Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America…

Democracy in Chains - Nancy MacLean

If You Want to Understand the Roots of Our Current Political Situation – Read this Book! Over the last few weeks I am finding it more and more difficult to post. Again I haven’t stopped reading, listening or exercising just that when I sit down to write a post, I get distracted and pick up a book or good do something else. Anyway I just finished book 9 of 2017. The following read though is for book 7. Hopefully, if I can get myself focused and motivated reviews for book  8 Parting Shot by Linwood Barclay and book 9 Descent by Tim Johnston, will follow shortly. Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean.  This is the story of the Radical Rights campaign  to steal our democracy. The blueprint for the campaign was laid out but conservative economist James Buchanan.  Buchanan merged states rights thinking with free-market principles and laid the groundwork for the “makers”and “takers” philosophy of today’s Republican party. The campaign  has been funded by Charles Koch and is bearing fruit beyond his wildest dreams. The Radical Right has goals like establishing and assuring minority rule, the elimination of both the government safety nets i.e. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and programs and agencies that protect our health and safety. They seem like current GOP goals to me. And I am scared for my country!  Throughout the last year we have seen time after time the majority of Americans opposing what…

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A SIxties Man Rants About Missing Art of Compromise!

Reading In Retrospect leads to thoughts about Government and Compromise   So I have not ever been a fan of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, The obvious reason, he was Defense Secretary, at the beginning and the height of the war in Vietnam, in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. But as I  read his autobiography In Retrospect The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, I realize that the administrations that he served in were really in a no-win situation in Vietnam, and that he and others may have kept the US from being involved in the war far earlier. He also admits that the course the US chose concerning the war was the wrong one! At one point, he reveals for the first time what he thought John Kennedy would have done regarding the situation in Vietnam .. ….I think that it highly probable that , had President  Kennedy lived , he would have pulled us out of Vietnam. He would have concluded that the South Vietnamese were incapable of defending themselves and that Saigon’s grave political weaknesses made it unwise to try to offset the limitations of the South Vietnamese forces by sending U.S. combat troops on a large scale…..(In Retrospect page 96) From what I have read so far in both this book and The Politics of Deception, i believe he may well be right! Damn you, Lee Harvey Oswald!! Anyway, this morning I read a passage in the book, that really hit home and speaks directly to the…

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