Download or read book Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette written by Bill Kauffman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2004-03 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Kauffman, a self-proclaimed "placeist" who believes that things urban are homogenizing our national scene, returned to his roots after a bumpy ride on the D.C. fast track. Rarely has he ventured forth since. Here he illuminates the place he loves, traveling from Batavia's scenic vistas to the very seams of its grimy semi-industrial pockets, from its architecturally insignificant new mall to the pastoral grounds of its internationally known School for the Blind. Not one to shy from controversy, Kauffman also investigates his town's efforts to devastate its landmarks through urban renewal, the passions simmering inside its clogged political machinery, and the sagging fortunes of its baseball heroes, the legendary Muckdogs.

Download or read book Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette written by Bill Kauffman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-03-04 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this memorable book written with heart, Kauffman offers a hilarious, sometimes touching tribute to an endangered American town under constant siege from the modern world.

Download or read book The Congressional Journal of Barber B Conable Jr 1968 1984 written by Bill Kauffman and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2021-06-30 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barber B. Conable, Jr.—perhaps the most respected member of Congress of his era—kept a frank, insightful, revealing journal available now for the first time thanks to the efforts of editor Bill Kauffman in The Congressional Journal of Barber B. Conable, Jr., 1968–1984. The journal is an honest, searching, sometimes humorous, occasionally cutting, and always fascinating look inside Congress. Conable, a Republican member of the House from upstate New York, wrote perceptively about Presidents Nixon, Ford, H. W. Bush, and the leading congressional figures of the day. For seventeen years he wrote about the big events as well as daily political life in an era that included Vietnam, Watergate, political realignment, and major changes in entitlements and taxes, where he played a key role. Displaying his gift for clear expression and astute insight, Conable narrates the machinations of major tax measures, trade bills, and such special interests of his as public financing of congressional campaigns. While he is never shy about expressing personal judgments, he revels in the give and take of legislative politics. Conable had an acute sense of the human dynamics of legislating: In addition to the tax bills he shaped and struggled with as the leading Republican on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, his work with the 1982–1983 Social Security Commission, led by Alan Greenspan, is a classic exercise. Conable thought a deal was critical for the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund but politically almost impossible given the differing priorities of the chief protagonists, President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill. In the journal Conable pronounces the effort doomed on January 13, 1983. Two days later he marvels at the political and personal dexterity and skill that ended up producing a deal. The journal illuminates Conable’s intellect, his commitment to his constituents, and his appreciation of principled pragmatism; his writings are in real time, not rendered retrospectively to make himself look better, a rarity among political legacies.

Download or read book Main Street Conservatism written by Emile Doak and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The political right is at an inflection point. The policies that have guided the conservative movement for decades are no longer relevant to the problems we face. Donald Trump's election exposed the vast chasm between the priorities of the conservative professional class, and those of the voters it purportedly serves. But this chasm existed long before it was exposed in 2016, and as we move further into the post-Trump era, these issues aren't going away. The right must contend with the forces that drove Trump to power. The American Conservative has been contending with those very forces for two decades. Launched in 2002 to reignite conversations conservatives had neglected for too long, the magazine has emerged as the best explainer of our present discontents—and the distinct “Main Street” conservatism that it forms as the best path forward. Main Street Conservatism: The Future of the Right takes seminal essays from TAC's robust back catalog and presents them in four broad topic areas that are driving our ongoing political realignment: foreign policy, political economy, American culture, and faith & family. TAC's prescience on these issues creates an anthology that is very much relevant to the issues we now face. The magazine was founded in opposition to the Iraq war, and has been a consistent proponent of a foreign policy fit for a republic, not an empire, ever since. Long before the 2008 financial crisis, the magazine warned of the pitfalls of globalization and an over-financialized economy. On immigration, TAC's prescience on these issues creates an anthology that is very much relevant to the issues we now inaugural editorial took seriously the challenge of assimilation, and placed the issue in the context of defending and defining a uniquely American culture. And all the while, the magazine has been mindful to robustly defend the bedrock of our society: faith and family. With essays from leading conservatives like Patrick J. Buchanan, Sir Roger Scruton, Walter McDougall, Robert W. Merry, Rod Dreher, and many more, Main Street Conservatism: The Future of the Right is far more than a disjointed anthology. The book, like the magazine from which it is taken, is indispensable for understanding American conservatism in our current moment.

Download or read book I Citizen written by Tony Woodlief and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a story of hope, but also of peril. It began when our nation’s polarized political class started conscripting everyday citizens into its culture war. From their commanding heights in political parties, media, academia, and government, these partisans have attacked one another for years, but increasingly they’ve convinced everyday Americans to join the fray. Why should we feel such animosity toward our fellow citizens, our neighbors, even our own kin? Because we’ve fallen for the false narrative, eagerly promoted by pundits on the Left and the Right, that citizens who happen to vote Democrat or Republican are enthusiastic supporters of Team Blue or Team Red. Aside from a minority of party activists and partisans, however, most voters are simply trying to choose the lesser of two evils. The real threat to our union isn’t Red vs. Blue America, it’s the quiet collusion within our nation’s political class to take away that most American of freedoms: our right to self-governance. Even as partisans work overtime to divide Americans against one another, they’ve erected a system under which we ordinary citizens don’t have a voice in the decisions that affect our lives. From foreign wars to how local libraries are run, authority no longer resides with We the People, but amongst unaccountable officials. The political class has stolen our birthright and set us at one another’s throats. This is the story of how that happened and what we can do about it. America stands at a precipice, but there’s still time to reclaim authority over our lives and communities.

Download or read book Right Wing Critics of American Conservatism written by George Hawley and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-07-31 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American conservative movement as we know it faces an existential crisis as the nation's demographics shift away from its core constituents—older white middle-class Christians. It is the American conservatism that we don't know that concerns George Hawley in this book. During its ascendancy, leaders within the conservative establishment have energetically policed the movement’s boundaries, effectively keeping alternative versions of conservatism out of view. Returning those neglected voices to the story, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism offers a more complete, complex, and nuanced account of the American right in all its dissonance in history and in our day. The right-wing intellectual movements considered here differ both from mainstream conservatism and from each other when it comes to fundamental premises, such as the value of equality, the proper role of the state, the importance of free markets, the place of religion in politics, and attitudes toward race. In clear and dispassionate terms, Hawley examines localists who exhibit equal skepticism toward big business and big government, paleoconservatives who look to the distant past for guidance and wish to turn back the clock, radical libertarians who are not content to be junior partners in the conservative movement, and various strains of white supremacy and the radical right in America. In the Internet age, where access is no longer determined by the select few, the independent right has far greater opportunities to make its many voices heard. This timely work puts those voices into context and historical perspective, clarifying our understanding of the American right—past, present, and future.

Download or read book Poetry Night at the Ballpark and Other Scenes from an Alternative America written by Bill Kauffman and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Kauffman has carved out an idiosyncratic identity quite unlike any other American writer. Praised by the likes of Gore Vidal, Benjamin Schwarz, and George McGovern, he has, with a distinctive and slashingly witty, learnedly allusive style, illumed forgotten corners of American history, articulated a defiant and passionate localism, and written with love and dark humor of his repatriation. Poetry Night at the Ballpark gathers the best of Bill Kauffman's essays and journalism in defense and explication of his alternative America--or Americas. Its discrete pieces are bound by a thematic unity and propulsive energy and are full of unexpected (yet startlingly apposite) connections and revelatory linkages. Whether he's writing about conservative Beats, backyard astronomers, pacifist West Pointers, or Middle America in the movies, Bill Kauffman will challenge, maybe even change, the way you look at American politics and the American provinces.

Download or read book Wendell Berry written by Jason Peters and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-06-11 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A portrait of one of America's most profound and honest thinkers, this book combines biographical sketches, personal accounts, literary criticism, and social commentary to illuminate Berry as he is: a complex man of place and community with a depth of domestic, intellectual, filial, and fraternal attributes.

Download or read book Bye Bye Miss American Empire written by Bill Kauffman and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2010-07-10 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's been almost a century and a half since a critical mass of Americans believed that secession was an American birthright. But breakaway movements large and small are rising up across the nation. From Vermont to Alaska, activists driven by all manner of motives want to form new states-and even new nations. So, just what's happening out there? The American Empire is dying, says Bill Kauffman in this incisive, eye-opening investigation into modern-day secession-the next radical idea poised to enter mainstream discourse. And those rising up to topple that empire are a surprising mix of conservatives, liberals, regionalists, and independents who-from movement to movement-may share few political beliefs but who have one thing in common: a sense that our nation has grown too large, and too powerfully centralized, to stay true to its founding principles. Bye Bye, Miss American Empire traces the historical roots of the secessionist spirit, and introduces us to the often radical, sometimes quixotic, and highly charged movements that want to decentralize and re-localize power. During the George W. Bush administration, frustrated liberals talked secession back to within hailing distance of the margins of national debate, a place it had not occupied since 1861. Now, secessionist voices on the left and right and everywhere in between are amplifying. Writes Kauffman, "The noise is the sweet hum of revolution, of subjects learning how to be citizens, of people shaking off . . . their Wall Street and Pentagon overlords and taking charge of their lives once more." Engaging, illuminating, even sometimes troubling, Bye Bye, Miss American Empire is a must-read for those taking the pulse of the nation.

Download or read book Ain t My America written by Bill Kauffman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Passionate and witty, Ain't my America is an eye-opening exploration of the rich, honorable, and absurdly under-known history of right-wing peace movements. Pointing toward a "Little American" alternative to the bipartisan imperialism that reigns in today's Washington, it is also a clarion manifesto for the antiwar conservatives of today. -- from dust jacket.

Download or read book Forgotten Founder Drunken Prophet written by Bill Kauffman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anti-Federalist Luther Martin of Maryland is known to us—if he is known at all—as the wild man of the Constitutional Convention: a verbose, frequently drunken radical who annoyed the hell out of James Madison, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, and the other giants responsible for the creation of the Constitution in Philadelphia that summer of 1787. In Bill Kauffman's rollicking account of his turbulent life and times, Martin is still something of a fitfully charming reprobate, but he is also a prophetic voice, warning his heedless contemporaries and his amnesiac posterity that the Constitution, whatever its devisers' intentions, would come to be used as a blueprint for centralized government and a militaristic foreign policy. In Martin's view, the Constitution was the tool of a counterrevolution aimed at reducing the states to ciphers and at fortifying a national government whose powers to tax and coerce would be frightening. Martin delivered the most forceful and sustained attack on the Constitution ever levied—a critique that modern readers might find jarringly relevant. And Martin's post-convention career, though clouded by drink and scandal, found him as defense counsel in two of the great trials of the age: the Senate trial of the impeached Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase and the treason trial of his friend Aaron Burr. Kauffman's Luther Martin is a brilliant and passionate polemicist, a stubborn and admirable defender of a decentralized republic who fights for the principles of 1776 all the way to the last ditch and last drop. In remembering this forgotten founder, we remember also the principles that once animated many of the earliest—and many later—American patriots.

Download or read book The Culinary Plagiarist written by Jason Peters and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than a collection of vignettes and stories from garden, grill, and kitchen, The Culinary Plagiarist is a sustained adventure in gustatory delight, an intensely private but candid account of desire and all its objects. Opinionated on the full range of human experience, from fasting to inebriety, from sports to politics, from religion to raunch, it is at once serious, humorous, ironic, reflective, grateful, allusive, and appetitive. Along the way it offers a defense of small-scale, local life, of family, of place, and of "the bread we do not live alone by." And also the drinks. Don't forget the drinks. This is a book for people who enjoy being alive, whether in the kitchen, the pasture, the library, the barn, the trout stream, the henhouse (or the doghouse), or the bedroom.

Download or read book Localism in the Mass Age written by Mark T. Mitchell and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-04-02 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States the conventional left/right distinction has become increasingly irrelevant, if not harmful. The reigning political, cultural, and economic visions of both the Democrats and the Republicans have reached obvious dead ends. Liberalism, with its hostility to any limits, is collapsing. So-called Conservatism has abandoned all pretense of conserving anything at all. Both dominant parties seem fundamentally incapable of offering coherent solutions for the problems that beset us. In light of this intellectual, cultural, and political stalemate, there is a need for a new vision. Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto assembles thirty-one essays by a variety of scholars and practitioners--associated with Front Porch Republic--seeking to articulate a new vision for a better future. The writers are convinced that human apprehension of the true, the good, and the beautiful is best realized within a dense web of meaningful family, neighborhood, and community relationships. These writers seek to advance human flourishing through the promotion of political decentralism, economic localism, and cultural regionalism. In short, Front Porch Republic is dedicated to renewing American culture by fostering the ideals necessary for strong communities.

Download or read book The Seven Ranges written by Will Hoyt and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Surveyor-General Thomas Hutchins drove a stake into the ground to mark a “point of beginning” for the 1785 establishment of Seven Ranges of townships on the west bank of the Ohio River, he had to have sensed that he was initiating something larger than a survey. After all, he was working for the newly formed United States, and the purpose of his work was to impose a grid of ideal squares on hill country to make it ready for sale—something that had never been done before. But Hutchins couldn’t by any stretch of the imagination have known that the public survey system he was testing would soon extend all the way to the Pacific or that the land on which he worked would soon become the staging ground for other, similarly revolutionary innovations like strip mining, Pentecostalism, the gaming industry, and tools for emancipating multi-national corporations. In this book, Will Hoyt details the arrival and eventual impact of these eastern Ohio products, and by framing the story of their development within the story of his own decision to move from California to eastern Ohio, he secures a glimpse of our country’s DNA. Readers will close this book with a firm grasp of three things: the grandeur of the American project, the extent to which that project is now at risk, and what we all must do to ensure its survival.

Download or read book Fractured Generations written by Allan C. Carlson and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years ago, the phrase "family policy" was rarely heard in America. Individual states maintained laws governing marriage, divorce, education, inheritance, and child protection, which regulated the formation, childrearing practices, and dissolution of families. However, these scattered policy issues were not seen as closely related. Until the 1960s, the nuclear family was an institution that was part of the natural life-course expected of most adults. Family meant marriage, children, the establishment of a home, care of the elderly, but perhaps most of all, bonding of the generations. As early as the 1840s, certain elements of states' policies hinted at a weakening family structure, but not until the 1960s was the family openly attacked. Feminists objected to a male-oriented home economy, demographers encouraged negative population growth, the sexual revolution was on the rise, and religiously grounded morality in public life was challenged in the federal courts. Married couples with children had to shoulder a larger tax burden, further discouraging people from building and maintaining families. Perhaps because family was so central to the founders' lives they found no need to mention it in the Constitution. But today, generational bonds have fractured, while family policy is a paramount public concern. As Allan Carlson makes clear no nation can progress, or even survive, without a durable family system. Contemporary family policy represents an attempt to counter the negative forces of the last four decades so as to restore the natural family to its necessary place in American life. "Fractured Generations"' chapters follow the life-course of the human family--marriage; the birth of children; infant and toddler care; schooling; building a home; crafting a durable family economy; and elder care. This is a passionate and well-reasoned appeal for a return to the institution that is the last best hope for America's future: the family. "No social institution is more vital to the perpetuation of civilized life than the family. Yet few institutions have suffered more from the relentless incursions of modernity than the family. And no field of contemporary scholarship has been more politicized and debased than the study of the family. These three facts, taken together, explain why Allan Carlson's humane voice, and his contribution to our national life, is so rare and so valuable. He is our most persuasive advocate for the natural family, one of the few scholars willing to approach the subject with an unapologetically normative view. For him, the family is rightly regarded as the nexus of the profoundest of human experiences: marriage, sexuality, procreation, childrearing, home life, home economics, and the care of the elderly. "Fractured Generations" is not only a succinct defense of that view, but a meaty compilation of particular policy initiatives that can begin to restore the strength and dignity of the natural family and give it the tools to defend itself. It should be read by everyone who cares about the future of the family."-Wilfred M. McClay, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga "A welcome and provocative book of thoughtfully revisionist history and wise prescriptions by an honest, learned man of the Midwest, "Fractured Generations" points the way to a family policy rooted in healthy tradition, American liberty, and human-scale community."Bill Kauffman, author of Dispatches from the "Muckdog Gazette" ""Fractured Generations" is an insightful and provocative account of the history and future of family policy in the United States. Written by one of the wisest observers of the family in America, this book offers timely analyses of topics such as social security, income tax policy, and family planning. This book is required reading for academics, journalists, and policymakers interested in the family."-W. Bradford Wilcox, Department of Sociology, University of Virginia and author of "Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands" "Allan Carlson is the best writer and thinker on family and society. His essays are always a 'must read' for anyone concerned about the family, be they liberal (to know the strength of their opposition) or conservative (to be led deeper and deeper in an always enjoyable way). With the years his already vast knowledge increases and his insights become more and more unassailable. In "Fractured Generations" he continues and refines his work - his tradition, and concludes with a list of public policy proposals that every Congressman and Senator should have in pocket-card form next to his (or her) heart." -Patrick F Fagan, The Heritage Foundation "Allan Carlson is an economist deeply immersed in the complexities of social history and public policy. Agree or disagree, his work always provokes and illumines. His recommendations for family-friendly social policy are stated clearly and defended vigorously. Anyone with an interest in marriage, families, and public policy will find Carlson's latest worthy of careful consideration. Let the debate begin!" -Jean Bethke Elshtain, author of "Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy." Allan Carlson is president of the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society in Rockford, Illinois, and distinguished fellow in family policy studies at Family Research Council. He is the author of "The Swedish Experiment in Family Politics," "Family Questions," and "The Family in America," all available from Transaction.

Download or read book Human Scale Revisited written by Kirkpatrick Sale and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Big government, big business, big everything: Kirkpatrick Sale took giantism to task in his 1980 classic, Human Scale, and today takes a new look at how the crises that imperil modern America are the inevitable result of bigness grown out of control--and what can be done about it. The result is a keenly updated, carefully argued case for bringing human endeavors back to scales we can comprehend and manage--whether in our built environments, our politics, our business endeavors, our energy plans, or our mobility. Sale walks readers back through history to a time when buildings were scaled to the human figure (as was the Parthenon), democracies were scaled to the societies they served, and enterprise was scaled to communities. Against that backdrop, he dissects the bigger-is-better paradigm that has defined modern times and brought civilization to a crisis point. Says Sale, retreating from our calamity will take rebalancing our relationship to the environment; adopting more human-scale technologies; right-sizing our buildings, communities, and cities; and bringing our critical services--from energy, food, and garbage collection to transportation, health, and education--back to human scale as well. Like Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher, Human Scale has long been a classic of modern decentralist thought and communitarian values--a key tool in the kit of those trying to localize, create meaningful governance in bioregions, or rethink our reverence of and dependence on growth, financially and otherwise. Rewritten to interpret the past few decades, Human Scale offers compelling new insights on how to turn away from the giantism that has caused escalating ecological distress and inequality, dysfunctional governments, and unending warfare and shines a light on many possible pathways that could allow us to scale down, survive, and thrive.

Download or read book The Philanthropic Revolution written by Jeremy Beer and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-05-22 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we talk about voluntary giving today, we usually prefer the word philanthropy to charity. Why has this terminological shift taken place? What is its philosophical significance? How did philanthropy come to acquire so much prestige—and charity come to seem so old-fashioned? Was this change contested? Does it matter? In The Philanthropic Revolution, Jeremy Beer argues that the historical displacement of charity by philanthropy represents a radical transformation of voluntary giving into a practice primarily intended to bring about social change. The consequences of this shift have included secularization, centralization, the bureaucratization of personal relations, and the devaluing of locality and place. Beer shows how the rise of "scientific charity" and the "new philanthropy" was neither wholly unchallenged nor entirely positive. He exposes the way modern philanthropy's roots are entangled with fear and loathing of the poor, anti-Catholic prejudice, militarism, messianic dreams, and the ideology of progress. And he reveals how a rejection of traditional charity has sometimes led philanthropy's proponents to champion objectionable social experiments, from the involuntary separation of thousands of children from their parents to the forced sterilizations of the eugenics movement. Beer's alternative history discloses that charity is uniquely associated with personalist goods that philanthropy largely excludes. Insofar as we value those goods, he concludes, we must look to inject the logic of charity into voluntary giving through the practice of a modified form of giving he calls "philanthrolocalism."