Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph

Publishers WeeklyThe culture wars rage on in this vigorous right-wing polemic. Conservative talk-show host Prager (Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism) fires salvos at "Islamism," the redoubt of terrorists, anti-Semites, and theocrats, but his focus is the ideological struggle between "Americanism"—defined as low taxes, small government, religion, and militarized patriotism—and "Leftism," the big tent of everyone from Karl Marx to the Democratic Party. Short on substantive policy analysis, he relies on broad, biting sociocultural caricatures: conservatives value liberty, reason, moral standards, hard work, earned rewards, faith, self-reliance, and manliness; leftists value authority, emotionalism, moral relativism, sexual license, unearned welfare handouts, spurious equality, nihilism, victimhood, and effeminacy.