<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: One star is STILL too high a rating...
Review: Blah blah blah. More midless blathering by wealthy old white men trying to defend the current power structure....not useful even as toilet paper...
Rating: 
Summary: The best deffense for conservatism is this book!
Review: I was once asked to give a speech on the Constitution, and the audience was filled with left of center questions. I wished I had had Say the Right Thing to refer to before hand.This book is not a storybook, nor is it a book with a plot; it is a reference manual for the conservative to use when confronted by the liberal with an obvious agenda. You'll find the right thing to say for every situation. The authors cover every issue from Americans to war and everything in between. They give you the ammunition to fight back when confronted. This should be a must reader for every conservative. John Adams, Winston Churchill, Eisenhower, Einstein, Carnegie, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel and Noah Webster and even the bible are just but a few of the people included in this book. A certain bestseller if I have ever seen one!
Rating: 
Summary: 'Conservative' quotes, if not always quotes by conservatives
Review: Living here in Seattle, I've had the opportunity to wake up to Kirby Wilbur's daily radio show most workday mornings for the last six years or so. I feel like I know him and what he stands for fairly well. This book of quotes is a pretty fair reflection of the true-blue mainstream, God-and-country conservative Kirby is (I've heard Floyd Brown on the radio a few times, and friends of mine are friends of his, but I don't know him nearly as well as I 'know' Kirby). As other reviews on this page have noted, this is a great source of quick-fire ammunition for speakers and writers looking for pithy statements from a right-of-center standpoint. As you'd expect, there's a lot of Reagan here. A lot of Thatcher and Churchill, Jefferson, Burke, Eisenhower, Lincoln, Goldwater, and Theodore Roosevelt. Surprisingly, there are also a fair number of entries from people you wouldn't expect to find in a book of 'conservative' quotes, including George Bernard Shaw, Mao Zedong, Louis Brandeis, Russell Long, and William O. Douglas. That brings me to what I think is an important point to make about this book: While many of the quotes are, taken entirely on their own, expressions of conservative sentiments, 'Say the Right Thing' isn't, by any stretch, a comprehensive treasury of conservative thought. Among the conservatives (or at least right-leaning people) I was surprised not to find included in this collection were: Albert Jay Nock, Murray Rothbard, John T. Flynn, Lysander Spooner, Robert A. Taft (the original 'Mr Conservative'!), Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, or Randolph Bourne ('War is the health of the state.'). Mises and Hayek have two and three entries respectively, Russell Kirk and Robert E. Lee (a surprise, given that Kirby's an American-historian from Virginia) none at all. Still, as a handy reference for reliable quotes, 'Say the Right Thing' is a good title to have around. It's organized into logical sections, and also indexed by name -- although the index could have used another pass by the editor: there are separate entries for 'HL Mencken' and 'Henry Mencken,' as well as 'Napoleon I' and 'Napoleon Bonaparte.' Republican speakers and newsletter editors, I'd bet, would find this especially useful. If you're looking for other powerful quotes combined with an easy-to-digest look at politics and philosophy, I very highly recommend 'Dreams Come Due: Government and Economics as if Freedom Mattered' by the pseudonymous 'John Galt.' Despite the author's nom de plume, it's not as Randian/Objectivist as it sounds.
Rating:
Summary: A source for educated speakers
Review: This little book provides numerous quotes from respected figures, past and present, which are invaluable in discussion with so-called Liberals. Every one disturbed by the current political scene who tries to bring some rationality into discourse with these people will love it.
<< 1 >>
| 
