2009-08-20 Links & Comments via Twitter
- RT: @hunterbaker: The End of Secularism is now available: http://tinyurl.com/lu4nmf #
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2009-08-11 Links & Comments via Twitter
- Win a Copy of Michelle Malkin’s New Book "Culture of Corruption" at Red State. http://ow.ly/jHTE #
- If @ezraklein endorses a health care book (THE HEALING OF AMERICA) that is enough reason to question its conclusions http://bit.ly/rATou #
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2009-08-10 Links & Comments via Twitter
- Red State review of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do To Stop Them” http://tinyurl.com/l649e7 #
- Books in a Blog World http://ow.ly/jyAR #
- One of my favorite journals, The City, is now available in a fancy high tech online version. A lot of good content. http://ow.ly/jD9r #
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2009-08-04 Links & Comments via Twitter
- This account & blog has not been as active as I'd hoped; I am going to try & restart it by offering daily links that I hope you find useful. #
- John J. Miller talks w/ Jay Richards about Money, Greed, & God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem http://tinyurl.com/n5cmwf #
- JOHN R. COYNE JR. reviews THE HOUSING BOOM AND BUST By Thomas Sowell for the Washington Times http://tinyurl.com/laqhmd #
- Thought this might be of interest: "I get it, you hate Amazon & the Kindle. So what?" via @CollectedMisc http://bit.ly/7LDGs #
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Right Time, Right Place by Richard Brookhiser
Richard Brookhiser I and have a lot in common. We both started reading National Review in high school; we both idolized William F. Buckley Jr. (WFB); we both love history (including the now out of fashion “dead white males”); and we both ended up as freelance writers.
Well, to be fair Brookhiser had his first NR cover story at the age of 14; became a senior editor, then managing editor at National Review; was close friends with and, for a time, heir apparent to Buckley; and has written highly successful biographies of the founding fathers. But take away the talent, ambition, and career success and it’s like we’re the same person!
Joking aside, it would be impossible to calculate how many young writers and politicos idealized and were inspired by Buckley and National Review. Particularly in the period leading up to Ronald Regan’s election, WFB and NR were at the center of American conservatism. And Brookhiser’s latest book – Right Time, Right Place – tells the story of what it was like to be at the very inner circle of this fully operational conservative battle station.
As the subtitle – Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement –indicates, RTRP is a blend of history, memoir, and political commentary. I find this type of “creative non-fiction” can lack focus, often jumping between subjects and styles, but Brookhiser’s unique perspective, style and flair for language make this a remarkably focused and powerful read.
It is a very personal and honest look at the man and magazine at the heart of the conservative movement’s rise to power, and eventual return to earth, while at the same time a meditation on the dangers of hero worship and the nature of mature relationships.
Q&A with Richard Brookhiser on Right Time, Right Place
I will declare my bias up front: Richard Brookhiser is one of my favorite writers. He hits the sweet spot with me; writing about politics, culture, and history with equal skill and insight. There is a sharpness to his writing but at the same time a calmness; an ability to write about the details of the here and now but also keep history in mind.
So it is not surprising that when his latest book (Right Time, Right Place) came out I cleared the decks and read it. Add in the fact that it is about William F. Buckley, National Review, and the history of the conservative movement, and it was a must read for me. Look for my review later today.
As an added bonus, Brookhiser generously agreed to an email Q&A to discuss the book, his career, and the conservative movement. (Questions in Bold)
Had you always planned to write about your experience at NR, with WFB, and conservatism after Buckley’s passing? How did this book come about?
I knew I wanted to write about my years with WFB. Death was the wake-up call: now you must get this done. I spoke to my agent, Michael Carlisle, who said, write a proposal, and I remember thinking: It’s on.
Was there ever a moment where you thought I shouldn’t write this; or I shouldn’t make it this personal?
I never doubted writing the book, which I owed to WFB, myself, and the history I lived through. If you don’t want to be personal, you should not write memoir (you will also have a lot of trouble living, but that’s another matter).
Were you worried that some would see it as a cheap shot at WFB (as some have done in comparing to Christopher’s book)?
Right Time, Right Place is a book about love—what it is, what it feels like, how it can go wrong, how you save it. Readers who can’t understand that should go back to Dan Brown.
The Magician’s Book by Laura Miller
Cover via Amazon
*Cross Posted from Collected Miscellany*
Laura Miller had a problem. When she was young she was absolutely captivated and enthralled with the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. Given a copy of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by a school teacher she dove in an entered a new world. Things would never be the same.
But eventually she grew older and began to find out things about Lewis and Narnia that changed her relationship with the series: the Christian underpinnings of the story, Lewis’s world view and political opinions, etc. But as she pursued a career as a literary critic she decided to return to these books and she found there was still much about them that she loved.
The road that had once seemed to lead to free and open country had in reality doubled back to church. Now I was trying to explain why my damning adolescent assessment of Chronicles wasn’t entirely sufficient, either. As an adult, I’d discovered that I could follow Lewis pretty far without feeling obliged to return to Christianity, and that the old sensations of freedom, of wilderness in Narnia, remained.
She sets out to make sense of this journey. The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia is her answer in book form.
Afternoon Book Links Worth Reading
Image via Wikipedia
–> Rand’s Atlas Is Shrugging With a Growing Load
Imagine a novel of more than a thousand pages, published half a century ago. The author doesn’t have a talk-radio show and has been dead for 27 years.
As for the storyline, it is beyond dated: Humorless executives fight with humorless public officials over an industry that is, today, almost irrelevant to the U.S. economy – - railroads. The prose itself is a disconcerting mixture of philosophy, industrial policy, and bodice-ripping: “The wind blew her hair to blend with his. She knew why he had wanted to walk through the mountains tonight.”
In short, you would think “Atlas Shrugged” might be long forgotten.
Instead, Ayn Rand’s novel is remembered more than ever. This year the book is selling at a faster rate than last year. Last year, sales were about 200,000, higher than any year before that, including 1957, when the book was published.
–> Get Off My (Intellectual) Property
No one should have had to write Digital Barbarism. It’s common sense that copyright laws are important: They protect the creators of art against theft, making it possible for writers, composers, filmmakers, and countless others to pursue their callings full-time. Without copyright protection, we could only enjoy works produced for free — by hobbyists, the very rich, those supported by charity, and those dedicated enough to starve for their crafts. Not to mention the obvious immorality of taking a work that someone labored to create, without permission and without payment, and not to mention that the Constitution explicitly encourages Congress to protect copyright.
But someone did need to write this book, because today there is a war on copyright. The music industry fought the opening battle against Napster (a web site full of copyrighted music available for free download) in the late 1990s. Napster lost, but infringers still won: Better piracy software soon came out, making it possible for users to download files from each other, rather than from a central website. Since then, the problem has spread to movies and books.
The surprising part isn’t that people like to take things without paying for them, but that they think they’re morally entitled to do so. An army of activists, ranging from bratty teenagers to tenured academics, has made the case that copyright itself is outdated or flat-out counterproductive. Some economists have even claimed (ridiculously) that piracy doesn’t hurt sales.
Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto charges fiercely into some of this war’s meanest fights, and the author, Mark Helprin, principally a novelist, is a terrific writer. He explains the history of copyright, offers interesting (if not always strictly relevant) anecdotes from his personal life, and bats down many of the anti-copyright mob’s arguments — even the silly ones he finds in Internet comment sections.
The Future of Conservatism
Two authors with forthcoming books on conservatism’s history offer insight for its future.
- Richard Brookhiser, author of Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement, writes in the Wall Street Journal about what the Right might learn from William F. Buckley:
The most important lesson of his career is that there are limits to accommodation. Buckley came to fame in the early 1950s after two decades of liberal Democratic dominance, the Fair Deal of Harry Truman having followed the New Deal of FDR. When Republicans finally recaptured Congress and the White House in 1952, it was a case of new men and old measures. The new president, Dwight Eisenhower, despite his conservative instincts, was unwilling to pick ideological fights. On the sidelines of politics, the poet Peter Viereck called for a New Conservatism dedicated to managing change gracefully and recognizing liberal Democrats like Adlai Stevenson as its natural leaders. Germany, Japan and (it seemed) the Depression had been beaten by great collective efforts. The world had moved into a new era, and conservatives should recognize the fact.
Buckley would have none of it. He wanted a conservatism that stood for capitalism and freedom. The Cold War required another great mobilization, which Buckley supported wholeheartedly, but he would not lose sight of his individualistic goals. In 1955, when he founded National Review as the journal of opinion for his kind of conservatism, he declared its purpose to be “to stand athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’” He yelled because he hoped to be heard. Liberalism had been ascendant for years, but that didn’t mean it always would be.
- Steven F. Hayward, author of The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counter-Revolution, 1980-1989, offers thoughts on Reagan’s Unfinished Agenda and where the Tea Parties might lead:
Here’s where the Tea Parties come in. If the Tea Party movement wishes to stand for something concrete, and sensibly avoid being co-opted by the Republican party, it might consider embracing Reagan’s Economic Bill of Rights (perhaps with the addition of term limits and an anti-earmark provision just to make sure the politicians stay away). It is not necessary that agitation for constitutional amendments actually succeed in getting the amendments adopted in order to have a significant political effect. There is no chance that the current Congress would even bring any of these amendments to a vote, though the Tea Parties could agitate for resolutions from state legislatures. The progress of feminism showed the Equal Rights Amendment to have been unnecessary for its larger social goals. Advocating amendments to secure new limits to government would have the salutary effect of putting liberals on the defensive, just as the balanced-budget movement and tax revolt of the 1970s assisted the rise of Reagan and conservatives in general in the 1980s. It is the kind of populism that would gain Tocqueville’s approval and Madison’s acquiescence. Above all, picking this fight would reintroduce constitutional ideas to America’s political conversation. And not a moment too soon.
Win The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal
Well, last weeks book giveaway didn’t exactly burn up the Internets. But I am going to chalk that up to a rough start here at TRR and perhaps the topic of the book.
This week’s book giveaway, however, could not be more on target in its topic. With the economic crisis and Obama in the White House the Great Depression and the New Deal are suddenly hot topics. And what better way to study up on this hot topic then to read The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal.
From the Inside Flap
Everything you know about the Great Depression and the New Deal is wrong
We all learned in school that the 1920s were a time of unregulated capitalism that led to the stock market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Herbert Hoover was a laissez-faire ideologue who did nothing to alleviate the crisis–even as citizens starved and were forced to live in “Hoovervilles.” And the interventionist policies and massive spending programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal gradually lifted us out of the Depression, until World War II brought it to a definitive end.
The only trouble with this official narrative–taught in most history textbooks, and proclaimed as gospel by the media–is that every element of it is false. Worse, this unsubstantiated myth is now being used to justify a “new New Deal” in response to today’s economic crisis that could lead to a Greater Depression even deeper and longer than the first. But in The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, economist Robert Murphy fact-checks the myths, shows why they’re wrong, and delves deep into history to set the record straight. His “politically incorrect” conclusion? It was government, not free markets, that caused the Great Depression–and the New Deal only made it worse. The real “lessons of the Great Depression” are not what you’ve been taught.
* The Crash of `29 was caused not by capitalism, but by the boom brought on by the newly created Federal Reserve’s easy money policy (sound familiar?)
* Hoover made the Depression “Great” precisely by abandoning the laissez-faire approach that previous presidents had followed and that kept depressions short
* The bank runs of the 1930s were caused by government intervention in the banking system
* Government efforts to prop up wages and prices led to a full decade of double-digit unemployment
* FDR’s arbitrary policies toward businessmen resulted in net investment of less than zero for much of the DepressionMight Barack Obama be the new FDR? You’ll know, after reading The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal that if he is, that’s nothing to celebrate.
Want to impress your friends with your impressive friends and co-workers with your impressive knowledge of this popular topic? Want to buck conventional wisdom and flaunt your politically incorrect historical knowledge? Sure you do.
So simply leave a comment below and you will be in a drawing for a free comment.
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