Ridiculous red-baiting, intellectually on the Coulter—not the Buckley—plane.
“In order to crush the Islamic radicals abroad, we must defeat the enemy at home.”
Wasn’t it Jerry Falwell who proclaimed that the gays and lefties were responsible for the terrorist events of 9/11, God having vented righteous wrath against the decadent? Rightist ideologue-for-hire D’Souza (Letters to a Young Conservative, 2002, etc.), a denizen of the ivory-tower Hoover Institution, picks up where Falwell left off, and though he takes pains to distance himself from the Falwellian message, as did so many other Republicans in public, he unswervingly voices the master’s themes. The “cultural left” is responsible for fostering decadence—after all, doesn’t it protect pornography under the disguise of free speech and get all worked up about naked abuses of imperial power? Decadent liberal culture “angers and repulses traditional societies” such as might be found in Saudi Arabia and Dallas. By questioning the Bush administration, which has America’s best interests at heart, the lefties are egging on bin Laden and company, which amounts to treason. D’Souza helpfully provides an enemies list, numbering such figures as Nancy Pelosi and Bill Moyers and of course Michael Moore, who are of course more dangerous than anything al-Qaeda might field. But to get to that list, the careful reader will have waded through a curious defense of Wahhabism (it’s just Islamic conservatism), witnessed D’Souza’s brave scolding of the Bush administration (it’s bad to try to democratize the Middle East, since the unwashed might well vote for Osama and Saddam), seen that Planned Parenthood is the source of much evil in the modern world inasmuch as it scorns “efforts to teach sexual modesty and ‘abstinence’ to young people” and understood that the Islamists are just upset by America’s “missionary paganism” as part of the liberals’ plot to undermine God. “We know who the domestic insurgents are,” D’Souza warns, trying to sound ominous, “and we know who is sheltering and supporting them.” Yes, indeed. Hillary, meet Hussein, whose collective fault it all is. As for the rest of the liberals, well, chadors and hellfire await.
Ridiculous red-baiting, intellectually on the Coulter—not the Buckley—plane.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2007
ISBN: 0-385-51012-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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