American Doctrines

The United States is an exceptional place to call home thanks to the character of the American people. With conviction and urgency, Ed Feulner and Brian Tracy affirm our core tenets - from patriotism and optimism to faith and generosity - and challenge all of us to live out the timeless principles of citizenship. Packed with engaging stories, insightful profiles, and eye-opening statistics, The American Spirit serves as an indispensable primer on the bedrock belief that an indomitable spirit does exist.

New York Times best-selling author Tony Blankley prescribes a three-pronged approach as key to America's success in previous wars that must be "rediscovered" today. The political-correctness crowd will complain, but Blankley argues that this conservative manifesto to reestablish American grit is essential - our nation's very survival depends on it.

Marco Rubio's parents came to the United States in 1956. The country they found was truly a land of opportunity, where hardworking people with grade school educations could afford a home, a car, and college for their kids. A country where maids and bartenders could raise doctors, lawyers, small-business owners, and maybe even a US senator. That was the American Dream - our country's central promise to its people.

Rick Tyler, MSNBC's leading conservative analyst, shows they are still the ones in the right by making the case for real conservatism, one grounded in principles of liberty, the history of freedom, and simple reason. He explains why it's necessary to have a global view of the economy - and how that includes immigration. He demonstrates the need for protecting our nation with a strong military as well as protecting the planet itself. He discusses what conservatism really asks when it comes to children, health care, taxes, and elections.

From his bestselling first novel, The Naked and the Dead, to his last work, American democracy was a lifelong project for Norman Mailer. It was his grand theme. Nearly all of his books touched on the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses, the grace (to use his word) and fragility of the American experiment as well as the threats to it. A Mysterious Country is a carefully selected collection of Mailer’s most incisive—and sometimes remarkably prophetic—commentary on American democracy and what must be done to safeguard it.

In this brilliant exploration of American history and contemporary conservative politics, foreign policy expert John Hulsman draws on his years at the heart of Washington to present a compelling new vision of conservative realism. In our current Age of Insecurity, Hulsman suggests, there has never been a bigger need for the re-ascendance of realist principles in conservative circles. By drawing on U.S. history to illustrate realist precepts at the heart of the American story, The Last Best Hope provides a practical, realist foreign policy for a new age of American politics.

Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy? Not only the erudite Thomas Jefferson, the wily and elusive Ben Franklin, and the underappreciated Thomas Paine, but also Ethan Allen, the hero of the Green Mountain Boys, and Thomas Young, the forgotten Founder who kicked off the Boston Tea Party. These radicals who founded America set their sights on a revolution of the mind. Derided as "infidels" and "atheists" in their own time, they wanted to liberate us not just from one king but from the tyranny of supernatural religion.

The McCarthy-era witch hunts marked the culmination of an anticommunist crusade launched after the First World War. With Bolshevism triumphant in Russia and public discontent shaking the United States, conservatives at every level of government and business created a network dedicated to sweeping away the "spider web" of radicalism they saw threatening the nation. In this groundbreaking study, Nick Fischer shines a light on right-wing activities of the time, showing that the term "spider web" far more accurately described the anticommunist movement.

In this powerful, sweeping history and analysis of American democracy, Thom Hartmann shows how democracy is the one form of governance most likely to produce peace and happiness among people. With the violent exception of the Civil War, American democracy resisted the pressure to disintegrate into factionalism for nearly two centuries, and now our very system of democratic elections is at stake. So how do we save our democracy?

The "silent majority" - a phrase coined by Richard Nixon in 1969 in response to Vietnam War protests and later used by Donald Trump as a campaign slogan - refers to the supposed wedge that exists between protesters in the street and the voters at home. The Loud Minority upends this view by demonstrating that voters are in fact directly informed and influenced by protest activism. Consequently, as protests grow in America, every facet of the electoral process is touched by this loud minority, benefiting the party perceived to be the most supportive of the protesters' messaging.

To save both democracy and a decent economy, here's why it's crucial that Americans elect a truly progressive president. The 2020 presidential election will be pivotal for the credibility of government and for democracy itself, argues Robert Kuttner in this brief and compelling call to arms. Either we continue the twin slides into corrupt autocracy and corporate plutocracy - the course set in the past half century by Republican and Democratic presidents alike - or we elect a progressive Democrat in the mold of FDR.

The AOC Generation examines the resurgent young left - including groups like Justice Democrats, the Democratic Socialists of America and Brand New Congress - and documents how and why they got active and energized in political organizing, the success and limitations of their approaches - and through their stories, it tells the history and the future of a generation.

Democracy is, by its very nature, often rude. But there are limits to how uncivil we should be. In the 2010 edition of Rude Democracy, Susan Herbst explored the ways we discuss public policy, how we treat each other as we do, and how we can create a more civil national culture. She used the examples of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama to illustrate her case. In a new preface for this 2020 edition, the author connects her book to our current highly contentious politics and what it means for the future of democratic argument.

A hard-hitting and no-holds-barred broadside, from the anchorman of the Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor - what's good about America (plenty), what's bad (plenty still), and what's completely ridiculous (most everything else).

Gun sellers sell more than just guns. They also sell politics. Merchants of the Right sheds light on the unparalleled surge in gun purchasing during one of the most dire moments in American history, revealing how conservative political culture was galvanized amid a once-in-a-century pandemic, racial unrest, and a U.S. presidential election that rocked the foundations of American democracy. Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews with gun sellers across the United States, Jennifer Carlson takes listeners to the front lines of the culture war over gun rights.

The problem isn’t that liberal authors present their opinions or interpretations of history from an obvious left-wing bias. Students learn, for example, that the Founding Fathers were elitists who drafted the Constitution in order to protect their own economic interests; that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation only because he needed black soldiers; that racist groups such as the KKK represented our society in the early twentieth century.

Howard Fineman, one of our most trusted political journalists, shows that every debate, from our nation’s founding to the present day, is rooted in one of thirteen arguments that–thankfully–defy resolution. It is the very process of never-ending argument, Fineman explains, that defines us, inspires us, and keeps us free. At a time when most public disagreement seems shrill and meaningless, Fineman makes a cogent case for nurturing the real American dialogue.

Widely popular conservative blogger Pamela Geller and New York Times best-selling author Robert Spencer team up for this battle cry about the damage being done by the current administration's policies to the institution of the American presidency.

Bill Bradley believes that America is at a crossroads, a "teachable moment" in which we are compelled to reevaluate our political system and leadership. With clarity and urgency, Bradley outlines the story we are being told now about who we are and what is possible for our nation. He then offers a new story, including what changes need to be made, and suggests that the party that chooses to embrace this new story will be in power for a generation.

In Homes for Living, urban planner and oral historian Jonathan Tarleton introduces listeners to two social housing co-ops in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Longtime residents of St. James Towers and Southbridge Towers lock horns over whether to maintain the rules that have kept their homes affordable for decades or to cash out at great personal profit, thereby denying future generations the same opportunity to build thriving communities rooted in mutual care.