Conservatism Books - Page 3

Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America

Mark Levin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 228 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Men In Black 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

When I bought this book I thought it was going to be about our corrupt judiciary, what is wrong with it, and how we might fix it. I was a little disappointed in the content, as from the first few pages I discovered it's more of a right hates left attack on liberalism circa the judiciary. It has more to do with how judicial decision affect party politics and how if you disagree with a verdict that judge must be an "activist." If that is what you are looking for, I recommend it.

I'm more interested in say, how judges use immunity to break the law, destroy lives, uphold blatantly unconstitutional government actions and protect their cronies while they fleece regular Americans.

Educational and Fascinating 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I recommend this book to everyone. The information contained in this book is not only educational, but it is pertinent to the cultural battle that is underway today by liberals using activist judges to circumvent our constitution. An easy read, and a must read, and you will understand how the courts are having an effect upon you and your children, whether you realize it or not, by bypassing the legislative process to make the government do things we would never vote for in a million years.

Editorial Review:

The bestselling Men in Black--first time in paperback! Lawyer and hugely popular radio talk show host Mark Levin throws the book at out-of-control liberal judges who ignore the Constitution, dismantle the rights of American citizens, and make up their own coercive law from the bench.

Godless: The Church of Liberalism

Ann Coulter

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Total reviews: 948 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"If a martian landed in America and set out to determine the nation's official state religion, he would have to conclude it is liberalism, while Christianity and Judaism are prohibited by law.

Many Americans are outraged by liberal hostility to traditional religion. But as Ann Coulter reveals in this, her most explosive book yet, to focus solely on the Left's attacks on our Judeo-Christian tradition is to miss a larger point: liberalism is a religion—a godless one.

And it is now entrenched as the state religion of this county.

Though liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, it bears all the attributes of a religion. In Godless, Coulter throws open the doors of the Church of Liberalism, showing us its sacraments (abortion), its holy writ (Roe v. Wade), its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal), its clergy (public school teachers), its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free), its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the "absolute moral authority" of spokesmen from Cindy Sheehan to Max Cleland), and its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident).

Then, of course, there's the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

For liberals, evolution is the touchstone that separates the enlightened from the benighted. But Coulter neatly reverses the pretense that liberals are rationalists guided by the ideals of free inquiry and the scientific method. She exposes the essential truth about Darwinian evolution that liberals refuse to confront: it is bogus science.

Writing with a keen appreciation for genuine science, Coulter reveals that the so-called gaps in the theory of evolution are all there is—Darwinism is nothing but a gap. After 150 years of dedicated searching into the fossil record, evolution's proponents have failed utterly to substantiate its claims. And a long line of supposed evidence, from the infamous Piltdown Man to the "evolving" peppered moths of England, has been exposed as hoaxes. Still, liberals treat those who question evolution as religious heretics and prohibit students from hearing about real science when it contradicts Darwinism. And these are the people who say they want to keep faith out of the classroom?

Liberals' absolute devotion to Darwinism, Coulter shows, has nothing to do with evolution's scientific validity and everything to do with its refusal to admit the possibility of God as a guiding force. They will brook no challenges to the official religion.

Fearlessly confronting the high priests of the Church of Liberalism and ringing with Coulter's razor-sharp wit, Godless is the most important and riveting book yet from one of today's most lively and impassioned conservative voices.


"Liberals love to boast that they are not 'religious,' which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion. Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as 'religion.'" —From Godless

A Personal Stand: Observations and Opinions from a Freethinking Roughneck

Trace Adkins

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Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Country music superstar Trace Adkins isn’t exactly known for holding back what’s on his mind. And if the millions of albums he’s sold are any indication, when Trace talks, people listen. Now, in A Personal Stand, Trace Adkins delivers his maverick manifesto on politics, personal responsibility, fame, parenting, being true to yourself, hard work, and the way things oughta be.

In his inimitable pull-no-punches style, Trace gives us the state of the union as he sees it, from the lessons of his boyhood in small-town Louisiana to what he’s learned headlining concerts around the world. Trace has worked oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, been shot in the heart, been inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, and braved perhaps the greatest challenge of all: being the father of five daughters. And shaped by these experiences, he’s sounding off.

• I’m incredibly frustrated with the state of American politics. If there were a viable third party, I’d seriously consider joining it.
• If anybody wonders who the good guys are and who the bad guys are in this world, just look at the way we teach our children as opposed to the way the fundamentalist Muslims teach their children.
• Organized labor now exists for the sake of organized labor, and not for the workers it once protected.
• I believe the easiest way to solve the illegal immigration enforcement problem is to go after the employers who hire illegal aliens.
• As a society, we’re unwilling to sacrifice our luxuries and our conveniences in order to conserve. We won’t change until we’re forced to.
• The war on terror is like herpes. People can live with it, but it’ll flare up from time to time.

Brash, ballsy, persuasive, and controversial, A Personal Stand isn’t just the story of Trace Adkins’s life; it’s the story of what life can teach all of us.

The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom

Robert A. Levy, William Mellor

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A non-lawyer’s guide to the worst Supreme Court decisions of the modern era

The Dirty Dozen takes on twelve Supreme Court cases that changed American history—and yet are not well known to most Americans.

Starting in the New Deal era, the Court has allowed breathtaking expansions of government power that significantly reduced individual rights and abandoned limited federal government as envisioned by the founders.

For example:
• Helvering v. Davis (1937) allowed the government to take money from some and give it to others, without any meaningful constraints
• Wickard v. Filburn (1942) let Congress use the interstate commerce clause to regulate even the most trivial activities—neither interstate nor commerce
• Kelo v. City of New London (2005) declared that the government can seize private property and transfer it to another private owner

Levy and Mellor untangle complex Court opinions to explain how The Dirty Dozen harmed ordinary Americans. They argue for a Supreme Court that will enforce what the Constitution actually says about civil liberties, property rights, racial preferences, gun ownership, and many other controversial issues.

Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National ReviewPM

William F. Buckley Jr.

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Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The very human side of an intimidatingly erudite polymath 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is a delicious trove of correspondence that shows WFB's sense of humor and wall-to-wall good nature. He spars with critics and detractors, tweaks friends like Art Buchwald and spreads his trademark wit, logophilia and his positively infectious joie de vivre over the decades. My favorite line is from a 12 or 13-year old asking for advice on life. WFB's response: never grow up. He was a man who very obviously cherished and loved God, family and country and his loss is acutely felt. This book is a delightful snapshot of the many facets of his personality.

Editorial Review:

Who knew that William F. Buckley Jr., the quintessential conservative, invented the blog decades before the World Wide Web came into existence? National Review, like nearly all magazines, has always published letters from readers. In 1967 the magazine decided that certain letters merited different treatment, and Buckley, the editor, began a column called “Notes & Asides,” in which he personally answered the most notable and outrageous letters. The selections in this book, culled from four decades of these columns, include exchanges with such figures as Ronald Reagan, Eric Sevareid, Richard Nixon, A. M. Rosenthal, Auberon Waugh, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. There are also hilarious exchanges with ordinary readers, as well as letters from Buckley to various organizations and government agencies.

How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present

Thomas Dilorenzo

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Total reviews: 50 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Here’s the real history of our country. How Capitalism Saved America explodes the myths spun by Michael Moore, the liberal media, Hollywood, academia, and the rest of the anticapitalist establishment.

Whether it’s Michael Moore or the New York Times, Hollywood or academia, a growing segment in America is waging a war on capitalism. We hear that greedy plutocrats exploit the American public; that capitalism harms consumers, the working class, and the environment; that the government needs to rein in capitalism; and on and on. Anticapitalist critiques have only grown more fevered in the wake of corporate scandals like Enron and WorldCom. Indeed, the 2004 presidential campaign has brought frequent calls to re-regulate the American economy.

But the anticapitalist arguments are pure bunk, as Thomas J. DiLorenzo reveals in How Capitalism Saved America. DiLorenzo, a professor of economics, shows how capitalism has made America the most prosperous nation on earth—and how the sort of government regulation that politicians and pundits endorse has hindered economic growth, caused higher unemployment, raised prices, and created many other problems. He propels the reader along with a fresh and compelling look at critical events in American history—covering everything from the Pilgrims to Bill Gates.

And just as he did in his last book, The Real Lincoln, DiLorenzo explodes numerous myths that have become conventional wisdom. How Capitalism Saved America reveals:

• How the introduction of a capitalist system saved the Pilgrims from starvation
• How the American Revolution was in large part a revolt against Britain’s stifling economic controls
• How the so-called robber barons actually improved the lives of millions of Americans by providing newer and better products at lower prices
• How the New Deal made the Great Depression worse
• How deregulation got this country out of the energy crisis of the 1970s—and was not the cause of recent blackouts in California and the Northeast
• And much more

How Capitalism Saved America is popular history at its explosive best.

Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror

Nonie Darwish

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Total reviews: 73 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

One woman’s story of why she left the culture of Islamic Jihad to support American liberty and tolerance

Why are so many Muslims embracing jihad and cheering for al-Qaeda and Hamas? Why are even the modern, secularized Arab states such as Egypt producing a generation of angry young extremists?

Nonie Darwish knows why. When she was eight, her father died while leading Fedayeen raids into Israel. Her family moved from Gaza back to Cairo, where they were honored as survivors of a "shahid"—a martyr for jihad. She grew up learning the same lessons as millions of Muslim children: to hate Jews, destroy Israel, oppose America, and submit to dictatorship.

But Darwish became increasingly appalled by the anger and hatred in her culture, and in 1978 she emigrated to America. Since 9/11 she has been lecturing and writing on behalf of moderate Arabs and Arab-Americans. Extremists have denounced her as an infidel and threatened her life.

In this fascinating book, she speaks out against the dark side of her native culture—women abused by Islamic traditions; the poor and uneducated mistreated by the elites; bribery and corruption as a way of life. Her former friends and neighbors blamed all the their troubles on Jews and Americans, but Darwish rejects their bigotry and calls for the Arab world to make peace with the West.

The only hope for the future, she writes, is for America to continue waging its War on Terror, seeding the Middle East with the values of democracy, respect for women, and tolerance for all religions.

The End of History and the Last Man

Francis Fukuyama

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 76 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Fascinating, thought--provoking, but out of date 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

In this fascinating and highly thought-provoking book, American philosopher Francis Fukuyama argues that the war at the beginning of human history was a battle for prestige or recognition. And, history has unfolded as a search to find a balance between the drives for victory of one over another to gain that recognition. In the eighteenth century, history effectively began to end as people embraced the liberal democratic/capitalist system that granted mutual recognition.

Now, history is not over for those outside this system, and nations can return to history if they move away from the liberal democratic/capitalist system. Along the way, the author unfolds his argument for the drive for recognition as the engine of human history, explains how we got to where we are, and what the future may eventually bring for the human race. The author makes his argument in a clear, compelling manner that puts great force behind his argument.

I do, though, have several complains against this book. First of all, I have the 1992 edition, and some of what I have to say may not apply to later editions. But, as the West now stands in a crisis situation in world history, it is easy to see that some of what has happened in the last 15 years was not anticipated by Mr. Fukuyama.

Chapter 7 of this book is entitled, No Barbarians At The Gates. Well, in point of fact, the West faces two sets of Barbarians at the gates. The first set of barbarians are in fact within the gates, and is the newly militant Liberalism with its drive to extinguish freedom (think of Dr. Heidi Cullen's desire to remove American Meteorological Society accreditation to any meteorologist who expresses skepticism towards man-made global warming) in its drive for radical equality. This is in fact the "excess of isothymia" that the author mentioned was possible in chapter 29, but he did not expect it to be coupled with an external threat.

Second of all, on page 45, Dr. Fukuyama states that Islam poses "a grave threat to liberal practices," but then immediately moves away from the threat of Islam, as if wishing it out of existence. In point of fact, with the West's inability and even downright refusal to maintain its borders, the "post-historic" world has been invaded by people from the "historic" world, and militant Islam is now working with some success to undermine the liberal democratic system from within the very heart of the "post-historic" world.

Therefore, while I do think that this book is quite correct in its view of the drive for recognition and the victory of the liberal democratic/capitalistic system, I do think that it does not do a good job of anticipating what would (and did!) come next. The "post-historic" world has proved itself unable (at least so far) to protect itself against the "historic" world, and it is uncertain that it will be philosophically able to protect itself without a turn to towards the "megalothymia" that the good doctor so fears.

So, overall, I would highly recommend this book as a fascinating philosophical look at the modern world, but I would not say that it goes so far as to explain where we are now and where we are truly heading. I give this book a somewhat guarded recommendation.

Editorial Review:

Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

The Conservative Soul: Fundamentalism, Freedom, and the Future of the Right

Andrew Sullivan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Disappointed 2 out of 5 stars.
5 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Without question, Andrew Sullivan is one of my favorite writers. Even when I do not agree with his analysis of a situation, be it political or philosophical, I find him to be interesting, thoughtful, and passionate. And when it comes to the Bush Administration and the handling of Iraq and other facets of the conflict with Islamic terrorists, I have to say that a good deal of his attitude (though not, I think, development of ideas) has mirrored my own over the course of the past several years. So I was very much looking forward to reading his most recent book, The Conservative Soul. I am also disheartened to say that I was tremendously disappointed. Although there are some interesting nuggets of good ideas buried in the book, I find that on the whole it was sloppy, muddled, disorganized and -- I'm sorry to say -- not very well written. Although I would highly recommend that everyone read Sullivan's blog and essays, I would not recommend this book.

Editorial Review:

Today's conservatives support the idea of limited government, but they have increased government's size and power to new heights. They believe in balanced budgets, but they have boosted government spending, debt, and pork to record levels. They believe in national security but launched a reckless, ideological occupation in Iraq that has made us tangibly less safe. They have substituted religion for politics and damaged both.

In The Conservative Soul, one of the nation's leading political commentators makes an impassioned call to rescue conservatism from the excesses of the Republican far right, which has tried to make the GOP the first fundamentally religious party in American history. In this bold and powerful book, Andrew Sullivan makes a provocative, prescient, and heartfelt case for a revived conservatism at peace with the modern world, and dedicated to restraining government and empowering individuals to live rich and fulfilling lives.

Wealth of Nations (Great Minds Series)

Adam Smith

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Total reviews: 64 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Monumental Importance 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

The Wealth of Nations is one of the most important books ever written. In some respects the Wealth of Nations was a tract for the times. Smith penned a crippling critique of the mercantilist `Policy of Europe'. Smith, along with David Hume and David Ricardo, refuted the mercantilist case for protectionism. Much of what we read in this book is still taught in modern economics classes. Modern day protectionists still have no answer to the principles of absolute and comparative advantage, and for the basic logic of Hume's specie flow mechanism.

Smith was more than an ordinary economist. He was a visionary who saw some of the potential for progress through Globalization. Perhaps the most important concept of this book is the dynamics between division of labor, labor productivity, and the extent of markets. Smith conceived of Globalization as a process that would raise productivity as local markets expanded to national and then international scope. His example of division of labor in a pin factory is simple, but illustrative.

The most widely known part of this book is that part of the `invisible hand of markets'. Invisible hand reasoning still pervades modern economic theory, though there are some variations in how economists interpret this concept. Smith does differ from Modern economists on certain issues. Smith thought of competition as a process and of monopoly as a government grant of privilege. In these areas Smith was ahead of many modern economists. Smith also explained market prices in terms of labor content. Here is Smith's great error. Labor value theory set economics on the wrong course. Labor value theory served as the basis for Marxism. This, of course, indicates the great influence of The Wealth of Nations on world history. Without labor value theory the Marxist idea of exploitation falls apart. Smith therefore played a posthumous role in twentieth century history, especially from 1918 to 1991. Of course, we cannot blame Smith for the misuse of his ideas. Smith would have surely opposed Marxism, had he been alive to do so.

What we have in this book is a tremendous effort at discovering the proper limits between private and public institutions. Better still, Smith thought about society and institutions in evolutionary terms. This is another reason why the Wealth of Nations is preferable to modern economics texts. Smith understood the dynamics of capitalism better than many modern economists- who focus on static math models. Smith also influenced Charles Darwin with his ideas of social evolution. There is much evidence indicating that Darwin got the idea for the evolution of species by reading The Wealth of Nations. Smith therefore had great influence on the biological sciences.

Modern economists reject Smith labor value theory (ever since Menger refuted it in 1870). However, there is no denying the influence of The Wealth of Nations. All members of the educated public should read at least part of this book. The question then in which edition should you buy? The Liberty Classics edition is unabridged. The Modern Library Classics edition has margin notes that could be helpful. Given the affordability of these editions, you might consider have both on your bookshelf (I do). I would avoid the Great Mind Series altogether. The Wealth of Nations should be read because it is both a book of great historical importance and a good source for understanding modern Globalization. The labor value theory part precludes a five star rating, but anything less than four stars would be absurd.

Editorial Review:

Political economy had been studied long before Adam Smith. But "Wealth of Nations" (1776) established it for the first time as a separate science. Smith based his arguments on vast historical knowledge, and developed his principles with remarkable clarity. What set this work apart was its statement of the doctrine of natural liberty. Smith believed that 'man's self-interest is God's providence' - that if government abstained from interfering with free competition, the invisible hand of capitalism would emerge from the competing claims of individual self-interest. Industrial problems would be resolved and maximum efficiency reached. After more than two centuries, Smith's work still stands as the best statement and defence of the fundamental principles of capitalism.