According to Goldberg, human societies are naturally tribal, greedy, violent and unequal. It is only in the recent history of the human animal that ideas such as universal human rights, cooperation across borders for commerce and science and the equality of all people became widely held in the West.
In both the politics of Obama and Trump, Goldberg According to Goldberg, human societies are naturally tribal, greedy, violent and unequal. In both the politics of Obama and Trump, Goldberg sees clear evidence of such devolution. The antidote is promulgation of capitalism, the flourishing of the free market and the protection of small government. At times, I felt as if the tone of this book was rather condescending, but I suspect that it was simply an attempt to keep his arguments accessible and engaging to a popular readership.
I do not share his conclusions; I am far more liberal politically than he is. His conclusion that capitalism and small government alone can counteract the pull of greed, fear of the outsider, intolerance and other base impulses is not the conclusion that I draw. But, I did appreciate the opportunity to hear a rational voice outside the echo chamber that I often find myself in.
I found here that, despite different political leanings, we share more values and aspirations than the current political conversation would have us believe. This is one of those times when a GoodRead book group pick caused me to read something I would not have picked up on my own and I am richer for the experience.
View 2 comments. May 03, Lynell rated it liked it. Read something that makes you yell at the audiobook every now and then Saw the author on The Daily Show and he had some interesting thoughts in promoting his book, so I downloaded the audiobook. Positive: Interesting historical recitation, including relating several schools of philosophy to his thesis that the current state of American democracy is active decay. Interesting juxtaposition of some social-psych research, which I have read in my academic career.
He has a MASSIVE habit of conflating unsubstantiated thoughts he has about the world with certain research and making sweeping generalizations - and even contradicting himself. Heavy on the "good old days were better for the world" rhetoric And the "traditional family structure" 1 man 1 woman raising children is "better" for society. He compares statistics from 60 years ago to the status of the family etc.
He rests on numerous assumptions as to what should be considered "better. I mean after all, he is clearly obsessed with Game of Thrones haha Jul 25, Murtaza rated it liked it.
To the extent that there is a vibrant political discourse in the United States today, it resembles an inconclusive screaming match that never progresses towards any culmination. Because of changes in information technology the room where that screaming match takes place has gotten louder and more crowded, as barbarians from the periphery such as myself have managed to penetrate the entrances in some small way. In my own view, the reason that public debates over the best nature of ordering societ To the extent that there is a vibrant political discourse in the United States today, it resembles an inconclusive screaming match that never progresses towards any culmination.
In my own view, the reason that public debates over the best nature of ordering society are so inconclusive — despite the massive amount of time and energy poured into them — is because people are arguing from fundamentally different and irreconcilable notions about the origins and inclinations of human nature. These originating differences are seldom acknowledged or even explained. But they are lurking there in the background, exerting their decisive influence. From the title of this book I was braced for a very hysterical and pessimistic polemic about the state of life in the United States.
In reality, it was like a milquetoast popular version of Francis Fukuyama's two volume series on the origin and decay of political order. Goldberg reasons, correctly, that human nature has to be shaped and molded in certain directions by various institutions, including families, guilds, religious communities, schools and in the worst case states.
In the absence of any kind of molding we simply revert back to a state of nature, which, contra Rousseau, is not a good thing. The reasons for why we evolved the institutions we did are open to debate and Goldberg gives his own version here. But the uncontroversial point is that they are simultaneously very important and under perpetual threat from a naturally regressive human nature. For the most part this is simply a restatement of the underlying debate between people who are either very optimistic or very pessimistic about what people are ultimately like and whose political preferences are downstream from this core difference.
Personally I have a hard time reconciling "humans are fundamentally animals" with "humans are fundamentally good and altruistic" but these two beliefs held together seems to be a common baseline belief for people.
Goldberg is a conservative, but the thing that he is actually interested in conserving is liberal democracy. He is hostile to romantic movements of both the left and right that he sees as undermining "the Miracle" of American freedom and prosperity. He sees romanticism very flexibly as a driver of all types of assaults against the liberal democratic order, which has provided great material wellbeing but in many respects cuts against our tribal biological programming.
Although he gives some bare minimum lip service to people not being too thrilled when they get "creatively destroyed" by our present form of unrestrained neoliberal capitalism he never takes seriously the idea that anyone has a serious criticism of the current way of doing things. Everything is chalked up as some kind of psychological failing of people wishing to revert back to a lower form of life.
People do sometimes falsely see conspiracies and structural failures where they don't exist. Yet anyone with two eyes can see that an unregulated economic system over time has accreted an undeserving aristocracy; not to mention the terrifying destruction of common goods like the natural environment. Goldberg makes some good points about the role of elites in society who often purposely make things as complex as possible to create barriers to entry to various fields for the lower orders. The intelligentsia feeds people's desires for a certain form of reassurance in a world defined by constant flux by "selling resentment of the way things are.
But it is true that there are some great miracles we live with today that are taken far too much for granted. Amid a predicted excoriation of political correctness, Goldberg even makes the sensible point that some of these debates are simply about the need for manners, which, believe it or not, are actually a good thing.
This book reads like an apologia for a worthwhile political order of which people have tired, but the actual reasons for this disenchantment are almost totally occluded. Goldberg rightly extolls the necessity of intermediate institutions in society between the individual and state.
But while sort-of acknowledging it he never takes seriously that our Social Darwinian economic system may have ruthlessly destroyed these necessary social bodies.
He raises the flag of a disembodied liberalism, which is not a bad thing, but the order he is extolling seems to be quite distant from the material realities of how many live in the present day. Aside from some true facts about how life is better today than it was in , there are not a lot of numbers in this books talking about the relative immiseration of people over the past few decades and the inevitable social consequences of that, including the destruction of the family which he correctly devotes a chapter to as an important social bulwark.
This kind of unreflective analysis is part of why I suspect that Never Trump conservatives are unpopular on the right: they don't actually conserve anything. Goldberg actually seems like a decent person and I can see very clearly why he recoiled from Trump, who very clearly embodies the uncivilized man that liberal democracy was supposed to prevent from ever emerging. I just disagree on the reasons for why it failed to do so. Shelves: nonfiction , conservative-thought , social-political , really-deep-thinking.
Jonah Goldberg is attacked from the right as a RINO Republican in name only , not because he is a liberal in disguise but because he is disloyal to and willing to criticize members of the GOP who advocate the exercise of power in ways he considers antithetical to conservative principles.
That has led me to disassociate myself from either tribal party. How can I tell? Because while he is quite careful in the use of logic when criticizing his own party, he throws out any subtlety when criticizing the enemy. I continue to read him despite the sizable volume of monetary solicitations that encourages the National Review to send me because his attacks on the tribalism of the right are enlightening. And, frankly, reassuring. So it goes on the to-be-read shelf.
I shouldn't have been surprised that he sounded more reasonable than I expected, but I was. I suspect there were two reasons for that. First, he's speaking to a broad audience and doesn't want to alienate potential readers book buyers , so he is going to tone down the partisanship. But the second is that his day job, as it were, is mostly preaching to his own church. Yeah, he's famous for being critical of Trump, but that doesn't mean he isn't going to play to his audience and be scathing towards the real opposition.
But the book is, again, to a broader audience, so there's no rationale for entertaining the troops sorry for the mixed metaphors. So maybe the book will be better than I'd hoped. View all 5 comments. Jul 11, Erin Cohenour rated it it was ok. I finished this by sheer force of will. He seems like a smart, decent human being.
This book is bloated, meandering, and frankly boring. I really appreciated Goldberg's tone and approach, this book was much more in the spirit of Jonathan Haidt, than that of more resent works of Dinesh D'Souza. Goldberg of course has strongly held opinions and beliefs, but the work didn't seem polemical. He held my interest throughout the book, and had very interesting reflections on why there seems the perennial pull towards tribalism, and this even after the west fortuitously stumbled upon ideals and ideas that have tempered our tribal inclinat I really appreciated Goldberg's tone and approach, this book was much more in the spirit of Jonathan Haidt, than that of more resent works of Dinesh D'Souza.
He held my interest throughout the book, and had very interesting reflections on why there seems the perennial pull towards tribalism, and this even after the west fortuitously stumbled upon ideals and ideas that have tempered our tribal inclinations, encouraged civility, tolerance and prosperity. His book is a celebration of individual freedom and a dislike of the state. Goldberg lodges this argument in a deeper context of political and biological theory.
The debate now in the West has its roots in Rousseau and Locke, he says. Get government out of the way and humans will flourish and everyone will benefit. This is American-Western Exceptionalism. The Rousseau-progressive types are, Goldberg says, tribal types of old. They are reflections of an old human nature that continues to pull our strings unless we take control over our animal side. As opposed to this, Goldberg says we need to guide our primal impulses toward more universal ends that transcend such primitive particularity.
More importantly, the state needs to give way to the impersonal operation of the market, which cares not at all about tribal identity. The Christian God brought humankind out of self-absorption and into the realm of the transcendent, but now the West suffers from the loss of belief in God.
Without God, we revert, he argues, to our worst selves — the pampered, entitled self, preoccupied with identity, rights, and all of that. But some of his words sneer or drip with disgust. How could anyone oppose a Miracle? Locke is about unleashing the self to do those good things that Goldberg admires. But of course, self-interest unchecked runs amok. Keep that in check and the better parts of human nature rise to the fore. But Goldberg will have none of that. The Rousseau type he sees as is human nature at its worst.
Goldberg thus takes a Trump tactic and applies it here, to those who have a different point of view. He brands his opponents with the same iron that should be applied to himself. Elites are natural, Goldberg says. Jeffersonian elites are iconic. These are the individuals who know how to succeed in the capitalist world.
Goldberg wants the Rousseau folks to step aside so that the Lockeans can flourish. Before, Goldberg says that the gods reflected our own image. Well, I suppose a strong argument can be made that the Christian god itself is distinctively tribal. For Goldberg, Lockean liberty comes from God. No, not really. It comes from our biological need to be free to do what we need to do to survive and live well. The trick is how to do that in a way that is compatible with the freedom of the other.
The Golden Rule is not a Christian idea, as Goldberg would have it. Otherwise, we have the reversion that Goldberg, Fukuyama, and Huntington and others fear — a disordered state where no one benefits, or to a disordered state where only the elites or the authoritarian leader prevails.
To have concerns about what Goldberg puts forward does not mean that his argument about what the problem with state power, an unaccountable administrative state, identity politics, and all of that do not have merit.
There are problems. But Goldberg tosses checks and balances and gives free rein to unregulated liberty. That steps not only on compassion, but also on the interest of the whole where everyone participates, everyone contributes, everyone is valued for what they do, and no one is left behind. Jul 11, Karen A. Wyle rated it it was amazing Shelves: nonfiction , sociology , politics , human-nature , civilization. I'm rounding up a bit due to a bit more repetition than absolutely necessary and perhaps an extra tangent or two.
This is a hugely, desperately important book. The subtitle sums up its main point, except that what it hails as humanity's "miracle" and seeks to defend is not just American democracy, but the liberty, prosperity, and scope for individual achievement that grew from the Enlightenment, of which American-style political and social freedoms provide the supreme example.
It is a warning and I'm rounding up a bit due to a bit more repetition than absolutely necessary and perhaps an extra tangent or two. It is a warning and a call to action. I can only hope it will be heeded. The Introduction is the best and most essential part of the book, but the rest provides useful explanation, history, and examples. I would sum up the book's thesis as follows: human evolution necessarily lags far behind our accomplishments. Humans remain essentially tribal, which means we long to be part of communities led by strong leaders, view resources as limited and subject to zero-sum calculations, and are essentially xenophobic.
The ability to understand and appreciate any other way of life, no matter how much better, how indisputably better, the quality of that way of life, must be trained into us, constantly renewed, actively appreciated, and defended. But that training, appreciation, and defense is falling by the wayside, and we are in serious danger of reverting to our natural condition.
One key line: "Capitalism is the most cooperative system ever created for the peaceful improvement of people's lives. It has only a single fatal flaw. It doesn't feel like it. In perhaps an excess of caution, I will avoid "spoiling" the last line of the Conclusion, but it left me profoundly affected by its concise and lingering power. In a nut shell, for the vast majority of human civilisation and before civilisation the vast majority of humanity lived in abject poverty and in the last years we stumbled upon the miracle which has pulled humanity out of abject poverty.
Today a lower class American lives better than did Louie IV, the sun king. We aren't quite sure how we stumbled upon the miracle, but we do seem to be actively trying to destroy it. We are forgetting the lessons the last years have taught us and are In a nut shell, for the vast majority of human civilisation and before civilisation the vast majority of humanity lived in abject poverty and in the last years we stumbled upon the miracle which has pulled humanity out of abject poverty.
We are forgetting the lessons the last years have taught us and are trying to bring back the tribalism of the past. This will end badly. And last, have a little gratitude You don't know how good you have it. May 05, Anthony rated it it was amazing.
National Review and AEI's Jonah Goldberg tackles the past years of human history, citing the growth and spread of capitalism as "the miracle" that has been singularly responsible for our progress as a species. As he concludes however, all this progress is tenuous in the West especially, as we are largely bound by tribal identities that threaten fracture and have fractured civil society.
While his scathing indictment of populism and identity politics excoriates Donald Trump, it is not the c National Review and AEI's Jonah Goldberg tackles the past years of human history, citing the growth and spread of capitalism as "the miracle" that has been singularly responsible for our progress as a species.
While his scathing indictment of populism and identity politics excoriates Donald Trump, it is not the crux of his argument. Trump remains the symptom of a larger disease, whose adherents actually believe in a principle of opposing "the powerful" to fix the world's problems.
The Donald uses it as a cynical ploy. Goldberg spares neither camp, while balancing his criticisms with highlights and indeed a validation of the causes of our current political predicament. While he does toss in the occasional red meat, he remains nonetheless focused on the historical case for the conditions that set and may be prelude to a populist movement. This is a must read for traditional conservatives who feel their alleged coalition no longer understands them if they ever did.
It easily ranks as one of the seminal works of the contemporary conservative movement as we seek to reclaim our roots. Every Buckleyite will be enjoy it. Feb 13, Kat Coffin rated it did not like it. The one good thing I can say about this book--it's a good book to give to conservative loved ones who are supporting Trump. Conservatives need Jonah Goldberg.
They need his criticisms of Trump, they need his criticisms of their movement being seduced, and they need his disgust towards their abhorrent behavior. But here is where my goodwill ends. Not only was this book a chore to read, it was condescending and poorly cited. Goldberg has an annoying habit of making loud claims, citing the claims, The one good thing I can say about this book--it's a good book to give to conservative loved ones who are supporting Trump.
Goldberg has an annoying habit of making loud claims, citing the claims, but when you actually look at the citations, you find that what he is referencing has nothing to do with the point he is making. Even worse, he looks down his nose towards feminism and LGBTQ rights, refuses to do any real study of both, and then has the gall to complain that progressive scholars don't do enough research. It is bizarre to me that he's willing to callout his own movement for their embrace of antisemitism, but dismisses the same charges of racism or homophobia.
It appears that bigotry is only bigotry when it actively affects him. I don't recommend it to anyone with common sense, but considering Trump supporters have none, this might be a good book to give to them. Dec 01, Cami rated it it was amazing Shelves: non-fiction , economics , philosophy , politics , history. I wish Jonah Goldberg's book titles were less incendiary to more accurately reflect the calm, reasoned tone of his content and be more inviting to moderate readers.
Unlike the angry political rant the title implies, this book is an intelligent and academic comparison of conservatism and progressivism; democracy and populism; romanticism and rationalism; Locke and Rousseau; capitalism and socialism, British and French Enlightenment; and Brave New World. As a conservative, Goldberg has been c I wish Jonah Goldberg's book titles were less incendiary to more accurately reflect the calm, reasoned tone of his content and be more inviting to moderate readers.
As a conservative, Goldberg has been consistent in his opposition to Trump and this book outlines the reasons why. Make sure you read the appendix to end your reading on an optimistic note. Favorite quotes: "The American founders believed that the enemy of liberty was arbitrary power.
Modern progressives have not only helped set up a system that millions of Americans believe is dedicated to making their lives more difficult and their path to success more daunting; the progressives also heap scorn on them for complaining about it. Dissent from the orthodoxy is now the equivalent of violence or complicity in it. The war on tolerance has become an effort to make room for a new intolerance. Healthy, well-functioning families are the primary wellspring of societal success.
Unhealthy, dysfunctional families are the primary cause of societal decline. The family is the institution that converts us from natural-born barbarians into, hopefully, decent citizens. It is the family that literally civilizes us. The healthy family is also the keystone of civil society. But whether it is natural or not misses the more salient point: The nuclear family works. But that is a lot to ask of them, and not the best way to organize a society. And, having succeeded, he is accelerating it.
If civilization is just a conversation, then Donald Trump is already a very consequential president, because he has profoundly changed the conversation of our democracy. The government can improve your net worth with a check, but it cannot improve your self-worth. Decline is a choice. Principles, like gods, die when no one believes in them anymore. The catch? It is full of uncertainty and tumult.
Capitalism cannot provide meaning, spirituality, or a sense of belonging. Those things are upstream of capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system that is fantastic at doing what we claim we want from economic systems: growth and prosperity. When those institutions fail, capitalism alone cannot restore them. As a result, human nature starts making demands of the political and economic systems that neither can possibly fulfill.
This book is a lot meatier than I might have expected. It is not merely a screed against "liberals these days. How did we arrive at a point where the free market was valued, individual rights were protected, and private property was sacrosanct?
And how have we maintained these characteristics these past several centuries? And how are they now in peril? Goldberg goes to great length to show how miserable poverty was the This book is a lot meatier than I might have expected. Goldberg goes to great length to show how miserable poverty was the lot of the vast majority of mankind for 10, years.
But then, starting somewhere in the or s, suddenly large portions of the west were rapidly growing out of subsistence poverty into much higher standards of living. And we have now exported these values around the world, so that even places as far-flung as Singapore or South Africa are enjoying many of these same benefits. Goldberg traces the political and moral developments that have made this world possible. He pits Locke against Rousseau, showing how it is the inheritors of Locke who have secured the liberty of the masses, while it is the inheritors of Rousseau who are threatening to pull it all down.
It is at this point that one would normally consider the impact of Protestant Christianity, and of the God it espouses, but Goldberg is quite loath to do so.
He from the start admits that this will be an atheistic account, even though he himself is not an atheist. He sees faith as an important story we tell ourselves that impacts how we behave, but is unwilling to go much further than that. He certainly does not want to discuss the Christian ethic and its impact on, say, private property or entrepreneurialism.
I recommend Douglas Wilson's critique of Goldberg on this point. The second half of the book transitions from this historical discussion to a look at the state of America's political landscape today.
Here Goldberg hits many well-known points: the need for mediating institutions, the dangers of populism, the weakness of the modern family, the insidious rise of progressivism, especially under Wilson and FDR, etc. Goldberg also points to how the middle class tends to produce offspring deficient in gratitude for what has come before. The children of the middle class go off to fancy colleges that badmouth everything that allowed the student to have the sort of background to attend the pricey university in the first place.
Goldberg stresses again and again the need for gratitude, even if he lacks the proper recipient for said gratitude. I would recommend this work to anyone. The first half is more philosophical that some might welcome, but it is worth pushing through in order to understand the underpinnings of much of western civilization despite his royally screwing up the religious aspect--and it's a lot more than just an "aspect" and how we must work hard to shore it up. Beyond the Ben Sasses of the world, I'm not sure anyone in Washington is paying attention.
But that's no excuse for the other We will be held responsible for how we handle the incredible privileges we have been given. Let us not we found wanting. May 19, John Devlin rated it really liked it. Suicide is a distillation of much of conservative thought in today's America. Capitalism is great, the family is great, community is great, and the State's rise is killing all the former. And I wholeheartedly agree. The grander assertion is that the West is failing bc the folks are ignorant, oblivious, easily distracted, and given over to a Oakland Raider like sensibility towards their team against all the others.
Goldberg goes onto discuss Trump and his rise, and like him Suicide is a distillation of much of conservative thought in today's America. Goldberg goes onto discuss Trump and his rise, and like him i was a NeverTrumper bc I bristled at the cult of personality that seemed to arrive with him.
After all, factually, Trump was a golden spooned, draft avoider, four time bankrupted philanderer, who said ludicrous and grandiose nonsense at a herculean rate. Also, I didn't believe he would do the things he ran on. After all, he had been Republican, Democrat, unwilling to state, and the Independence Party member.
But he has done much of what he promised, and furthermore, a media, I knew to be Leftist, has been revealed to be far more malignant than I would ever have imagined. An analogy I used elsewhere was I thought the Media was a serious rash on the body politic, but the fourth estate has actually been revealed to be a stage 3 cancer. Trump is an antidote to a Media that went from reporting the news, to deciding what was news, to deciding what the folks should think about the news they decided on.
But if Trump is an antidote he's not a palliative but a purgative. Vomiting is never pretty and either is the Donald, but in this case I question whether any other prescription would've worked. Nevertheless, I don't disagree that the US and the West are in decline. Shrug, all great empires fall. The question becomes will capitalism and the technology unleashed allow for a greater quality of life for the humans on this planet or will the West's demise augur a steeper breakdown into something unseen since Constantine's vision of Christ.
Feb 06, Willy Marz Thiessam rated it it was ok Shelves: capitalism , politics , usa , ebook , globalization , right-wing. Jonah Goldberg justifies inequality and a myriad of global problems as the price for Freedom, as if it existed as an absolute, almost like an object with physical dimensions and qualities. The object of freedom is to make a commitment in one way or the other. The massive inequality that Goldberg justifies minuses out any aspect of change.
Capital and its accumulation above every other consideration is not about stuff or maintaining the ability to maintain "freedom", its about power commoditized Jonah Goldberg justifies inequality and a myriad of global problems as the price for Freedom, as if it existed as an absolute, almost like an object with physical dimensions and qualities.
Capital and its accumulation above every other consideration is not about stuff or maintaining the ability to maintain "freedom", its about power commoditized and numerical which only has meaning in relation to the interests of the other holders of capital.
And what is that interest, the control of price and the market. That society creates the space for this struggle to take place is of course something Neo-liberals barely understand, its not merely the existence of night-watchmen, monetary policy and prisons that make "capitalism" possible. The advantages Goldberg accrues to Capitalism were derived from a mixed economy where control of the business enterprise was as essential to ensuring those in positions of power would remain in power as it did secure the needs of society as a whole.
Goldberg would do well to remember the maxim of Machiavelli when he pointed out that men are always ready to overthrow their masters. Its transplanting it with something that works that is the rarity. The Neo-liberal Revolution is over and it was never the sweet words and complex ideology of policy wonks such as Goldberg that made that revolution possible.
The world gave it a try and found it wanting, the age is over, the magic incantation of Neo-liberal mantras about freedom have come to an end. Goldberg seems intelligent so I'm sure he can come up with something new that might find a receptive audience, this however is not it.
The overall messaging may be the only stumble here, as Goldberg spends more time explaining this from his point of view rather than a sober analysis leading him there, but this is a tome with a lot to chew on.
Much like Liberal Fascism , this should be required political reading right now. We pulled ourselves out of the muck, not some Garden of Eden. Indeed, if the Garden of Eden ever existed, it was a slum. We created the Miracle of modernity all on our own, and if we lose it, that will be our fault too. He wrote in brutal honesty.
Suicide of the West is a worthwhile read. Sep 07, Joseph Stieb rated it liked it. More of a 2. Goldberg is an anti-Trump conservative and a senior editor at National Review. I'm sympathetic to the book's central argument, which is rooted in classical liberalism, but I found significant ideological and historical problems with his argument.
Goldberg argues that human societies face a constant battle against decay and entropy that always takes us back to our tribal natures. In the last few centuries, however, he argues that the West has come up with new institutions that channel and contain our tribalism and make it possible to have prosperity and government by consent.
These include individuals rights, tolerance, the market, and teh rule of law. While he doesn't say these institutions can't function elsewhere, he argues that they all came together in modern Western civilization.
However, we are now facing a regression toward tribalism and romanticism, an anti-rational human emotion that seeks to draw us back to the nostalgic past, the small clan, and nationalist mythologies. Civil society is breaking down, we are engaged increasingly in meaningless, self-centered pursuits, media fragments our attention spans and tribalizes our identities, the left and right have developed their own versions of identity politics, and too many of us are so ignorant of our civilization's values and achievements that we won't defend or appreciate them.
Trump he sees as someone who both embodies these trends and took advantage of our vapidity, isolation, andignorance to rise to power. At times Goldberg does fairly well with the history behind his argument, which takes up about half of the book. Still, he draws on a somewhat selective and pretty old body of research, and this gets him into trouble at times. Most of the time, he makes qualified claims and backs up his claims with at least some evidence. Like many conservatives, Goldberg detests conservatives but misrepresents them by portraying them out of context: sure, they had dark and even authoritarian aspects, but fundamentally they were trying to address real problems and real human suffering, all mostly within existing American traditions of rights and governance.
This is a frustrating aspect of conservatism and this book to me: the tendency to ignore that founding ideals often have to be adapted, within important bounds, to changing conditions and crises, and those who seek to adapt them are often more focused on addressing real world problems than proffering philosophical arguments. Goldberg subscribes to the sunny view of history in which founding principles of the US, or on a deeper level, Christianity, play themselves out in the world to doom oppression, inequality, and prejudice.
Of course, I believe, as Lincoln did, that founding documents established principles that in and of themselves favored freedom and equality, but the dominant parts of our society were more than happy to simply not apply those principles for hundreds of years to numerous marginalized groups until those groups and their allies found ways to compel change.
In a weird sense, this is a Whiggish view of history in a book that is all about imminent decline; an odd combo. I will give Goldberg a lot of credit for his moral, political, and intellectual critiques of Trump.
I'm sympathetic as well to many of his critiques of the modern left. However, he makes indefensible moral equivalencies btw Obama and Trump, saying that they both had equal cults of personality and equal abuses of executive power this claim was slightly less absurd when this book was published in He also has an overly rosy view of the Tea Party: instead of seeing it as a white backlash movement with a thin commitment to small gov't principles, he sees it as a last gasp of the good kind of conservatism.
The best research on the Tea Party has shown the centrality of conspiracies, racism, paranoia, and reactionary attitudes in the TP; this doesn't mean their beliefs on gov't don't matter but that we have to go well beyond those beliefs to understand them. The Tea Party paved the way for Trump by bringing back paranoia, nativism, and white rage, embraced him fully, and drove the GOP into truly insane territory.
This is one of the many areas of this book where it's clear that Goldberg didn't bother to read beyond the sources that support his presuppositions about a given topic.
This has been a mostly critical review, but I don't want to make it seem like this book is terrible. It is often reasonable and interesting. I tend to see conservatives like Goldberg as sort of second cousins: I'm a liberal but not "on the left" or a progressive, so Goldberg and I think very similarly about tribalism and human nature.
There's a sort of ideological second cousin type relationship in our shared classical liberalism, although I see that classical liberalism as a foundation on which other ideas must be debated, weighed, and added as history changes while he sees it as an untouchable, sacred foundation. Dec 30, Forrest rated it liked it Shelves: politics , overdrive , We have all heard the story about the goose that laid the golden egg.
By the same token if we tax the wealthy and businesses to the point to where it is no longer beneficial or advantageous to them to produce wealth, then the contributing source will disappear and the state will be left with nothing. The worst thing about American slavery is that happened.
The best thing about American slavery is we put an end to it. At the expense of hundreds of thousands of lives. Those who today now demand som We have all heard the story about the goose that laid the golden egg. Those who today now demand some sort of compensation for slavery that they have neither witnessed nor endured represent the most despicable form of ingratitude and greed imaginable In this world of prudish personal restraint where image and self-promotion is everything at work, school, church, etc social media is an Avenue by which we can be ourselves and speak our mind within a controlled setting.
Therefore, if you post something that a "friend" cannot tolerate and that friend subsequently "unfriends" or "unfollows" you, you will know that your friendship with that person was never genuine and was irrelevant to begin with. It's a great social filtering mechanism by which we can weed out the fake friends in our lives, the type we are forced to interact with in other more professional settings. John Jack Rousseau had several mistresses one of which bore several of his children.
After they were born he demanded that each one be placed in an orphanage. Russo was very immoral and very hypocritical Woodrow Wilson had contempt for the Constitution and coined the term of a living document in reference to the Constitution.
He was a Statist and a huge fan of Charles Darwin. Many people lost their jobs during the Industrial Revolution when machines took over mass production. It wasn't a positive thing for them at the time, but in the end everyone mutually benefited.
We shouldn't discourage innovation just because of a few growing pains. Author openly admits in the book that he holds Trump in contempt but then admits that if he had the deciding vote today in the election between Hillary and Trump that he would "probably" vote for Trump. So, for the author to suggest that he would "probably" vote for Trump tells me that there is a fair amount of ignorance on the authors part regarding Hillary Clinton.
I feel like the last few years have taught us that for every Yin that comes from the left there is a Yang that comes from the right. Through their actions and hostility towards whites and conservatives and Christians the left is literally paving the way to a another Trump election Towards the end of the book the author claims that most conservatives voted for Trump because or primarily because he was so entertaining.
But I strongly disagree with the author. The entertainment value is probably what attracted the most attention from the media and both sides of the political Spectrum but it was by no means how he won the presidency. After so many years of government waste and government corruption, particularly after the Obama presidency, but also much further before then is how Trump won the presidency.
Our country is not managed by Congress and the president. It is it is plainly obvious that America is being run by such groups as unions and big business such as Goldman Sachs. Only the most stupid and naive people would truly believe that there nationally elected leaders are serving in their constituents best interest. The biggest thing that set Trump apart from other candidates and from previous presidents is simply that Trump is no politician.
Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Publication date Topics james burnham Collection opensource Language English.
Liberalism is not equipped to meet and overcome the actual challenges confronting Western civilization in our time. Liberalism has been and continues to be primarily negative in its impact on society. The guilt that is always part of the liberal syndrome swells painfully when liberals gain power and find that the world's sorrows show no tendency to vanish at their sovereign touch.
Liberalism's inaptitude for power bears directly on the crucial fact: that the issue before Western civilization today is survival. The liberals have no replacement for the structure they have so enthusiastically helped to tear down.
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