Rating: 
Summary: I loved this book.....
Review: I loved it but having first hand experience with liberal distortion of history, (attending college as a history major) it can also be a pretty frusterating read because it's unfathonable to me why liberals possess the anti-American, self-defeatist attitude that they do. There's not much that I can say about this book that hasen't already been said better by anyone before me who's already given this book 4 or 5 stars. I will point out that I personally found this books strongest point to be in it's excellent and meticulous documentation. The reader is bombarded with example after example of liberal ideology and hatered for thier own country that defies comon sense; each example well documented. The book deals with liberal opposition during the cold war, (primarily during the Regan administration), Vietnam, and the last chapter or two touches on post-9/11. I also recomend reading "Treason" by Ann Coulter, which I'm in the middle of reading right now.
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Summary: THE FIRST BIG BUZZWORD OF THE NEW MILLENIUM
Review: Such the appropriate title, and such a cool new buzzword -- even used it myself here in the office a time or two -- it doesn't just apply to politics ya know ! Most importantly Ms. Charen rights the wrongs of decades of abuse by the extreme leaning leftists. And yah, socialism imposed -- even if surreptitiously -- is still communism. Near and dear to my heart is the good ole much aligned and abused police action in Vietnam. Being a former Marine, as a young man I found a country that loathed the military, and everything we stood for, and that was tragic indeed. It was made even more so by the cowardice of political leaders, the brash lies and falsehoods perpetuated by the media, and a sympathetic group of just plain USEFUL IDIOTS who went along with their lying hype. My nomination for favorite book of the year is Keshner's COCKPIT CONFESSIONS OF AN AIRLINE PILOT. Do yourself a favor and but this book, now.
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Summary: Revisionist Right-wing Ranting
Review: In which once again, a reactionary beats the drum of "Liberal wrong, conservative right". Has any other group in history worked so hard to validate itself by tearing down anyone who holds differing views? Recommended for anyone who likes the complexity of historic issues reduced to black/white, bumper sticker sloganeering. There is a certain ready-made audience for the childish name calling that right-wingers specialize in, though this particular tome is probably a little dense for the average "ditto-head". They might do better to stick to the livelier fictions and sloppy research of an Ann Coulter. The title tells you all you need to know. It's doubtful that any thoughtful reader seeking fair and balanced writing would ever pick up this volume, but if they did, they'd be treated to a shrill litany of distortions and selective factual presentations. As in so many other cases, the people most bent in wrapping themselves in the flag seem to "think" that dissent or criticism of one's country is "treason" rather than civic responsibility. History records many places where blind, unquestioning, lock-step support of all state policy is welcome, where any effort at critical thinking is anathema. The former Soviet Union would be one such place, and I never cease to be amazed by the "patriots" who cannot see that the dream state that they aspire to has already come and gone. To update an old saw: "Patriotism" is the FIRST refuge of the scoundrel. Engaging in the enumeration of perceived Liberal/Democrat errors of judgement does not automatically bestow righteousness upon the right. A more intellectually valid approach to bolstering conservative views (which after all, is what books like this are all about) might be to abandon the "sexiness" of inflammatory rhetoric and instead focus on positions where the right was "right". Show us, don't tell us. Until a right-wing writer finds it in her/him to rise above schoolyard taunts, your message will continue to be recieved only by losers, people virulent in their hates, and anyone content to let others do their thinking for them.
Rating: 
Summary: An important piece of missing history
Review: When Bill Clinton said that we were all cold warriors once upon a time, the record needed to be set straight. Mona Charen's great research and prose demonstrate what sissies National Democrats were post Vietnam. Not only were they too feeble to stand up against the barbarians, they many times tried to help the wrong side. The genius of Charen's title, Useful Idiots is that Lenin coined it himself when he described the kinds of people that would unknowingly help their cause. But Charen also makes the case that some politicians are so reflexively leftwing that they seemed to actually admire communist regimes. Today that would best be demonstrated in Fidel Castro. No matter how many human rights abuses or how much poverty the Cuban people have to endure, liberals will insist that Cuba's health care system is tops and literacy is the best in the world. While there is no independent data to confirm any of this, they buy it because it plays into their prejudices of share and share alike. They don't seem to mind that Castro still lives like a king 40 years after his revolution for equality. My favorite section of the book is the fight against communism in Central America. The Left was giddy with praise for Nicaraguan Strongman Daniel Ortega. Several Congressmen and celebrities traveled to see his proletariat "paradise." They Democratic controlled Congress had the aid package to the Contras rescinded and they were left to rot. What isn't remembered is that the Contras continued to grow in number anyway and were able to depose Ortega and insist on free elections. The Liberals were certain that Ortega would easily win that election and were stunned when the voters sent him to retirement. The book is full of quotes from reporters, anchormen, congressmen and celebrities defending the worst kind of barbarism. It is no wonder we continue to replay the horrors of Hitler and pat ourselves on the back for his defeat, because we haven't taken care that many bullies since. Mona Charen's book is a great historical document of what the American Left did in the face of totalitarianism from Vietnam to the end of the Soviet Union. The book is very timely since the Democratic aspirants are spending the lion share of their time nitpicking at Bush for defeating a dictator. When Bill Clinton said that we were all cold warriors once upon a time, the record needed to be set straight. Mona Charen's great research and prose demonstrate what sissies National Democrats were post Vietnam. Not only were they too feeble to stand up against the barbarians, they many times tried to help the wrong side. The genius of Charen's title, Useful Idiots is that Lenin coined it himself when he described the kinds of people that would unknowingly help their cause. But Charen also makes the case that some politicians are so reflexively leftwing that they seemed to actually admire communist regimes. Today that would best be demonstrated in Fidel Castro. No matter how many human rights abuses or how much poverty the Cuban people have to endure, liberals will insist that Cuba's health care system is tops and literacy is the best in the world. While there is no independent data to confirm any of this, they buy it because it plays into their prejudices of share and share alike. They don't seem to mind that Castro still lives like a king 40 years after his revolution for equality. My favorite section of the book is the fight against communism in Central America. The Left was giddy with praise for Nicaraguan Strongman Daniel Ortega. Several Congressmen and celebrities traveled to see his proletariat "paradise." They Democratic controlled Congress had the aid package to the Contras rescinded and they were left to rot. What isn't remembered is that the Contras continued to grow in number anyway and were able to depose Ortega and insist on free elections. The Liberals were certain that Ortega would easily win that election and were stunned when the voters sent him to retirement. The book is full of quotes from reporters, anchormen, congressmen and celebrities defending the worst kind of barbarism. It is no wonder we continue to replay the horrors of Hitler and pat ourselves on the back for his defeat, because we haven't taken care that many bullies since. Mona Charen's book is a great historical document of what the American Left did in the face of totalitarianism from Vietnam to the end of the Soviet Union. The book is very timely since the Democratic aspirants are spending the lion share of their time nitpicking at Bush for defeating a dictator.
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Summary: a lesson in twentieth century history
Review: This book fills a vacuum caused by a shortage of Cold War history books. I was a senior in College when the Berlin Wall came down, but modern college freshman do not even remember the Cold War. Books like this will help them understand what took place during those perilous days and how liberals obstructed us from winning the Cold War at every turn. This book quotes media pundits as smirking that the GOP would be a party without an enemy after the Soviet Union. What really happened is that the Dems became a party without a unifying agenda. They always gave lip service to not losing the Cold War (they did not believe it could be won) but when the time came to take some action, they told us it would lead to nuclear war, as is clearly documented in this book. I recommend this book both for people who would like documentation of what they remember and for young people who would like to learn about the world their parents inhabited alike.
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Summary: Serious Compilation of Mistaken Believers
Review: I will often clip a quote or comment out of a newspaper and send it off to a friend or family-member. "How could someone ostensibly intelligent say something so dumb?" Mona Charen has compiled an entire book of intelligent people saying dumb things, and she shows that this is not adventitious, but the result of an ideology that blinds some liberals to America's virtues and from Communism's bloody vices. The book bogs down now and then as Ms. Charen details leftist muddle-headedness, but pick up any chapter on any topic and there are head-shakers that will have you muttering at the lack of common sense of some of our politicians, intellectuals, entertainers.
For another point of view, see Tampa, Fl's review down below.
He constantly calls Ms. Charen a "facist". I wish he had explained what a "facist" is. Someone who does not wear a mask?
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Summary: Expose of a desperate, socialist, political party
Review: Liberals REALLY do have to be the most pathetic lot of idiots America has ever had to contend with. These revisionists of history know they could never enforce such a socialist agenda upon the American people, without first rewriting the constitution, and destroying the reputations of our very reputable founding fathers. Again, liberals hate America. They hate the truth. They hate themselves. Like the scarlet letter, they need a big 'L' painted on their foreheads. For 'Liberal'? No, for 'LOSER'. Conservatism is the salvation of this country. They know this. Why else do you think Liberals get on Amazon, look up all of the conservative authors' books, like this one, and give it a low rating without ever having read them? Because, again, they try to persuade public opinion through lies, propaganda, and self-fulfilling prophecies. READ THIS BOOK. Find out how to handle these despots. And then help spread the truth. Their tactics of desperation will only backfire. BANG!
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Summary: Liberals are on the wrong side of history
Review: The Truth, as they say, will set us free. This simple fact explains why the inexorable tide of history favors conservatism and leaves the liberals in the dust. Mona Charen's book is just straightforward facts that have been obscured by the people who had a vested interest in keeping the facts from becoming known. Winners write the history, and conservatives are the winners. The underlying question throughout Charen's book is, why do liberals harm America? It requires some psychology, applied to the issue of order and power. First, there is a strain that runs through a never-ending segment of the population that is anarchistic in nature, embodied by Russian emigre "Red Emma" Goldman. This strain believes there should be no government, just a body of "elites" who will make the right decisions that most yahoos are not smart enough to make. Combine this with their great unease with the power of America. History tells us global power is corrupting. Conservatives think God endowed America with the ability to do His good work after centuries of evil. Liberals prefer either not to believe in God, or that He places no special sanction on America. Therefore, they say America is not checked by morality, its leaders prone to the mistakes of Napoleon, the Roman Empire, the Spanish Inquisition, etc. Conservatism requires a faith in America to do the right thing, and Charen demonstrates that we have rewarded that faith from the beginning. Liberals are the ones who do not do the right thing, so they must discredit those who do in order to hide their own inadequacies.
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Summary: Not from Tampa
Review: This is a somewhat tedious, though valuable, recital of the left's idiocy during the 20th century. It proves what your hearing now is nothing new. Just read the review from Tampa, FL as a prime example. Simply put, the left hates America and that hate is what drives their ideology.
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Summary: Liberal Bashing by a Die- Hard Conservative
Review: Author Mona Charen is a conservative columnist and former speech writer who has written her share of right- leaning material over the years. In "Useful Idiots", Charen summarizes what she believes are the major flaws in liberal thinking and she includes examples and direct quotes to back up her thinking. In some respects, Charen's criticisms seem valid and she explains them reasonably and effectively. It is true, for example, that the liberal media often shows sympathy toward Communism and Socialism. Always ready to embrace the idea that bigger government is better, it's common to see news stories where members of the liberal media elite will try to sway viewers and/or readers into believing that conditions are not really all that bad in Communist countries like Cuba and that America is really the place where poverty and mistreatment of the poor is widespread. This is, of course, complete nonsense but the media always tries to paint a semi- rosy picture of Communism, no matter how bleak the true story really looks. Charen is correct when she points out this stupidity, and she backs up her claims with proof. In other areas, though, I have to question Charen's assumption that the liberal who spouted off some outrageous claim is necessarily an "idiot" for doing so. Charen has dozens and dozens of quotes in this book from prominant liberals and many of them do, indeed, sound rather idiotic at first. But what Charen doesn't explain is the reason behind the statements. For instance, Charen points out the stupidity of Walter Mondale in 1984, when he tried to say that nuclear war is the greatest threat the U.S. and the world will ever face and that it's an issue that will define whether or not we live or die in the near future. Yes, it's true that Mondale did make statements to this effect. But Charen makes no mention at all that this could have been (and most likely was) motivated by politics. She just sticks with the assumption that Mondale is an idiot to say something like this. Politicians, as we all know (I hope!), are liars by nature. In 1984, Walter Mondale faced a task that was probably even more impossible than winning a nuclear war: He was trying to defeat the immensely popular Ronald Reagan for the presidency. Mondale had to come up with some issue to use in the race for the White House that was scary enough to possibly muster up a few more percentage points in the polls. He decided to choose the possibility of nuclear war. I don't believe that Mondale was really dumb enough to believe his own statements. I think he only did this out of desperation. He had to think of something, so he decided to play politics and use the possibility of nuclear war to scare the public. It didn't work (Mondale lost the election by a huge margin), but you can't blame him for trying. In the same situation, most any politician would have done the same thing. It doesn't necessarily mean that he believed what his own words. Aside from that, Charen is an excellent writer, and she breaks down statements piece by piece, then uses actual lessons from history to show how the liberal speaker was way off base when he/she made the remark. She is effective, yes, but she fails to point out the motives behind the statements and some of her quotes could very well be taken out of context. This is one of those books that will be cherished by some, and despised by others. If you worship such political figures as Ronald Reagan, Pat Buchanan, and Bob Dole, then you will undoubtedly enjoy "Useful Idiots". But if your political preferences lean more toward Ted Kennedy, Michael Dukakis, and Bill Clinton, then you should probably avoid "Useful Idiots" completely. The title of the book, the quotes, and the accusations will make liberals' blood boil!
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