Downsizing the U.S.A

Rating:
Summary: a thought-provoking argument
Review: If you also believe the answer to many of our social woes is a return to "community" and a reverse course away from impersonalization, the arguments in this book will appeal to you. More than an emotional cry for "smaller is better", rather one based on deep intellectual and rational thinking.

Rating:
Summary: For the outside-the-box thinker
Review: Naylor and Willimon offer a simple yet challenging suggestion to our churches, schools, universities, and government: grow smaller, not bigger. In so doing, the authors manage to make a credible case for seccession for states.

This book will make you reinvestigate your constitutional views and actually ponder the plausibility of a peaceful breakup or splitoff of the United States. These radical ideas are apt to gain a mainstream following, particularly for those disenfranchised with the state of our current welfare, social security, and public school systems. My only complaint with the book was that the end came too soon.

Rating:
Summary: Post Liberals Go Rural
Review: This book could be described as two liberals departing the "Babel" of Big Government Socialism looking for the "Promised Land" of Small Town Grass Roots, Feel Good, Ben & Jerry Socialism. While they've given up on "Big Government" solutions, as true liberals they can't for the life of them endorse home schooling as at least a possible solution or see that federalism as defined in the Constitution (not the mess we have now) WAS the decentralized state they now long for! While the quote the Bible to prove their point "sort of", it's really just to justify the cover illustration of the tower of Babel. It's as if the Bible were silent on anything else related to their subject! I guess the sorta-religious Eerdmann publishing house wanted to go "mainstream", but Amy Grant these guys ain't.

I will take what they say about not buying things at Wal Mart and those nasty mail order houses to "Save America" if they give all the royalties earned from sales of their book here at the "dreaded" amazon.com over to charity!

Some good stuff here. This work is another symptom that Big Government liberalism is falling apart and people who thought they were "politically correct" are becoming "Buchanan Democrats" who are "socially conservative" yet can't swallow the Republican worship of the "free market diety".