Shapiro argues that Western freedoms are built upon the twin notions that every human being is made in God's image and that human beings were created with reason capable of exploring God's world. These values gave us the birth of science, the dream of progress, human rights, prosperity, peace, and artistic beauty. Jerusalem and Athens were the foundations of the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence; civilizations that rejected Jerusalem and Athens have collapsed into dust. Now we are in the process of abandoning Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, favoring instead moral subjectivism and the rule of passion. And we are watching our civilization collapse ... -- adapted from information provided

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent argument that America and other democracies are in peril because they have lost the will to defend the values and institutions that sustain freedom and prosperity. Now updated with a new preface! “Epic and debate-shifting.”—David Brooks, New York Times Only once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history. If democracy, individualism, and the free market were humankind’s destiny, they should have appeared and taken hold a bit earlier in the evolutionary record. The emergence of freedom and prosperity was nothing short of a miracle. As Americans we are doubly blessed, because the radical ideas that made the miracle possible were written not just into the Constitution but in our hearts, laying the groundwork for our uniquely prosperous society. Those ideas are: • Our rights come from God, not from the government. • The government belongs to us; we do not belong to it. • The individual is sovereign. We are all captains of our own souls, not bound by the circumstances of our birth. • The fruits of our labors belong to us. In the last few decades, these political virtues have been turned into vices. As we are increasingly taught to view our traditions as a system of oppression, exploitation, and privilege, the principles of liberty and the rule of law are under attack from left and right. For the West to survive, we must renew our sense of gratitude for what our civilization has given us and rediscover the ideals and habits of the heart that led us out of the bloody muck of the past—or back to the muck we will go.

Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? --Publisher.

Late in life, William F. Buckley made a confession to Corey Robin. Capitalism is "boring," said the founding father of the American right. "Devoting your life to it," as conservatives do, "is horrifying if only because it's so repetitious. It's like sex." With this unlikely conversation began Robin's decade-long foray into the conservative mind. What is conservatism, and what's truly at stake for its proponents? If capitalism bores them, what excites them? In The Reactionary Mind, Robin traces conservatism back to its roots in the reaction against the French Revolution. He argues that the right was inspired, and is still united, by its hostility to emancipating the lower orders. Some conservatives endorse the free market; others oppose it. Some criticize the state; others celebrate it. Underlying these differences is the impulse to defend power and privilege against movements demanding freedom and equality -- while simultaneously making populist appeals to the masses. Despite their opposition to these movements, conservatives favor a dynamic conception of politics and society -- one that involves self-transformation, violence, and war. They are also highly adaptive to new challenges and circumstances. This partiality to violence and capacity for reinvention have been critical to their success. Written by a highly-regarded, keen observer of the contemporary political scene, The Reactionary Mind ranges widely, from Edmund Burke to Antonin Scalia and Donald Trump, and from John C. Calhoun to Ayn Rand. It advances the notion that all right-wing ideologies, from the eighteenth century through today, are improvisations on a theme: the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back. When its first edition appeared in 2011, The Reactionary Mind set off a fierce debate. It has since been acclaimed as "the book that predicted Trump" (New Yorker) and "one of the more influential political works of the last decade" (Washington Monthly). Now updated to include Trump's election and his first one hundred days in office, The Reactionary Mind is more relevant than ever.

The Washington Post journalist and legal expert Ruth Marcus goes behind the scenes to document the inside story of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle and the Republican plot to take over the Supreme Court—thirty years in the making—in this “i mpressively reported, highly insightful, and rollicking good read” ( The New York Times Book Review ). In the summer of 2018 the Kavanaugh drama unfolded so fast it seemed to come out of nowhere. With the power of the #MeToo movement behind her, a terrified but composed Christine Blasey Ford walked into a Senate hearing room to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual assault. This unleashed unprecedented fury from a Supreme Court nominee who accused Democrats of a “calculated and orchestrated political hit.” But behind this showdown was a much bigger one. The Washington Post journalist and legal expert Ruth Marcus documents the thirty-year mission by conservatives to win a majority on the Supreme Court and the lifelong ambition of Brett Kavanaugh to secure his place in that victory. The reporting in Supreme Ambition is full of revealing and weighty headlines, as Marcus answers the most pressing questions surrounding this historical moment: How did Kavanaugh get the nomination? Was Blasey Ford’s testimony credible? What does his confirmation mean for the future of the court? Were the Democrats outgunned from the start? On the way, she uncovers secret White House meetings, intense lobbying efforts, private confrontations on Capitol Hill, and lives forever upended on both coasts. This “extraordinarily detailed” ( The Washington Post ) page-turner traces how Brett Kavanaugh deftly maneuvered to become the nominee and how he quashed resistance from Republicans and from a president reluctant to reward a George W. Bush loyalist. It shows a Republican party that had concluded Kavanaugh was too big to fail, with senators and the FBI ignoring potentially devastating evidence against him. And it paints a picture of Democratic leaders unwilling to engage in the no-holds-barred partisan warfare that might have defeated the nominee. In the tradition of The Brethren and The Power Broker , Supreme Ambition is the definitive account of a pivotal moment in modern history, one that will shape the judicial system of America for generations to come.

"When most people think of the history of modern conservatism, they think of Ronald Reagan, with his politics and policies front and center. Yet this narrow view of a movement obscures the whole, leaving many to question: How did Donald Trump win the presidency? And what is the future of the Republican party? In The Right, distinguished journalist Matthew Continetti shifts this lens, arguing that an understanding of the history of the pre-Reagan right is crucial to understanding the past and determining the future of the movement. The Right is a sweeping historical account of American conservatism's evolution, from the beginning of the Progressive Era through the present. It tells the story of how conservatism in the United States began as networks of intellectuals, often acting in concert with political figures, developed a critique of Progressivism and of New Deal liberalism, and institutionalized this vision in magazines, think tanks, nonprofits, and political entities and campaigns. Over time, these thinkers attracted new adherents, including former Democrats and evangelical Christians, and built up a conservative superstructure of organizations and media outlets that turned ideas into policy. With the end of the Cold War, this conservative superstructure found itself under attack from dissidents for whom it was too globalist, too corporate, and too open to unrestricted immigration. The superstructure held for two decades but buckled under the pressures of the second Iraq War and the global financial crisis of 2008. Just as the Vietnam War ended the reign of Cold War liberals in the Democratic Party, the Iraq War ended the reign of post-Cold War conservatives in the Republican Party, and the right began to resemble other national populist movements around the world. Drawing out the tensions between conservatism and populism, and between the conservative desire for mainstream acceptance and the pull of extremism, Continetti argues that the more one studies conservatism's past, the more one becomes convinced of its future. Deeply researched and brilliantly told, The Right is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the American right"--

A fresh and sharp-eyed history of political conservatism from its nineteenth-century origins to today’s hard Right For two hundred years, conservatism has defied its reputation as a backward-looking creed by confronting and adapting to liberal modernity. By doing so, the Right has won long periods of power and effectively become the dominant tradition in politics. Yet, despite their success, conservatives have continued to fight with each other about how far to compromise with liberalism and democracy—or which values to defend and how. In Conservatism , Edmund Fawcett provides a gripping account of this conflicted history, clarifies key ideas, and illuminates quarrels within the Right today. Focusing on the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, Fawcett’s vivid narrative covers thinkers and politicians. They include the forerunners James Madison, Edmund Burke, and Joseph de Maistre; early friends and foes of capitalism; defenders of religion; and builders of modern parties, such as William McKinley and Lord Salisbury. The book chronicles the cultural critics and radical disruptors of the 1920s and 1930s, recounts how advocates of laissez-faire economics broke the post 1945 consensus, and describes how Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and their European counterparts are pushing conservatism toward a nation-first, hard Right. An absorbing, original history of the Right, Conservatism portrays a tradition as much at war with itself as with its opponents.

The idea that American conservatism is identical to "classical" liberalism -- widely held since the 1960s -- is seriously mistaken. The award-winning political theorist Yoram Hazony argues that the best hope for Western democracy is a return to the empiricist, religious, and nationalist traditions of America and Britain -- the conservative traditions that brought greatness to the English-speaking nations and became the model for national freedom for the entire world. Conservatism: A Rediscovery explains how Anglo-American conservatism became a distinctive alternative to divine-right monarchy, Puritan theocracy, and liberal revolution. After tracing the tradition from the Wars of the Roses to Burke and across the Atlantic to the American Federalists and Lincoln, Hazony describes the rise and fall of Enlightenment liberalism after World War II and the present-day debates between neoconservatives and national conservatives over how to respond to liberalism and the woke left. Going where no political thinker has gone in decades, Hazony provides a fresh theoretical foundation for conservatism. Rejecting the liberalism of Hayek, Strauss, and the "fusionists" of the 1960s, and drawing on decades of personal experience in the conservative movement, he argues that a revival of authentic Anglo-American conservatism is possible in the twenty-first century

Conservative radio host Michael Savage examines the initial appointments, speeches, tweets and history of Donald Trump and offers his insights and analysis. President Trump has many challenges in delivering on the promises he made to millions of American voters. He faces relentless opposition from special interests in both parties who stand to lose trillions if Trump's America First policies become the law of the land. Savage has been on the front line of this fight for decades and knows what Trump and his administration are up against. He lays out a path to victory for the new, conservative American revolutionaries in Trump's War.

Over the last year, award-winning journalist and videographer Max Blumenthal has been behind some of the most sensational (and funniest) exposes of Republican machinations. Whether it was his revelation that Sarah Palin was "anointed" by a Kenyan priest famous for casting out witches, or his confronting Republican congressional leaders and John McCain's family at the GOP convention about the party's opposition to sex education (and hence, the rise in teen pregnancies like that of Palin's daughter), or his expose of the eccentric multimillionaire theocrat behind California's Prop 8 anti- gay marriage initiative, Blumenthal has become one of the most important and most constantly cited journalists on how fringe movements are becoming the Republican Party mainstream. Republican Gomorrah is a bestiary of dysfunction, scandal and sordidness from the dark heart of the forces that now have a leash on the party. It shows how those forces are the ones that establishment Republicans-like John McCain-have to bow to if they have any hope of running for President. It shows that Sarah Palin was the logical choice of a party in the control of theocrats. But more that just an expose, Republican Gomorrah shows that many of the movement's leading figures have more in common than just the power they command within conservative ranks. Their personal lives have been stained by crisis and scandal: depression, mental illness, extra-marital affairs, struggles with homosexual urges, heavy medication, addiction to pornography, serial domestic abuse, and even murder. Inspired by the work of psychologists Erich Fromm, who asserted that the fear of freedom propels anxiety-ridden people into authoritarian settings, Blumenthal explains in a compelling narrative how a culture of personal crisis has defined the radical right, transforming the nature of the Republican Party for the next generation and setting the stage for the future of American politics.

"From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller This Town, the eyewitness account of how the GOP collaborated with Donald Trump to transform Washington's "swamp" into a gold-plated hot tub--and a onetime party of rugged individualists into a sycophantic personality cult"--

"From New York Times bestselling author Naomi Wolf, Facing the Beast is a devastating, detailed account of wrongthink, deplatforming, and an unexpected political, personal, and spiritual transformation that followed during one of the most divisive times in American history. In this uncompromising investigation into today's most urgent issues, Naomi Wolf uses her own wildly politicized pilgrimage-from New York Times bestselling author and high-level Democratic consultant to a journalist cast out from the elite political and social circles she once moved through-as a stunning narrative framework that is both chilling and incisive. Wolf's sin? Doing the job that good journalists once prided themselves on: asking questions, challenging authority, and, during one of the most politically divisive moments in modern history, exposing the many failures of the public health response during the COVID-19 pandemic by chronicling the dangerous descent of our democracy into tyranny, censorship, and totalitarianism. Unable to remain silent in the shadows and unwilling to collude with the mainstream, Wolf bravely covers topics that few other writers dare to address critically for fear of being deplatformed. Facing the Beast explores reproductive rights, medical freedom, the uncurious thought-policing of the "progressive" left, the Second Amendment, the criminal relationship between the FDA and Pfizer-Wolf's clear writing repeatedly shines light in the dark corners of our fractured society. A decades-long champion of free speech, freedom of the press, and the Constitution, Wolf found herself not only in the midst of a political rebirth but a spiritual transformation as well-one in which the events of the day could only be described in terms of good, evil, and a metaphysical quest on the nature of reality. For readers of Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, and Bari Weiss, Facing the Beast is a fearless indictment of legacy media and the political class, as well as a brutal reminder that searching for and defending the truth can be dangerous. "Naomi Wolf is one of the bravest, clearest-thinking people I know. The reason you hear the forces of repression so desperately trying to dismiss her is because she is right."-Tucker Carlson"--

"This book, by one of America's most intelligent and decent political writers, tells liberals how the conservative movement rose and fell, and how they could emulate its successes while avoiding its failures." --George Packer, author of Blood of the Liberals and The Assassins' Gate "No one is better than Todd Gitlin at describing the crucial dynamic through which movements gain or lose political power. Justly celebrated for his seminal work on such dynamics during the 1960s, Gitlin now explains everything that's happened since, with passion and wisdom--and happily, because of Bushism's collapse, legitimate optimism about the future." --Michael Tomasky, Editor, Guardian America "An impassioned yet realistic plea for Democrats and liberals to become more serious about politics. They would do well to follow his advice." --Alan Wolfe, Director, Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, Boston College "A brilliant and indispensable book. Gitlin convincingly urges liberals to take seriously the greater difficulty the Democrats have forging cohesion among identity-based groups over the Republicans persuading the less diverse Republican base to bury disagreements in the drive for victory. Gitlin argues that Democrats will have to bite the bullet and unite under a big tent. It's a hard lesson for ardent newcomers to the movement to swallow. Gitlin is dead right." --Thomas B. Edsall, Special Correspondent, The New Republic "This is an indispensable book by one of our most gifted public intellectuals. Todd Gitlin explains--with splendid scholarship, reporting, and wit--how the Bush machine debased our political life and how progressives, in all their variety, are struggling to build a new majority. It is the best guide we have to America's recent past and its possible future." --Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan and Professor of History, Georgetown University

In a series of columns and essays that renowned journalist and former presidential adviser Sidney Blumenthal wrote in the three years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a unifying theme began to emerge: that Bush, billed by himself and by many others as a conservative, is in fact a radical--more radical than any president in American history. In How Bush Rules , Blumenthal provides a trenchant and vivid account of the progression of Bush's radical style--from his reliance on one-party rule and his unwillingness to allow internal debate to his elevation of the power of the vice president. Taking readers through pivotal events such as the hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the rise of the foreign-policy neoconservatives, Abu Ghraib, the war on science, the Jack Abramoff scandal, and the catastrophic mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, the book tracks a consistent policy that calls for the president to have complete authority over independent federal agencies and to remain unbound by congressional oversight or even the law. In an incisive and powerful introduction, Blumenthal argues that these radical actions are not haphazard, but deliberately intended to fundamentally change the presidency and the government. He shows not only the historical precedents for radical governing, but also how Bush has taken his methods to unique extremes. With its penetrating account of a critical new era in American leadership, How Bush Rules is a devastating appraisal of the Bush presidency.

Journalist and speechwriter Gerson uses his own experiences in the upper tier of the Bush White House to show why America needs a conservatism that is heroic in its aspirations--including "compassionate conservative" proposals to confront global AIDS, combat poverty in America, and promote human rights and dignity abroad--initiatives that Gerson fought for during his time in government. Gerson has a unique ability to frame complex issues in a way that both challenges and inspires, and here he delivers a new manifesto for the Republican Party and a memoir of a history-shaping Presidency.--From publisher description.

This is the only book by Drucker in which he systematically develops a basic social theory. He presents the requirements for any society to be functioning and legitimate, and then applies these general concepts to the special

"The Trump presidency has resulted in a fundamentally disruptive moment in this nation's political culture. Not only were there different policy options and directions, but the cultural artifacts of politics changed because of how this president dramatically challenged the existing norms of political behavior and action. As we have shifted from a period of American liberalism to a time of political populism, deep fissures are dividing Americans in general and Jews in particular. The Impact of the Presidency of Donald Trump on American Jewry and Israel unpacks President Donald Trump's distinctive and unique relationship with the American Jewish community and the State of Israel. Addressing the various dimensions of his personal and political connections with Jews and Israel, this publication is designed to provide an assessment of how the Trump presidency has influenced and altered American Jewish political behavior. Writers from different backgrounds and political orientations bring a broad range of perspectives designed to examine various aspects of this presidency, including Trump's particular impact on Israel-US relations, his special connection with Orthodox Jews, and his complex and uneven relationship with Jewish Republicans. For liberal American Jews, these four years represented a fundamental revolution, overturning and challenging much that a generation of activists had fought to achieve and protect. For Trump's supporters, it afforded them an opportunity to advance their priorities, while joining the forty-fifth president in changing the American political landscape. The "Trump effect" will extend well beyond his four-year tenure, creating an environment that has fomented the politics of hate and exposed a deeply embedded presence of anti-Semitism. How Americans understand this moment in time and the ways society will adapt can be reflected through the prism of the Jewish encounter with Trumpism that this volume seeks to explore"--

Neoconservatism is the movement that has provided the intellectual foundation for the resurgence of American conservatism in our time. And if neoconservatism can be said to have a father or an architect, that person is Irving Kristol. Neoconservatism is the most comprehensive selection of Kristol's influential writings on politics and economics, as well as the best of his now-famous essays on society, religion, culture, literature, education, and - above all - the "values" issues that have come to define the neo-conservative critique of contemporary life. These essays provide an unparalleled insight into the 50-year development of Kristol's social and political ideas, from an uneasy socialism tempered with religious orthodoxy, to a vigilant optimism about the future of the American experiment. Those already familiar with Kristol's work will especially enjoy the new autobiographical essay that introduces this volume; it is sprinkled with personal recollections about such luminaries as Lionel Trilling, Leo Strauss, Saul Bellow, Sidney Hook, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and historian Gertrude Himmelfarb (who is also Mrs. Kristol). Those relatively new to Kristol's writings will be treated to some of the most lucid, insightful, entertaining, and intellectually challenging essays of our time.

Hours after the USSR collapsed in 1991, the U.S. Congress began making plans to establish the official memory of the Cold War. Conservatives dominated the proceedings, spending millions of dollars to portray the conflict as a clash of good vs. evil, ending in a defeat of totalitarianism equal in significance to the outcome of World War II. In this book, the author visits Cold War monuments, museums, and memorials across the United States to find out how the era is remembered today. His journey provides a history of the Cold War that turns many conventional notions on their heads