As usual, my reviews have been too generous. Although Lind's earlier work, The Next American Nation, struck me as fundamentally med to me possessed of an interesting historical imagination.
In a truly free society, it wouldn't matter who the president was. We wouldn't have to vote or pay attention to debates. We could ignore campaign commercials. There would be no high stakes for ourselves, our families, or the country. Liberty and property would be so secure that we could curse him, love him, or forget about him.
This is a much more radical book than its title suggests. Criticism of quotas and affirmative action is hardly new. As the authors note, opinion polls show a vast majority of the public opposed to these programs;
The Gold Standard Act of 1890, which officially established the gold standard in America, was the culmination of a twenty-year battle between inflationists, who favored unlimited government purchase of silver (the "Free Silver" movement), and the advocates of sound money based on the gold standard. The inflationists were led by Senator John Sherman, author of the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act (as well as the monopolistic Sherman Antitrust Act), brother of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.
Michael Lind's book contains one excellent idea, and several well worth discussion.
Eugene Genovese is a Marxist historian, but he is a Marxist of a most unusual kind. In this excellent collection of essays, he continually advocates conservative views, often expressed more trenchantly than is customary among rightists themselves
John T. Flynn is best known today as a once-liberal columnist for the New Republic who became a bitter enemy of Franklin Roosevelt and a stalwart of the Old Right.
D'Souza's massive tome is structured by a simple message.
To Renew America conveys a vivid sense of its author's unusual personality. But the vital core of the book lies elsewhere.
