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Title details for Suicide of the West by Jonah Goldberg - Available

Suicide of the West

How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy

by Jonah Goldberg
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent argument that America and other democracies are in peril because they have lost the will to defend the values and institutions that sustain freedom and prosperity.
 
“Epic and debate-shifting.”—David Brooks, New York Times
 
Only once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history. If democracy, individualism, and the free market were humankind’s destiny, they should have appeared and taken hold a bit earlier in the evolutionary record. The emergence of freedom and prosperity was nothing short of a miracle.
 
As Americans we are doubly blessed, because the radical ideas that made the miracle possible were written not just into the Constitution but in our hearts, laying the groundwork for our uniquely prosperous society. Those ideas are:
 
• Our rights come from God, not from the government. 

• The government belongs to us; we do not belong to it. 

• The individual is sovereign. We are all captains of our own souls, not bound by the circumstances of our birth. 

• The fruits of our labors belong to us.

 
In the last few decades, these political virtues have been turned into vices. As we are increasingly taught to view our traditions as a system of oppression, exploitation, and privilege, the principles of liberty and the rule of law are under attack from left and right. For the West to survive, we must renew our sense of gratitude for what our civilization has given us and rediscover the ideals and habits of the heart that led us out of the bloody muck of the past—or back to the muck we will go.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 24, 2018

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

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      • ISBN: 9781101904947
      • File size: 8296 KB

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      • ISBN: 9781101904947
      • File size: 5155 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      A conservative political commentator sees democracy and capitalism in peril.Goldberg (The Tyranny of Cliché How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, 2012, etc.), a National Review senior editor and member of the Fox News All-Stars, continues the passionate, polemical celebration of conservative values--and disdain for the liberal left--that informed his previous two books. The health and future of our nation, he argues, are being undermined by tribalism (read: identity politics) and a wrongheaded conviction that the state can be "the only source of meaning in our lives." As a conservative, he disparages both the tea party, which he once heartily supported, and Donald Trump. The tea party "married populism to the principles of the Founding, demanding the government live within its means and abide by the Constitution," but it fell into tribalism after being unfairly branded by the media as "racist yokels and boobs." Trump, "boorish and crude," lacks character, much less consistent beliefs in any ideology. True conservatism, Goldberg asserts, "is a bundle of ideological commitments: limited government, natural rights, the importance of traditional values, patriotism, gratitude" and "the beliefs that ideas matter and that character matters." Gratitude ranks high in that list, and the author insists that Americans should be thankful for what he--drawing on scholars such as Ernest Gellner--calls the "Miracle," modern capitalism. Emerging in 18th-century England, the Miracle "is an attitude, expressed in new ideas and the rhetoric that accompanies them." Among those new ideas was an "ideology of merit, industriousness, innovation, contracts, and rights." Before the Miracle, "notions of betterment, innovation, and improvement were seen, literally, as heresy." But the Miracle rewards "earned success," which, the author asserts, "is the secret to meaningful happiness." As for economic inequality, the author claims that the free-market system is "the only anti-poverty system ever invented." A supporter of immigration, Goldberg also supports assimilation; civil society works best "in ethnically or culturally homogeneous communities."A fairly straightforward conservative argument that partisan politics and lack of reverence for capitalism portend the demise of democracy.

      COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)

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