Parties Books

Everything anyone could ever want to know about the debate to change the U.S. Presidential election system from the present Electoral College to an all-national popular election. Dr. Best presents the arguments others have written against the Electoral College before explaining why those arguments are incorrect. Her defense of the Electoral College is witty, concise, and well explained. A must read for anyone interested in American politics and government.

I remember how avidly (at age 15)I followed by radio the excitement which was the 1944 Democratic Convention. This little book does an excellent job of trying to tell what happened behind the scenes, and reads like a novel--where one must continually remind oneself that it IS going to come out all right, that Truman will be nominated, that he will go on to be an outstanding President, and that some things do work out for the best. An entralling and fascinating book, it brought back to me all the excitement which permeated Chicago and the people who were following what went on there in those momentous July days in 1944.

Great coloring book. It even tells why each pixie picked their fairy (all but Flora and Chatta ~ they are in it... it just doesn't say why... just that Chatta picked Flora). My oldest who never colors is coloring and she's enjoying herself. I'm glad I bought one for each of my girls.

This box set shows Pike at his finest. "Gimme a Kiss" is a wonderful story of suspense & betrayal. The main character is Jane Retton, who the reader develops a love-hate relationship with due to her clever yet fallible plan, which is the basis for this story. The other 3 books in this box set are the "Final Friends Trilogy", which Pike did a lovely job with. The stories follow a group of teens beginning their senior year in high school. The death of one of these people at the end of "The Party" begins the mystery that is not truly solved until the end of "The Graduation." There are enough plot twists to keep anyone guessing, & Pike has a unique gift in his rich character development, which is lacking in so many other young adult novels. I would definitely recommend this set (or any of these novels) to any suspense fan.

The reason why i realy like this book is because i love every thing that has winnie the pooh.I liked when pooh had a realy nice time at his birthday party.

A LUSTY TALE OF GOVERNMENT AND UNITARIANISM ON THE MASSACHUSETTS FRONTIER: The new bodice-ripper by Mashhood Rassam has everything a reader could wish for: shifty political shenanigans, bloodthirsty fanatical Unitarians, and (most of all) Governor Hinsdale, the barrel-chested iron-jawed studmuffin of political reform. While the author's slight over-reliance on the adjective "deliquescing" might cause shortness of breath and palpitations in the faint of heart, most readers will be left panting by the virility of Mr. Rassam's muscular prose. Having enjoyed this book so much, I can only say that my heart's all a-flutter for Mr. Rassam's next book, "The Plague in Colonial Philadelphia."

Three books now on conservatism: Roger Scruton, "Meaning of Conservatism," John Kekes, "Case for Conservatism," and Lawrence E. Cahoone, "Civil Society: The Conservative Meaning of Liberal Politics." I can state without reservation that whichever variant of "conservatism" one adopts, the landscape is not attractive. I'll grant conservatives two critical observations and claims: (1) Ideological Utopianism, i.e., "progressivism," which insists it can remake society according to some rationalist scheme into an improved model, is surely tenuous at best, and often is accompanied by unintended deleterious consequences. (2) The "problem" of human actions we commonly label "evil" cannot be ignored, reprogrammed, or overcome by improving social structures.

While often two-sides of the same coin, the entire notion that some ideological utilitarian calculus will make all our lives better, or that if we "educate, indoctrinate, or inculcate" our citizens, that they'll achieve perfection, are both empirically nonsense, but based on our biological human natures, not on any conservative conceptual scheme that claims these insights from logic (which is, of course, barred by the first claim).

But Cahoone's work is most valuable not for the conservatism it adopts and extols, but for demonstrating through persuasion the impossibility of the liberal principle of "neutrality." By virtue of demonstrating the impossibly of this "neutral" principle, conservatives believe they can introduce their conservative "values" as the preferred values of a pluralistic republican society. And, since the vacuum left by abandoning the liberal principle of "neutrality" requires some values to fill its void, arguably many conservative values may be better than other values. But these values have to be shown or demonstrated to be valuable first, and then as values that society should prefer as conservative values over others; mere assertion of conservative principles is insufficient. That is Cahoone's objective in the second-half of the book.

Since the principle of neutrality is widely misunderstood, it is important to understand it before we agree to bury it. As it pertains to liberal governance and to its mechanics in our civil society, neutrality is understood to be the government's stance toward any particular individual's choice of morals, modes of life, interests, pursuits, which are, according to this principle, to be left to the individual, not to the state, to adopt in the manner of his/her own choosing. While one may remain sentimentally attached this idea, Cahoone, to his credit, demonstrates this is impossible, and if possible, would be undesirable, to attain. While the capitulation to this realization does force us to adopt non-neutral stances, it does not follow that the conservative stances are the ones to adopt.

Cahoone has apparently been tainted, if not absorbed, by the arguments of social constructionists. Their claim is that individuals are socially embedded, and thus individuals are constructed from this embeddedness as the basis of their existence. Whether Cahoone adopts social constructionism as an `empirical' or an `ontological' claim is left unaddressed, and for his purposes probably not important. As an empirical claim, social constructionism offers insights as to how society molds individuals, from which they arise, dwell, and interact. As an ontological claim, social constructionism is either tautological or vacuous, but neither is inadequate to any subsequent task. So, we'll assume Cahoone invokes its empirical claims.

As an empirical claim, it is self-evident, if not circular, but it does offer insights in how society molds us individuals according to time, place, and space through the generations. And, yes, we all come to `this' point embedded in our social histories that are uniquely ours collectively. To cut to the chase, I'll use a less nuanced example to obtain the same result. As we Americans observed during the Multiculturalist Movement of the 1980s, the central tenet of which is that all cultures (political institutions, religions, artistic tastes, mores, technologies, etc.) are no better/worse than any other (cf., pluralism, which does evaluate the differences). Depending on one's context and personal perspective, including one's own cultural and social inheritances, the world's cultures may be radically different, but in no sense can one claim that one culture/society is superior/inferior to any other. The "great equalizer" of Multiculturalism leveled Modern Western Liberal Democracies along with Medieval Arab Societies along with Aboriginal Societies along with Hebraic Tribal Societies, etc. Even the most egalitarian spirit cannot embrace the "parity" of these divergent societies. This extreme form of relativism was finally slain by our acquaintance with Modern Arab Cultures in the Middle East.

A pluralist, in contrast to a multiculturalist, will readily admit that individuals value different aspects of various cultures differently and should be free to do so, and moreover that these diverse cultural and social features may pleasantly co-exist within the same society, as long as the prevailing/dominant "social contract" is understood and subscribed to, which then allows, even revels, in this pluralism of expressions. But that already presupposes a value! Yes, a liberal value, but a value nonetheless. A liberal pluralist may indulge other cultures but would not dare equate a modern pluralistic liberal democracy with that of a medieval feudal theocracy with that of an Australian Aboriginal Hunter-Gatherer Tribe, etc., which all muliculturalists insist we do.

Cahoone's more-nuanced arguments are along similar lines, but both reinforce that `some' cultural values must preexist as socially embedded and preexistent anterior to any individual, and no matter how indulgent liberals are of others' values, liberals themselves already demonstrate their tolerance of preexistent values which liberalism insists is supposedly `neutral,' and which it demonstrates, it is obviously not.

So, the `neutrality' principle of liberalism has been slain! So, what "values" should we liberals adopt as socially normative, since remaining "neutral" is not tenable, defensible, or even desirable? Cahoone offers a very sophisticated alternative that he labels "postmodern conservatism." In the final analysis, I am not persuaded by any conservatism, not even Cahoone's conservative principles (which incorporates many liberal principles), which, on the whole are clearly superior to any other "conservative's." Alas, that leaves us liberals nowhere, or worse, vulnerable to some others' values we detest (e.g., neoconservatives, social conservatives, theoconservatives - assuming we/they stay within the `liberal' tradition at all).

To exacerbate the dilemma, we have `progressives' who once identified themselves as `liberals,' but now have an aggressive meliorist agenda to `cure' society of its social ills through grand social engineering (e.g., socialists, Utopians, communitarians, theocrats, etc.), who are the "egalitarians" of the last resort that would flatten everyone and everything to achieve `equality.' Some may prefer universal poverty and impoverishment as the great "equalizer," but after the USSR, Mao's China, Fidel's Cuba, Chavez's Venezuela, surely we can do better than equal impoverishment! What is clearer, is that we cannot bury ourselves in a `neutrality' nostrum any longer.

We liberals, however few of us are still left, must find values that we want as normative for our society and culture. That single point makes Cahoone's book worth its while. We may prefer liberal values, definitely, but liberal `neutrality' no longer (if it ever) works, as globalization makes increasingly clearer. We must adopt some set of values (even if they are Cahoone's), lest we evaporate in the vacuum that `neutrality' bequeaths us only to find some tyrant in its place.

Even within our own liberal society, we have those illiberals who would use liberalism's neutrality for their nefarious purposes to subvert liberalism - from Islam fanatics to Christian fanatics to Hugo Chavez ideologues to neoconservatives - so `neutrality' is no longer even conceptually defensible. Cahoone, to his estimable analysis, has cast the scales off this liberal's eyes, and seeing more clearly, we liberals have adopt some values even if `neutrality' is not one of them. But that requires some moral values be established over others, and as a liberal, I know I must attend, but not very willingly.

Postscript: Even if I cannot agree with Cahoone's conservatism, I certainly understand it far better than his "fellow" conservatives, Kekes, Scruton, Sullivan, included. As always, the conservative is first and foremost a moralist, because that instantiates a particular set of values. Even when a particular religion is excluded as a part of the moral values (Kekes, Cahoone), they have to admit it enters fully through the front door, even if they'd prefer it through side door, even the back doors. But this illustrates their problem. Goldwater (who we all acknowledge was a libertarian, not a conservative), could not keep his conservatism from being overtaken and immersed in Evangelicalism. Once "morals" enters the foray, religion follows, whether or not it is welcomed. As Cahoone demonstrates, some moral values must be accepted as normative, just not the moral values of the religionist moralists. But that remains the central problem for conservatism (in whatever stripe it comes in), once we recognize the need for values (and we all do), I might choose Aristotlean ethics, benevolence ethics, but I do not approve of Kantian morality, much less Judaism, Christian, Catholic, utilitarian calculi (as it is not even "moral"), but where does one draw that line? This explains why liberals shy away from conservatism, because even the best of conservatism gets contaminated by religionists, if not overtaken as well. Behold: The past three decades. Goldwater (and the rest of us) shudder!

But, for better or worse, at least Cahoone gets us liberals off our 'neutrality,' as if we were ever there to begin with. That is the greatness of this work. Cahoone is not a partisan ideologue (in fact, just the opposite), but he lays out the landscape of the current political climate admirably, honestly, and accurately, and then clears the underbrush and the Overbush to get to some values that we can all accept and trust, except for the fact that the clearings introduced the most toxic "conservatism" in recent memory (a year after this book was published). It only begs the question: How does conservatism get hijacked by such nefarious characters? Therein, is no answer, and therein is the problem.

"A sympathetic biographer, Lause wishes we had more politicans like James Weaver and more movements like the Greenback-Labor party of 1880. Many readers will share his enthusaiasm. Anyone interested in third parties in general and late-nineteenth-century reform politics in particular should read his book carefully."

Why are people so often disenchanted with presidential nominees? Probably because they don't really pick. According to Butler, who becomes a nominee comes down to four things: How much money can they raise? Can they manage the media? Can they win the respect of their party? And is their campaign well organized? If a candidate can't do these things, they are bound to lose the nomination. Butler also explains the three way primaries work out: a "Seven Dwarfs" scenario (no obvious nominee, a "Snow White" eventually emerges because of the four aforementioned reasons), a "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" scenario (an obvious nominee against others who don't have a chance of winning), and a "Clash of the Titans" scenario (the incumbent president or vice-president vs. an incredibly strong candidate who looks like he has a fighting chance - but the incumbent always wins anyway).

All of this is explained clearly, with lots of details that make it both interesting and easy to follow. At times Butler takes his metaphors a little too far, but when it comes to genuine political science, this book is top-notch.

I am the professor majoring in law in South Korea.
I am an attorney of N.Y State. I earned LL.M. degree at the George Washington Law School in 1995.
I read the book. And I was very impressed by it's high quality.
I strongly recommand this book.
Recently, the modern disputes which accompany collective and diffused damages such as consumer conflicts and pollution conflicts occur frequently because of the rapid industrialization and the complexity of social environment. But the present litigation system can't relieve damages satisfactorily. On account of that, public criticism is aroused in the form of the collective enmity of the people. It is the judicial settlement that fixes the conflicts desirably.
To cope with these conflicts, there is Class Action, Citizen Suits in America and Verbandsklage in Germany. In Korea, the discussion to introduce Class Action is being hotly spread out.
In the position of a plaintiff, the collective litigation system is the useful means of judicial relief for many victims with small sum damage. In the position of court, the collective litigation system can promote the judicial efficiency through the unificative decision.
There is quite differences between the two systems. The Verbandsklage of Germany gives the right to litigate only to the qualified organizations while the Class Action of America gives the right to litigate to a private person in principle and doesn't limit it to a specific person.
Moreover, the Class Action of America is applied to the post-relief of damages yet happened but the Verbandsklage is used to hinder damages from happening by preventing offenses. In the back of these differences, there are differences of legal culture between the two nations. Germany fundamentally has a collective legal culture or legal culture centering around the legislative body while America has an indivisualistic legal culture. Therefore, in the Class Action of America, an individual takes the lead and the individualistic profit is an important object. But in the Verbandsklage of Germany, groups take the lead and the public profit is an important aim.
The identity of the Korean environmental law must be secured not through closure and insulation but through open-hearted attitude and positive groping.
The introduction of Class Action doesn't settle all questions. The important thing is not the introduction of the collective litigation system but its proper administration and strong will to settle the question. In this sense this book will contribute the development of
Korean class action law.
Again I strongly recommand this book.