Rating:  Summary: Cite, Cite, Cite Review: Ann Coulter speaks for many when she finally points out that the liberal left and Democrats since Truman provide only antagonism to major events in recent history. The book is written with the same dry humor as Slander but is a little more dense.Coulter spent too much time focussing on McCarthy than I felt was necessary--but in her defense, she was trying to clarify an indoctrinated lie regarding the Red Scare. I also wish she spent more time speaking about current politicians but when she wrote the book perhaps the level of invective propaganda the Democrats are now spewing was reasonably less. I look forward to her next book.
Rating:  Summary: Zzzzzzz Review: Slightly entertaining, in a silly way, in small increments. Otherwise it's a cure for insomnia.
Rating:  Summary: sure... Review: "Come on. To assume that to disagree with the Republican party line is treason is not only simplistic it is insulting." No. What is insulting is for the left to keep on trying to mischaracterize the authors point of view in the book as "disagreeing with the Republican party line is treason" "Factcheck.org has a good analysis of both Coulter and her detractors." Factcheck has no such analysis. "But, I'm sure the converted will pass non-partisan analysis off as liberal media spin." Oh, since they call themselves non partisan, then it must be true.
Rating:  Summary: Obnoxious, if slightly amusing Review: I find it always quite entertaining while listening to or reading some ultra, on the edge of fanatism, conservative (as in this case) or liberal. It's almost funny but reading this book and trying to follow the logic of the author, her many quotes from various sources, creates a totally opposite effect from the one the author desires. Just in this particular sense the book is a failure - it failes to convey the message. Besides, it's full of hatred and very obnoxious. Al Franken called this book a political pornography and I totally agree. The book contains a few interesting points and arguments but the way Ann Coulter writes about it kills any potential interest in these points and arguments (in the end people don't watch pornography to find some interesting ideas).
Rating:  Summary: Preaching to the fundamentalist choir Review: I firmly believe that she has made a very compelling case that Republican Presidents tend to act with honor and with America's best interest at heart when it comes to fighting tyranny and terror and that Democratic Presidents tend to act without honor and without America's best interest at heart when it comes to fighting tyranny and terror, thus the apt title of this book "Treason". Come on. To assume that to disagree with the Republican party line is treason is not only simplistic it is insulting. As I recall FDR was a Democrat and took opposing someone fairly out there on the tyranny scale rather seriously. Factcheck.org has a good analysis of both Coulter and her detractors. But, I'm sure the converted will pass non-partisan analysis off as liberal media spin. It is amazingly convenient, if someone doesn't agree with you, they are a liberal hack who probably had a hand in Vince Foster's death and everything else that is Clinton's fault.(..)
Rating:  Summary: Obnoxious but sometimes thought-provoking Review: 2.5 stars. I didn't expect to find anything of value in this book. We're all familiar with Coulter's deliberately provocative style (a tedious mix of hyperbole, sweeping generalization and hypocrisy). Her approach isn't nuanced enough to be called satire. Al Franken had it right when he called her a political pornographer, catering to her audience's basest instincts. Nevertheless, some of her underlying arguments appear well-supported. She makes some interesting points about the relative merits of diplomacy and military intervention, and she's obviously correct in stating that some liberals reflexively oppose everything that a Republican president does. (Of course, there are plenty of dogmatic conservatives as well- note some of the five-star reviews for this divisive, nasty book...) Her bias is always obvious and she often cherry-picks facts to support her position, but I sometimes had difficulty refuting her arguments. The bottom line is that this book helped me pinpoint some gaps in my knowledge and some possible flaws in my reasoning. "Treason" is a reminder of the importance of an informed opinion. All readers of this book, knee-jerk liberals and knee-jerk conservatives alike, should use it as a catalyst for re-examining their own biases and seeking out multiple points of view.
Rating:  Summary: Blame it on the Liberals Review: Even with hindsight some conservatives can't see straight. Another long winded harangue from the pin-up girl of the Right Wing, this time doing a bit of revisionist history to blame liberals for every ill conceivable from Truman to Clinton. There isn't much in this book that hasn't already been said 100 times over by other conservative pundits. Everyone knows the failure of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to deal with the Vietnam War, and McNamara has been more than forthcoming in his role in escalating the war, but Coulter seems to forget that this was a war that stemmed back to the Eisenhower administration, which supported the French in Indochina before lending assistance to a "third force" in Vietnam that would supposedly better connect with the people. No one administration stood out in this war that stretched from the mid-50's to 1975, including Cambodia. It was a disgraceful episode in American history that drug on despite Nixon's "secret plan" to bring it to an end. A plan whose only purpose it seemed was to secure him a second term. I don't expect someone like Coulter to examine these issues in any depth. She uses them more as a sounding board for her vitriolic chatter. But, she has found an ear among conservatives who are looking to bury "liberalism" once and for all.
Rating:  Summary: Many Important Facts Review: Although the book is stylistically written in a way to tick off left wing extremists, many of the points made in the book are extremely sensible and important. If it wasn't for writers like Coulter, the fact that JFK and RFK had Martin Luther King wiretapped to smear him, that Truman's coverup resulted in McCarthyism, and that Robert McNamara holds most of the responsibility for the Vietnam War would be totally erased by partisan historians. People also tend to forget that most of the civil rights legislation, the EPA, Affirmative Action, and Great Society reforms that worked were developed by the Nixon Administration. When Reagan cut social programs in the 1980s, they were Nixon's, not Johnson's or Kennedy's. It is disturbing that opponents of Coulter treat "Treason" as a Partisan attack rather than a reminder of important historical facts that academia tries to erase from the record. Please, read the book with an open mind and don't be so narrow minded that you overlook the importance of "Treason."
Rating:  Summary: Ann Coulter Exposed Review: I can no longer remain silent on what I know beyond a moral certainty about Ann Coulter. It is time that the American people know the truth: Ann Coulter is an agent working for the liberals as part of a vast diabolical plot to undermine the validity of most core conservative positions and to turn the whole of conservatism in this country into a laughing stock. Coulter represents liberal treachery in its most cancerous and insidious form. Unable to enter into an honest, evenly matched challenge of conservative principles so that they can be laid out before thinking and principled Americans to decide, liberals like Coulter have attempted to sabotage the process by writing a "conservative" set of essays so spectacularly burlesque of reasoned conservative views, so outrageous and over-the-top that the reading public will reflexively dismiss conservatives everywhere as paranoid lunatics. In their own dark twisted plot, these liberals have apparently hoped that through Coulter's "Treason," they could do to the Republican Party what "Spinal Tap" did to heavy metal music. Herein then lies but the most recent lurid example for the magnitude and depth of nefarious mendacity liberals are willing to go to lay siege on democracy. To effectively counter this evil liberal insurgency, it is necessary to understand the cunning artfulness of their unctuous trade. Leaving no detail to chance, Coulter and her liberal masters have crafted a book of such shrill and vituperative stridency that the prose literally leaps off the page like spittle hitting you in the face if you were to stand too close to an irrate neo-Nazi at a Klan rally. Coulter shows herself to be a true artisan of ingenious nuance. The "liberal" that Coulter refers to is deliberately kept broad and absurdly general as to include virtually anyone who still favors a two or more party system of government. At various turns liberals are "the Democrats," the academic "elite," the media, civil libertarians, virtually anyone who defied McCarthy or Nixon. The unwitting reader, lured into Coulter's web that beckons with a sense of urgency issues of fundamental concern, is then ambushed by a relentless onslaught of banalities and side-splitting absurdities which make the liberal bogeyman into everyone so that the liberal is effectively rendered into no one. All this is done without once revealing her true liberal agenda that would belie itself in the less skilled hands of a satirist or mere pundit. The crown jewel of this screed is the case for Joe McCarthy. As Coulter is willing to admit, there was considerable communist activity in 40's-50's America: some of it of the romantic ideological variety espoused by rather uninformed dilettantes largely from academic and art quarters while others were true subversives and communist agents actively infiltrating and spying within the U. S. Government. Coulter's scheme here is to depict McCarthy as a martyr who was maligned as part of a liberal plot to neutralize the exposure of true communists. But Coulter's hidden leftist machinations here do not hold up in the light of more rigorous scrutiny. Given the real threat that communism and Soviet espionage posed during the Cold War period, why was such an awesome responsibility of determining the truth, of separating real threats from uninformed sympathies, placed in the hands of a drunken buffoon like Joe McCarthy who turned the entire inquiry into an idiotic witch hunt? I'll tell you why. I'm afraid that I must now share what I understand beyond a moral certainty: Joe McCarthy was a communist agent planted in an elaborate plot to obscure the real threat of communist espionage and sabotage under a carnival cloud of absurdity and extremes. When the inquiries were effectively halted with Welch's famous charge to McCarthy, "have you no sense of decency," little did Welch realize how perfectly he was playing into the diabolical hands of Joe McCarthy and his clandestine communist plot to innoculate the American people from a real concern by amplifying it to a ridiculous level of absurdity. I will reveal more latter...
Rating:  Summary: Fair and Balanced Review Review: People should indeed read this book. Note that I said READ this book. I did not say anything about buying the book and wasting your money. Take it out of your public library, or perhaps borrow it from a gullible friend. I spent much of the last month reading both sides of what appears much like a court battle. Now in court, the prosecution goes first, and the defense follows, so the books I read and the order of reading were: (1) Slander ..., by Ann Coulter (2) Treason ..., by Ann Coulter (3) Let Freedom Ring ..., by Sean Hannity (4) Big Lies ..., by Joe Conason (5) The Hunting of the President ..., by Conason and Lyons (6) Blinded by the Right ..., by David Brock Anyone who can take this little six-book journey and come away impressed by the likes of Coulter and Hannity has got to have a screw loose, in my humble opinion. Their so-called research doesn't hold up under the slightest scrutiny, and there are almost no primary sources listed in the "academic looking" end notes. This journey shows a person how "push-polling" works to slander a political opponent, how to lie with quarter-truths and innuendo effectively, and how to manipulate single-issue voters like the Religious Right with an anti-abortion stance, all the while selling those voter's children into effective slavery with Wal-Mart level jobs. To paraphrase a man from 50 years ago: "Have you no sense of decency, Coulter, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" And indeed they don't. The only real question is how long we will allow ourselves to be distracted by this power-hungry side-show of neo-con partisans masquerading as journalists and investigators. How many Enrons and Jimmy Swaggerts does it take before we all see that the neo-cons have no clothes, just juicy book deals and radio shows designed to help loot the nation without us noticing. Maybe 30 years from now they will be willing to use their skills to relate "The Fall of the American Empire" to which they will have contributed so much.
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