Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Sense: Restoring America's Promise at Home and Abroad - Softcover

Enormously important. -- Theodore C. Sorensen, Former Special Counsel to President John F. Kennedy This volume can only help restore America's promise at home and abroad. -- Kevin Phillips, former strategist in the Nixon White House, author of Wealth and Democracy This is one of the clearest, most important books of our time written by some of the most insightful and provocative experts. It is a truth-telling book that makes the connections from individual failures to the comprehensive indictment of what is wrong with America. This one book says it all with some of the most honest voices of our time. -- Celinda Lake, pollster and political strategist, Lake Snell Perry Mermin and Associates How do you get to the American people? They are aware of what is happening to some extent. It's the solutions that they need and we have failed. Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense can begin to reverse that. It offers a cogent and comprehensive policy prescription that people can understand. -- Ian Williams, Guardian and The Nation [Takes] a hard look at the United States and suggests practical alternatives to present policies. * The Review of Higher Education *

Featured on CNN, C-SPAN, FOX News, NBC's Today Show, Democracy NOW!, News Hour with Jim Lehrer and other leading talk shows. In the late 1960s, the bipartisan Eisenhower Violence Commission, formed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson and extended by President Richard Nixon, warned that most civilizations have fallen less from external assault than from internal decay. Over recent years, the internal decay prophesied by the Violence Commission, but also by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his military-industrial complex farewell speech, has been reflected in American public policies. The fault lies on both sides of the political aisle. After Pearl Harbor, "Mr. Republican," Senator Robert A. Taft, said criticism is patriotic. Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Sense assembles more than three dozen patriots. They range from Kevin Phillips, chief political strategist for Richard Nixon's victory in 1968, and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, called a "true American hero" by President George H. W. Bush in 1991, to Jessica Tuchman Mathews, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and former Oklahoma Senator Fred R. Harris, who advocated grassroots, populist policies when he ran for president in the 1970s. Why have American policies failed? What alternative policies can return America to its promise, internally and in the eyes of a global community shaken by, among other things, American torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners in Iraq? Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense answers these questions in a preposterous way. It asks citizens and policy makers to actually connect the dots-to move America forward by developing mutually supportive and complementary foreign, national security, Middle East, economic, domestic, inner city, media, campaign finance and voting reform policies. Too much to expect of our civilization? This important and timely effort is published in cooperation with The Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation. From Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Se