A fairly straightforward conservative argument that partisan politics and lack of reverence for capitalism portend the...
A conservative political commentator sees democracy and capitalism in peril.
Goldberg (The Tyranny of Cliché: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, 2012, etc.), a National Review senior editor and member of the Fox News All-Stars, continues the passionate, polemical celebration of conservative values—and disdain for the liberal left—that informed his previous two books. The health and future of our nation, he argues, are being undermined by tribalism (read: identity politics) and a wrongheaded conviction that the state can be “the only source of meaning in our lives.” As a conservative, he disparages both the tea party, which he once heartily supported, and Donald Trump. The tea party “married populism to the principles of the Founding, demanding the government live within its means and abide by the Constitution,” but it fell into tribalism after being unfairly branded by the media as “racist yokels and boobs.” Trump, “boorish and crude,” lacks character, much less consistent beliefs in any ideology. True conservatism, Goldberg asserts, “is a bundle of ideological commitments: limited government, natural rights, the importance of traditional values, patriotism, gratitude” and “the beliefs that ideas matter and that character matters.” Gratitude ranks high in that list, and the author insists that Americans should be thankful for what he—drawing on scholars such as Ernest Gellner—calls the “Miracle,” modern capitalism. Emerging in 18th-century England, the Miracle “is an attitude, expressed in new ideas and the rhetoric that accompanies them.” Among those new ideas was an “ideology of merit, industriousness, innovation, contracts, and rights.” Before the Miracle, “notions of betterment, innovation, and improvement were seen, literally, as heresy.” But the Miracle rewards “earned success,” which, the author asserts, “is the secret to meaningful happiness.” As for economic inequality, the author claims that the free-market system is “the only anti-poverty system ever invented.” A supporter of immigration, Goldberg also supports assimilation; civil society works best “in ethnically or culturally homogeneous communities.”
A fairly straightforward conservative argument that partisan politics and lack of reverence for capitalism portend the demise of democracy.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-90493-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Crown Forum
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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