Posted on 06/30/2004 12:15:19 AM PDT by neverdem
As some states see red, others feel blue.
As we head into this year's presidential contest, we're told that the U.S. electoral map remains split down the middle. That may be--but most new political books address the "red" or Republican side, whether in praise or censure. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's "The Right Nation" does a little of both on the way to explaining why conservative ideas resonate so deeply in our society, driving left-liberals around the bend.
Combining statistics, witty anecdotes and useful summaries of the work of other writers, "The Right Nation" is a kind of anthropology of the conservative movement, from 1952 to today. Messrs. Micklethwait and Wooldridge aren't Republican activists but center-right journalists from Britain (they report for The Economist). They are well-disposed toward their subject but detached enough to criticize it. Any blue-state shut-ins curious enough to buy this book will gain insight into how people live in fly-over country and why they think as they do. Conservatives may learn something too.
"The Right Nation" compares the variegated conservative movement to knights who fight under the banner of one king though they wear the liveries of different causes. It helps to remember this divided identity when sitting down to read "America Alone." Its authors, Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, are Republican horsemen in Kissingerian colors trying hard to knock neoconservative upstarts out of their saddles.
--snip--
The Bush foreign policy's "moralistic edge," say Messrs. Micklethwait and Wooldridge, is no neocon imposition. It has a long pedigree. Conservative America--and 41% of our citizens identify themselves as members of it--leans "toward unilateralism instinctively," but not out of mere "stubbornness." Rather, the "refusal to compromise ties into something slightly nobler," namely the dual strains of idealism and action-oriented pragmatism that "have been at work from the country's Puritan beginnings to John Foster Dulles's invocation of a holy war against communism."
Now that sounds right.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Its a good book. If you want to know why America isn't a giant version of Canada, its the one to read this year.
I assume you are referring to "The Right Nation". Correct me if I'm wrong.
Yes, that's the book I was referring to. The question is with all the liberals here, why isn't America a 300 million plus version of our nothern neighbor? Why can't Democrats break 50% of the vote in presidential elections? Why are they a minority in Congress and much of the country? In short, why aren't Americans as leftist as Canadians are?
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