Buy This Book
I have ordered it and await it eagerly. Rick Perlstein is one of the clearest observers of American politics around and one of the very few historians who really understands how the right wing works.
It’s only 8 bucks and I guarantee that it will be worth reading even if you don’t agree with his conclusions:
A majority of Americans tell pollsters they want more government intervention to reduce the gap between high- and lower-income citizens, and less than one-third consider high taxes to be a problem. Yet conservative Republicanism currently controls the political discourse. Why?
Rick Perlstein probes this central paradox of today’s political scene in his penetrating pamphlet. Perlstein explains how the Democrats’ obsessive short-term focus on winning “swing voters,” instead of cultivating loyal party-liners, has relegated Democrats to political stagnation. Perlstein offers a vigorous critique and far-reaching vision that is a thirty-year plan for Democratic victory.
If you are very good, I may even be able to persuade the author to do a little blogospheric interview if he’s so inclined. It’s long past time that liberals supported their writers and thinkers the way the wingnuts support theirs.
Update:
Speaking of books, are any of you libertarians out there a little bit discomfited by the fact that “On Liberty” by JS Mill got an honorable mention in the 10 worst books list by HumanEvents magazine? I mean, “Mein Kampf” and “Das Kapital” aren’t big surprises. I’m not shocked by “The Feminine Mystique” or even the inclusion of John Maynard Keynes (although you have to love this commentary: “FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt.” Haha.)
But “On Liberty”? What, he wasn’t sufficiently agitated about stem cell research? The capital gains tax?
Jesus, I now have not one single intellectual connection to the right. Not one. They are aliens from another planet.
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