Book Review: “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump”

Stevens was a top Republican campaign strategist for many state and national elections, including Bush and Romney. His thesis: Trump isn't an aberration of the Republican party; he is its culmination. What happened to balancing the budget? Small government? Personal responsibility instead of playing the victim? Character counts? These principles that were supposedly the bedrock of the Republican party were abandoned over night when Trump was elected.

August 30, 2020 0

Book review: “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World”

This book offers a well-defended critique of markets. In sum: inequality is in part due to morally dubious behavior of corporate elites, and big philanthropy is an undemocratic process that circumvents elected representatives of the people. Bravo. You convinced me.

March 7, 2019 0

Book review: “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt

I just finished reading Jonathan Haidt's most recent book The Codding of the American Mind, and I wanted to go to his original work The Righteous Mind which he wrote back in 2012. I was already familiar with some of the ideas in The Righteous Mind from his TED talk, "The Moral Roots of Liberals... Continue Reading →

November 8, 2018 1

Book review: “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure”

Rating 5/5 Goodreads Summary The generation now coming of age has been taught three Great Untruths: their feelings are always right; they should avoid pain and discomfort; and they should look for faults in others and not themselves. These three Great Untruths are part of a larger philosophy that sees young people as fragile creatures... Continue Reading →

October 9, 2018 2

He who only knows his own side knows little of that: Review of “Conflict of Visions”

Rating: 4/5 Goodreads blurb Controversies in politics arise from many sources, but the conflicts that endure for generations or centuries show a remarkably consistent pattern. In this classic work, Thomas Sowell analyzes this pattern. He describes the two competing visions that shape our debates about the nature of reason, justice, equality, and power: the "constrained"... Continue Reading →

September 5, 2018 0

Book review of “Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations”

Rating: 5/5 Goodreads blurb: Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. In many parts of the world, the group identities that matter most - the ones that people will kill and die for - are ethnic, religious, sectarian, or clan-based. But because America tends to see the world in terms of nation-states engaged... Continue Reading →

August 12, 2018 1

How the other half lives redneck style: Book review of “Hillbilly Elegy”

My PI recommended this book for our book club for July with stellar ratings. I tried to pick up a copy from my library, but all 23 available ebook copies were already checked out, so it seems most everybody else agrees! I wasn't sure what to expect as a premise just judging from the title:... Continue Reading →

July 11, 2018 0

Small c conservatism: Epistemological modesty and the value of institutions

I re-checked out Jerry Z. Muller's comprehensive little library of conservative theory "Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present" this past week, because I kept wanting to quote it, but I hadn't written down any quotes when I first read it! Checking it out from the UW library,... Continue Reading →

June 26, 2018 0

The rise and fall of the liberal empire: Book review of “Why Liberalism Failed”

In politics, each side usually blames all the problems on the other: it's either the rainbow-loving communist godless liberals or the oppressive wealthy capitalist overlords and their witless redneck cronies. But here in Why Liberalism Failed, Deneen argues that the problems are systemic, built into liberalism itself and its underlying assumptions. By liberalism, he... Continue Reading →

June 3, 2018 2

Seizing your moment and remembering who all this was for

Coco just came out on Netflix, and I just got to watch it for the first time with my family. It really was very well-done. And I couldn't help but notice a recurring pattern in recent Disney films: they do a very good job of simultaneously encouraging a message with liberal tendencies (take me as... Continue Reading →

June 2, 2018 0

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