Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America

*BUMPED.*

I just pulled out my old copy in the original hardback.

But it's still available in paper.

At Amazon, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Revised and Enlarged Edition).

One of the added sections at the revised edition is "Schlesinger’s Syllabus," an essay on "the thirteen books you must read to understand America."

How awesome. If only more professors steeped their students in these classics.

Describe the 2016 Election in One Word

Spectacular.

Incredible.

Awesome.

Unprecedented.

Disastrous.

I don't know? Those are just a few words that come to mind for me. Actually, this has been the most interesting election in my lifetime, regardless of who wins. As noted previously, I'm especially pleased to see the crackup of the GOP coalition. I love the populist uprising and I expect it to continue for some time. This is all healthy to me, not dangerous. America's a big enough and great enough country to tackle all these problems. There's no threat to the survival of the American republic, although there's definitely a threat to the culture and ideological foundations that have made us great. Those things may be going away. Leftists are cheering such developments, because they hate American exceptionalism. The dis-empowered "coalition of restoration," however, isn't so pleased. They're going to be on the outside of the dominant culture looking in, and they'll get burned as society keeps up its inexorable movement to the radical left.

In any case, it is what it is.

At the Los Angeles Times:

We went to the ‘happiest place on Earth’ and asked people to describe the election in one word https://t.co/yRm9CaB6Kl pic.twitter.com/VUwD2AZ1vD

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) October 29, 2016

Dick and Liz Cheney's Exceptional is Out in Paperback

I blogged this book a lot almost exactly one year ago, upon its release.

It's now available in paper, and more timely than ever.

At Amazon, Dick and Liz Cheney, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

ICYMI: Eric Metaxas, If You Can Keep It

Here's the Metaxas book, at Amazon, If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty.

BONUS: From Dennis Prager, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph.

Eric Metaxas, If You Can Keep It

I mentioned this book last night.

At Amazon, If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty.

Deal of the Day: Burgess Propane Insect Fogger

At Amazon, Burgess 1443 Propane Insect Fogger for Fast and Effective Mosquito Control in Your Yard.

Also, Fire HD 6 Kids Edition Tablet, 6" HD Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB, Blue Kid-Proof Case.

And, Must-Read Kindle Best Sellers.

More, by Bret Stephens, America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.

Also, from Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.

Plus, Michael Mandelbaum, Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era.

BONUS: Dick and Liz Cheney, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

Assignment America: A Look at What Makes Texas Texas

At the New York Times.

Thank goodness some Americans are determined to preserve their heritage and values.

What makes Texas Texas https://t.co/jfY813VjmC pic.twitter.com/iyo61lciLh

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 7, 2016

Deal of the Day: Up to 46% Off Bounty Hunter Metal Detectors

At Amazon, Bounty Hunter TK4 Tracker IV Metal Detector.

More, Save on Bounty Hunter Metal Detectors.

Plus, Save Up to 51% on T-Fal and WearEver Cookware Sets.

And, 40% Off Select ASICS GEL-Excite 3 Running Shoes.

Still more, from Ed Feulner, The American Spirit.

And from Dennis Prager, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph.

Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

BONUS: Yuval Levin, The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism.

The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty

From Eric Metaxas, out June 14th, If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty.

From the Amazon blurb:

If You Can Keep It is at once a thrilling review of America's uniqueness, and a sobering reminder that America's greatness cannot continue unless we truly understand what our founding fathers meant for us to be. The book includes a stirring call-to-action for every American to understand the ideals behind the "noble experiment in ordered liberty" that is America. It also paints a vivid picture of the tremendous fragility of that experiment and explains why that fragility has been dangerously forgotten—and in doing so it lays out our own responsibility to live those ideals and carry on those freedoms. Metaxas believes America is not a nation bounded by ethnic identity or geography, but rather by a radical and unprecedented idea, based upon liberty and freedom. It's time to reconnect to that idea before America loses the very foundation for what made it exceptional in the first place.

Pre-order here.

The World Is Getting Worse, But This Time America Won't Save It

From Dennis Prager, via Blazing Cat Fur:

I cannot imagine any thinking person who does not believe the world is getting worse.

The number of slaughtered and the number of refugees from slaughter is immense and growing.

Islamic State now controls territories from Afghanistan to West Africa. Libya is in the process of being added to that list. And other sadistic Islamist movements hold additional territory.

According to Pew Research, approximately 10 percent of world Muslims have a favorable opinion of the Islamic State and terror against civilians.

That’s more than 100 million people...

Keep reading.

Deal of the Day: STIGA Table Tennis

Save 37 percent, at Amazon, STIGA Triumph Table Tennis Table.

Plus, more savings, T-fal A80789 Specialty Nonstick Dishwasher Safe Oven Safe PFOA-Free Jumbo Wok Cookware, 14-Inch, Black, and T-fal A91082 Specialty Nonstick Dishwasher Safe Oven Safe Jumbo Cooker Saute Pan with Glass Lid, 5-Quart, Black.

Lots more, T-fal Kitchen Items.

BONUS: From Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

EXTRA: From Richard Ben Cramer, What It Takes: The Way to the White House.

Deal of the Day: Up to 70 Percent Off Select Cuisinart Kitchen & Dining Ware

At Amazon, Cook N Home 15 Piece Non stick Black Soft handle Cookware Set.

And see all your reduced Cuisinart Kitchen & Dining Ware.

Also, from Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

Plus, David Horowitz, The Black Book of the American Left Volume 5: Culture Wars.

BONUS: From Dick and Liz Cheney, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

Left and Right Differences: How Do You Judge America?

An awesome clip, from Dennis Prager:

Dana Loesch's Birthday Today, and She's Standing Strong

Another day, another batch of death threats for Dana Loesch --- this time including a blood-spattering snuff video.

See the Blaze, "Anti-Gun Advocate Reimagines Dana Loesch’s NRA Ad With Shocking, Sick Ending — but He Surely Didn’t Expect TheBlaze TV Host to Respond Like This."

It's Dana's birthday today, so please go ahead and tweet her some birthday wishes. She's a good lady.

And here's her book, Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America.

The American Project Is Dead

By "the American project is dead," it's asserted that the world historical experiment of American exceptionalism and the U.S. standard of world freedom and opportunity is dead, thanks to the left.

A podcast, at the Federalist, "Charles Murray Says the American Project Is Dead Unless We Fix It."

And see Murray's newsbook, at Amazon, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission.

Also, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

Obama the Villain in Exceptional

Here's the book, which I hope to start reading as soon as this weekend, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

And at the New York Times, "Review: In ‘Exceptional,’ the Cheneys Make Obama the Villain":

Former presidents may keep quiet about those who occupy the White House once they leave, but the code clearly does not extend to vice presidents. Nearly seven years after leaving office, Dick Cheney has produced a book that amounts to a stinging indictment of President Obama as an ineffectual, America-hating, military-destroying, soft-on-terrorism appeaser whose tenure has damaged the country.

It is a case he prosecutes relentlessly. To the witness stand, Mr. Cheney and his daughter and co-author, Liz Cheney, summon the ghosts of presidents past, including Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan, to testify to the greatness of America and what they call the bipartisan postwar tradition of muscular leadership on the world stage.

This is a tradition Mr. Obama has shirked, the writers argue, making him a modern-day Neville Chamberlain. “The damage that Barack Obama has done to our ability to defend ourselves is appalling,” they write in “Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.” “It is without historical precedent. He has set us on a path of decline so steep that reversing direction will not be easy.”

But while styled as a condemnation of Mr. Obama, this book — appearing just as the Republican primary contest is getting underway in earnest — is actually a prod to the Republicans seeking to succeed him. Although Mr. Cheney noted during a speech in Washington this week that he is no longer running for office, he clearly is seeking to influence those who are.

The Cheneys are championing a strain of national security conservatism that waned even within their own party because of the flawed intelligence leading to the Iraq invasion in 2003 and the later travails of the occupation. Even Mr. Bush’s brother Jeb Bush has said that if he had been president, he would not have authorized the invasion had he known then what he knows now, a position shared by other Republican candidates.

And yet, the post-Iraq isolationist streak that seemed on the ascendance for a while has also begun to fade with the rise of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Syria and Iraq and Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Although today’s candidates are not showcasing the unpopular Mr. Cheney in their campaigns, they are, to some extent, voicing a more hawkish message on foreign policy, especially amid the debate over Mr. Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran.

Whether Mr. Cheney is the right messenger for the moment is open to question. While even some Democrats agree with his criticisms of Mr. Obama — that he has given away too much to Iran, that he has not done enough to help Ukraine against Russia, that his withdrawal from Iraq paved the way for the Islamic State — Mr. Cheney all but invites the “well, what-about-you” counterargument...

Okay, yeah, what about you?

The Bush administration's foreign policy looks better with each passing day. For example, see Glenn Reynolds, "SO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DID ALL THE STUFF THEY ACCUSED BUSH OF DOING. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS, BUSH WON THE WAR, AND THEY LOST IT."

They lost it alright.

But back to the New York Times.

Is the West Dead Yet?

From VDH, at National Review, "The West - Is the Decline Cyclical?":

The West is paradoxically dominant on the global stage and eroding from within.

Never has Western culture seemed so all-powerful.

Look at the 30 top-ranked universities in the world; they are all American, British, or European — albeit these rankings are based largely on the excellence of their science, engineering, medicine, and computer departments rather than their English and sociology departments.

The American West Coast changed the world’s daily lifestyle with Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo.

The worldwide reach of schlock American pop culture is frightening. Hollywood psychodramas, rap vulgarity, reality TV, crude body tattooing and piercing, and the sorry, unhinged Miley Cyrus find their way up the Nile and around Cape Horn.

The United States, even with recent defense cuts, has more conventional military power than nearly the rest of the globe combined. American oil entrepreneurs have changed the global energy calculus.

Millions flee their homes to enter Europe — not Russia, China, or India. Ten percent of Mexico lives in the United States. Polls in Mexico suggest that half the remaining Mexican population would prefer to head north into the U.S., a nation to which, polls also suggest, they of course are hostile.

Immigration is a one-way Western street. Those who, in the abstract, damn the West — as much as elite Westerners themselves do — want very much to live inside it. The loudest anti-Western voices in the Middle East are usually housed in Western universities, not in Gaza. Jorge Ramos is a fierce critic of supposed American cruelty to illegal immigrants — so much so that he fled Mexico for America, became a citizen (how is that possible, given American bias against immigrants?), landed a multimillion-dollar salary working for the non-Latino-owned Spanish-language network Univision, and then put his kids in private school to shield them from hoi polloi of the sort he champions each evening. Now that’s the power of the West.

The alternatives are uninviting. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Pervez Musharraf, and Mohamed Morsi all resided in the West for long periods of time until political power beckoned at home. Putin’s Russia is a geriatric and unhealthy kleptocracy. China will never square the circle of free-market capitalist consumerism and Communist state autocracy. India, like Brazil, is always corrupt and always said to be full of potential. Neo-Communism has all but wrecked Latin America. The African nations are still tribal societies beneath a thin statist veneer. The Middle East is now mostly pre-civilized. (The Asian Tigers have escaped these fates by becoming mostly Westernized.) And, in our wired age, the maladies of the Third World are all instantly known and contrasted with the civilized alternative in the West.

But as in mid-fifth-century Athens and late-republican Rome, there are signs that the West is eroding — and fast. The common Western malady is age-old and cyclical. It was long ago described, over some thousand years of decline, by an array of Classical scolds, from Thucydides and Aristophanes to Tacitus, Petronius, Plutarch, Suetonius, and Procopius. In the case of modern America, Britain, and Europe, the sheer material bounty spawned by free-market capitalism and legally protected private property, combined with the freedom of the individual, creates a sort of ennui. Boredom is the logical result of that lethal mix of affluence and leisure.

It is not just that Westerners forget who gave them their bounty, but they tend to damn anonymous ancestors who worked so hard, but without a modern sense of taste and politically correct deference. Of course, so far, Western civilization presses on, despite the periodic sky-is-falling warnings that echo the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler, and H. G. Wells. But does it press on as it did before?

 Still more.

Dick and Liz Cheney's New Book is Out Today!

I'm looking forward to diving in.

Get your copy, at Amazon, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

And ICYMI, "Restoring American Exceptionalism."

Dick and Liz Cheney on CBS 'This Morning'

The Cheneys' new book's out tomorrow, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

Restoring American Exceptionalism

Dick and Liz Cheney's new book is here, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

And they write at today's Wall Street Journal, "President Obama has dangerously surrendered the nation’s global leadership, but it can be ours again — if we choose his successor wisely":

In 1983, as the U.S. confronted the threat posed by the Soviet Union, President Ronald Reagan explained America’s unique responsibility. “It is up to us in our time,” he said, “to choose, and choose wisely, between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.” It was up to us then—as it is now—because we are the exceptional nation. America has guaranteed freedom, security and peace for a larger share of humanity than any other nation in all of history. There is no other like us. There never has been.

Born of the revolutionary ideal that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights,” we were, first, an example to the world of freedom’s possibilities. During World War II, we became freedom’s defender, at the end of the Cold War, the world’s sole superpower. We did not seek the position. It is ours because of our ideals and our power, and the power of our ideals. As British historian Andrew Roberts has observed, “In the debate over whether America was born great, achieved greatness or had greatness thrust upon her, the only possible conclusion must be: all three.”

No other nation, international body or “community of nations” can do what we do. It isn’t just our involvement in world events that has been essential for the triumph of freedom. It is our leadership. For the better part of a century, security and freedom for millions of people around the globe have depended on America’s military, economic, political and diplomatic might. For the most part, until the administration of Barack Obama, we delivered.

Since Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed us the “Arsenal of Democracy” in 1940, Republican and Democratic presidents alike have understood the indispensable nature of American power. Presidents from Truman to Nixon, from Kennedy to Reagan, knew that America’s strength had to be safeguarded, her supremacy maintained. In the 1940s American leadership was essential to victory in World War II, and the liberation of millions from the grip of fascism. In the Cold War American leadership guaranteed the survival of freedom, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the defeat of Soviet totalitarianism. In this century it will be essential for the defeat of militant Islam.

Yet despite the explosive spread of terrorist ideology and organizations, the establishment of an Islamic State caliphate in the heart of the Middle East, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and increasing threats from Iran, China, North Korea and Russia, President Obama has departed from this 75-year, largely bipartisan tradition of ensuring America’s pre-eminence and strength...

Keep reading.

And again, don't miss this essential book, at Amazon, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.