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Author : Kevin J. Smant
Number of Pages : 390
Publisher : ISI Books
List Price : $29.95
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Product Description As the subtitle to Kevin Smant's biography indicates, the shape of the postwar American conservative movement was decisively influenced by Frank Meyer (1909-1973). One of the most passionate and committed of the Cold War's communists-turned-conservatives, Meyer's untiring efforts to locate a principled ground for the "fusion" of the disparate strands of conservatism -- particularly its traditionalist and libertarian wings -- provided the necessary cohesion for a fractious movement to eventually sweep to power with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Customer reviews Influential by .. The Doctor (The TARDIS)
Meyer was an influential thinker in the neoconservative movement. He basically argues that American Conservatism is the fusion of two lines of thought or ideas that are in Europe thought contradictory (and maybe this is part of the reason why Europeans have such a big problem with American conservatism). These two ideas are the importance of individual freedom and the importance of tradition or a code of ethics needed to civilize an otherwise naturally savage species.
This is what Thomas Sowell calls the "constrained vision" of human nature. Liberals tend to embrace the "unconstrained vision," which assumes that people are just naturally good and that ignorant policies are the only thing keeping us back from developing the utopia we could easily create. Liberals believe that if high-minded third-party decision makers tell the public how they should live their lives and impose their values on everyone else that utopia would only be a few years away.
The problems with this thinking, according to the constrained vision, is that first, in order for the government to have the power to create such a utopia a totalitarian regime must first be established, and second, even if a totalitarian leader managed to force his (or her as may soon happen) vision on everyone else, according to the constrained vision this will likely only make things worse, not better. Most social "programs" have unexpected consequences, and have historically only tended to make the problem in question worse than it already was.
According to the constrained vision we should focus on process and incentives, not lofty outcomes. Welfare might have a lofty outcome for example (to lift people out of poverty), but when one focuses on incentives created one sees that welfare will only create more poverty. People with the unconstrained vision in the sixties saw this before it even happened. When Barry Goldwater heard about welfare he said all this will do is create a caste system in America. Paying people to not help themselves is about as strong a reinforcer to NOT help yourself as could possibly be created.
So instead of people preempting your decisions and telling you how to live your life, conservatives emphasize individual freedom combined with an emphasis on classical virtues such as stoicism, reticence and honor. This is a recipe for fuller, more self-actualized citizens who create more and together, through good competition, make society a better place for all who live in it, including the poorest. (There really are no "poor" people in America after all. The average person who lives below the poverty line works 16 hours a week and spends $2.50 for every $1 earned. This is a behavioral problem, not a societal problem!) Liberals instead focus on instant gratification, getting in touch with "feelings," and the destruction of personal responsibility, which creates a society of dependent complainers who have been conditioned out of helping themselves. This removes the incentives to succeed by destroying meritocracy and in the end pulls everyone down to the mean. Society as a result will suffer.
Conservatives emphasize fairness in process; liberals emphasize fairness in outcome, which necessitates the creation of unfair processes in order to force the preconceived "fair" outcome. This unfair process typically punishes success and resourcefulness and rewards laziness and sloth. Thus we can see that conservatism is not so much a religious movement (this is a HUGE misconception), as it was actually spearheaded largely by completely secular thinkers whose common feature was an opposition to all forms of fascism, which includes all forms of socialism.
Meyer thought that liberals tended to be relativists who deny the existence of right and wrong. Their relativism, which they think makes them "enlightened," really only makes them gullible and susceptible to naïve social planners who want to rush in and "fix" everyone else's life. Frank S. Meyer, along with William Buckley, were the fathers of "fusionism," which is the stance much of modern conservatism is based on.
A well-written work and a fascinating read by .. Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
Principles And Heresies: Frank S. Meyer And The Shaping Of The American Conservative Movement is a fact-filled and engaging biography of Frank S. Meyer (1909-1972), and his profound influence on the conservative political movement in the United States, particularly in the years after World War II. An erudite commentary and presentation by Kevin J. Smant (Assistant Professor of History, Indian University, South Bend) that focuses in depth upon Frank Meyer's political career and beliefs. Especially recommended for students of 20th Century American political history, Principles And Heresies is a well-written work and a fascinating read from cover to cover.
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Author : S. T. Joshi
Number of Pages : 311
Publisher : Prometheus Books
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Product Description Since 1968, Republican presidents have occupied the White House far longer than Democratic presidents, and recently Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress as well. In spite of these electoral triumphs, leading spokespersons on the right continue to depict conservatives as an embattled minority. Lashing out at their liberal opponents, sharp-tongued partisan advocates like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Sean Hannity never tire of issuing jeremiads against what they perceive as the inexorable tide of liberal abuses that threatens to overwhelm the Republic. But if Republicans have won the battle at the voting booths, why is the right so angry? As S. T. Joshi reveals in this incisive profile of twelve leading conservatives, the rage at the heart of the right is fueled by a gnawing sense that conservatives long ago lost the hearts and minds of the American people. Since the F.D.R. administration, conservatives have unsuccessfully opposed legislative and judicial reforms that today are considered so mainstream as to be "conservative." In effect, yesterday’s liberalism is today’s conservatism, and this has been the direction of social and political change since the age of the Flappers and the Model T. Examining the writings of such conservative icons as Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr, Phyllis Schlafly, and nine others, Joshi uncovers statements that most people today would consider not just radical but outrageous: · In the 1950s, Russell Kirk opposed Social Security because he said it was "un-Christian." · In the same decade, William F. Buckley Jr. argued against the desegregation of public schools on the grounds that it would be an infringement of states’ rights (an argument also used a century earlier to defend slavery). · In the 1970s, Phyllis Schlafly declared that women’s liberation is a "disease" and a "homewrecker." Knowing that these positions are today indefensible, conservative spokespersons have little recourse but to engage in passionate invective that attempts to portray their opponents as extremists. Joshi characterizes the aggrieved lament of conservatives as the last gasp of those who know their ideas will be confined to the dustbin of history. Customer reviews Just Another Intellectual Snob  by .. Bruce Jones (Seattle, WA USA)
Mr. Joshi confuses "angry" with passion.
His leadoff for the Rush Limbaugh chapter...
"...I have not listened to a single radio broadcast by Rush H. Limbaugh III (b. 1951)."
Gee, and now you're going to write a chapter on how "Loud and Wrong" he is? What are you going to base it on since he's America's most popular radio broadcaster?
And so he (Mr. Joshi) says...
"...it will be more fruitful to gauge Limbaugh's political and social opinions by means of his written words--specifically, his two best-selling volumes, The Way Things Ought to Be (1992) and See, I Told You So (1993)--since his views do not appear to have undergone significant change since these works were issued."
OK, so your discussion is immediately 13 years out of date, but you claim his views haven't changed much--how do you know if you've never listened?
And he goes on for 22 more pages attributing Limbaugh behavior and ideas to other, previous conservatives whose views in today's environment are not considered mainstream. He lumps Limbaugh in with Francis Parkman (1884) in a discussion on women suffrage! Now that's a current position for conservatives, eh? And he conveniently ignores that women did have the right to vote in many western states in the 1890's that were run by Republicans.
And then he concludes...
"...he is a deeply embittered and frustrated man.[ ]I don't get the impression that he gets much pleasure out of life. All he seems to do is work and watch football games. The manifold beauties and wonders of literature, music, painting, sculpture, drama, and the other arts find him, apparently, quite unresponsive, as it does the majority of Americans. He is, fundamentally, an uncivilized man."
Sound bite version..."you're all slobs." Typical liberal rant.
Maybe the rest of the book is better. I'll try...thank goodness it's a library book.
Anger management courses won't help by .. Loves the View (Hawaii)
Joshi posits that while conservatives can win elections, they look around and see a stalled agenda. Phyllis Schaffley was not able to convince women that they did not want equal pay for equal work, and William F. Buckley has not seen the end of the USA with the dawn of integrated schools. Schaffley has to suffer seeing the now ubiquitous title "Ms." which she had ridiculed, belittled and condemned. Contemporary conservatives, who's faces grace the book's cover, are a lot more shrill than their predecessors ever were. Joshi posits that this is because they see an America that is not like the one THEY have determined that it "should" be.
Joshi spends most of the text demonstrating "why conservatives keep getting it wrong." By quoting the writings of conservatives, he shows the missing logic of their positions. As contemporary conservative book titles suggest ("How to talk to a liberal if you must"; "Liberalism is a disease"), their program has little to do with policy and more to do with being against liberals. The need to shout and smear, he suggests, results from frustration in seeing the institutionalization and cultural acceptance of the liberal causes they fought against (civil rights, availability of abortion, environmental protection laws, to name a few) and an inability to articulate a logical argument.
He deals with a neglected (I think) issue, as to why, in public debate, "morals" are always about sex. Greed, corruption, etc., are never linked to immorality in the public discourse. Joshi discusses reasons why.
As I finished this book, I started the John Dean book, "Conservatives without Conscience", which adds more perspective.
Getting the Right Absolutely Right by .. Michael Bartolo (Florida)
This book was a total delight! With easy-to-read skill and erudition, Joshi peels the skin from the conservative media's main figures, his excoriations done in a pleasantly polite manner.
The author does us the service of giving the historical perspective on the conservative movement, particularly the background promulgations of Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley Jr., analyzing for us their long record of discredited positions on the issues of our times.
His chapter on "The Traitor Police" (Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity) makes for delicious reading, not only for the bizarre and hysterical rantings of this dubious troika, but for Joshi's exceedingly dry wit in dealing with their extremism.
This is one of the best political books ever, and a stone-cold necessity for anyone who wants to understand what's ticking in America.
If you've ever wanted insights into the ideals of the conservative mind, THE ANGRY RIGHT tells all. by .. Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
It's a fact that Republications have enjoyed unprecedented power for the last eight years: so why is the right so angry? THE ANGRY RIGHT: WHY CONSERVATIVES KEEP GETTING IT WRONG uses twelve leading conservatives to document the roots of rate by the right, which believes conservatives have strayed from the righteous path. The writings of conservative icons here document this shift, using works from William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk and nine others. If you've ever wanted insights into the ideals of the conservative mind, THE ANGRY RIGHT tells all.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
S.T. Joshi Gets It Right by .. Bryan L. Simmons ()
In a well-written, well-researched history of modern conservative opinionmakers, Mr. Joshi thoroughly debunks with surgical precision the assertions of a dozen conservative icons of the last fifty years. Every progressive in America should read this book.
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Author : Robert M. Buck, Auberon Waugh Frank S. Meyer
Number of Pages : 384
Publisher : Conservative Book Club
Used Price : $5.75 |
Product Description Conservative Book Club, Omnibus Volume 3: containing three books (1) The Moulding of Communists by Frank S. Meyer,1961. (2) The Grim Truth About Fluoridation by Robert M. Buck,1964. (3) Path of Dalliance by Auberon Waugh, 1963. 384 total pages. Related Search : club omnibus , omnibus 3 , conservative book  |
Author : V.S. Naipaul
Number of Pages : 208
Release Date : 2008-04-29
Publisher : Knopf
List Price : $24.95
Amazon Price : $8.25
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Product Description Born in Trinidad of Indian descent, a resident of England for his entire adult life, and a prodigious traveler, Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul has always faced the challenges of “fitting one civilisation to another.” Here, in his first book of nonfiction since 2003, he gives us an eloquent, candid, wide-ranging narrative that delves into this sometimes inadvertent process of creative and intellectual assimilation.
He discusses the writers he read early on: Derek Walcott, Gustave Flaubert and his own father among them. He explains how Anthony Powell and Francis Wyndham influenced his first encounters with literary culture. He looks at what we have retained—and forgotten—of the world portrayed in Caesar’s The Gallic War and Virgil’s Aeneid. He illuminates the ways in which the writings of Gandhi, Nehru and other Indian writers both reveal and conceal the authors and their nation. And he brings the same scrutiny to bear on his own life: his years in Trinidad; the gaps in his family history; the “private India” kept alive in his family through story, ritual, religion and culture; his ever-evolving reaction to the more complicated and demanding true India he would encounter for the first time when he was thirty.
Part meditation, part remembrance, as elegant as it is revelatory, A Writer’s People allows us privileged insight—full of incident, humor and feeling—into the mind of one of our greatest writers. Customer reviews Everyone's favorite literary scoundrel by .. Eric Maroney (Brooktondale, NY)
Certainly it is no secret that V.S. Naipaul has unsavory aspects to his personality. In this work, "A Writer's People," some of those traits are on display: the snobbishness, the egotism, the general myopia of things, events, moods, which are outside of Naipaul's purview, and therefore, to him, unimportant. But in the cavalcade of harsh judgments, it is easy to the pass over the essential fairness he attempts to exercise in his assessment of other writers. He is critical and dismissive of Walcott, but does not leave out the excitement this poet's work generated both for himself and for other Trinidadians in the 40's. He has nothing particularly good to say about Anthony Powell's work "A Dance to the Music of Time," but he is generous to the man, his easy stance as a writer, and his semi-admiration for his "collection" of people so much like a literary endeavor in its meticulousness.
This collection of essays, although a bit disorganized in the flow of ideas, show how strong a writer Naipaul continues to be: witty, incisive, stern, humorous, Naipaul is still a writer of great subtly and dexterity. Here, writing about writing, he still has new things to say.
More than simply a writer by .. Muhammad A. Quddus (Los Angeles)
I was not going to write the review but the passion of a fellow reviewer compels me to say a few words. The reviewer had expected humility and dignity from the writer. If the reviwer wishes to see those attributes, why not pick up other books or watch politicians. I thought Mr.Naipaul's most recent book is one of the most amazing book I have ever came across. The book contains a theme: "what is history, what is disaster and what is civilization." This has been the writer Naipaul's preoccupation. He does not write to belittle others or settle some score. Anyone could do it. A reader expects more from a writer of great imagination. He see so much and feel so much. In fact the writer teaches the reader how to be aware of the world around. Reading all his books has been one of my best experience so far.
A Writer's People: Ways of Looking and Feeling  by .. A. P. Garland (Bahrain)
I found this book very disappointing and would not recommend it.
V.S. Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, indicates that this book is not meant as a literary criticism or biography. In fact, I found the opposite. He is very critical of authors' works, and often sickeningly condescending. In places, he seems to be apologizing for having favored authors' works in his past, but having seen the obvious shortcomings of these works, he takes us on a laborious, rather self-serving, journey into how he grew to see the light.
I found him so utterly annoying that I tore the book up after reading it on the plane, just in case someone else had the misfortune to pick it up and read it.
He is a Nobel Prize winner, and I (perhaps naively) expected a little more humility and dignity from V.S. Naipaul.
Exhibits a high culture that is both erudite and realistic by .. Roy E. Perry (Nolensville, Tennessee)
Born in Trinidad of Indian descent and educated in England, V. S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. In A Writer's People, he is concerned with the process of cultural assimilation--of fitting one civilization to another--and the nature of good writing.
"My purpose in this book," he writes, "is not literary criticism or biography. . . . I wish only, and in a personal way, to set out the writing to which I was exposed during my career. I say writing, but I mean more specifically vision, a way of seeing and feeling." Nevertheless, there is much literary criticism and biography in this work.
Juxtaposing various authors, Naipaul shows how some are burdened with prejudicial "fixed ideas," and how others have broken free of such constraints to face honestly, with open eyes, our place in a changing world.
Naipaul's far-ranging interests include critiques of Derek Walcott, Francis Wyndham, Anthony Powell, Gustave Flaubert, Juulius Caesar, Virgil, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharhal Nehru, and many others.
The elegant prose and thoughtful content of A Writer's People reveals Naipaul to be a champion of a high culture that is both erudite and realistic, exalted yet down to earth.
About the author: V. S. Naipaul was born in 1932 in Trinidad, an island seven miles off the coast of Venezuela. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. In 1990 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and in 2001 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1971, Naipaul became the first person of Indian origin to win a Booker Prize for his book In a Free State. In awarding Naipaul the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. The Swedish Academy praised his work "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories." The Committee added, "Naipaul is a modern philosophe carrying on the tradition that started originally with Lettres persanes and Candide. In a vigilant style, which has been deservedly admired, he transforms rage into precision and allows events to speak with their own inherent irony." The Committee also noted Naipaul's affinity with the Polish author of Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad: "Naipaul is Conrad's heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings. His authority as a narrator is grounded in the memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished." Naipaul has published more than 25 books of fiction and nonfiction, including Half a Life, A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, Magic Seeds and a collection of letters, Between Father and Son.
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Author : Michigan Historical Reprint Series
Number of Pages : 232
Release Date : 2005-12-20
Publisher : Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library
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Product Description This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. Related Search : s s , conservative essays , legal political |
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