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Nixon in China
by Adam Daifallah on June 18, 2009 | Book Review, China
Only one presidential trip in memory has resulted in the creation of a famous political saying. From Richard Nixon’s seminal visit to China in 1972 came the “Nixon Goes to China Rule” of politics, the crux of which is that the politician perceived to be least likely to do something will actually have the easiest time doing it.
Read more » | 0 commentsGrowing Up in Castro's Cuba
by Mark Milke on June 18, 2009 | Book Review, Cuba
In a strange twist of a double coincidence, Luis M. Garcia was born in 1959, the year of Cuba’s revolution, and in the town of Banes, the birthplace of deposed dictator Fulgencio Batista (born there in 1901). Garcia’s shopkeeper parents, initially supportive of the 1959 revolution, later applied to leave Cuba after they lost their small business in one of Fidel Castro’s nationalization programs. The application to leave meant that from that moment on, the Garcia family were “gusanos” – “counter-revolutionaries” – in the view of the regime.
Read more » | 0 commentsSolzhenitsyn's conservatism
by Collin May on June 19, 2009 | Book Review, Philosophy
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s life and works are a testimony to moral, political and literary courage. His short stories, novels, speeches and his own experiences convey, perhaps more than any other author, the drama, terror and heroism that manifested themselves throughout one of humanity’s most violent and decisive periods. By collecting excerpts from these works together in one volume, the editors have performed a valuable service for English readers seeking to understand the forces and ideas that gave birth to and continued to support totalitarianism long after its bankruptcy was realized.
Read more » | 0 commentsIslamic Imperialism or a Political History of Islam?
by Collin May on June 19, 2009 | Book Review, Islam
Of all the world’s major religions, none is at the center of as much controversy today as Islam. Wherever it comes in contact with other religions, a political storm arises. From Paris to the Balkans, Chechnya to Xinjiang, Kashmir to the Sudan, and most notably, in the heart of the Middle East itself, Islam seems unable to make peace with its neighbours. Various explanations, excuses and accusations have been made in response to this phenomenon. None, however, seem as prescient or as penetrating as that presented by Efraim Karsh in his latest work, Islamic Imperialism: A History .
Read more » | 0 commentsWe've been here before: Middle Eastern terrorism circa 1776
by Mark Milke on June 19, 2009 | Book Review, Terrorism
In the self-hating narrative all too popular and which serves as a substitute for thoughtful historical analysis, the West deserves recent Islamic-based terrorism – or at least – should expect nothing less. We bring such atrocities upon our own heads given our collective history of imposed colonialism, insensitivity to other cultures and willingness to sacrifice all others and our own principles. We do this for black gold to heat our gargantuan homes and fuel our obscene SUVs. This is the bleating apologia from everyone from Michael Moore to the late Edward Said, from New Democrats to the ever-pacifist Bloc Quebecois, from critics at home and abroad.
Read more » | 0 commentsThe Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West
by Jordan Smith on June 19, 2009 | Book Review, Religion
In academic circles, the future of Muslims in the post-Cold War world was being debated long before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In The End of History and the Last Man , the 1992 book he expanded from a National Interest essay, Francis Fukuyama argued that the world was witnessing "the universalization of Western liberal democracy." The Islamic world, he wrote, "would seem more vulnerable to liberal ideas in the long run than the reverse." Samuel Huntington published a response of sorts in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order , his own article-turned-book, which held that Islamic countries would remain theocratic and illiberal. In large part, Huntington wrote, differences between Islam and the West resulted from the "Muslim concept of Islam as a way of life transcending and uniting religion and politics versus the Western Christian concept of the separate realms of God and Caesar."
Read more » | 0 commentsThe Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament
by Adam Daifallah on June 22, 2009 | Book Review
The study of Canadian identity has preoccupied many Canadian political, sociological and historical scholars. Like Canadian unity, it is a topic that virtually has its own industry. Scores of books have been written and conferences convened on the subject, and yet still no one has found a definitive answer to the question of what Canadian identity actually is.
Read more » | 0 commentsWhere Marx and Conservatives Meet: The Writings of Paul Piccone
by Collin May on June 22, 2009 | United States, Book Review
Is it possible to render the intricacies of Marxism, of phenomenology and of critical theory interesting, even intriguing? And could such a topic have anything to offer conservatives? If the person doing the expositing is Paul Piccone, then the answer to both questions is an unqualified “yes”.
Read more » | 0 commentsA Graveyard For All: The Trouble With Relativism
by Dr. Travis D. Smith on June 22, 2009 | Book Review, National Defense
Naming a book The Book of Absolutes is a bit hubristic. It’s also redundant. The Book should suffice to christen the book that reveals absolutes. Setting that defect aside, I believe that we should forgive author William Gairdner’s boast, too. His candour and daring is refreshing in an age awash in wishy-washiness. I much prefer it to the feigned humility of one who formulates comprehensive rules and recommendations for restructuring society and then labels it but “a theory.”
Read more » | 0 commentsReview: "The Art of Politics: The New Betrayal of America and How to Resist It"
by Collin May on June 22, 2009 | Book Review
With a subtitle like, The New Betrayal of America and How to Resist It , a reader might expect such a book to be primarily polemical in its orientation. And in that regard, John Kekes does not disappoint in his latest offering
Read more » | 0 commentsThe Presidential Candidate Biography Business
by Michael Lindsay on June 22, 2009 | United States, Book Review
Recently, on the editorial pages of the New York Times, William Kristol argued that the biographies of candidates will play only an ancillary role in determining the next President of the United States this fall. [i] Reading his editorial, my thoughts turned to the central role that biography is currently playing in determining the Democratic nominee. Absent a meaningful divergence between the candidates on a substantive policy issue, the media (induced by the candidates themselves) has turned Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton into living symbols of the aspirations of a race and gender respectively. Voters, however, seeking to evaluate whether these candidates are truly capable of representing these communities, have turned to their autobiographies, hoping to find stories within that commune with their own tales of hardship.
Read more » | 1 commentsUnhealthy Combination: How Government and Medicine Don't Mix
by Mark Milke on June 22, 2009 | Healthcare, Book Review
If the first step toward a cured addiction is to admit the problem, Dr. David Gratzer has given himself no small task: to convince politicians that their reliance on government interference in health care hurts more Americans than it helps.
Read more » | 0 commentsMoney Problems and War
by Nigel Hannaford on July 22, 2009 | Book Review
For anybody who has recalculated his net worth recently and recoiled in horror from the screen and asked the question--“How did we get in this mess anyway?”—, there are some answers to be found in Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money. It is, in fact, the book you wish you’d read a year ago.
Read more » | 0 commentsMy Party: Right or Wrong?
by Scott Reid on July 22, 2009 | Book Review
A review of Bob Plamondon's Blue Thunder: The Truth About Conservatives from MacDonald to Harper, Key Porter Books, 474 pages.
Read more » | 6 commentsThe Innate Parochialism of Canada's Modern Constitutional Consensus
by Colin Pearce on July 22, 2009 | Book Review
“If there is one constant theme in the scholarly literature concerning American and Canadian constitutional laws, it is that the two nations are quite different.” That opinion, from which the authors of Judging Democracy will dissent, is the scholarly consensus formed around the notion that the American constitutional tradition “promote(s) individual rights and place(s) substantial restrictions on the capacity of government to legislate for the common good. By contrast the Canadian Charter is much less individualistic in both text and interpretation.” The authors then explain that they “have written this book in part to refute this analysis.”1
Read more » | 0 commentsBook Review: The Housing Boom and Bust, by Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, 148 pp, $31.95 -
by Grant Morgan on September 24, 2009 | Media, Book Review
Review of The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell.
Read more » | 0 commentsBook Review: It’s the Regime, Stupid! A Report From the Cowboy West on Why Stephen Harper Matters
by John von Heyking on November 19, 2009 | Fiscal Policy, Public Policy, Philosophy, Book Review, Democracy
Combining philosophical, literary, and historical analysis, social science, and personal anecdote, Cooper analyzes the “logic” of the Canadian “regime.”
Read more » | 0 commentsBook Review: Progress and Property Rights: From the Greeks to Magna Carta to the Constitution
by Matt Bufton on November 26, 2009 | Property, Fiscal Policy, Future of Conservatism, Book Review
Review of Progress and Property Rights: From the Greeks to Magna Carta to the Constitution , by Walker Todd.
Read more » | 0 commentsThe Audacity of Despair: Book Review of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism
by Grant Morgan on December 14, 2009 | Public Policy, Future of Conservatism, Book Review
One inevitable side-effect of the disastrous performance of the U.S. Republicans in recent elections, and the apparent revival of statist economics across the western world, has been a sudden proliferation of books offering theories on the decline of conservatism and prescriptions for its revival. Derbyshire, however, makes a surprisingly energetic and amusing case for why conservatives should be unrelentingly pessimistic.
Read more » | 0 commentsBook Review: Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed
by David W. Livingstone on March 01, 2010 | Book Review
By Howard Rotberg, Mantua Books, 231 pp, $25 Howard Rotberg’s new book, reviewed by David W. Livingston— Page 50 Rotberg sets out to show that tolerance has been “raised to the be-all and end-all of human existence” and to point out the problems that excessive tolerance brings in its wake: “It disarms our best minds and our future leaders from protecting the important values and freedoms for which our forefathers have fought, and even died.”
Read more » | 0 commentsThis Month's Featured Article
Has treason run its course in Canada?
Don’t look for another case of treason any time soon argues Michael Taube in a column that supplements this month’s treason issue…
Read More » | 0 commentsMost Read
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