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Title: UP FROM CONSERVATISM by Michael Lind ISBN: 0-684-83186-4 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 15 July, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.4 (25 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Not Perfect But Still a Good Critique
Comment: Michael Lind was once an up-and-coming conservative activist until he realized that his mentor, William F. Buckley, Jr., refused to condemn televangelist Pat Robertson for his book "The New World Order." Lind became disillusioned with the conservative movement as it veered away from the old-style conservatism to embrace the radical right.
Because he has the advantage of having been an insider, his book is much more powerful and persuasive than books by those outside the movement. Lind shows the reader the roots of modern day conservatism, he discusses the think tanks that are behind much of today's conservative thought, and he focuses on three conservative hoaxes very popular with the public.
The best part of his book, however, is a chapter based upon a review Lind wrote in the New York Review of Books about Pat Robertson's "The New World Order." Lind is absolutely brilliant in exposing Robertson's plagarism of anti-Semitic works which Robertson in turn sanitized to a more conventional conspiracy theory. And yet there was very little negative comment about Robertson, especially from fellow conservatives. Lind calls this silence a result of a "no enemies to the right" policy.
Lind's book isn't perfect. His explanation of the genealogy of American political thought becomes rather confusing in places. Some readers will no doubt object to Lind's attitude toward affirmative action (he's against it). But all in all, it is still an excellent book.
Rating: 3
Summary: Well-intended, but flawed.
Comment: I began reading this book with great anticipation, intrigued by Lind's call for a revival of old-fashioned populist/centrist "vital center" liberalism, a position that has almost completely disappeared from the radar screens of the nation's political and media elites. For the most part, Lind delivers; his comments regarding the professional-managerial overclass are right on the money, and go a long way toward explaining the current political "consensus" that combines cultural liberalism and economic conservatism, both of which are a slap in the face to the working and lower-middle classes, black and white alike. Similarly the usefulness of leftist "multiculturalism" and identity politics as useful tools for that same overclass are given much-needed exposure. However, his belief that the so-called "culture war" is purely a right-wing fabrication betrays a misunderstanding of the depths of people's convictions regarding issues like abortion, sexual morality, drug abuse, careerism, and materialism. While conservatives (and more than a few liberals) have proven adept at exploiting these convictions for political gain, they didn't invent them from scratch. Indeed, for all his jeremaids against overclass elitism, Lind himself seems oddly unwilling to recognize the validity or authenticity of cultural populism, dismissing it as the exclusive province of crackpot fundamentalists a la Pat Robertson. (A more thoughtful consideration of these concerns can be found in the works of Christopher Lasch i.e. "The Revolt Of The Elites." Despite this reservation, however, I found this book to present a compelling case for political reform, and more than worthwhile for the millions of us who are relatively lacking in wealth and privelege and dare to assert that we have a voice too.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Real Eye Opener
Comment: I recommend this book to anyone who wants a lot of information about what went wrong with the Republican Party (Lind was a Democrat who switched parties then left the Republicans in disgust.) Lind isn't a partisan though, he has many problems with the Democratics and liberals in general, so his critique of the Right is clearly from the middle. It's is also rich with the names of the people who are the major players in the Party - whose names you see today on TV news shows or on op-eds in major news publications nationwide.
This book left me with a real sense, though, that much of Republican ideaology is just propaganda designed to maintain the power and profit of a super rich overclass -- and that the current Democratic ideology is nearly as bankrupt. The future, as I read the book, lies in a return to New Deal Liberalism, where the government is meant to benefit the working middle class and protect it from the abuses of unchecked capitalism.
Altogether a great insight into our modern History.
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Title: Dead Right by David Frum ISBN: 0465098258 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: May, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth by Joe Conason ISBN: 0312315600 Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books Pub. Date: 25 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century by Paul Krugman ISBN: 0393058506 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Made In Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics by Michael Lind ISBN: 0465041213 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 17 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: NEXT AMERICAN NATION: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution by Michael Lind ISBN: 0684825031 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 05 July, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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