Rating: 
Summary: Blather
Review: I read the book thinking Coulter was going to make her points ala some wit and humor, using the Treason label as an obvious overstatement as a tool to gain attention. I was wrong. Coulter takes herself seriously. As any serious student of current national and world affairs knows, there is a great deal of PR taking place to sell the war in Iraq and tax cuts and environmental policy. The question is, is there any substance below the PR? If one finds there is not, obviously dissent is warranted. Coulter doesn't seem to get this. Under even a little scrutiny her arguments fall apart quickly. For mean -spirited right wingers, this is a quick sell. For all others, there's very little here that's not pure blather. It's of interest to note that Coulter didn't show up for a Kudlow-sponsored debate with Joe Conason, author of "Big Lies". This, after the show re-scheduled the first debate date upon Coulter's request. Who can blame her? Again, her work, her ideas cannot stand up to scrutiny, and no doubt she cannot stand up to an enquiring panel.
Rating: 
Summary: Facts prevail
Review: Essential reading for informed Americans. However Coulter miss interprets American defeat in Vietnam by adhering to President Reagan's perception of "A noble effort". Reagan may be forgiven his effort to achieve closure for Johnson's lies were not disclosed publicly until 10 years later. Coulter undermines her credibility by ignoring LBJ's lies & deceit, echoed by each JCS member. "Dereliction of Duty" by McMaster provides a factual account. Johnson triggered acts of war in '64 to win an election. Nixon pursued war long after defeat was self evident to win re-election in '72. Nixon's campaign rhetoric, 'Return home with honor' was a cruel hoax. Coulter's perception of potential victory is not valid. Claims to the contrary ignore the fact Nixon's 'solution' was ineffective as well as unacceptable. B-52 bombing in '72 failed to secure concessions. North Vietnamese 'Peace' terms prevailed. Coulter provides valuable insight on liberal efforts to rewrite history. The author will strengthen her logic by abstaining from similar subterfuge
Rating:
Summary: Facts prevail
Review: Essential reading for informed Americans. However Coulter miss
interprets American defeat in Vietnam by adhering to President Reagan's perception of "A noble effort". Reagan may be forgiven his effort to achieve closure. Johnson's lies were disclosed publicly 10 years later.
Coulter undermines her credibility by ignoring LBJ's lies & deceit, echoed by each JCS member. Johnson triggered acts of war in '64 to win an election.
Nixon pursued war long after defeat was self evident to win re-election in '72. Nixon's campaign rhetoric, 'Return home with honor' was a cruel hoax.
Coulter's perception of potential victory is not valid. Claims to the contrary ignore the fact Nixon's 'solution' was ineffective as well as unacceptable. Massive B-52 bombing in '72 failed to secure concessions. North Vietnamese 'Peace' terms prevailed.
"Dereliction of Duty" by McMaster provides a factual account of defeat in Vietnam.
Coulter provides insight on liberal efforts to rewrite history. The author will strengthen her logic by abstaining from similar subterfuge.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't listen to the 1 star reviews
Review: Wow, liberals are really scared of Ann Coulter. This book already has 1000 reviews on Amazon.com, that in itself shows you that Ann Coulter is doing soething right. It's funny how the 1-star reviews (most likely liberals, and I love the ones saying they're "embarassed conservatives", yea, sure) don't really say much about the book. It's evidence they haven't read it. The main reason liberals are upset about this book is the misunderstood premise of it: that liberals are traitors. Does Coulter mean that some registered democrat hair stylist in Stucky, Ohio is a traitor? Of course not. Coulter is talking about the liberal elite. The presidents, congressman, and of course the media. Again, it's obvious they have not read the book. It's funny to hear the 1-star reviewer's claim that it's "full of lies", yet they can't cite one supposed "lie" in this book. There are around 60 pages of references which Coulter cites throughout her book. There is very little she does not cite, so, again, I can't understand how there could be as many "lies" as they procliam. Ann Coulter's "Treason" is probably one of the most important books to come out in a long time. It tells you that, basically, Joe McCarthy was right that there were Soviet spies in the Government, and liberals didn't do anything about it. It tells you how liberals waffle on national security and foreign policy. How Clinton failed us with North Korea, how the media (NY Times, mainly) is so obsessed with political correctness that it didn't even mention that the Snipers that killed so many people in the Washington D.C. area were, you guessed it, Muslim. (But they made sure to mention they were "Gulf War Vets" and "Teenagers"). I've read this book. It changed my life. Read it. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Best doorstop I ever bought!
Review: Once again, in a failed attempt to elavate the political discourse, ann coulter has allowed more hypocrisy to be mass marketed and sold to unsuspecting individuals. She constantly falls victim of every thing(ad hominem arguments, lies, narrowmindedness) she attacks her liberal opponents for. Just flush your 12 bucks down the toilet, it is much more entertaining than reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: Beware: Corporatist Propaganda Published to Inhibit Populism
Review: This book should bear a warning: HIGH RISK OF STROKE TO THE LEARNED; DO NOT GET PREGNANT AFTER READING THIS BOOK, EVER.
Coulter's arguments are so wildly invalid that finding footing from which to launch a rational critique is impossible.
A few things, though, so I can sleep tonight. First of all, Joe McCarthy is almost entirely irrelevent to any discussion of the Red Scare. He jumped on board late in the game to further his political career. Truman, far from being a closet commie-sympathizer, created with his doctrine, the loyalty oaths, the Taft-Hartley Act, etc., both the illusion of an essential international crusade to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities around the world" by vanquishing communism, as well as the overwhelming fear that communists were silently invading America (think "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"), destroying our values and doing generally evil things. The first exercise of his doctrine was to crush a popular uprising against the monarchy in Greece in '47. Indeed, Truman took seriously the advice of Senator Vandenberg that to win Congressional approval for his foreign policy he would have to "scare the hell out of the country."
The true purpose of the Red Scare was two-fold. 1st: to fight nationalist revolutions abroad that might threaten our hegemony; 2nd: to undermine the American labor movement. Think about it: most of the popular revolutions and freely-elected leaders we crushed or deposed weren't even communist (Arbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran, Allende in Chile, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua--even Castro wasn't communist until the Soviets told him they'd buy his oil, which we refused in protest of his nationalization of Cuban industry, if he acted a little redder), and those who were donned the red cloth as a way of negating our imperialistic domination.
Furthermore, in a country that fears communism, leftism, socialistic movements in general, the unions are detoothed. The Taft-Hartley Act made solidarity strikes illegal. Strikes were attributed to communist instigators. Corporations raked in the profits from a obedient and malleable workforce. Mussolini once said that Facism should really be called Corporatism, because it is the dissolution of the barrier between corporation and state. Members of the ruling class flitted (and continue to flit; look at the current administration) about between positions of corporate and political leadership. Take MacNamara for example: CEO of Ford, Secretary of Defense, then director of the World Bank.
People like Coulter aren't proffering a valid point of view. They are not here to enlighten you. They are funded by large corporations to keep the working class, a group inherently inclined towards leftism, from realizing who their true oppressors are. Chief among the weapons in this assault is the classic political tactic of accusing your enemy of doing the bad thing you in fact are doing. There was a time in America when a legitimate political debate existed between libertarians and progressives. Now we have Democrats and Republicans, both closet corporatists who don the costumes of seeming-rivals to keep you, the hard working American (and we Americans do work harder longer and for less pay than the citizens of any other industrialized nation) from realizing that it's not the commies or the hippies or the liberals or even the terrorists who are oppressing you, to keep you from joining forces with your neighbors and co-workers, to instill in you the belief that nothing you can do will make a difference. This practice owes its origin to the ruling class's dire fear of populism, born in the late 19th century and reborn in the 30s. It depends upon our ignorance and our distrust of one another. Words like "traitor," "treason," "red," and "terrorist" are thrown about so much they lose any and all meaning beyond "bad" and "not American." You can do something, though. Educate yourself. Their is a renaissance occuring currently in the historiography of the 20th century. For the truth about 1945-60 in America, read "The Dark Ages," by Marty Jezer. For a revolutionary analysis of Post-Reconstruction South through the Civil Rights Movement, read "Class, Race, & the Civil Rights Movement," by Jack Bloom. For the truth about Vietnam, the classist tensions at work and the real reason we pulled-out, read "The American War" by Jonathan Neale. For a clearer understanding of America's present relationship to the world and how we got here, read "America's Half-Century," by McCormick. And when someone complains about the liberal media whilst cashing checks large media conglomerates, be suspicious; they might be a traitor.
Rating:
Summary: What is wrong with Ann Coulter?
Review: I'm sorry to say that Ms. Coulter has produced another pile of mindless drivel and lies and called it a book. I'm ashamed to even say I read it. It's a pathetic and hypocritic attempt to trick readers into blindly ignoring the faults of their leaders. I didn't support the War in Iraq, but I'm certainly not a traitor and I do not hate the United States. The ability to publicly dissent is part of what makes the country so great. Ann doesn't seem to agree with the Constitution, however. For those of you thinking about buying this book, there is just one thing you need to know: a section of the book is devoted to the defense of McCarthyism! That's just plain rediculous, people. Please, do whatever you can to avoid reading this rediculous book.
Rating: 
Summary: Revisionist, Reactionary, Wrong
Review: Coulter overlooks thousands of cases where rampant McCarthyism lost people their livelihoods and credibility without reason. Her angry tone will certainly inpsire other rightwingers to clap; luckily, her anger will win no converts. How can someone look at something as clearly wrong as witch-hunts and find reason to support it? Also, her argument is simply flawed. Liberals are always eager to solve the problem, but they don't want to create a further problem while solving the current one. Liberals are also rather picky about others' and their own civil liberties. Liberals who were against the Iraq invasion were not pro-Saddam. This is a line of argument commonly known as "The Straw Man Fallacy" in which an (unintelligent) debater (in this case Ann Coulter) oversimplifies an opponent's argument in order to draw obviously unsupportable conclusions. Liberals were against the war because they saw the thousands of Iraqi citizens who would die; saw the hundreds of American soldiers who would die or get injured while thousands of miles away from home; saw the billions that would be spent; saw the deterioration of international diplomacy; saw the contracts that Halliburton would get to rebuild Iraq; saw that our main ally in the region, Turkey, is just as "evil" as Iraq. Coulter simplifies all of these very complex issues into a simple war cry of "Treason!" in order to not have to answer the concerns. She overlooks the thousands of Americans who were wrongly imprisioned under McCarthyism. She overlooks the 4 million Koreans who died and the hundreds of thousands of American solderies who died in the Korean War, and all to no end; the borders are exactly the same as the day we entered that meaningless war. Liberals do not side with the enemy; they side with humanity as a whole and hope to find peaceful solutions to world problems. Wilson (a liberal) defended America against the Germans, then Roosevelt (a liberal) defended us again. Coulter will sell lots of copies of this book, but I hope her readers will also read some actual history in order to flush their systems of this poison.
Rating:
Summary: She's nailed them!
Review: Ann Coulter's acid wit and sarcasm provide the perfect spice for this terrific history of the left's unbelieveable ignorance, incompetence, deception and outright lies. The left have been wrong about our enemies from Stalin through Osama bin Laden, and wrong about our heroes, including the man who won the Cold War, Ronald Reagan. She also makes it clear that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was right - there were scores of US Government employees on the Soviet payroll, but the left were more concerned about destroying McCarthy than facing the truth. Coulter includes footnotes for all her quotes, so the left are exposed as "traitors" by their own words, and by the decoded KGB tapes - the Venona Project. Liberals will not like this book, but for those interested in the facts, Ann Coulter nails them.
Rating:
Summary: Is there a rating lower than one star?
Review: I bought this book because a colleague that disagreed with the book said no one could out-debate Ann Coulter on the subject. I expected a logical and moderately convincing argument. I was disappointed. Pick a logical fallacy at random and Coulter was sure to employ it. The book is short on authorities but long on over generalizations, post hoc, ad hominem and straw man arguments (to name a few). Coulter fails to identify her premise other than that anything that comes out of a "liberal" mouth is treason. The reader is left wondering what her definition of treason is (although she does finally employ the Constitution's definition towards the end of the book). Sometimes, it looks like questioning the president is treason; unless, of course, the president's name was Carter or Clinton. She fawns over military leaders that decoded Soviet encoded messages in contravention of the Commander in Chief's orders. It appears that her definition of treason is being opposed to any Republican idea. The other alternative is that exercising your First Amendment rights is treason. She compounds her logical errors with sexist and racist statements. Writing about McCarthy's WWII record, she says he "took enemy fire from savage Oriental beasts." Talking about a document encouraging jihad and suicide bombings, she writes "anyone slightly darker than Tony Orlando found with this document should have been arrested." She derides Joseph Welch for crying during the McCarthy Army Hearings and claims that "no woman worth her salt ever loses an argument. She starts crying, making it unmanly to pursue your victory." She says that actors "are sissy-boys who put on little-girls' plays." (One wonders whether this includes Ronald Reagan.) She refers to a Los Angeles Times editorial attacking conservatives as "female taunting of liberals." She does make some cogent points about Democrats not being able to make up their mind whether they support war with Iraq or not. Her points, however, are overshadowed by her assumption that Iraq is connected to 9/11 and she poo-poos anyone that dares to ask for evidence. She is also not above a little historical revisionism. Even Eisenhower is not right wing enough for Coulter. She avers he was part of the "elite establishment." She denigrates "Anglophile bluebloods" that went to Yale and were members of Skull and Bones. She apparently forgets that Eisenhower was a middle class Midwesterner that attended West Point and that George Bush went to Yale and belonged to Skull and Bones. The first one-third or so of the book is hagiography about Joseph McCarthy and she does make a case that there were Communist agents in the government. From there, she argues that because McCarthyism was not as bad as Stalin's reign of terror, it was okay. She tries, with moderate success to deconstruct the liberal argument that the U.S.S.R. imploded (I personally agree with her that that argument is false and wish she had made a better case rather than simply engage in near hysterical polemics). The next third of the book consists of historical revisionism. Regan and Bush the younger stride across her pages as Christ-like figures sent to save America. Any Democrat that opened his or her mouth during their administrations is insulted. Finally, she tells us why Americans need to die in Iraq. Her arguments fall flat. Overall, the book has a hysterical tone and aptly shows the dangers of extremism on either political wing. According to her, Republicans never err and Democrats conspire to overthrow the government. It would be nice if politics were as clear cut as she would have the reader believe. It would be even nicer if I could get back the money I spent buying this book.
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