Can America Survive?
The Rage of the Left, the Truth, and What to Do About It
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Publisher Description
Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth examine this anti-American rage, providing plentiful and outrageous examples from campuses to foundations to Democratic candidate debates to liberal "fund-raisers" that openly tout hate as their message.
The authors attempt to plumb the psychological wellsprings that generate this anger: Is it infantile narcissism? Is it a desperately incomplete maturation process? Is it competition with patriarchal figures?
The authors attempt to create a psychological road map that explores what the psychological roots of this national self-loathing might be. This is a unique approach, attempting to explain political beliefs in terms of psychological background, and the authors believe that it’s the only approach that works, since a realistic appraisal of America would not allow as much rage as we see in daily political discourse.
Finally, the authors offer a plan for how to fight back: They recommend educating your children in such a way as to develop pride in their country, suggest specific reading materials, offer ways to raise your voice to talk back to the major newspapers and TV networks, and even discuss how you can work fearlessly in university settings so that the left doesn’t dominate political discourse.
Can America Survive? is a portrait of what is clearly wrong with the national mood, where that malady comes from, and how those who still believe in America can work in their communities and in the nation to preserve the republic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
America may be waging war against"certain deranged souls in the Moslem world," but the real enemy--lurking alarmingly within--is a Fifth Column of angry,"Anti-American" leftists fomented by Al Gore and John Kerry, contend conservative humorist Stein and journalist-cum-psychologist DeMuth (co-authors of Yes, You Can Time the Market). The authors maintain that these enraged liberals, whom they say characterize the Bush administration as imperialistic, overreaching and racist, have essentially joined Islamist fanatics' assault on the United States. Worse, the authors argue, the Left's relentless invective--during wartime, no less--threatens to drag the nation into its most divisive crisis since the Civil War (although they concede that this will not lead to an actual war). Instead,"a more likely and potentially equally bloody sequel to today's anger from the Left would be a failure to adequately wage the war on terror," they warn. Stein and DeMuth blame the usual suspects--the"liberal news machinery," Marxist academics, befuddled environmentalists and Hollywood radicals--with the unoriginal gusto of apparatchiks. When they aren't heaping accusations on their straw adversaries, they're trying to uncover the psychological clues to liberals'"perceptual disorder" and"irrational" anger with the Bush administration. The Left's rant is a manifestation of an infantile personality, they say, while environmentalists"have projected their inner sense of guilt on to the world at large, and are seeking their personal redemption by redeeming the planet instead of redeeming themselves." In other words, this volume will be appreciated primarily by those who already sympathize with the authors' views.
