By Jonah Goldberg – …Humans have an innate moral sense. How we use it depends on the environment we grow up in and how we define morality. The desire for unity and distrust of strangers are universal human tendencies. Of all systems ever created that actually increases trust and cooperation among strangers none has been as successful as the market. The market lowers the level of distrust by letting very different peoples and cultures find common interest. …ideology flows from human nature… and refining the definition of evil is the very essence of what civilizations do Read More
Book Reviews
The book summaries are a mix of interpretations, paraphrases of the author’s language, and direct quotes from the book (without quotation marks). One purpose of the summaries is to summarize the author’s main ideas so that if interested you can order the book. Another purpose of the summaries is to survey some of the most important and soundest ideas in government structure, political philosophy, history, and economics to give a rough idea of how they all fit together. These may not be the best books in each category but all are excellent and deal with extremely important subjects in a very thoughtful manner. A few of the best, and best known, books on many of these subjects are listed in a separate section.
All material on this site is for educational purposes only
Why Nations Fail
By Daron Acemoglu and James Ronbinson – “The authors convincingly show that countries escape poverty only when they have appropriate economic institutions, especially private property and competition….countries are more likely to develop the right institutions when they have an open pluralistic political system with competition for political office, a widespread electorate, and openness to new political leaders. This intimate connection between political and economic institutions is the heart of their major contribution…” – Gary Becker
Balance
Notes on BALANCE by Glenn Hubbard & Tim Kane – The book is a review of the experience of great powers in world history and the political and economic lessons to be learned from studying them. Two thousand years ago, Rome was a stable and prosperous civilization. After 3 centuries of decline from the relentless… Read More
The Breakdown of Higher Education
By John M. Ellis – The preface cites Bloom’s, The Closing Of The American Mind, Kimball’s, Tenured Radicals, D’Souza’s, Illiberal Education, and Ellis’s, Against Deconstruction, all warning about the dangers of a radicalized campus being created by increasingly radical professors. “This book is of a different kind, since now the campus is already radicalized. …its purpose is to explain exactly what happened and what made it possible; to describe the damage done to all levels of education, ..and to our society; …and to suggest what can be done about this educational and societal catastrophe.” Read More
The Plot To Change America
By Mike Gonzalez – Introduction – The political purpose of identity politics is to divide the country into groups as a strategy to change America completely. Identity politics sees people’s beliefs and interests as determined by their membership in specific groups, particularly sex, race, sexual orientation, and disability status. It is an enemy of reason… Read More