Rating: 
Summary: A Very USEFUL Book
Review: This book is an extremely USEFUL to anyone who has been alive during the last 30 years (or longer). It demonstrates unequivocally just how hypocritical the left is. Without mincing words, become acerbic, or lowering herself to ad hominem attacks Mona Charen has painted a viciously clear picture of the liberal left. One that may get you angry when you realize how they get a free ride by the liberal press in espousing their anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-liberty claptrap to the masses. I had always wondered why the liberals had such a deep seated hatred of Ronald Regan, this books clarifies the issue. Regan was the arch-nemesis of the left because he attacked their cherished political ideology of communism. Not only did he attack it, but it was his policies and superior guidance of world affairs that brought Russian communism to its death bed. The liberals, especially those in the press who idolized Russian communism, were infuriated at Reagan. Please don't get me wrong, this book is not about Reagan, it is about the communist threat and the cold war and how liberals reacted to this challenge. However, Ms. Charen has done her part in helping to illustrate the pre-eminence of Mr. Reagan. It is strange that when Ronal Regan was president, I thought he was an effective leader but not an excellent president. Well history has shown that Mr. Reagan was a superlative leader one with keen insight and intuition. Ms. Charen thanks for the imprinting this memory onto the pages of history for us.
Rating:
Summary: Useful for an Informed Electorate
Review: For those of you who haven't noticed, the national Democratic Party has changed in the past forty years. It's no longer the party of FDR, JFK and LBJ. It's now the party of the anti-American, socialist left. In American politics, the words "liberal" and "progressive" mean socialist, and most national Democrats are progressive liberals. (Many Democrats on the state and local levels are not yet sufficiently enlightened and still cling to traditional American capitalism.) Mona Charen gives us a thoroughly researched history of the American left going back to the Walter Duranty era when he was reporting for the New York Times about Stalin's workers' paradise in the Soviet Union. It's amazing that in the modern era people with eyes to see and ears to hear cannot sense the duplicity and propaganda that passes for objective reporting in the main-stream press, but apparently there are still many Americans who fail to see that the national Democrats are socialists. This book tells the historical truth about how American liberals have continually supported communist revolutions around the world while undermining American interests, sometimes deliberately. They've been apologists for every communist tyrant from Stalin to Pol Pot. They're all cold warriors now that the Soviet Union has been defeated by Reagan initiatives, but during the Reagan years they continually ridiculed and fought SDI, preferring instead arms limitation talks and appeasement. SDI proved to be the wooden stake driven through the heart of the Soviet Union. After 9-11 the left was curiously silent for a few days but quickly regained form by excusing the terrorists who were compelled to fly those jets into the twin towers because of "American militarism." Liberals won't go anywhere near this book and for conservatives it's preaching to the choir. But every American should read it. Ms. Charen is an excellent writer and can back up every claim she makes with solid evidence. The word "socialist" still has a bad connotation with Americans, so the national Democrats and their accomplices in the main-steam media cannot yet be honest about who they are. Some day it might not matter. Both national parties are taking America toward socialism, but the Democrats are aggressively driving to get there as soon as possible. If and when that happens, it should be the result of deliberate decisions by an informed electorate, not because we were duped by political propaganda.
Rating: 
Summary: The Author is in Fact the Tool
Review: This is a terrible book and quite remarkably she herself has become the "tool" of the government propaganda machine. It has become the age of McCarthyism where anyone disagreeing with the government views is considered anti-American, or a fool, or worse a "liberal". By the way I am a conservative - not just dumb. The government has been out of control for decades supporting dictators and invading small countries. It is not a liberal or republican problem it is a national problem supported by both parties. Now after years of supporting dictators like the Saudi's they themselves have spun off and created groups like Bin Laden that have come back to attack the hand that feeds them. The Saudi government still supports terrorism. The Bush family has close business ties to the same people that support the terrorists. The US has done nothing about the real problem of Saudi Arabia. Nothing is being done nor does there appear to be any plan to stop the Saudi government except but to make an expensive invasion of Iraq, a country near Saudi Arabia, that was never a threat to the US. It is shameful and very sad and supported by a broad propaganda effort that so far has fooled more than half of the American people - including this author, and the US has expended a lot of international goodwill. The "war on terror" is in fact an attempt reverse almost 30 years of support by America of Muslim terror groups going back to when Jimmy Carter shipped weapons and materials to Afghanistan. If you want to win the war on terror, you boycott Saudi Arabia and buy the oil elsewhere. Jack in Toronto
Rating:
Summary: Anxiously awaiting a sequel
Review: Mona Charen has been telling the truth about liberals for quite a few years now. A good measurement of her success is the liberals' reactions to her columns. When the liberal Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World used to run her columns (sadly, Cal Thomas and George Will are the only two conservatives currently included on that newspaper's opinion pages), regular Journal-World columnist and professor emeritus of the "prestigious" White Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas, labeled Charen a "troglodyte." "Useful Idiots" is sure to elicit much more name-calling from the left. Such name-calling is the best evidence that a conservative has made an excellent argument. When I first saw the cover of Charen's book, and noted the photos of, among others, Phil Donahue, Peter Jennings, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Jimmy Carter, I thought the book was about the war on terrorism. However, the subtitle, "How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First," tells us that the book deals with events during the second half of the last century. Charen details how liberals claimed they helped win the Cold War after that war was over, but were clearly on the other side during the actual battles. In the pages of "Useful Idiots," we find Sen. Chris Dodd lambasting the Reagan administration for fighting against the "tide of history" when it sought to rid Central America of the Marxist Sandinistas. Seven years later, the Soviet Union had fallen and the Sandinistas were voted out of power. This is merely one example of how liberals got it wrong during the Cold War. (Note: Sen. Dodd has been one of President George W. Bush's harshest critics vis-a-vis the Iraq war. Given his poor track record, why does anyone still take him seriously?) One reviewer noted that, while he liked the book, "Useful Idiots" offered nothing that he hadn't already read elsewhere. It is true that much of the information in this book has been documented in other sources. However, what makes "Useful Idiots" so valuable is the fact that we have all of these cases of the liberals being wrong in one book. I, too, have read about most of these cases before. However, there are many that I had forgotten about. Americans need to be reminded about the outrageous actions of the liberals during the Cold War as the same liberals make similar arguments regarding the war on terrorism. One of these same liberals is Rep. John Conyers on Michigan. This useful idiot wanted to impeach President Reagan over the invasion of Grenada. The same Rep. Conyers is now talking about impeaching President Bush over the liberation of Iraq. Some clever fellow once observed that Democrats try to impeach Republican presidents when those presidents act presidential, while Republicans impeach Democratic presidents when they act unpresidential. As I read through "Useful Idiots" and listened to liberals debating the war on terrorism, it struck me that Charen could write another book in several years. The title and photos on the cover could remain the same. Only the subtitle would have to be changed to "How Liberals Got it Wrong in the War on Terrorism and Still Blame America First." I had to laugh after reading the account of Peter Jennings reading poll results in January 1990 that showed Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas would win big in Nicaragua's presidential election. It turns out that opposition candidate Violetta Chamorro actually won 55 percent of the vote. The same Peter Jennings is on television today telling his shrinking audience that Iraqis are not welcoming Americans with open arms. One would think that Jennings would know by know that oppressed people are too intimidated to express their true opinions. In the privacy and safety of the polling booth, Nicaraguans rejected the communists. Once Saddam and his regime are clearly out of power, Iraqis will express what they truly feel. Jennings will once again have egg on his face, but that won't stop him from continuing to be a useful idiot. One minor problem with "Useful Idiots" is the editing. The names of Ramsey Clark, John Maynard Keyes, Sidney Bluemnthal, and Anastasio Somoza are misspelled. This is minor, but liberals are likely to try discrediting Charen's work on this basis in lieu of dealing with the substance (which, unlike Bill Clinton, is unimpeachable). None of those who gave this book a poor rating noted the misspelled words. This leads me to believe that they did not actually read the book. Charen's book is an invaluable contribution to those of us who care about history being portrayed in an accurate manner. Liberals were clearly on the wrong side during the Cold War. As we continue to fight the war on terrorism, we should keep that in mind as the same liberals attempt to block President Bush's efforts.
Rating:
Summary: She should write a book ...
Review: on all of the idiots that gave this book a 1 star and then proceeded to call her a facist, racist, fill-in-blank-ist. The quotes from mainstream academic economists are - alone -worth the price of the book. Lester Thurow defending the communist economic system as late as the '80s all but discredits his entire career. All you have to remember is this: Communist China = 65+ million murdered
Communist Soviet Union = 20-30+ million murdered
Communist Khmer Rouge = 2-3+ million murdered etc. etc. etc. murder murder murder And idiots in this country continue to this day to defend these "evil empires." Moreover, they blame the actions of these murderous regimes on the US. Not only is that idiotic, it is immoral.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible analysis
Review: I have to admit that Ms. Charen's book is well-argued and to the point. But she has failed to show the readers the complexity of foreign affairs during the cold war. To lump all non-hardliner policy makers as "liberals" is misleading. With the exception of the later stage of Vietnam, there had been an elite consensus among policy-makers with regards to Soviet Threat. We would always be a)fully committed to support our European allies b)have a second-strike nuclear arsenal c) maintain friendly powers in Asia to counter-balance China. Although there were occasional dissenters, US policies in general supported a "hard" approach to the Soviet Union. Ms. Charen has also tried to suggest that academic Sociologists treated the Soviet Union as a friend. This is simply not true. From what I know, the disdain for the Soviet Union has a positive correlation with expertise in Soviet history. This book lacks concrete analysis by "watering down" much cold war policy details. She has made no use of any recently declassified policy memos and much of the book is a piece of personal opinion. Although it's fun to read, readers should remind themselves that international politics is not so easily defined and hind-sight is always 20/20.
Rating:
Summary: A searing indictment, with plentiful evidence...
Review: I have enjoyed leafing through this book, which is, in a way, funny (how could people be so stupid?), and, in a way, infuriating (how could people be so stupid?) Perhaps the most important point was this: whenever Democrats (or "liberals," take your pick) get involved with foreign policy decisions, they immediately frame the entire debate in terms of "peace" versus "violence." When this frame is set, all the people who set the frame agree that "peace" is infinitely better than "violence," and so (unwittingly) they become the true heirs of Neville Chamberlain, architect of appeasement and phrasemaker ("peace in our time"). These people apparently never consider any foreign policy issue in terms of "right" and "wrong" -- or "good for the world" versus "bad for the world" -- or even (God forbid) "good for America" versus "bad for America." Nope. The only visible issues are "peace" versus "violence." Check it out. They are all on the record, even after 9/11. The only option they offer us, in a dangerous world, is "dialog." You know yourself, as you read this, that I am not making this up. The book is well-done.
Rating: 
Summary: Should be required reading.
Review: After reading both "Useful Idiots" and Ann Coulter's "Treason" (both books should be required reading for high school history courses), I am outraged that liberals in our country continue to defend an ideology which has produced the two greatest mass murderers in history--Mao and Stalin. And let's not forget Pol Pot and the 2 million-plus murders he was responsible for. On top of the murders of 100 million-plus people, millions more were oppressed, imprisoned and/or tortured. And yet liberals here in America defended these dictators, calling them "agrarian reformers," or saying they were "misunderstood." Liberals have an uncanny knack for ending up on the wrong side of history, as shown during the Cold War, and once again today during the war on terrorism. These people have shown repeatedly that they cannot be trusted with U.S. foreign policy, and none of them should ever be allowed even within dreaming distance of the White House.
Rating: 
Summary: The naive Neocons--The latest useful idiots
Review: Now that it has broken that the Neocons were played like violins by Ahmed Chalabi and his handlers in Iranian intelligence, and foolishly believed all the silliness that Iran thought up for them, I guess the phrase "useful idiots" now has a new and even sadder definition. Doing the misguided bidding of Iran, an axis of evil, is not an example of hard-headed analysis--it is utter gullible naivete. Can't wait for Charen's scathing account of how the Neocons turned America's credibility and intelligence services into the Keystone Kops, gullibly suckling at the teet of Iran. Good job, fellas!
Rating:
Summary: For those who don't remember....
Review: A concise review of the left's history of apology for, support of, or just plain ignoring tyrniry during the Cold War. For anyone who was a news junkie as a youth (particularly one who was a Scoop Jackson Dem like myself at the time) Nothing in this book will be much of a surprise. I remember it all and stand amazed as people talk about what they said in the past as if there was no such thing as video tape. I would suggest that is was this very willingness to excuse evil and unwillingness to admit that perhaps the willingness to trust the USSR over US was wrong that resulted in may people like myself going to the other side politically. Charen writes a readible book which should be added to every library, particularly to places like the Holocost Musuem to show how "never again" can have caviats if one is not carefull. Buy and read: By an odd coincidence today on C-SPAN there was a call in question asking "Is America the greatest country in the world." Much to my delight both people on the left and right call in to say yes and for many of the same reasons. Perhaps there is hope for my old party after all.
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