Download or read book In Defense of America written by Bronwen Maddox and published by Little Brown. This book was released on 2008-07 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noted British columnist Maddox argues incisively and elegantly that the worldneeds a dominant America.
Download or read book America on Trial written by Robert Reilly and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2020-05-08 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Founding of the American Republic is on trial. Critics say it was a poison pill with a time-release formula; we are its victims. Its principles are responsible for the country's moral and social disintegration because they were based on the Enlightenment falsehood of radical individual autonomy. In this well-researched book, Robert Reilly declares: not guilty. To prove his case, he traces the lineage of the ideas that made the United States, and its ordered liberty, possible. These concepts were extraordinary when they first burst upon the ancient world: the Judaic oneness of God, who creates ex nihilo and imprints his image on man; the Greek rational order of the world based upon the Reason behind it; and the Christian arrival of that Reason (Logos) incarnate in Christ. These may seem a long way from the American Founding, but Reilly argues that they are, in fact, its bedrock. Combined, they mandated the exercise of both freedom and reason. These concepts were further developed by thinkers in the Middle Ages, who formulated the basic principles of constitutional rule. Why were they later rejected by those claiming the right to absolute rule, then reclaimed by the American Founders, only to be rejected again today? Reilly reveals the underlying drama: the conflict of might makes right versus right makes might. America's decline, he claims, is not to be discovered in the Founding principles, but in their disavowal.
Download or read book In Defense of Our America written by Anthony D. Romero and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A brave, powerful book from one of freedom’s most courageous defenders. These stories remind us how real -- how personal -- the threats to our Constitutional rights really are -- and of the duty that we all have to protect them in times of trouble. Woven through these riveting chapters is a strong reminder: democracy is the best security.” — Eli Pariser, Founder and Executive Director, MOVEON.ORG Executive Director of the ACLU Anthony D. Romero and award-winning journalist Dina Temple-Raston present stories of real Americans at the front lines of the fight for civil liberties at a time when our most basic rights are being challenged. From the story of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh to the battle against the National Security Agency's warrantless spying program, and from a movement in Pennsylvania to force religion into the public school science curriculum to the case of Matthew Limon, a gay teenager sentenced to seventeen years in prison for having consensual oral sex with another teenage boy in Kansas, In Defense of Our America offers readers an eye-opening look at the dangerous erosion of rights in the post-9/11 age of terror and chronicles the courageous ongoing struggle of ordinary Americans to preserve our hard-won constitutional freedoms.
Download or read book Understanding America written by Peter H Schuck and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2009-04-07 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is America? Is it a hegemonic superpower, composed of ruthlessly selfish capitalists? Or is it a land of hope and glory, a shelter for the huddled masses, and a beacon of freedom and enlightenment? The definition of this complex nation has been debated substantially, yet all seem to agree on one thing: it is unique. The idea of an exceptional America can be traced all the way back to Alexis de Tocqueville's nineteenth-century observations of a newly formed democracy that seemed determined to distinguish itself from the rest. Little, it seems, has changed. Building on de Tocqueville's concept of American exceptionalism, this collection of essays, contributed by some of the nation's top scholars and thinkers, takes on the weighty task of sizing up America in a way its people and others can comprehend. Far more than simple history, they outline the current state of American institutions and policies -- from the legal system to marriage to the military to the Drug War -- and anticipate where these are headed in the future.
Download or read book Insanity Defense written by Jane Harman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider's account of America's ineffectual approach to some of the hardest defense and intelligence issues in the three decades since the Cold War ended. Insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. As a nation, America has cycled through the same defense and intelligence issues since the end of the Cold War. In Insanity Defense, Congresswoman Jane Harman chronicles how four administrations have failed to confront some of the toughest national security policy issues and suggests achievable fixes that can move us toward a safer future. The reasons for these inadequacies are varied and complex, in some cases going back generations. American leaders didn’t realize soon enough that the institutions and habits formed during the Cold War were no longer effective in an increasingly multi-power world transformed by digital technology and riven by ethno-sectarian conflict. Nations freed from the fear of the Soviets no longer deferred to America as before. Yet the United States settled into a comfortable, at times arrogant, position as the lone superpower. At the same time our governing institutions, which had stayed resilient, however imperfectly, through multiple crises, began their own unraveling. Congresswoman Harman was there—as witness, legislator, exhorter, enabler, dissident and, eventually, outside advisor and commentator. Insanity Defense is an insider’s account of decades of American national security—of its failures and omissions—and a roadmap to making significant progress on solving these perennially difficult issues.
Download or read book The Sheriff written by Colin S. Gray and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the end of the Cold War, and especially since September 11, few issues have been more hotly debated than the United States' role in the world. In this hard-nosed but sophisticated examination, Colin S. Gray argues that America is the indispensable guardian of world order. Gray's constructive critique of recent trends in national security is holistic, rooting defense issues and prospective answers both in U.S. national security policy, broadly defined, and in the emerging international security environment. Colin S. Gray is professor of international politics and strategic studies at the University of Reading, England, and senior fellow at the National Institute for Public Policy in Fairfax, Virginia. He is the author of seventeen books, including Modern Strategy and Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History.
Download or read book In Defense of Elitism written by Joel Stein and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Thurber finalist and former star Time columnist Joel Stein comes a "brilliant exploration" (Walter Isaacson) of America's political culture war and a hilarious call to arms for the elite. "I can think of no one more suited to defend elitism than Stein, a funny man with hands as delicate as a baby full of soft-boiled eggs." —Jimmy Kimmel, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! The night Donald Trump won the presidency, our author Joel Stein, Thurber Prize finalist and former staff writer for Time Magazine, instantly knew why. The main reason wasn't economic anxiety or racism. It was that he was anti-elitist. Hillary Clinton represented Wall Street, academics, policy papers, Davos, international treaties and the people who think they're better than you. People like Joel Stein. Trump represented something far more appealing, which was beating up people like Joel Stein. In a full-throated defense of academia, the mainstream press, medium-rare steak, and civility, Joel Stein fights against populism. He fears a new tribal elite is coming to replace him, one that will fend off expertise of all kinds and send the country hurtling backward to a time of wars, economic stagnation and the well-done steaks doused with ketchup that Trump eats. To find out how this shift happened and what can be done, Stein spends a week in Roberts County, Texas, which had the highest percentage of Trump voters in the country. He goes to the home of Trump-loving Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams; meets people who create fake news; and finds the new elitist organizations merging both right and left to fight the populists. All the while using the biggest words he knows.
Download or read book Tyranny Comes Home written by Christopher J. Coyne and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Americans believe that foreign military intervention is central to protecting our domestic freedoms. But Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall urge engaged citizens to think again. Overseas, our government takes actions in the name of defense that would not be permissible within national borders. Emboldened by the relative weakness of governance abroad, the U.S. government is able to experiment with a broader range of social controls. Under certain conditions, these policies, tactics, and technologies are then re-imported to America, changing the national landscape and increasing the extent to which we live in a police state. Coyne and Hall examine this pattern—which they dub "the boomerang effect"—considering a variety of rich cases that include the rise of state surveillance, the militarization of domestic law enforcement, the expanding use of drones, and torture in U.S. prisons. Synthesizing research and applying an economic lens, they develop a generalizable theory to predict and explain a startling trend. Tyranny Comes Home unveils a new aspect of the symbiotic relationship between foreign interventions and domestic politics. It gives us alarming insight into incidents like the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri and the Snowden case—which tell a common story about contemporary foreign policy and its impact on our civil liberties.
Download or read book Black Americans in Defense of Our Nation written by DIANE Publishing Company and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers every war fought by the U.S. Includes: both men and women, black recipients of the medals of honor, black military role models, graduates of the military service academies, statistical factors on blacks in the military, black civilian workforce in the DoD, and much more. Encyclopedic! Over 200 photos, including: General Colin L. Powell, Brig. Gen. Hazel W. Johnson, Gen. Roscoe Robinson, Jr., Brig. Gen. Marcelite J. Harris, Gen. Bernard P. Randolph, Astronaut Mae. C. Jemison, Lt. Col. Thomas L. Bain, Brig. Gen. Sherian G. Cadoria.
Download or read book In Defense of Justice written by Eileen Tamura and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2013-09-30 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a leading dissident in the World War II concentration camps for Japanese Americans, the controversial figure Joseph Yoshisuke Kurihara stands out as an icon of Japanese American resistance. In emotional, often inflammatory speeches, Kurihara attacked the U.S. government for its treatment of innocent citizens and immigrants. Because he articulated what other inmates dared not voice openly, he became a spokesperson for camp inmates. In this astute biography, Kurihara's life provides a window into the history of Japanese Americans during the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Hawai'i to Japanese parents who immigrated to work on the sugar plantations, Kurihara worked throughout his youth and early adult life to make a place for himself as an American: seeking quality education, embracing Christianity, and serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army during World War I. Though he bore the brunt of anti-Japanese hostility in the decades before World War II, he remained adamantly positive about the prospects of his own life in America. The U.S. entry into World War II and the forced removal and incarceration of ethnic Japanese destroyed that perspective and transformed Kurihara. As an inmate at Manzanar in California, Kurihara became one of the leaders of a dissident group within the camp and was implicated in "the Manzanar incident," a serious civil disturbance that erupted on December 6, 1942. In 1945, after three years and seven months of incarceration, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and boarded a ship for Japan, where he had never been before. He never returned to the United States. Kurihara's personal story illuminates the tragedy of the forced removal and incarceration of U.S. citizens among the West Coast Nikkei, even as it dramatizes the heroic resistance to that injustice. Shedding light on the turmoil within the camps as well as the sensitive and formerly unspoken issue of citizenship renunciation among Japanese Americans, In Defense of Justice explores one man's struggles with the complexities of loyalty and resistance.
Download or read book Provide for the Common Defense written by Dave Richard Palmer and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The military clauses were perhaps the most contentious in the drafting of the constitution. The old Continental Congress had had an abysmal record in taking care of the army. Promises made to soldiers during the war remained unfulfilled. At the same time, American distrust of European-style professional armies ran deep.This masterful account of the creation of the Constitution shows our founding fathers at work and brings them to life.
Download or read book Present Dangers written by Robert Kagan and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This original collection of essays offers hope to those who believe that the cause of world peace requires a new American foreign policy and repairing our depleted military. The twelve contributors to this book show why America must take another look at our possible adversaries and real strategic partners. Present Dangers offers practical strategies for policymakers eager to disarm adversaries like North Korea and Iraq and head off the terrorist threat. Intellectuals, historians and policy-makers such as James Ceasar, Ross Munro, Peter Rodman, Richard Perle, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Nicholas Eberstadt, Jeffrey Gedmin, Aaron Friedberg, Elliott Abrams, Frederick Kagan, Willliam Schneider, William Bennett, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Kagan all challenge America to make sure that foreign affairs, a sleeping issue for the last eight years, gets a wake-up call in election year 2000. Table of contents, notes, bibliographic essay.
Download or read book Stand Your Ground written by Caroline Light and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of America’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, from Reconstruction to Trayvon Martin After a young, white gunman killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, conservative legislators lamented that the tragedy could have been avoided if the schoolteachers had been armed and the classrooms equipped with guns. Similar claims were repeated in the aftermath of other recent shootings—after nine were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and in the aftermath of the massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Despite inevitable questions about gun control, there is a sharp increase in firearm sales in the wake of every mass shooting. Yet, this kind of DIY-security activism predates the contemporary gun rights movement—and even the stand-your-ground self-defense laws adopted in thirty-three states, or the thirteen million civilians currently licensed to carry concealed firearms. As scholar Caroline Light proves, support for “good guys with guns” relies on the entrenched belief that certain “bad guys with guns” threaten us all. Stand Your Ground explores the development of the American right to self-defense and reveals how the original “duty to retreat” from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. In her rigorous genealogy, Light traces white America’s attachment to racialized, lethal self-defense by unearthing its complex legal and social histories—from the original “castle laws” of the 1600s, which gave white men the right to protect their homes, to the brutal lynching of “criminal” Black bodies during the Jim Crow era and the radicalization of the NRA as it transitioned from a sporting organization to one of our country’s most powerful lobbying forces. In this convincing treatise on the United States’ unprecedented ascension as the world’s foremost stand-your-ground nation, Light exposes a history hidden in plain sight, showing how violent self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged and used as a weapon against the most vulnerable.
Download or read book Against All Enemies written by Richard A. Clarke and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-12-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Clarke has been one of America's foremost experts on counterterrorism measures for more than two decades. He has served under four presidents from both parties, beginning in Ronald Reagan's State Department becoming America's first Counter-terrorism Czar under Bill Clinton and remaining for the first two years of George W. Bush's administration. He has seen every piece of intelligence on Al-Qaeda from the beginning; he was in the Situation Room on September 11th and he knows exactly what has taken place under the United State's new Department of Homeland Security. Through gripping, thriller-like scenes, he tells the full story for the first time and explains what the Bush Administration are doing.
Download or read book In Defense of Elitism written by William A. Henry, III and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-03-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic for Time magazine comes the tremendously controversial, yet highly persuasive, argument that our devotion to the largely unexamined myth of egalitarianism lies at the heart of the ongoing "dumbing of America." Americans have always stubbornly clung to the myth of egalitarianism, of the supremacy of the individual average man. But here, at long last, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic William A. Henry III takes on, and debunks, some basic, fundamentally ingrained ideas: that everyone is pretty much alike (and should be); that self-fulfillment is more imortant thant objective achievement; that everyone has something significant to contribute; that all cultures offer something equally worthwhile; that a truly just society would automatically produce equal success results across lines of race, class, and gender; and that the common man is almost always right. Henry makes clear, in a book full of vivid examples and unflinching opinions, that while these notions are seductively democratic they are also hopelessly wrong.
Download or read book Vindicating the Founders written by Thomas G. West and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2000-11-28 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This controversial, convincing, and highly original book is important reading for everyone concerned about the origins, present, and future of the American experiment in self-government.
Download or read book Armageddon Insurance written by Edward M. Geist and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-10-30 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dangerous, decades-long arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War begged a fundamental question: how did these superpowers actually plan to survive a nuclear strike? In Armageddon Insurance, the first historical account of Soviet civil defense and a pioneering reappraisal of its American counterpart, Edward M. Geist compares how the two superpowers tried, and mostly failed, to reinforce their societies to withstand the ultimate catastrophe. Drawing on previously unexamined documents from archives in America, Russia, and Ukraine, Geist places these civil defense programs in their political and cultural contexts, demonstrating how each country's efforts reflected its cultural preoccupations and blind spots and revealing how American and Soviet civil defense related to profound issues of nuclear strategy and national values. This work challenges prevailing historical assumptions and unearths the ways Moscow and Washington developed nuclear weapons policies based not on rational strategic or technical considerations but in power struggles between different institutions pursuing their own narrow self-interests.
