LETTERS TO A YOUNG CONSERVATIVE

Name: LETTERS TO A YOUNG CONSERVATIVE
Author: Dinesh D’Souza
ISBN: 0-465-01733-9

by Dinesh D’Souza ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2002

Add water and stir: a political philosophy in 30 easy lessons, just right for college students too busy or ill-educated to...

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A recruiting brochure for the conservative cause, padded with the usual slams against Hilary Clinton, feminists, and anyone who questions the intellectual might and political accomplishments of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

This volume in the Art of Mentoring series finds Reagan administration alumnus D’Souza (The Virtue of Prosperity, 2000, etc.) piloting a young college student between the treacherous shoals of liberalism on one hand and libertarianism on the other. Avuncular and arch, D’Souza peppers his letters of instruction with homespun homilies about right-wing virtues: if I give a hungry man a sandwich, he writes, “then I have done a good deed, and I feel good about it. . . . But then see what happens when the government gets involved. The government takes my sandwich from me by force. . . . Instead of showing me gratitude . . . the man feels entitled to this benefit.” Humans are inherently driven by self-interest, he goes on to explain, and conservatives, unlike liberals, have no illusions about their perfectibility; hence, conservatives have a more realistic view of humankind, which is why they’re so much better at government and better people to boot. In all of this, D’Souza avoids the empty windbaggishness of Rush Limbaugh and the nastiness of Ann Coulter, but his arguments for the superiority of conservatism (or, really, neoconservatism) turn on a similar glibness: he falls easily into us good–them bad rhetoric and half-baked formulas (conservatives care about money, whereas liberals care about power, which is so much dirtier than money). Some of his attacks are well placed, if of the fish-in-a-barrel variety, as when he takes on proponents of academic “political correctness” (a term he popularized with his 1991 book Illiberal Education) and twits elite radicals who “communicate their anger in very nice lounges over expensive meals and fancy cocktails.” Few, however, are completely thought through, suggesting that D’Souza wrote his Letters in a hurry—for money, of course, and not for power.

Add water and stir: a political philosophy in 30 easy lessons, just right for college students too busy or ill-educated to read Edmund Burke or William Buckley.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-465-01733-9

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002

Categories:

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION

- BOOK REVIEW
STEALING AMERICA
by Dinesh D’Souza

- BOOK REVIEW
OBAMA'S AMERICA
by Dinesh D’Souza

- BOOK REVIEW
GODFORSAKEN
by Dinesh D’Souza

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THE NEXT POPE

A BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK AT THE FORCES THAT WILL CHOOSE THE SUCCESSOR TO JOHN PAUL II AND DECIDE THE FUTURE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

by Peter Hebblethwaite ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1995

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Renowned Vatican watcher and journalist Hebblethwaite (Paul VI: The First Modern Pope, 1993, etc.) offers a savvy analysis of how the next pope will come to be chosen and of the challenges he will face. Since John Paul took office in 1978, he has survived an assassination attempt, the removal of a growth, and a hip replacement. It's too early to predict his successor, says Hebblethwaite, but the Catholic Church is now clearly in a pre- conclave period. He describes how popes have been elected since 1179 by the cardinals of the Roman Church and gives us the inside story on the (supposedly secret) elections over the last 150 years. Noting that every conclave has to decide between continuity and discontinuity with the previous pope, Hebblethwaite examines the contributions of John Paul II, such as his role in the fall of communism and his publication of the New Code of Canon Law and the recent Catechism. He offers an incisive critique of the Pope's vision of a renewed Europe and of his position that a democracy without values or a respect for the human person becomes an open or thinly disguised totalitarianism. Hebblethwaite sees John Paul II as ruling the Church from the extreme right and suggests that a future pope will be more centrist, more accepting of a ``loyal opposition'' within the fold and of pluralism in society, will reexamine the possibility of women priests, and will see the world in terms of the North-South, rather than the East-West, divide. Based on his own sources, Hebblethwaite (who died during the preparation of this book) assesses possible future popes, e.g., the forward-looking Italians Carlo Maria Martini and Achille Silvestrini, the African Francis J. Arinze (who has a special understanding of Islam), the charismatic (and Yiddish-speaking) Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris, and Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles, who is said to want the job. The liberal Catholic position presented intelligently and loyally.

Pub Date: April 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-06-063752-8

Page Count: 192

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995

Categories:

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION

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IN SEARCH OF STONE

A PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH, REASON, AND DISCOVERY

by M. Scott Peck ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1995

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Severe inflammation of the ego is in evidence as ex-therapist Peck (Further Along the Road Less Traveled, 1993, etc.) muses on life and recounts his 21-day tour of Great Britain's ancient megalithic sites. Following his nephew's wedding at a famous London church, Peck and his wife, Lily, set out by train for Wales, the English Lake District, and Scotland in search of stones, similar to those at Stonehenge, set up in mysterious patterns more than 4,000 years ago. Peck tells us that he is too clever and possibly too humble to write an autobiography and that this is the closest he will get to it. As we follow him from the ``litter'' of Paddington Station to Cardiff, where the best hotel vaguely reminds him of Calcutta and he finds the natives unintelligible, we hear of his embarrassment at his privileged upbringing on the better part of Manhattan's Park Avenue and of his marital infidelities (which he says have ceased due to the onset of late middle age). He cites, as a bit of British provincialism, the fact that an English clergyman was scandalized at his $10,000 fee for a day's speaking engagement (half the priest's yearly income). As for Scotland itself, Peck found Glasgow ``grimy and littered'' and somehow missed out on its ancient cathedral and renowned architecture. He visited the New Age Community at Findhorn (which also disappointed him) but failed to call at the nearby 13th-century Pluscarden Abbey, with its remarkable stonework and vigorous religious community. Eloquent in his allusions to the Druids, the Merlin legend, and the mysterious people who built the stone circles, the author seems to have been hardly aware of their more recent counterparts. For the moment, Peck seems to have run out of road.