I rented, and learned that there are three separate disc in Blockbuster, AND a duplicate third disc so if you grab the four that are on display, you end up with three useful and one duplicate. I certainly hope that Best Buy and others are only selling a single disc, but thought to mention, renter or buyer, beware. There are seven parts in all. The first two (disc one) takes you up to his riding off to the first Congress. The second goes through Washington's being elected President, and the last features his own presidency, tragedies, the rise of his son John Quincy to be president himself, and his death, the last of two (Thomas Jefferson the other) to survive, both dying on the 4th of July 50 years after independence.
I was moved by this movie, and think ever more highly of Paul Giamatti for his acting. I received insights I did not have before, and while some may complain about the details, for myself, this was an extraordinary three hours or so watched over the course of three evenings.
Forgery is old news–focus on the loss of morality, August 7, 2008
Ron Suskind
EDIT of 3 Sep 08 to add CIA published denial and attack, and comment from Association of Former Intelligence Officers, as a comment.
I have reviewed all the books linked to below, and my reviews of those books will add depth to this review.
Ron Suskind's first book on the current Administration, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 was extraordinary for its deep look at Dick Cheney and how since his Ford days, he has always favored unfettered Executive power and has never, in every Continuity of Government exercise, NEVER, given any thought to Congress. He ALWAYS went for an Executive dictatorship that used “war powers” to overturn the Constitution and every single civil liberty. However, the better books on Cheney (25 documented high crimes) and Bush (a tragedy within a farce) are these:
The media and the other reviewers are placing excessive emphasis on the forgery. This is old news. Vaclav Havel, former President of Czechoslovakia, personally said that the White House claims that Iraqi intelligence met Al Qaeda in his country were false. The son in law of Sadaam Hussein who defected asserted, very credibly (and without torture) that the regime kept the cookbooks, destroyed the stocks (Army intelligence tells me they poured so much stuff into the river the future of those downstream is very scary), and were bluffing for regional influence's sake). The fact is that in addition to Cheney's 25 high crimes, there were 935 documented lies told by the White House, and their lack of ethics, integrity, and respect for the Constitution is now beyond repudiation. See for example:
I continue to be astonished that citizens of the US are not burning tires in the streets and surrounding the White House demanding the immediate exile of Dick Cheney and the appointment of a care taker Vice President, at a time when open source intelligence (OSINT) is telling all of us, and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) that Dick Cheney has promised Israel the US will nuke the Iranians between November 2008 and January 2009.
The core value of this book is NOT in the forgery, which is old news, but in the broad picture it paints of a Republic that has become a Third World dictatorship in which Cheney calls the shots, Congress is complaint (both parties be damned, the Republicans for being collaborators, the Democrats for being doormats), the war loots the individual taxpayer for Halliburton's financial benefit, and brave Americans die for an illegal, immoral war justified by a cadre of liars: Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Feith.
I read a a great deal–an almost fruitless attempt to remain sane in a time of mass insanity–and what I admire most about this author and this book is his broad focus on morality, civil liberties, and the values that differentiate true conservatives who read and value philosophy–and liberals who parrot phrases they do not understand. This is SERIOUS stuff!
In support of this author's “brief” to We the People, who should all be absorbing and then acting upon his message of paradise lost, I can only point to four more books within my Amazon limit, but urge all to look at my lists of books on evaluating Dick Cheney, on the case for impeachment, and on strategy, emerging threats, and anti-Americanism for good reason.
Will and Ariel DurantThe Lessons of History, a capstone volume on their 10-volume History of Civilization, tell us that MORALITY is a strategic asset that is priceless. Ron Suskind is right on target when he points out that it is this aspect–the loss of our national morality–that distinguishes the Bush-Cheney regime. Other Presidents have lied, cheated, and stolen, but this is the first in modern history to combine BOTH global imperialism AND domestic subversion on a scale that makes Richard Nixon look like a novice.
Max Manwaring, contributing editor of The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century, and his distingusihed authors, make the point that LEGITIMACY is the single most priceless asset for any government, for it empowers citizens and enables commerce, innovation, and civil society.
Ambassador Mark Palmer, author of Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025 points out that the US is not respected nor trusted in part because the Bush-Cheney Administration has chosen to be best pals with all but two of the 44 dictators in the world. Rendition, torture, warrantless wiretaping at home (including Guantanamo); deep secret and financial relations–at our expense–with 42 dictators busy looting and terrorizing their publics. Go figure….
Much of what the author has brought together is not new for those of us that continually monitor and agonize over crimes against the Republic, but I have to give him credit for crafting an elegant presentation that makes his book a moving and hence essential wake up call for the Republic. The people are NOT sovereign today, the people are sheep whose civil liberties, freedom of expression, right to bear arms, even their right to assemble, are all under attack.
With my final link, choosing from over 1,000 candidates, I conclude with a strong recommendation for the book Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. America is a failed state, and it is not just Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson that are saying this, but also true conservatives steeped in thinking and integrity who are aghast at both the crimes of this Administration “in our name,” and the two clowns we have running for President, neither of whom can produce a strategy to restore America in the face of the ten high-level threats to humanity, a coherent policy matrix (twelve policies from Agriculture to Water), or a draft balanced budget and notional Cabinet proving they have a clue. They do not.
The USA has become a Third World nation. We let it happen by abdicating our moral and civic responsibilities as citizens of a Republic. Right now, regardless of who “wins” in November, we all lose. THAT is the point of this great book. The Republic is adrift and sinking fast.
Learn how to do public intelligence in the public interest at Earth Intelligence Network. It's time we take back the power.
Alexis de Tocqueville 2.0–Extraordinary Analytic Review, April 22, 2008
Howard Fineman
The publisher should have done a better job of loading information, such as the complete table of contents, using the Amazon Advantage features that I myself use when offering a book on Amazon.
Introduction: For the Sake of Argument
1. Who Is a Person?
2. Who is an American?
3. The Role of Faith
4. The Limits of Individualism
5. What Can We Know and Say?
6. Who Judges the Law?
7. Debt and Dollar
8. Local versus National Authority
9. Presidential Power
10. The Terms of Trade
11. War and Diplomacy
12. The Environment
13. A Fair, “More Perfect” Union
Conclusion
Some strategic reactions:
+ Conceived in 2005, executed since then, an incredible labor of love
+ As I went through I kept thinking “wow, what a mix of historical unraveling and comparison, current trials & tribulation, and philosophical commentary.” This is Tocqueville 2.0, nothing less.
+ I read a lot, so my admiration for the chapters was mostly a reflection of how skillfully I thought this master author and thinker had mined and then hammered into elegant shape a plentitude of sources and perspectives.
The message of the book is revealed on page 243, and I quote:
“We need to calm down, get engaged, and look for leadership. We have been here before: the seeming gridlock; the sudden, uncharacteristic loss of faith in the future; the sense that we cannot produce leaders capable of dealing with real problems. Facing despair and danger, we have always found in our storehouse of conflicting paradoxical traditions a way forward.”
The author's bottom line from earlier in the book: never-ending argument is who we are, how we are. It defines us, this never-ending back and forth. His idealistic view is that we cannot afford to NOT be part of the argument, but this does deny the reality that prior to this election cycle, fully half the eligible population refused to engage.
Frequently throughout the book I am struck by the currency of the author's citations and reflections–this is not a book written two years ago and a year in the editing. The author clearly reads and thinks broadly, and it shows.
Some nuggets that grabbed me:
+ New England (revere nature), Virginia (exploit nature), and the Middle Colonies (live within nature) existed as three completely distinct models for 180 years before the convention in Philadelphia. These three models play through each of the arguments.
+ The author irks me slightly when he says early on that the system for choosing presidents is not be best because we have turned it over to primacy voters. Later in the book he recovers with reference to The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
+ NAFTA hollowed out the midwest and many other locations across the USA, and Bill Clinton is as much to blame as anyone. It's led to Mexico importing half what they export to us.
+ Gore could have lost from any of 100 factors, not just Ralph Nader, but the author's favorite is the photo of Gore drinking champagne at 11 in the morning with the Chinese promoting free trade. The UAW acted on that.
+ Somewhere in the middle I have the note, great paper, great spacing, great font. This is an elegantly structured book and it honors the Tocqueville 2.0 status that I for one accord to this author's historical and current reflections.
+ On page 197 he cites Bush as reluctant to answer the question about who his advisors are, but then Bush mentions Wolfowitz, and raises his eyebrows to add significance. THAT was our early warning. See Obama – The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate for a similar warning on Zbigniew Brzezinski's last chance to be Dr. Strangelove on Russia.
+ Interestingly, although Dick Cheney appears in the index sufficient times, it is mostly with reference to undermining the environment and capturing energy at any cost [for every three dollars we pay at the pump, Exxon externalizes $12 in costs to us and all future generations].
+ On page 214 the three models come in very nicely on the subject of the environment:
– VIRGINIA: deplete the land, move West
– PENNSYLVANIA: “city in a garden,” the “middle landscape”
– NEW ENGLAND: untouched nature, against industrialization (of course this was very early on when Emerson and Thoreau were active.
The author notes that the reigning over-all idea in early America was that nature was our Eden to consume and to subdue.
Toward the end there are two fascinating insights:
+ John McCain used to rail at how the Bushes could muster money just by having “daddy” call everyone he ever gave an Ambassadorship to. The author provides some very powerful insights into John McCain, both the good (an earnest reformer) and the bad (perpetually angry).
+ John Edwards is not part of the system, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama *are* the system–perhaps one explanation he has not endorsed either.
I note: McCain-Edwards? Probably a bridge too far, but wouldn't that be something! It's certainly a ticket I would support, leaving Senator Clinton to be Majority Leader in the Senate. . If McCain can learn to say the word “transpartisan,” and mean it, he just might be the best break-out reformist President.]
The author ends with a quote from Bill Clinton in 1993, to wit:
“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
I agree with that, but only if all Americans pay attention, get into this fight for the soul of the Republic, and demand substance from all three candidates: a transpartisan sunshine cabinet appointed immediately; a balanced budget online for discussion by 4 July 2008; and opening the final presidential debates to candidates from the top five parties in America.
Before I list other books, I want to make one other very important point: the “advisors” to all three candidates are, as a general rule, completely out of touch with reality. What the candidates SHOULD be doing is leading national conversations on the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers, and then converting those conversations, backed up by real budget numbers, into a national consensus. LOSE THE ADVISORS, lead the arguments among us, of, by, and for We the People. THAT is how you lead this country.
Kudos to the author of this great book for timeliness, relevance, and elegance.
Extraordinary–Elegant in Concise Inisights and a Holistic Appraisal, March 18, 2008
Steven Waldman
This is a very special book. The author has done an utterly superb job of original research and elegant concise representation of the nuances in belief, practice, and circumstances with respect to the matter of religion as confronted by the Founding Fathers, and especially Ben Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.
We learn early on that freedom of religion was originally designed to apply only at the federal level–only later, when the North pushed through the Fourteenth amendment, did this get grandfathered upon the states.
We learn throughout the book that the original evangelicals wanted separation of the church and state, and made common cause with the rationalists, both groups believing that individual liberty and freedom of personal conscience were the core values.
Midway through the book we are confronted by the author with the reality that the diversity of faiths existent today in the USA render meaningless and unachievable any thought of America being a Christian or even a Protestant nation–pluralism rules.
Religion was appreciated by the Founding Fathers for its generally good impact on civic morals. George Washington especially, in the Continental Army, demanded religious tolerance, authorized chaplains, encouraged officers and men to attend religious services, and generally communicated a sense that the American Revolution was a “holy war” with God standing firmly with the colonies against England and the Church of England.
The author provides concise but no less shocking accounts of the early religious wars in America, with torture and execution and jail being imposed on Quakers and Baptists, Protestants against Jews and Catholics.
We learn that both Jefferson and Franklin doubted divinity but respected Jesus for his moral code.
Adams considered Catholics the “whore of Babylon” and this resonates with more than one modern US evangelical who has endorsed John McCain.
We larn that the Great Awakening and the revivals spawned a general practice of questioning authority.
The author draws a clear connection between political liberty and religious freedom–the two were intertwined from the beginning of the revolutionary impulse.
George Washington was spiritual but not theological.
There are many gifted turns of phrase throughout the book. One that stayed with me: Jefferson saw God not as devine, but as a “brilliant wise reformer offering a benevolent code of morals.”
Madison held a dispassionate faith in contrast to the others. He also felt that one should err on the side of separation.
From page 192 the author lists and discuonts four liberal and four conservative falacies. Buy the book.
The conclusion is as elegant as the rest of the book: Separation is the root condition for nurturing the fullest possible religious diversity and vitality.
I put this book down with an intellectual, spiritual, and civic “WOW” in mind. Truly an extraordinary work, a very important work, a lovely piece of scholarship that is meaningful to every American and every immigrant would would be an American citizen.
Amazon ate my earlier review, probably because they did not like all the links I included to make the point that while Patrick Buchanan is dead on target as an individual minds, there is a *huge* convergence of public opinion from left to right that boils down to this: government is broken, from war criminals in the White House to doormats in Congress abdicating their Article 1 responsibility to balance the power of the Executive.
I regret the loss of my detailed review, here are just a few of the notes from the flyleaf:
+ Insufficient focus on Cheney, but does correctly evaluate Wolfowitz as a madman.
+ Tars Bush's ideology as a “false God”as “modernity's Golden Calf.”
+ Respect Gore Vidal in citing “perpectual war for perpetual peace.”
+ Opens book with excellent discussion of the cost of lost wars and the mismantling of artificial nations (there are 177 failed states today,up from 148 in 2006 and 75 is 2005.
+ This may be the most credible and thoughtful author on the subject of treason in modern times. He explicitly accuses corporate chiefs who favor globalization and “transnationalism” with being traitors to the Republic.
+ He states that Islamic militarism is not a threat to America. I agree.
+ Pages 153-154 provide a brilliant articulation of seven reasons why China is not a threat to the US.
+ I note: “This is the epitaph for the village idiot.”
While I am not quite prepared to say the US should be a white, Christian nation, in part because the Native Americans and the people of color we brought here in slavery have every bit as much right as we do to the place, I *am* prepared to say that we need to emulate the Spanish and issue an expulsion edict for all Muslims who refuse to adopt our customs. Any Muslim that continues to beat their wife and demand that she dress in Muslim fashion, should be shown the way out of here. Any Muslim that speaks or hears without protest the advocation of the murder of Americans on American soil should be immediately evicted with all property confiscated. Indeed, I am beginning to believe that we should outlaw foreign ownership of anything and especially land, as well as absentee landlords, and of course revoke corporate personality.
I am going to list some books at the end of this review because while the author is utterly brilliant and on point, he overlooks all the evil things the US Government is doing “in our name,” and I will be the first to say we cannot restore our Republic unless we first restore both our moral compass and the sovereignty of We the People, demanding that the Constitution and Electoral Reform be the only two issues that matter henceforth.
The authors table of contents says it all, and I have never seen a better more organized laydown of content than this one, so good that I am spelling it out here because for many, the table of contents alone is sufficient (but I urge buying the book, it is very readable and thought-provoking).
An Economy in Hock
La Reconquista (the Reconquering, Mexico has gotten all the way back to the Guadalupe-Hidalgo line)
Absolishing Self-Defense
Subordinating Ourselves
Subordinating Our Culture
Subordinating Our Country
An Ideology of Submission
Enforcing the Ideology
Disabling Americans
Spreading the Ideology
Can America Be Saved?
Reclaiming the Individual
Reclaiming the Economy
Reclaiming the Government
If All Else Fails
This is an enormously important book that speaks to the heart and mind of every person of any race or faith who believes in America the Beautiful, in dignity, justice, and liberty for all. That's not what we stand for today, and that is a travesty of epic proportions.
One final observation: the author is completely correct in all that he says, but we have to recognize that it is the virtual colonialism, unilateral militarism, and predatory immoral capitalism (a class war on both our workers and middle class and those of other countries) that are the foundation for the mass immigration toward America. There is plenty of money for peace–for just one third of the $900 billion a year military budgets of all nations, we can resolve every single one of the ten high-level threats to humanity identified by the United Nations (with LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft representing America) and created infinite stabilizing wealth, what Medard Gabel calls in his forthcoming book, “Seven Billion Billionaries.” We know what needs to be done, we have to take back control of the US Government from the corrupt politicians and crooked Wall Street gangs that have legalized the marginalization of the majority of all citizens.
The blind support for an Israel that is both fascist and genocidal, combined with the idiocy of hundreds of billions of dollars for Egyptian arms purchases and total subservicen to the depraved and desposit Saudi regime are signs of a government that is totally out of touch with both reality, and the possibilities of peace and prosperity. No one in Washington cares about us, only about their next bribe or paycheck or lunch hour.
Renters & Buyers Be Alert, October 4, 2008
