Book picks similar to
The Transparent Cabal by Stephen J. Sniegoski
conspiracy
jewish
politics
foreign-policy
Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West
R.R. Reno - 2019
R. Reno argues that we are witnessing the return of the “strong gods”—the powerful loyalties that bind men to their homeland and to one another. Reacting to the calamitous first half of the twentieth century, our political, cultural, and financial elites promoted open borders, open markets, and open minds. But this never-ending project of openness has hardened into a set of anti-dogmatic dogmas which destroy the social solidarity rooted in family, faith, and nation. While they worry about the return of fascism, our societies are dissolving. But man will not tolerate social dissolution indefinitely. He longs to be part of a “we”—the fruit of shared loves—which gives his life meaning. The strong gods will return, Reno warns, in one form or another. Our task is to attend to those that, appealing to our reason as well as our hearts, inspire the best of our traditions. Otherwise, we shall invite the darker gods whose return our open society was intended to forestall.
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Timothy Snyder - 2017
Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power.Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”Twenty Lessons is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.
The Light that Failed: A Reckoning
Ivan Krastev - 2019
And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West.In this work of political psychology, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of history turned out to be only the beginning of an Age of Imitation. Reckoning with the history of the last thirty years, they show that the most powerful force behind the wave of populist xenophobia that began in Eastern Europe stems from resentment at the post-1989 imperative to become Westernized.Through this prism, the Trump revolution represents an ironic fulfillment of the promise that the nations exiting from communist rule would come to resemble the United States. In a strange twist, Trump has elevated Putin's Russia and Orbán's Hungary into models for the United States.
Nixon's Secrets: How the Former President Blackmailed the Government
Roger Stone - 2014
Using Gen Al Haig as his agent, Nixon let Vice President Ford know that he would expose the CIA's involvement in the JFK assassination and Ford's role in altering autopsy records for the Warren Commission if he went to trial in the Watergate scandal. “Tell them if Dick Nixon's going down I'm taking everyone down with me, that prick [CIA Director Richard] Helms, Lyndon, and Jerry Ford are going down with me” was the way Haig phrased it.Thus Nixon would use this information to avoid prosecution and jail to blackmail Gerald Ford for a full, free and unconditional pardon. Nixon's secret would not only destroy his presidency—it would save him from prison.Stone examines the bungled Watergate break-in to determine what exactly Nixon's agents were looking for and how the CIA infiltrated the burglar team and sabotaged the break-in to gain leverage over Nixon who was demanding the CIA turn over the records of the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy Assassination. He also explains the 18 1/2 minute gap in the White House Tapes, although the point is moot as the government has still redacted all references to the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy Assassination, and the CIA from the publicly released Nixon tapes and the Obama Administration's fighting in Federal Court to keep the CIA's Bay of Pigs records sealed.
Natural Right and History
Leo Strauss - 1953
On the centenary of Strauss's birth, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Walgreen Lectures which spawned the work, Natural Right and History remains as controversial and essential as ever."Strauss . . . makes a significant contribution towards an understanding of the intellectual crisis in which we find ourselves . . . [and] brings to his task an admirable scholarship and a brilliant, incisive mind."—John H. Hallowell, American Political Science ReviewLeo Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Chicago.
The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945
George H. Nash - 1979
Nash’s celebrated history of the postwar conservative intellectual movement has become the unquestioned standard in the field. This new edition, published in commemoration of the volume’s thirtieth anniversary, includes a new preface by Nash and will continue to instruct anyone interested in how today’s conservative movement was born.
The Betrayal Of The American Right
Murray N. Rothbard - 2007
It shows that the corruption of American "conservatism" began long before George W. Bush ballooned the budget and asserted dictatorial rights over the country and the world. The American Right long ago slid into the abyss. Betrayal of the American Right is the full story, and the author is none other than Murray N. Rothbard, who witnessed it all first hand. He tells his own story and reveals that machinations behind the subversion of an anti-state movement into one that cheers statism of the worst sort. The book was written in the mid-1970s and is only now published for the first time. Each time a prospective publisher promised to go ahead, the deal fell through. Even so, it has been privately circulated for the 30 years since it was written - and everyone lucky enough to own a copy of the manuscript knew he had a treasure. People who have read it swear that it is the best account ever how the old right was subverted to become a propaganda branch of the state, not just recently but fifty years ago. So Rothbard's account is not only a critical historical document; it also has explosive explanatory power. According to Rothbard, the corruption of the right began in the ten years after the end of the Second World War. Before then, a strong movement of journalists, writers, and even politicians had formed during the New Deal and after. There was a burgeoning literature to explain why New Deal-style central planning was bad for American liberty. They also saw that central planning and war were linked as two socialistic programs. The experience of war was telling. Prices were controlled by central edict. Businesses were not free to buy and sell. Government spending went through the roof. The Fed's money machine ran constantly. The war was a continuation of the New Deal by others means. They learned that a president dictatorial enough to manipulate the country into war would think nothing of ending liberty at home. There were wonderful intellectuals in this movement: Frank Chodorov, John T. Flynn, Garet Garrett, Albert Jay Nock, Rose Wilder Lane, and dozens of others. This movement didn't want to conserve anything but liberty. They wanted to overthrow the alien regime that had taken hold of the country and restore respect for the Constitution. They believed in the free market as a creative mechanism to improve society. They favored a restoration of the gold standard, decentralized government, and peace and friendship with all nations (as George Washington wanted). Murray Rothbard recounts all this, and then enters into the picture. He was a central player in the unfolding events. As a young man, he first encountered the new generation of people on the right who departed dramatically from the old. They were the first "neoconservatives." They favored war as a means. They were soft on executive dictatorship. They considered economics rather trivial compared with the struggle against international foes. They found new uses for the state in the domestic realm as well. They like the CIA, the FBI, and no amount of military spending was enough for them. A leader of the movement William F. Buckley even called for a "totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores" so long as Russia, which had been an alley in the war, had a communist system. This transformation was formative for Rothbard. He began an intellectual journey that would lead to a break from the movement that was now calling itself conservative. He studied with Ludwig von Mises during and after his graduate school years. He wrote a seminal book on economics. He wrote at a fevered pace for the popular press. By 1965, he found that he was pretty much alone in carrying on the Old Right vision. Most everyone else had died or had entered
Easternization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond
Gideon Rachman - 2017
Easternization is the defining trend of our age the growing wealth of Asian nations is transforming the international balance of power. This shift to the East is shaping the lives of people all over the world, the fate of nations, and the great questions of war and peace. A troubled but rising China is now challenging America s supremacy, and the ambitions of other Asian powers including Japan, North Korea, India, and Pakistan have the potential to shake the whole world. Meanwhile the West is struggling with economic malaise and political populism, the Arab world is in turmoil, and Russia longs to reclaim its status as a great power. As it becomes clear that the West s historic power and influence is receding, Gideon Rachman offers a road map to the turbulent process that will define the international politics of the twenty-first century."
Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
Michael Scheuer - 2004
leaders try to convince the world of their success in fighting al Qaeda, one member of the U.S. intelligence community would like to inform the public that we are, in fact, losing the war on terror. Further, until U.S. leaders recognize the errant path they have irresponsibly chosen, he says, our enemies will only grow stronger. According to the author Michael Scheuer, the greatest danger for Americans confronting the Islamist threat is to believe—at the urging of U.S. leaders—that Muslims attack us for what we are and what we think rather than for what we do. Blustering political rhetoric “informs” the public that the Islamists are offended by the Western world’s democratic freedoms, civil liberties, inter-mingling of genders, and separation of church and state. However, although aspects of the modern world may offend conservative Muslims, no Islamist leader has fomented jihad to destroy participatory democracy, for example, the national association of credit unions, or coed universities. Instead, a growing segment of the Islamic world strenuously disapproves of specific U.S. policies and their attendant military, political, and economic implications. Capitalizing on growing anti-U.S. animosity, Osama bin Laden’s genius lies not simply in calling for jihad, but in articulating a consistent and convincing case that Islam is under attack by America. Al Qaeda’s public statements condemn America’s protection of corrupt Muslim regimes, unqualified support for Israel, the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and a further litany of real-world grievances. Bin Laden’s supporters thus identify their problem and believe their solution lies in war. Scheuer contends they will go to any length, not to destroy our secular, democratic way of life, but to deter what they view as specific attacks on their lands, their communities, and their religion. Unless U.S. leaders recognize this fact and adjust their policies abroad accordingly, even moderate Muslims will join the bin Laden camp.
Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War
Evan Wright - 2004
It's only five in the afternoon, but a sandtorm has plunged everything into a hellish twilight of murky, red dust. On rooftops, in alleyways lurk militiamen with machine guns, AK rifles and the odd rocket-propelled grenade. Artillery bombardment has shattered the town's sewers and rubble is piled up in lagoons of human excrement. It stinks. Welcome to Iraq...
Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terrorism fell to those like the 23 Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ed combat since Vietnam. They were a new breed of American warrior unrecognizable to their forebears-soldiers raised on hip hop, Internet porn, Marilyn Manson, video games and The Real World, a band of born-again Christians, dopers, Buddhists, and New Agers who gleaned their precepts from kung fu movies and Oprah Winfrey. Cocky, brave, headstrong, wary, and mostly unprepared for the physical, emotional, and moral horrors ahead, the "First Suicide Battalion" would spearhead the blitzkrieg on Iraq, and fight against the hardest resistance Saddam had to offer. Generation Kill is the funny, frightening, and profane firsthand account of these remarkable men, of the personal toll of victory, and of the randomness, brutality, and camaraderie of a new American war.
Constitution of the Confederate States of America
Confederate States of America - 1861
In its entirety...you have the CSA "Confederate States of America" Constitution.This is a must read.....imagine a young country that just learned all the things wrong with their country and its government....then makes their own.The CSA was ahead of its time in many respects...(never mind the whole slavery thing)....If you are a History buff or just doing research...get this...read it....it is outstanding.
Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
Michael Isikoff - 2006
October 2006: The world finds out why. What was really behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq? As George W. Bush steered the nation to war, who spoke the truth and who tried to hide it? "Hubris" takes us behind the scenes at the Bush White House, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Congress to answer all the vital questions about how the Bush administration came to invade Iraq. Filled with new revelations, "Hubris" is a gripping narrative of intrigue that connects the dots between George W. Bush's expletive-laden outbursts at Saddam Hussein, the bitter battles between the CIA and the White House, the fights within the intelligence community over Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, the startling influence of an obscure academic on top government officials, the "real "reason Valerie Plame was outed, and a top reporter's ties to wily Iraqi exiles trying to start a war. Written by veteran reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn, this is the inside story of how President Bush took the nation to war using faulty and fraudulent intelligence. It is a news-making account of conspiracy, backstabbing, bureaucratic ineptitude, journalistic malfeasance, and, especially, arrogance.
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
Daniel Bell - 1976
With the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a new world order, this provocative manifesto is more relevant than ever.
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
Lawrence Wright - 2006
Lawrence Wright's remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States.The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling the story through the interweaving lives of four men: the two leaders of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri; the FBI's counterterrorism chief, John O'Neill; and the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal.As these lives unfold, we see revealed: the crosscurrents of modern Islam that helped to radicalize Zawahiri and bin Laden . . . the birth of al-Qaeda and its unsteady development into an organization capable of the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole . . . O'Neill's heroic efforts to track al-Qaeda before 9/11, and his tragic death in the World Trade towers . . . Prince Turki's transformation from bin Laden's ally to his enemy . . . the failures of the FBI, CIA, and NSA to share intelligence that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks.The Looming Tower broadens and deepens our knowledge of these signal events by taking us behind the scenes. Here is Sayyid Qutb, founder of the modern Islamist movement, lonely and despairing as he meets Western culture up close in 1940s America; the privileged childhoods of bin Laden and Zawahiri; family life in the al-Qaeda compounds of Sudan and Afghanistan; O'Neill's high-wire act in balancing his all-consuming career with his equally entangling personal life--he was living with three women, each of them unaware of the others' existence--and the nitty-gritty of turf battles among U.S. intelligence agencies.Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat.