Rational, well thought out, and impeccably argued—of interest to all students of politics.
Sturdy account of the many divisions within modern conservatism, divisions that have been growing over a century.
There are many forms of conservatism, writes American Enterprise Institute fellow Continetti, but there are essentially two large camps: populist and elitist, which often battle and occasionally cooperate. “Is the American Right the party of insiders or outsiders? Is the Right the elites—the men and women in charge of America’s political, economic, social, and cultural institutions—or is it the people?” he asks. “And is the Right even able to answer such a question?” A century ago, the Harding administration devalued conservatism with the same disregard for the law and ineptitude during a pandemic that characterized the Trump administration, but both presidents were essentially self-serving rather than ideological. True conservatism, writes the author, safeguards the classical liberal ideals of self-government. “The preservation of the American idea of liberty and the familial, communal, religious, and political institutions that incarnate and sustain it—that is what makes American conservatism distinctly American,” he writes, memorably. Trump instead converted the GOP from the intellectually grounded political opposition of the time of Goldwater and Buckley into a government-hating mob stocked with legions of antisemites and White supremacists. Indeed, Continetti writes, “Every bad habit of the Right was on display in the Capitol riot that left five dead, $30 million in damage, close to three hundred arrested, and Capitol Hill an armed camp.” The author presents a convincing case for a brand of conservatism that checks overly ambitious progressives. He also clearly shows how the Democratic Party has moved to the left precisely in reaction to Trump and needs the restraint of a principled opposition. Highlighting a long string of heroes and villains, Continetti urges “a de-personalization of the Right” and return to core values.
Rational, well thought out, and impeccably argued—of interest to all students of politics.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5416-0050-8
Page Count: 496
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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