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Tragedy of Freedom: An Indictment of Liberal Democracy and a Call for Patriotic Resistance

West, Jonathan, Tragedy of Freedom: An Indictment of Liberal Democracy and a Call for Patriotic Resistance, (West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2006.) $14.95.

Review by Ryan Setliff

An Indictment of Liberal Democracy

Tragedy of Freedom - An Indictment of Liberal Democracy and a Call for Patriotic Resistance

Author Jonathan West grew up in liberal family, attended college in Washington, DC, during the tumultuous Vietnam era. There he witnessed the subversion of America by New Left radicals who made heroes of our nation’s communist enemies. During this time, West underwent an epiphany and became convinced that the democratic system itself, which coddles subversives, is the culprit. West laments, "Liberals recreated the American soul, first in the media and then in the teachings and textbooks of America’s schools. By the time the Viet Nam war was underway, the real battle was already over." The liberal intelligentsia succeeded in sapping "America’s children" "of their national character, their cohesion and vision. In place of these stood attributes of ethnic pluralism, leftist self-hate, and alienation" (p. 90.)

It should be no surprise, that the Tragedy of Freedom is very much an indictment of contemporary liberalism in America—and a call for patriotic resistance to this insidious creed:

Liberalism is a media-induced judgment disorder, not an ideological doctrine. Liberals have been conditioned to rely on their feelings and to judge people and events, not on some moral or logical basis, but on how they gratify their own emotions. Liberals use a non-objectivist kind of decision making with no relation to future impact. Their politics serves only as an emotional tonic for unhappy reality, the sole purpose of which is to feel good. With such morally and mentally perverse people in charge of our opinion-forming institutions is it any wonder our society also seems to lurch toward madness and self destruction? (p. 117)
"Liberals are not concerned with outcomes or even with how policies work. They are only concerned with how policies FEEL," notes West. "Thus, they often embrace false and unworkable principles (like equality) simply because they are emotionally irresistible" (p. 117).

Book Notes - Unlawful Government

Unlawful Government: Preserving America in a Post-constitutional Age

Unlawful Government: Preserving America in a Post-constitutional Age by Wilton H. Strickland (West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2006), Amazon.com $11.95.

Publisher's Description

Unlawful Government presents historical and legal evidence to argue that the federal government has utterly cast off its constitutional limitations, thereby transforming America from a voluntary, civil society into a compulsory, political one. Such massive concentration of political power in one entity’s hands contradicts both the law and the modern world, whose hallmarks are decentralization, competition, and individual freedom. The book ultimately recommends that States and local communities re-assert their independence, either immediately or incrementally, in order to unravel the illicit federal power and to allow diverse communities to pursue their priorities free from unlawful federal intrusion.

Entrepreneurial Heroes: Hein Hettinga vs. Big Business

The Washington Post reports in their article Dairy Industry Crushed Innovator Who Bested Price-Control System that "A maverick dairyman named Hein Hettinga started bottling his own milk and selling it for as much as 20 cents a gallon less than the competition, exercising his right to work outside the rigid system that has controlled U.S. milk production for almost 70 years." Eventually, this entrepreneurial hero was tackled by a corrupt cadre of Big Dairy lobbyists and Congressmen determined to keep the price-support system in place to the detriment of consumers. Hein Hettinga is a James J. Hill for the twenty-first century. Three cheers for American entrepreneurs that earn the fruits of their labor, and don't seek legal plunder, patronage and privilege from the state. The United States needs more men like Hein Hettinga.

Not Yours To Give

Davy Crockett

Not Yours To Give by Col. David Crockett, US Representative from Tennessee

One day in the House of Representatives a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:

"Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it.

Exposing an Imposter! Bush is a Sham Conservative!

Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy by Bruce Bartlett. Hardcover: 320 pages. (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2006) Amazon Price: $16.38.

An Imposter, a Pretend Conservative!!


Bush came into office riding on a tide of popular backlash directed at the scandal-plagued Clinton administration. Bush even went so far as to present himself as the consummate Reaganite. Nonetheless, G.W. Bush’s last few years of leadership from foreign policy to domestic issues have been uninspiring and characterized by a profound increase of government spending, record budget deficits, an exploding national debt, a reckless interventionist foreign policy, and a post-9/11 barb-wiretapped police state that completely eviscerates the Bill of Rights.

The ill-conceived 2005 Bush nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court marked the dramatic opening of a fissure within Republican ranks over the sitting President. Miers had no judicial bench experience but was rather a lottery commissioner with questionable business dealings, and she was a financial contributor to the Democratic Party. In fact, many professed Republican stalwarts began to question Bush’s leadership once and for all after this lamentable move.

The Bush track record speaks for itself. On foreign policy, the avoidable Iraq War was justified on false pretenses of an elusive national security threat that was never substantiated. It was all to overthrow a dictator that the United States hypocritically propped up and supported for two decades. By 2004, at the behest of his spin-doctors, Bush was campaigning for reelection and boasting that his administration was trying to spread global democracy to the four corners of the earth. The elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) went down the Orwellian memory well. He simply found a new neo-Jacobin rationale for his foreign meddling and the Iraq War which is all the more spurious. His economic, fiscal and budgetary track record is no less problematic. As Bartlett documents, Bush never vetoes spending bills coming out of Congress, and he has presided over the largest budget deficits in history. His economic and fiscal policies are misguided and reckless. The U.S. government is one step away from insolvency, and may soon turn to monetary inflation in order to pay its bills.