An energetic populist manifesto that scores hits on a wide range of targets.
This free-wheeling polemic argues it’s time for Australians to stand up to a corrupt establishment.
Stewart begins by saluting the iconically plucky Australian populace—among them, pre-colonial aborigines, who lived a “culturally rich, refined and satisfying life”; later mavericks, from Robin Hood-like outlaw Ned Kelly to brassy feminist Germaine Greer; and the current crop of ordinary farmers, miners, small businesspeople, and innovators. Keeping this last group down, the author contends, is a rogue’s gallery of pernicious institutions. Pride of place goes to government bureaucrats—Stewart likens them to parasitic aphids. He also attacks the finance industry (“You puffed up, fat lazy arrogant bankers, you should not be proud of stealing the savings of trusting little old ladies”); schools that “force children to…grovel before the power of the state” until they become “frightened little snowflakes”; the “pustule of politicians” in Parliament; “young, green zealots” and their “loony, lazy, Lefty lamentations”; and British aristocrats, whom he calls “deeply flawed and depraved dipsticks” who perpetrated a “genocide” on Australian soldiers by roping them into the world wars. The author’s argument leans right—he’s intensely skeptical of illegal immigration and big government—but he takes on concentrated economic power as well. Stewart lays out a vision of a society that’s autonomous and adaptable, structured not around centralized institutions but families and villages. He offers a raft of policy proposals, some wistful (banning lawyers from Parliament because they have a vested interest in passing complicated laws that provoke suits) and others more serious (the author suggests having companies run by German-style councils with worker representation). Stewart’s punchy prose revels in aggressive alliteration, but he also provides a thoughtful, probing social critique. (“Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work.”) The result is a provocative challenge to Australia’s entrenched interests.
An energetic populist manifesto that scores hits on a wide range of targets.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2021
ISBN: 9798782307653
Page Count: 215
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
