home and around the world, can we preserve America's security and liberty in the dangerous twenty-first century.

State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind

Bryant Welch

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Finally, the answer to the many questions that have been preying on the minds of millions of Americans has arrived. Why are Americans so vulnerable to divisive political tactics? Why did Americans get dragged into such an unwise war in Iraq? Why do fundamentalist religious groups, Fox News, and right-wing radio still play such influential roles in America’s political landscape? And why are long-accepted rational scientific ideas like evolution under siege? These questions hold America’s future in the balance. Ultimately, they are questions about the American mind.  Psychologist-attorney Dr. Bryant Welch has the answers.

If America is going to change the mind-set that led us to war in Iraq and left us unable to confront our serious national problems, this book is vitally important. Drawing on his unique experience both as a clinical psychologist and a Washington, D.C., political figure with the American Psychological Association, Dr. Welch shows how the long-term effects of sophisticated new forms of political manipulation have not only led to our debacle in Iraq but are also currently undercutting America’s ability to address its very serious problems. In the 1944 movie Gaslight, a husband drives his wife to the brink of insanity by playing games with her sense of reality. Just as in the movie, America’s most recent political “gaslighters,” such as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and many religious leaders, have generated and exploited confusion in the minds of countless Americans.

Gaslighters prey on their victim’s vulnerability to paranoia, sexual perplexity, and envy to undermine the mind’s ability to function rationally. Welch examines why millions of Americans, in response to such assaults, subconsciously and dangerously create their own simplistic reality, even if it is completely different from the more complex reality of the world.

Most important, State of Confusion explains how and why Americans must act now to fight back against this harmful manipulation before it’s too late. Dr. Welch’s exploration of the American mind is both fascinating and frightening, and State of Confusion is a must-read for everyone who cares about the future of this great country.

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC MENTALITY, THE (Lib Works Ludwig Von Mises PB)

LUDWIG VON MISES

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Envy or Conceit? 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

The Anti Capitalistic Mentality is Mises' attempt to uncover the driving force behind the socialist movement of the early twentieth century. As such, it should be seen as an alternative to Hayek's `Fatal Conceit/Abuse of Reason' hypothesis. Mises and Hayek agree on some points. Mises claims that "everyone is prone to overate his own worth and deserts" (p10). This is consistent with Hayek's Fatal Conceit hypothesis, but Mises takes the idea that people overate themselves inn a different direction. Hayek thought that intellectuals disdain capitalism because it offends their intellectual pride. Those who see themselves as the best and brightest cannot accept the idea that spontaneously evolved orders outperform any system that they can consciously design.

Mises emphasizes envy and resentment, along with the lack of proper economic education. As Mises puts it on page 36 socialists "are blinded by envy and ignorance. They stubbornly refuse to stuffy economics ... they pretend to trust only in experience. But they also stubbornly refuse to take cognizance of the undeniable facts of experience".

The main problem with this book is that it is too short. Mises did not develop his ideas in this book to the extent he developed other ideas elsewhere. Also, Mises relies too much on the notion that people hate capitalism because the market value of their wage is below their self-evaluation. People do tend to overate their own worth. However, it should be noted that even those who succeed often hate capitalism. Consider the following list of highly successful wealthy capitalism haters: John Lennon, James Cameron, George Soros, Stephen Speilberg, Warren Beatty, Ted Turner, Jane Fonda... These people passed the market test and then some. Yet they hate the system that made them wealthy and famous. Why? Lack of economic education might explain more than does envy. Who would they envy?

The Anti Capitalistic Mentality is still an important book. It explores vital issues that should be sorted out more completely. Since Mises kept this book brief, the task of developing this and Hayek's work on the motivations behind the socialist/interventionist movement will be left to their intellectual heirs.

Editorial Review:

In "The Anti-capitalistic Mentality", the respected economist Ludwig von Mises plainly explains the causes of the irrational fear and hatred many intellectuals and others feel for capitalism. In five concise chapters, he traces the causation of the misunderstandings and resultant fears that cause resistance to economic development and social change. He enumerates and rebuts the economic arguments against and the psychological and social objections to economic freedom in the form of capitalism. Written during the heyday of twentieth-century socialism, this work provides the reader with lucid and compelling insights into human reactions to capitalism.

More: Utopia (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

Thomas More

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Utopia: Not As Free As You Might Think 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

When Thomas More wrote UTOPIA in 1516, he attempted to postulate how human beings could create a society that would be as nearly perfect as possible. At least that is what is commonly believed that he tried to do. For those who have read his book, they immediately see some troubling issues. The first sticky point is to define what he meant by the term "utopia." Did he mean a totally democratic state; such as the ancient Greeks had, in which each citizen had direct voting in all issues? Or perhaps More was simply updating Plato, who saw his Republic as a society governed by a carefully selected breed of rulers who would rule an equally carefully selected brood of subjects? Or again, was More attempting to strike an impossible balance between the burgeoning rise of Renaissance humanism with a stifling set of conflicting Christian religions? It is too easy for moderns to suggest that he was merely holding up Utopia as a fun-house type mirror by which he wished his contemporaries could see themselves reflected as zigzag images and perhaps be ashamed enough--or exhorted enough--to alter their behavior for the better. We today are tempted to judge his meaning by 20th century standards, which do not always draw a clear distinction among the virtues that More's Renaissance contemporaries took for granted but today we dismiss as outdated, or worse, irrelevant.

The book itself has two parts. The first includes More, who places himself in the book as a traveler to Antwerp who meets Peter Giles, who in turn introduces him to Raphael Hythloday, a name that Moore punningly notes that in Greek means "nonsense speaker." Hythloday mentions that he journeyed with Amerigo Vespucci to America and along the way encountered the mythical land of Utopia. This first part is slow reading in that More does little more than discuss some general reforms of potential benefit to England, most of which involved agrarian, economic, judicial, military, and criminal justice matters, all of which obliquely suggest that what worked in Utopia might work in England as well. It is the second part that has generated considerable controversy as to what More really meant his readers to grasp.

For those who come to the second part of UTOPIA and expect a 16th century version of Eden, the results are profoundly shocking. When More details the basic government setup as one in which its citizens are living in a ruthless police state with the death penalty meted out for a variety of reasons, readers suddenly grasp that Utopia may not be all that different from Plato, who similarly envisioned his society as one free from the degenerating influences of poetry and the basic tenets of free speech. When this sobering concept sinks in, then the term "utopia" begins to lose its cache as a synonym for a land of unrivalled happiness. But if these readers look at Utopia through the eyes of More and not their own, then a different Utopia arises. As an educated classicist fully versed in traditional Christian orthodoxy, More was trained to evaluate any social structure according to the non-Christian but humanistic Cardinal Virtues of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice, and then compare these to the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity. More made it clear that both sets of virtues were needed to make Utopia an enduring entity. More was not optimistic enough to truly believe the social inequities in England (or Utopia for that matter) could be so easily eliminated merely by rearranging the pieces of the social pie. What humans of any society needed to ensure genuine freedom from tyranny was mastery of the far more unmanageable Seven Deadly Sins. Of these More suggests that by downplaying the importance of gold, by limiting the nature and amount of material wealth, and by forcing all citizens from the highest to lowest to share in all types of drudgery, that the worst of the sins, Pride, will be vanquished, thus leaving Utopia as ready to endure in the face of what to other and less advanced societies would be tantalizing but deadly temptations.

What emerges then in Utopia is a mythical land based on equally mythical virtues that can house a citizenry such as never existed in human history nor is likely to. But More felt that even if his contemporaries managed to alter for the better their profligate ways, then a small sliver of Utopia might result. For More and perhaps for us today, that might be good enough.

Editorial Review:

Thomas More's Utopia is one of the supreme achievements of Renaissance humanism. His complex and ironic account of an imaginary communist society has not only given rise to the genre of utopian fiction but has been an inspiration to generations of political reformers. The present edition differs from other English-language editions in that it includes all the ancillary materials that were included, at More's behest, in the early editions (encompassing letters and poems on Utopia by More and several of his humanist associates), in that it presents a new version of the highly-regarded translation by Robert M. Adams, and in that its introductory materials and annotations assimilate important recent scholarship.

Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

Sheldon S. Wolin

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Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost cliché. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"?

Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level.

Democracy Incorporated is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come.

Notes on democracy,

H. L Mencken

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Editorial Review:

[Democracy] is, perhaps, the most charming form of government ever devised by man... It is based on propositions that are palpably not true and what is not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true...

H.L. Mencken, America's greatest journalist and critic, wrote Notes on Democracy over 80 years ago. His time, the paranoid and intolerant years of World War I, Prohibition and the Scopes trial, is strikingly like our own. Notes isn't just a blast from the past, but also a perceptive and unsentimental report on contemporary life.

Dissident Books is proud to reintroduce this gem of cynicism and clear-thinking to a new generation. Mencken performs a brilliant, merciless and often hilarious vivisection on that most holy of sacred cows: democracy. The new edition is supplemented by extensive annotations that put Mencken's words and ideas in context and expose fascinating details and nuances.

Don't even think about voting until you read this book!

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

John Gray

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Editorial Review:

For the decade that followed the end of the cold war, the world was lulled into a sense that a consumerist, globalized, peaceful future beckoned. The beginning of the twenty-first century has rudely disposed of such ideas—most obviously through 9/11and its aftermath. But just as damaging has been the rise in the West of a belief that a single model of political behavior will become a worldwide norm and that, if necessary, it will be enforced at gunpoint. In Black Mass, celebrated philosopher and critic John Gray explains how utopian ideals have taken on a dangerous significance in the hands of right-wing conservatives and religious zealots. He charts the history of utopianism, from the Reformation through the French Revolution and into the present. And most  urgently, he describes how utopian politics have moved from the extremes of the political spectrum into mainstream politics, dominating the administrations of both George W. Bush and Tony Blair, and indeed coming to define the political center. Far from having shaken off discredited ideology, Gray suggests, we are more than ever in its clutches. Black Mass is a truly frightening and challenging work by one of Britain’s leading political thinkers.

Inside the Third Reich

Albert Speer

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Successes and Limitations of Allied Bombing 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Reich Marshall Albert Speer was in charge of Germany's armament production, and this is the main subject of my review (based on the original 1970 English-language edition).

A major advance in military production had been achieved by the Germans long before WWII: "The real creator of the concept of industrial self-responsibility was Walther Rathenau, the great Jewish organizer of the German economy during the First World War." (p. 249)

Allied WWII strategic bombing failed to knock out crucial German military manufacture, notably ball-bearing production, because the Allies couldn't know if and when the dispersal of this manufacture had been achieved (p. 341). Moreover, aerial photos were often misinterpreted (by both sides), leading to an exaggerated sense of success regarding the destruction of industrial targets. For example, "ruined" factories turned out to have surviving sections which enabled the revival of full production in as little time as two weeks (p. 341). Bombed railroad tracks could often be repaired in a matter of hours (p. 337). (This clarifies complaints about the Allies not bombing the tracks to Auschwitz, and of the Polish Underground not dynamiting other tracks; apart from the fact that the Polish Underground wasn't significantly organized until the latter half of 1943, by which time the Germans had already murdered most of Poland's 3.3 million Jews).

Owing to these and other difficulties, the outcome of Allied precision bombing was not surprising: "But the enemy had always demonstrated a lack of consistency; he switched from target to target or attacked in the wrong places." (p. 412)

Now consider Allied area bombing. It has fallaciously been attacked as ineffective. In actuality, the disruption of urban-industrial function caused by area bombing caused more lost productivity than the actual destruction itself. Following the Hamburg firestorm, Speer reported to Hitler that armaments production was collapsing, and that six more such raids would bring German war production to a total halt (p. 338). So area bombing didn't bring Germany to her knees not because area bombing didn't work, but because it wasn't pursued with sufficient focus: "Fortunately for us, a series of Hamburg-type raids was not repeated on such a scale against other cities." (p. 339)

Allied bombing succeeding in forcing the Germans to divert crucial frontline resources: "Had it not been for this new front, the air front over Germany, our defensive strength against tanks would have been about doubled, as far as equipment was concerned. Moreover, the antiaircraft force tied down hundreds of thousands of young soldiers. A third of the optical industry was busy producing gunsights for flak batteries. About half of the electronics industry was engaged in producing radar and communications networks for defense against bombing. Simply because of this, in spite of the high level of the German electronics and optical industries, the supply of our frontline troops with modern equipment remained far behind that of the Western armies." (p. 332)

Finally, Allied bombing practically insured that Germany would not develop an atom bomb. Speer commented: "For it was not only superior productive capability that allowed the United States to undertake this gigantic project. The increasing air raids had long since created an armaments emergency in Germany which ruled out any such ambitious enterprise." (p. 273)

Editorial Review:

'INSIDE THE THIRD REICH is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler's inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production and the inner struggle of Albert Speer. The author does not try to make excuses, even by implication, and is unrelenting toward himself and his associates...Speer's full-length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. The Fuhrer emerges as neither an incompetent nor a carpet-gnawing madman but as an evil genius of warped conceits endowed with an ineffable personal magic.' NEW YORK TIMES

One Nation Under Fear: Scaredy Cats and Fear-Mongers in the Home of the Brave (And What You Can Do About It)

Bob Cesca

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Taking Back Our National Character 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

We may not always agree with one another politically, but the central thesis of this book, that our politics are tainted with the stench of fear drummed up for political purpose, is one which will light the revolutionary spark that is the birthright of every American - and it comes not a moment too soon. As our nation gears up for "Change" and "Hope" under the administration of our history-making 44th President, we must stand guard against the impulse in ourselves, and others, to cheat America of its best days because we are cowering in fear.

Those familiar with Bob Cesca's writings both on his own blog (www.bobcesca.com) and on the Huffington Post, will be delighted to discover that Bob does not turn into a "stuffy academic" when setting his pen to the longer form. Those not familiar with Mr. Cesca's writings are in for a treat. (And fair warning - tolerance of "colorful language is a must... but it's worth it!) Forceful, assertive, and honest, I've become a fan of Bob Cesca, largely because of how completely forthright, and upright he is. It isn't just that he expresses his opinions with emotional honesty - its that in his expression, both by word and by tone, he demonstrates a thorough and absolute rejection of the politics of hate, division, and fear.

I'm sure that Mr. Bob Cesca and I disagree on a number of points, not limited to his colorful language. But in the reclamation of our national character, defense of our liberties, and refusal to let fear cause us to sell our heritage away, Mr. Cesca will find common cause with patriots everywhere.

Editorial Review:

In post-9/11 America, authoritarians and politicians are happily leaning on the panic button for fun, profit, and the ongoing oppression of a frightened populace. This timely book examines that fear: where it came from, how it's promoted, and what can be done about it. Author Bob Cesca hits a bracingly wide range of targets — the right-wing noise machine, climate change deniers, creeping fascism from the Bush White House — before presenting a sober, sensible plan for fighting and overcoming this potentially irreversible trend.

Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography

John Toland

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Total reviews: 68 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A must read!! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I really enjoyed this biography. The author researched his subject matter thoroughly and was able to write without giving the reader pre-conceptions. I was absolutely fascinated, this book separates fact from myth, gives an incredibily intimate look at Hilter and his "family" circle. Although the Nazi regime without question committed genocide on a massive scale, the main players were rather ordinary human beings in a most extraordinary time and place. I would recommend this bio to anyone wanting to explore the life and times which brought the Nazi party to power, and it's ultimate failure. These were not just a group of egotisical and insane individuals, but brilliant in their own right. I will never be able to wrap my mind around the unbridled racism of the regime, yet I can admire them. It really makes one think. If they would have used their gifts for good it most certainly would be a different world. They weren't pure evil as they are usually depicted. I would suggest reading "Mein Kampf" as a companion to this bio.

Editorial Review:

Based on previously unpublished documents, diaries, notes, photographs, and dramatic interviews with Hitler's colleagues and associates, this is the definitive biography of one of the most despised yet fascinating figures of the 20th century. Toland won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945. 150 photographs; 3 maps.