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| Book Reviews | Archive Contents | 2012 Election: | Obama's book | Biden's book | Romney's book | Ryan's book | 2012 Debates |
Seize Freedom! American Truths and Renewal in a Chaotic Age, by Rep. Thad McCotter  (Click for Amazon book review)
OnTheIssues.org BOOK REVIEW: We're not sure why Thad McCotter is running for President. He's a five-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, but no member of the house has won the presidency since 1880. Unlike McCotter, his two House colleagues running for the presidency in 2012 do have substantive presidential credentials: Rep. Ron Paul (R, TX) invented Republican grassroots Internet politics in 2008; and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, MN) chairs the House Tea Party caucus. Perhaps McCotter is actually running for Governor, and just wants his name made more well-known nationally. OnTheIssues.org usually adores non-mainstream candidates, and indeed was founded to give them more equal footing with the mainstream. But McCotter is just too nasty to fulfill the "firebrand" role like Sen. Mike Gravel (D, AK) did in 2008. Sen. Gravel made incomprehensible wordless Internet ads showing him throwing rocks into a lake and then walking away; Rep. McCotter seems to be following this model by writing incomprehensible passages about political philosophers like Wilhelm Röpke (whom he cites three times in this book!). But Sen. Gravel was charmingly iconoclastic, while Rep. McCotter is just plain nasty. For example, McCotter dismisses the 1960s by admiringly citing his father's take on hippies as "spoiled rotten jackasses" (p. 39). McCotter goes on to further name-calling, describing the New Left as "intellectually adolescent" (p. 39); declaring that the Left seeks "active euthanasia" (p. 41, which presumably means killing superannuated grandmothers); and deriding the Left for being "too European" (p. 39). That last accusation is particularly odd from a writer who routinely cites European philosophers as both positive and negative examples, from the aforementioned Wilhelm Röpke (a German socialist); to Fyodor Dostoevsky (p. 35, the Russian writer); to countless citations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (the French revolutionary philosopher). McCotter truly hates Rousseau -- who lived from 1712 to 1778, although McCotter bashes him as if he's part of the American Left's daily thoughts. For example, the Left is accused of "anointing itself Rousseau's Legislator" (p. 40, and oft repeated). I've attended many a Leftist powwow, and no one has even mentioned Rousseau, much less described "Rousseau's Legislator" -- in fact, the only time I ever recall Rousseau's name coming up was at a meeting of the Harvard University Libertarian Caucus, not a Leftist organization at all. McCotter's citations of philosophers extends well beyond Rousseau. He hits the usual suspects: Edmund Burke (p. 31 & 53); Saul Alinsky (p. 155); and Francis Fukuyama (p. 44). But he also hits the unusual: Alfred Lord Tennyson (p. 56); Antonio Gramsci (p.140); and Franz Schurmann (p. 141). Citing philosophers is nice -- if one is establishing one's intellectual bona fides, or writing an academic treatise. But doing so in a book intended to establish one's basis for the presidency just alienates the reader. Rep. Newt Gingrich does the same with his over-reliance on historical citations in A Nation Like No Other; McCotter should have learned the lesson from Gingrich about how alienating is that method. McCotter certainly alienated me. I read this book hoping to hear a fresh voice with a fresh perspective to further stir up the GOP primary and establish McCotter as a future conservative thought leader. Instead all I heard was shrill shrieking. -- Jesse Gordon, editor-in-chief, OnTheIssues.org, July 2011
American Truths and Renewal in a Chaotic Age, by Rep. Thad McCotter.
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