Political Liberalism

Wall Street Journal columnist and bestselling author Kim Strassel argues that Joe Biden, like Jimmy Carter before him, has mired the country in weakness, inflation and political unease.

With Uncivil Agreement, Lilliana Mason looks at the growing social gulf across racial, religious, and cultural lines, which have recently come to divide neatly between the two major political parties. She argues that group identifications have changed the way we think and feel about ourselves and our opponents. Even when Democrats and Republicans can agree on policy outcomes, they tend to view one another with distrust and to work for party victory over all else.

America is hopelessly divided, but more worryingly, the ideas and “mystic chords of memory” that rest at the cornerstone of our civilization and bind the generations are being severed, attacked, and forgotten. The left has set out to shatter these bonds with a war on American history - the fundamental concepts, institutions, and icons that make our country what it is. And we have failed to protect our history, allowing Hollywood, educators, and the media to rewrite the story of America. We have ignored the invaluable lessons of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

Matthew Continetti gives a sweeping account of movement conservatism’s evolution, from the Progressive Era through the present. He tells the story of how conservatism began as networks of intellectuals, developing and institutionalizing a vision that grew over time, until they began to buckle under new pressures, resembling national populist movements. Drawing out the tensions between the 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.

Twenty years after the Starr Report and the Clinton impeachment, former special prosecutor Ken Starr finally shares his definitive account of this period in American history. Now Starr finally shares his unique perspective on the investigation that began with the Whitewater land deal and spread to a wide range of President Clinton's actions, including accusations of sexual harassment and perjury in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Starr's narrative includes behind-the-scenes details that have never before emerged as well as a new analysis from the perspective of history.

Rarely does a work of history contain startling implications for the present, but in The People, No, Thomas Frank pulls off that explosive effect by showing us that everything we think we know about populism is wrong. Today "populism" is seen as a frightening thing, a term pundits use to describe the racist philosophy of Donald Trump and European extremists. But this is a mistake. The real story of populism is an account of enlightenment and liberation; it is the story of American democracy itself, of its ever-widening promise of a decent life for all.

In this balanced, illuminating audiobook, Updegrove tells the story of the Bushes' relationship from the birth of George W. through their postpresidential years and Jeb Bush's failed candidacy. Drawing on exclusive access and interviews with both presidents and the key people in their lives, Updegrove reveals the Bushes' views on the current state of the nation and the GOP and how the party they both led and helped build is undergoing a radical transformation.

Recent years have seen a revival of the heated culture wars of the 1990s, but this time its battleground is the Internet. On one side the alt-right ranges from the once obscure neo-reactionary and white separatist movements, to geeky subcultures like 4chan, to more mainstream manifestations such as the Trump-supporting gay libertarian Milo Yiannopolous. On the other side, struggle sessions and virtue signaling lurk behind a therapeutic language of trigger warnings and safe spaces. The feminist side of the online culture wars has its equally geeky subcultures.

Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality that, tragically, has seldom been realized in practice. While these contradictions have caused dissent and even violence, there was always an underlying and evolving solidarity drawn from the cultural resources of America’s “hybrid Enlightenment”. James Davison Hunter, who introduced the concept of “culture wars” 30 years ago, tells us in this new book that those historic sources of national solidarity have now largely dissolved.

The syndicated columnist and bestselling author of Brainwashed, Porn Generation, and Project President tells the shocking true story of how the most powerful medium of mass communication in human history became a vehicle for spreading the radical agenda of the left side of the political spectrum. Similar to what Bernard Goldberg’s Bias and A Slobbering Love Affair did for the liberal news machine, Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda is an essential exposé of corrupting media bias, pulling back the curtain on widespread and unrepentant abuses of the Hollywood entertainment industry.

Who is killing America? Is it really Donald Trump and a GOP filled with white supremacists? In this audiobook, Dinesh D’Souza makes the provocative case that Democrats are the ones killing America by turning it into a massive nanny state modeled on the Southern plantation system. Death of a Nation's bracing alternative vision of American history explains the Democratic Party's dark past, reinterprets the roles of figures like Van Buren, FDR, and LBJ, and exposes the hidden truth that racism comes not from Trump or the conservative right but rather from Democrats.

Remember when socialism was a dirty word? Now students at America's elite universities are parroting socialist talking points and "sure thing" Hillary Clinton is struggling to win the Democratic nomination against a 74-year-old avowed socialist who promises to make the nation more like Europe. What's happened? Do Americans need a reminder about the dangers of socialist ideology and practices?

Richard Hanania has come out of nowhere to become one of the best-known writers in the nation in the last few years. In this book, he directs his attention to the culture war that has driven society apart and presents a stunning new theory about what is going on. In a nation nearly evenly split between conservatives and liberals, the left dominates nearly all major institutions, including universities, the government, and corporate America. Hanania argues that this is as much a legal requirement as it is an issue of one side triumphing in the marketplace of ideas.

America Last is a guide for the perplexed, identifying and tracing a persuasion—or the "illiberal imagination"—that has animated conservative politics for a century now. Since the 1940s, the Right has railed against communist fellow travelers in America. Heilbrunn finally corrects the record, showing that dictator worship is a longstanding tradition within modern American conservatism that cannot be ignored—and what it means for us today.

Some have claimed that the neoliberal era is behind us. Baradaran shows that such thinking is misguided. Neoliberalism is a failed economic idea—it doesn't, in fact, create more wealth or more freedom. But it has been successful nevertheless, by seizing the courts and enabling our age of crypto fraud, financial instability, and accelerating inequality.

Alex Marlow was just a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student when renowned media mogul Andrew Breitbart hired him as his first employee. Breitbart began mentoring Marlow on how to fight the culture war one headline at a time and to remain resilient in the face of personal attacks. Now, in this eye-opening and timely book, Marlow explains how the establishment press destroyed its own credibility with a relentless stream of “fake news” designed to smear Donald Trump and his supporters while advancing a leftist agenda.

With grit, guts, and gusto, talk radio sensation Michael Savage leaves no political turn unstoned as he savages today's most rabid liberalism. In this audio edition of his third New York Times bestseller, Savage strikes at the root of today's most pressing issues.

What moral values do human beings hold in common? As globalization draws us together economically, are our values converging or diverging? In particular, are human rights becoming a global ethic? These were the questions that led Michael Ignatieff to embark on a three-year, eight-nation journey in search of answers. The Ordinary Virtues presents Ignatieff's discoveries and his interpretation of what globalization - and resistance to it - is doing to our conscience and our moral understanding.

For the past 30 years, David Mamet has been a controversial and defining force in theater and film, championing the most cherished liberal values along the way. In some of the great movies and plays of our time, his characters have explored the ethics of the business world, embodied the struggles of the oppressed, and faced the flaws of the capitalist system. But in recent years Mamet has had a change of heart.

This passionate, erudite, and groundbreaking book will appeal to readers of Steven Pinker and Thomas Frank. It is a fascinating read for anyone interested in how the mind works, how society works, and how they work together.