Liberalism Books - Page 6

Blue Grit: Making Impossible, Improbable, and Inspirational Political Change in America

Laura Flanders

Amazon Price: $11.70 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin (Non-Classics) Amazon Marketplace: 60 new & used starting at $1.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> Political Parties
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Campaigns not Candidates 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Blue Grit is what the Democratic Party needs. It's a little bit like soul it's a lot like grits. Whether they get it or whether they will ever get it is another story.

The story that Laura Flanders tells in her prescient book is one that the fourth estate--fawning over Barack Obama's rout in Iowa--would have been well advised to read. They might have learned a thing or two: That progressive movements are not built over night and that they are not built on the backs of candidates, no matter how inspiring they are. Flanders is not a conventional campaign correspondent--conventional campaign correspondents don't actually cover campaigns; they cover candidates--and that is why Blue Grit, which chronicles progressive change in unlikely places, is much more valuable than the daily dose (often mind numbing) of political reportage. For a good example, see Flanders' recent stories in the Nation magazine on why the current campaign is not about Obama and why the real battle is not between Obama and Clinton but between the suites (the penthouse party) and the streets.

Flanders is more attuned to the people who make political change, often against great odds, than anyone else writing today. Thus her book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the current moment, a field guide to a more promising political future.

What is happening and what will happen in '08? As Flanders points out, the Democratic gains in '06 "didn't usher in new power for a new agenda." But the political shift is taking place at a different level. "The top of the ticket is not where the action is. Political change, as opposed to personnel change, works from the bottom up..." Will we see political change in the next election or just another changing of the guards?

Editorial Review:

Noted political commentator Laura Flanders investigates the state of American politics from the bottom up

With her trademark wit and indefatigable reporting, Laura Flanders, host of RadioNation and bestselling author of Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species, reveals as only she can the state of progressive America today. All over the country, grassroots organizations are making a difference, and democrats of all stripes are doing what the national party has failed to do: engage new voters, advance progressive issues, and even run their own candidates for office—and win—in some of the most unlikely places. With a fiery polemic, assured narrative, and acute political commentary, Blue Grit is crucial reading for anyone interested in the future of the Democrats—and this country.

Up From Liberalism

William F. Buckley Jr.

List Price: $16.95 By: Stein and Day Amazon Marketplace: 3 new & used starting at $19.63

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Government -> State & Local Government
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Up From Liberalism 5 out of 5 stars.
25 of 26 people found this review helpful.

I'm a college student studying on a liberal college campus who will probably pursue a career in Constitutional law. Reading this book has helped me understand my political philosophy much more clearly. Up From Liberalism by William F. Buckley, Jr. is a witty, sagacious, and very perceptive book declaring the fresh conservative alternative to liberal establishment politics. It is a must read for anyone really serious about being a political conservative. Although most of Buckley's comments are referring to past political history in the 40's and 50's, it helps one understand the ideological battle that has been raging for years in the political spectrum. Sparkling with humour and intellectual fun, Buckley quickly dispatches of his opponents' ideas with the ease of a master swordsman. This book is still valuable to read because the philosophy of liberals today hasn't really changed. To them, Government is still the answer to all of our problems. If you are a liberal, reading this book will help you understand the arguments against your position. If you are a conservative, this book will give you enjoyment, but also valid logical proof of why one should believe in limited government. I hope that everyone even slightly interested in politics reads this book.

Editorial Review:

This witty, piercing, and smart assessment of Liberalism is as relevent today as it was when it was first written 30 years ago. 5 cassettes.

Freedom's Power: The History and Promise of Liberalism

Paul Starr

Amazon Price: $12.38 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Basic Books Amazon Marketplace: 51 new & used starting at $5.54

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> History & Theory
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> Human Rights
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> U.S.

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Grownups Speak (at long last) 4 out of 5 stars.
15 of 17 people found this review helpful.

The greatest weakness of this book is also its greatest strength.

Full of resentful fury at the ideologically based incompetence, irresponsibility, and felonious assaults on constitutional liberty that characterize the bush "administration", one might crave more stirring reading.

One MIGHT be disappointed...

Except, this is not a book for people who just want to be outraged. It is a well-crafted explanation of the development of "liberal" thinking AND ACTIONS starting from the late Enlightenment/early Industrial Revolution. This evolution involved many splits and transformations. But it also represents some coherent progression to a consensus that MAY actually be growing in power and acceptance.

It should be required reading for citizenship . . . but that would be a naive, moralistic (as well as utterly unenforceable and counterproductive) requirement. It would also be contrary to democratic liberalism, as it has evolved.

Still reading this book drove home several points. First, even without the current "presidential" disaster, we should never be complacent about our constitutional liberties and their economic, political, civic, and other structural underpinnings. Second, worthwhile progress takes lots of hard work, serious clear eyed thinking, and strategic compromises; its success and failure is measured more in decades than in years. Third, so much cynicism (along with so much idealism) is rooted in thoughts and feelings divorced from responsible experience.

Not everyone will read this book. But I hope that many who do will work to use its examples and ideas to bring more citizens back into the political process. The stakes are very high.

(I'm still gonna try to give less $$ to the Democrats and more to orgs like MOVEON)

Editorial Review:

American politics are as fractured and partisan as they have ever been and liberalism is in greater peril than at any time in recent history. Conservatives treat it as an epithet, and even some liberals have confused it with sentimentality and socialism. But Paul Starr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and one of America’s leading intellectuals, claims that, properly understood, liberalism is a sturdy public philosophy, deeply rooted in our traditions, capable of making America a freer and more secure country.

Liberalism and Social Action (Great Books in Philosophy)

John Dewey

Amazon Price: $11.24 List Price: $14.98 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Prometheus Books Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $5.93

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> General AAS
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Political
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> General

Editorial Review:

In this, one of Dewey's most accessible works, he surveys the history of liberal thought from John Locke to John Stuart Mill, in his search to find the core of liberalism for today's world. While liberals of all stripes have held to some very basic values-liberty, individuality, and the critical use of intelligence - earlier forms of liberalism restricted the state function to protecting its citizens while allowing free reign to socio-economic forces. But, as society matures, so must liberalism as it reaches out to redefine itself in a world where government must play a role in creating an environment in which citizens can achieve their potential. Dewey's advocacy of a positive role for government - a new liberalism - nevertheless finds him rejecting radical Marxists and fascists who would use violence and revolution rather than democratic methods to aid the citizenry.

Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition

Amazon Price: $24.94 List Price: $30.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: The University of North Carolina Press Amazon Marketplace: 21 new & used starting at $16.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Popular Economics -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Popular Economics -> General AAS
Subjects -> History -> Historical Study -> Social History

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

important addition to both Afro- and European history 5 out of 5 stars.
24 of 27 people found this review helpful.

It's time that Robinson's work receives the attention it deserves. No other book on African and African American thought that I know of shows such a keen ability, or even acknowledges the need for, a contextualization of black radicalism within the larger currents of world history. Unlike most intellectual histories which restrict themselves to national or racial boundaries, Robinson addresses the emergence of Marxism within western civilization, reaching back to the medieval and even classical periods, and shows how its thinkers were guided by ethnocentric and universalistic tendencies that caused them to miss the way that class solidarity has been thwarted by nationalism and ethnicity, and of how socialism as envisioned by European radicals has never been monolithic but has adapted itself to local and regional folkways. My only criticism of this work is that Franz Fanon is not included in the list of important black thinkers (Du Bois, James and Wright) to be discussed. Fanon's synthesis of nationalism, communism and existentialism as phenomena to be considered simulatenously for analyzing postcolonial movements seems to fit Robinson's discussion very well, so I'm surprised he receives such little attention. Otherwise, this is a wonderful and surprising study, which I highly recommend, and one that surpasses the unfortunate practice of so many books on African thought that refuse to recognize the dialectic between black and European intellectuals.

Editorial Review:

In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of black people and black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of blacks on western continents, Robinson argues, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this.

To illustrate his argument, Robinson traces the emergence of Marxist ideology in Europe, the resistance by blacks in historically oppressive environments, and the influence of both of these traditions on such important twentieth-century black radical thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright.

Virginity or Death!: And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time

Katha Pollitt

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Random House Trade Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $4.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> U.S.
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“As this book, which is greater than the sum of its brilliant parts makes clear, Katha Pollitt, who is famously a feminist, is also a humorist, a moralist and a most hilarious, wise, and incisive observer.”
–Victor Navasky, author of A Matter of Opinion

Through presidential administrations Democratic and Republican, Katha Pollitt has observed and exposed the inconsistencies and illogic of those who stand in the way of progress solely to hold on to their power. In defense of human rights and equality, she assails the corrupt and educates the misguided with compassion, Swiftian wit, and complete literary authority.

In this compelling collection, Pollitt skewers one hypocrite after another. She suggests, for example, that creationists be permitted to oppose the teaching of evolution only so long as they agree to forgo the benefits of the theory–such as flu vaccines. She gently wonders if those who denounced the decision to allow Terri Schiavo to die in peace would themselves be satisfied to be video-diagnosed by Senator Bill Frist. And in the title essay about fundamentalists’ antagonism toward sex education and STD prevention, she asks, “What is it with these right-wing Christians? Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time.”

Pollitt is one of the most eloquent and persuasive voices in American political conversation of this or any other era, and Virginity or Death! Is a marvelous demonstration of her keen insight, mordant humor, and sense of justice.

“Katha Pollitt has long and rightly been hailed for her brilliance, wit, and great insight into politics, social issues, and women’s rights. As with all of her work, I am enormously grateful for Virginity or Death!, and also deeply jealous.”
–Anne Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies

The Virtues of Liberalism

James T. Kloppenberg

Amazon Price: $50.00 List Price: $50.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 41 new & used starting at $3.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General AAS
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Political

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This spirited analysis--and defense--of American liberalism demonstrates the complex and rich traditions of political, economic, and social discourse that have informed American democratic culture from the seventeenth century to the present. The Virtues of Liberalism provides a convincing response to critics both right and left. Against conservatives outside the academy who oppose liberalism because they equate it with license, James T. Kloppenberg uncovers ample evidence of American republicans' and liberal democrats' commitments to ethical and religious ideals and their awareness of the difficult choices involved in promoting virtue in a culturally diverse nation. Against radical academic critics who reject liberalism because they equate it with Enlightenment reason and individual property holding, Kloppenberg shows the historical roots of American liberals' dual commitments to diversity, manifested in institutions designed to facilitate deliberative democracy, and to government regulations of property and market exchange in accordance with the public good.

In contrast to prevailing tendencies to simplify and distort American liberalism, Kloppenberg shows how the multifaceted virtues of liberalism have inspired theorists and reformers from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison through Jane Addams and John Dewey to Martin Luther King, Jr., and then explains how these virtues persist in the work of some liberal democrats today. Endorsing the efforts of such neo-progressive and communitarian theorists and journalists as Michael Walzer, Jane Mansbridge, Michael Sandel, and E. J. Dionne, Kloppenberg also offers a more acute analysis of the historical development of American liberalism and of the complex reasons why it has been transformed and made more vulnerable in recent decades.

An intelligent, coherent, and persuasive canvas that stretches from the Enlightenment to the American Revolution, from Tocqueville's observations to the New Deal's social programs, and from the right to worship freely to the idea of ethical responsibility, this book is a valuable contribution to historical scholarship and to contemporary political and cultural debates.

What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?: Classroom Politics and "Bias" in Higher Education

Michael Berube

Amazon Price: $21.56 List Price: $26.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton Amazon Marketplace: 59 new & used starting at $1.40

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> General AAS
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Education -> College & University -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Education -> College & University -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A compelling defense of liberalism on campus and off.

At least since the publication of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, higher education in the United States has been described as an institution in crisis, infected by liberal bias, hemmed in by political correctness, and undermined by an erosion of standards. This portrait has been accepted by millions of people outside academe—and a surprising number of college professors and students as well. But is it accurate?

What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts? offers a definitive rebuttal to conservative activists' most incendiary claims about American universities. In his analyses of faculty and students, critiques of ideologues left and right, and behind-the-scenes accounts of his own courses, Michael Bérubé makes a supple case for liberalism itself—for the cause of universal human rights, for free and unfettered inquiry, and for the classically liberal insistence that no single faction should attain dominance over all of a society's civil institutions.

After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State.

Paul Edward Gottfried

List Price: $39.95 By: Princeton University Press Amazon Marketplace: 14 new & used starting at $4.31

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Law -> Administrative Law -> Central Governments
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Government -> Democracy
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Government -> Public Affairs & Administration

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this trenchant challenge to social engineering, Paul Gottfried analyzes a patricide: the slaying of nineteenth-century liberalism by the managerial state. Many people, of course, realize that liberalism no longer connotes distributed powers and bourgeois moral standards, the need to protect civil society from an encroaching state, or the virtues of vigorous self-government. Many also know that today's "liberals" have far different goals from those of their predecessors, aiming as they do largely to combat prejudice, to provide social services and welfare benefits, and to defend expressive and "lifestyle" freedoms. Paul Gottfried does more than analyze these historical facts, however. He builds on them to show why it matters that the managerial state has replaced traditional liberalism: the new regimes of social engineers, he maintains, are elitists, and their rule is consensual only in the sense that it is unopposed by any widespread organized opposition.

Throughout the western world, increasingly uprooted populations unthinkingly accept centralized controls in exchange for a variety of entitlements. In their frightening passivity, Gottfried locates the quandary for traditionalist and populist adversaries of the welfare state. How can opponents of administrative elites show the public that those who provide, however ineptly, for their material needs are the enemies of democratic self-rule and of independent decision making in family life? If we do not wake up, Gottfried warns, the political debate may soon be over, despite sporadic and ideologically confused populist rumblings in both Europe and the United States.

Reckless Disregard: How Liberal Democrats Undercut Our Military, Endanger Our Soldiers, and Jeopardize our Security

Robert Patterson

Amazon Price: $16.95 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Regnery Publishing, Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> Freedom & Security -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> Freedom & Security -> General AAS
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> U.S.

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 89 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Great read, tells it like it is.... 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 23 people found this review helpful.

Which is why libs hate it. They don't want the truth to be told because if it ever was (which is to say if CNN and other lib talkers told the whole story), nobody would even think about voting for them.

Bush is the right president because unlike Bill, George doesn't just shake his finger at enemies while getting off on interns. He actually sees a war when its right under his nose, and doesn't ignore it. Clinton spread out our military while cutting their numbers back drastically. Thus, he proved that, just like other Liberals like Carter, he is ignorant to the ways of war. Then again what do you expect from a draft dodger who protested Vietnam in the UK while our actual patriotic americans (something that NO liberal will ever be) were dying in Vietnam?

Key facts here
* In the 45 years prior to the Clinton years, we deployed armed forces beyond our borders 8 times. In Clinton's 8 years in office, he deployed our forces 44 times. So we went from one deployment ever 5.6 years to 5.5 deployments a year. Why? Clinton used the armed forces as a peace keeping force in any and every area he could. To him, our men and woman in uniform could be sent in very small groups all over the world to be international police. He was ignorant to the job of being Commander In Chief. Maybe if he handn't been a traitor to the US in the 60's and actually served his time via his draft notice, then he might understand what honor and duty meant. Instead he he focused on "on her" and "booty."

* Clintons inaction during all the terrorist attacks we had in the 90's made us look weak. Afterall, if an enemy never fights back are you going to surrender or are you going to cheer in victory and fight more? Like Patterson says in this book "Pacifism never won wars, soldiers did."

I'm proud to be an American because of what our constitution and those who protect it stand for. From time to time we find those that live up to it, such as Reagan and Bush. Luckily enough Americans agree, as the red and blue election map of 2004 showed. As for those that want to point to our problems and try to find a better way, that is what needs to be done. Yet for those like Clinton, Kerry, Ted "the swimmer" Kennedy, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and anyone who follows them and is ignorant enough to believe the war and Bush are wrong, I say to you "read this book" so that you might actually be able to learn from history. Then again, you liberals make it and art at ignoring history. In the end your beliefs and cries of protest are backed only by socialists, communists and extremists. Thus you are they, they are you. You have no home here, you are not Americans. To be an American requires more than just living here. You need to support the Americn ideals, which you do not. A die hard anti-war on terrorism liberal is basically saying "I don't believe we should be free, its ok for terrorists to attack us, leave them alone." Thus you are nothing more than an athiest who says he is a Christian.

Do us Americans all a favor you socialist libs - if you hate America so much, then move somewhere that you think is better. Like Alec Baldwin, you won't though because you know no other country is going to put thier butts on the line to save yours. People like Mr. Patterson here are the ones carrying on the American ideals, you libs are the ones who do all you can to destroy them.

Editorial Review:

Reckless Disregard shows how liberal Democrats are wasteful of American military lives, and have committed themselves to policies that are inimical to America's national security. This is a frontline soldier's report on how liberalism and national security don't mix.