American Doctrines

We the Fallen People presents a close look at the ideas of human nature to be found in the history of American democratic thought. McKenzie, following C. S. Lewis, claims there are only two reasons to believe in majority rule: because we have confidence in human nature - or because we don't. The Founders subscribed to the biblical principle that humans are fallen and their virtue is always doubtful, and they wrote the US Constitution to frame a republic intended to handle our weaknesses.

The American way - independence, entrepreneurialism, liberty - has been under assault for decades. The cultural foundations of the United States and its institutions are devolving along the line of some futuristic apocalyptic novel and producing social, moral, and economic dry rot that can lead only to chaos and ruin. Attacks on individuality, freedom, and personal responsibility for most of the last century have resulted, as Alexis de Tocqueville once predicted, in a gradual degradation of the people and the descent into slavery of once-free people.

From the author of The New York Times best sellers Treason and Slander comes an updated Ann Coulter compendium, complete with reader responses and television and talk radio transcripts (Couric, Donahue, Franken). With titles like "Would Mohamed Atta Object to Armed Pilots?", "9 out of 10 Caribou Support Drilling", and "Liberal Pimps for Clintonism", How to Talk to a Liberal covers Coulter's waterfront on her favorite issues and targets, from national security to Hollywood.

In this ground-breaking analysis, author James Kurth (a Harvard student of Samuel Huntington) explains that the roots of America's current foreign policy crisis lie in contradictions of an American empire which attempted to transform traditional American national interests promoted by Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and FDR into a new American-led global order that has unsuccessfully attempted to promote supposedly universal, rather than uniquely American, ideals.

Curtis J. Austin chronicles how violence brought about the founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, dominated its policies, and finally destroyed the party as one member after another - Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton, Alex Rackley - left the party, was killed, or was imprisoned.

Since the end of the second World War, the United States has sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into foreign economies in the hope that its investments would help remake the world in its own image - or, at the very least, make the world "safe for democracy." So far, the returns have been disappointing, to say the least. Pushing for fair and free elections in undemocratic countries has added to the casualty count, rather than taken away from it, and trying to eliminate corruption entirely has precluded the elimination of some of the worst forms of corruption.

A Ruling Class have emerged in America against the hopes and designs of our Founding Fathers. Over the last hundred years, they have rejected the Constitution and expanded their own power, slowly at first and now rapidly. These people believe their actions are justified, because they think they are smarter than the rest of us - so smart they can run our lives better than we can.

Long before the advent of conservative talk radio and Fox News, Robert Ringer was an outspoken advocate for the cause of freedom and free enterprise. In this classic work - updated for the 21st century - Ringer's basic premise is that liberty must be given a higher priority than all other objectives.

Responsible. Independent. Hard-working. These are qualities that used to define Americans. But now we're a nation of whiners, blamers, and excuse-makers. So says Michael Graham - radio talk show host, former GOP campaign consultant, and journalist - in his new book.

The golden key to understanding the last 75 years of American political development, the eminent labor-relations scholar Michael Goldfield argues, lies in the contests between labor and capital in the American South during the 1930s and 1940s. Labor agitation and unionization efforts in the South in the New Deal era were extensive and bitterly fought and ranged across all of the major industries of the region. Goldfield shows how the broad-based failure to organize the South during this period made it what it is today.

If you’re a never-Trumper, maybe you’d like to understand better your Trump-supporting relative at Thanksgiving dinner. Over 74 million of your fellow Americans voted for Trump in 2020. Despite all the things about him that make you crazy, they decided, "that’s my guy", and filled in the dot or pulled the lever. Why did they? How could they? Is there any way to bridge the gap between you and them?

Americans responded to the deadly terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, with an outpouring of patriotism, though all were not united in their expression. A war-based patriotism inspired millions of Americans to wave the flag and support a brutal War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, while many other Americans demanded an empathic patriotism that would bear witness to the death and suffering surrounding the attack. Twenty years later, the war still simmers, and both forms of patriotism continue to shape historical understandings of 9/11's legacy and the political life of the nation.

After Donald Trump's rise to power, after the 2020 presidential election, after January 6, is American politics past the point of no return? New York Times columnist Thomas Byrne Edsall fears that the country may be headed over a cliff. In this compelling and illuminating book, Edsall documents how the Trump years ravaged the nation's politics, culture, and social order.

Alveda King, niece of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., shares 21 keys to help you unlock your spiritual potential. As your tour guide on this journey of discovery, she reveals how her famous family taught her that when you use your God-given gifts, you can impact the world. Sharing secrets to unlocking a divine family, divine salvation, divine forgiveness, and much more, King inspires you to unlock authority to use your spiritual gifts to their greatest potential. Learn how to live "in spirit and in truth" to discover what "to you it has been given" means for your life.

As a biomedical sciences student, Isabel Brown never anticipated finding herself immersed in a world of leftism, silenced by the thought police, and afraid to speak up for conservative values, but this is the reality that defined her college experience. Isabel's story is a compelling memoir about the current state of affairs on America's college campuses - unveiling the truth that university administrators don't want you to hear - and a reminder of the need for true ideological diversity.

In The Politics of Petulance Alan Wolfe argues the core of our problem isn't Trump himself - it's that we are mired in an age of political immaturity. That immaturity is not grounded in any one ideology, nor is it a function of age or education. In 2016, many Americans were offered tantalizingly simple answers to complicated problems, and, like children being offered a lunch of Pop Rocks and Coke, they reflexively - and mindlessly - accepted. The good news is that we've been here before. Wolfe reminds us that we know how to grow up and face down Trump and other demagogues.

Has American democracy's long, ambitious run come to an end? Possibly yes. As William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe argue in this trenchant new analysis of modern politics, the United States faces a historic crisis that threatens our system of self-government - and if democracy is to be saved, the causes of the crisis must be understood and defused.

In the history of American politics, there are few stories as enigmatic as that of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison's bitterly personal falling out. Together they helped bring the Constitution into being, yet soon after the new republic was born, they broke over the meaning of its founding document. Hamilton emphasized economic growth; Madison the importance of republican principles. Author Jay Cost is the first to argue that both men were right - and that their quarrel reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of the American experiment.

In a remote corner of Oregon, James Pogue found himself at the heart of a rebellion. Granted unmatched access by Ammon Bundy to the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Pogue met ranchers and militiamen ready to die fighting the federal government. He witnessed the fallout of communities riven by politics and the danger (and allure) of uncompromising religious belief. The occupation ended in the shooting death of one rancher, the imprisonment of dozens more, and a firestorm over the role of government that engulfed national headlines.

For much of American history, evangelicalism was aligned with progressive political causes: nineteenth-century evangelicals fought for the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, and public education. But contemporary conservative activists have defaulted on this majestic legacy, embracing instead an agenda virtually indistinguishable from the Republican Party platform.