Levin at least doesn’t calumniate too pointedly against a single party, though the fact that his villain is Barack Obama and...
Ronald Reagan stalwart and conservative radio host Levin (Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America, 2012, etc.) punts one for the Gipper in the showdown with the dreaded statists and their “century-long march to disfigure and mangle the constitutional order.”
Forget for a minute that Reagan expanded the federal government plenty even while talking about the evils of big government. Forget for a minute that a little more than century ago, it was the Republicans who pushed the 17th Amendment, which Levin attributes to “a Progressive populism promoting simultaneously radical egalitarianism and centralized authoritarianism.” For those needing to brush up their constitutional law, the 17th Amendment is the one that lets you vote for your U.S. senator rather than having your legislature appoint one, which Levin proposes restoring. Indeed, much of this book, a set of prescriptions and proscriptions to restore “the republic,” is really a reformulation of the old anti-federalist argument against the likes of John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, who, one presumes, would bristle about Levin’s idea that taxing an estate is somehow evil. The author has a few more notions that the liberal elite may find variously quaint or alarming, including the thought that the states should somehow have the authority to “check Congress.” The preference for states’ rights over federal ones is nowhere more apparent than here, though if Levin were to look closely at the doings of the legislatures of, say, Texas or Arizona, he might be glad to see that the system of checks and balances is in place at least somewhere—not in Phoenix or Austin, but in Washington, D.C.
Levin at least doesn’t calumniate too pointedly against a single party, though the fact that his villain is Barack Obama and the hero is Saint Ronnie is a giveaway. For like-minded readers only.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-0627-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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
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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