Reviews

• 米国の政治を理解するなら必読

  共和党は、表向きにはレーガンやギングリッチあたりから急に保守化したように見えるが、その種が蒔かれたのはずっと昔のことであり、John C. Calhounの影響を受け、ノーベル経済学賞を受賞したJames Buchananの存在が大きかった。でも、James Buchananの名前は米国人でも知らないでしょう。本作品でも説明されているとおり、行動がばれないように、影で動く方が都合の良い結果を出せると分かっていたから。チリ政府のアドバイザーとして活躍したことも知られていない。 ちなみにJohn C. Calhounの銅像は2020年6月24日に撤去された。レイシストとしても知られていたから。その影響を受けたJames Buchananも、レイシストなところがあったから、2020年であればネット上で叩かれていただろうけど、2013年に死亡。 でも彼が築いたシステムは残っている。一番問題なのは、保守系の連邦判事を次々に輩出していること。 本作品を読むとその背景がよく分かる。

• We should read this book.

  We all should read this book and know the truth of American Democracy. ウィスコン大学の歴史学者 ナンシー・マクリーン女史の本書は、昨年発売されるや、全米で話題となり、2017年のNational Book Award of Nonfiction のファイナリストにノミネートされた。 この本の主人公は、1986年にノーベル経済学賞を受賞したジェームズ・ブキャナン経済学部教授である。「公共選択理論」の分野を新たに切り開いた。同氏と、彼に対して、戦後直後から資金提供を行い、民主主義を制限し、自由な経済社会を築くことを信条として活動を続けるKoch兄弟の50年以上にわたる活動を描いている。 かつて、ナオミ・クラインの「ショック・ドクトリン」が、ミルトン・フリードマン教授らのシカゴ学派が、中南米の国の独裁体制を支援し、その下で、大胆の経済改革を進めた一方で、国民の大多数の生命と安全と財産が脅かされたことを見事に描き、全世界に衝撃を与えたが、この書は、その裏で、アメリカで長い間進行していた更なる真実を明らかにしている。 ブキャナン教授は、ハイエク氏、ミルトン・フリードマン教授と同様に、政府の活動を極力制限し、国民が自由（特に経済的活動）に行動することを目指したリバイアンを信条としていた。その彼に当初より多額の資金援助をしていたのが、Koch兄弟である。彼らは、「the free society = liberty of the individual」を目指し、ルーズベルト大統領の政策を徹底的に批判し、最初は、1964年にゴールドウォータ氏を大統領候補に押し上げた他、レーガン大統領の政策にも大きな影響を与える。 当初は、ステレス作戦で表に出ないで活動していたものの、1990年代後半からは、Koch兄弟自ら、表に出て、具体的な行動を開始するようになる。特に、民主党のオバマ大統領が誕生してからは、非常に危機感を持ち、2008年以降は、活動をさらに活発化させていく。当初は、自発的な活動と言われたTea Party運動も、今では、Koch兄弟の巨額な資金援助によることが明らかになっている。狙いは、古い共和党勢力を追い出して、新しいメンバーに入れ替えることということで、2016年の大統領選挙では、その結果、共和党の大統領選に出馬した全員が、気候変動を認めず、公教育を始めとした公的歳出を大幅にカットすることを主張するまでになる。先日、政界引退を表明したライアン下院議長は、まさに、Koch兄弟の全面支援を受けた共和党期待の次世代のスターであった。 彼らの活動が成功裡に終わり、大統領のポストを射止める直前に、彼らの成功を横取りしたのが、ロシアの支援を受けて、突如、大統領選挙に名乗りをあげたビジネスマン トランプ氏だったというのも、皮肉な話である。

• This is my THIRD attempt to enter this review. While others want you to save your money, I a Christian mother of 5 want you to save your life. See the book DEADLY SPIN to understand the tactics that are being used and will likely be used against this truth. VIRGINIA is the root of this destructive ideology and guess who else comes from Virginia and from Regent University Law school? The book quotes Buchanan as advocating the divide and conquer of all groups that support the Social Security network. They must be divided because united belief in anything other than Ayn Rand style politics and radical Libertarian ideology defeated the TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS which has been clearly demonstrated to be a hoodwinking of the world. 8 People now own more than 3.9 billion and that is NOT ENOUGH? His colleagues advocated a LENINIST strategy- who else seems to like that IDEA? Please read it. Do not listen to the propaganda. My husband started the first trading floor in the middle east after being the president of the London, England Jr. Chamber of commerce, and he urged me to warn people of this. Debra, BA (honours) first in class, MA, MBA- in the USA.

• This is one of the most important books I've read in a decade. If you are interested in what the plan of the Republicans is for America, and how they are using tricks and deception to achieve it, you need to read this book. Extremely well written by a reputable historian who works at an actual University (Duke), this amazing book shows how libertarians, funded largely by Charles and David Koch, set in place a plan to greatly reduce democracy in America in order to allow the wealthy to run the country the way they want. Almost all the conservative think tanks: CATO institute, Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, etc., etc. are Koch funded and coordinated. The goal of all these libertarian foundations is to stop democratic processes from allowing ordinary people to have a say in schools, the environment, workers rights, etc. Other goals include destroying social security, privatizing the prisons, privatizing the schools, and removing most other government institutions that help ordinary Americans, including important parts of the US Constitution. Prof. Nancy Maclean stumbled accidentally on the trove of information about these plans while researching in the offices of the recently deceased Noble Prize winning economist, James Buchanen. Buchanen wrote much of the plan described above and even applied it to Pinochet's Chilean government (destroying the Chilean constitution and economy in the process). Charles Koch had been working for decades along similar lines, but came up short because the bulk of Americans actually want social security, anti-pollution laws, good public schools, and the ability to influence elections through voting. Around the 1990's, Charles Koch discovered Buchanen's ideas. He then switched the millions of dollars that were funding his hundreds of conservative think tanks and institutions to the stealth method of fooling the American people the way Buchanen suggested. This implementation has been amazingly successful and is easily seen every day now. For example the Buchanen/Koch technique to destroy social security (a system they think is at the root of the evil they say they are trying to stop), is to make small changes to the system that will eventually cause it fail. Some steps the plan calls for: Divide people into groups and get them to fight with each other, for example 1. Tell current Social Security recipients they will keep their pensions, so they won't resist the changes. 2. Tell younger people that the system won't be there when they need it and so they are unfairly subsidizing the old people, 3. Tell the financial industry and wealthy people that all the money now going into social security will be theirs once changes to privatize it are made, and 4. Make annoying changes around the edges to make people unhappy with the current system (e.g. change retirement age, lower pension amounts, etc.) The Koch funded libertarian groups also have carefully thought out plans to destroy the public schools, all environmental and pollution regulation (including any action on climate change). The big question, of course, is why would anyone want to do this to America. Maclean traces the historical reasons back to the slave-owning south, where libertarians such as John Calhoun defined "freedom" as the freedom to own slaves and treat them in any way they wanted. They worried that democracy would take away their "freedom" and so conceived of ways to reduce and prevent democracy. Modern libertarians such as Buchanen, Milton Friedman, etc. use the same definition of freedom: freedom to exploit others in any way they want. And they want to prevent democracy from stopping them for the same reasons. As detailed in this book, they have also been using the same arguments and methods as were used in the pre-civil war South. Recently, however, they have realized that stealth is required, since most Americans oppose their goals. Finally, a comment on the huge number of negative reviews of MacLean's book on Amazon and elsewhere. The Koch brothers organization is very well organized and extremely well funded, so one expects an all out attack on a book that exposes so much of their stealth program. Most of the attacks just misstate MacLean's points, or make stuff up, and so are typical of the Fox News crowd and easily ignored. But some criticisms seem quite academic and for example say she misquoted sources on purpose to arrive at her conclusions (e.g. about how libertarians mean something different than we do by "freedom": e.g. Cowan says "The freest countries have not generally been democratic.") Careful checking shows that these criticisms also are misstating MacLean intentions, probably in order to stop you from reading the book. For more in depth discussion see historian Andrew Seal's comments on these criticisms. In summary, we are well on the way to the dystopian America the Koch family wants to create. Better read this book quick and figure out how to stop them before it is too late.

• This is a fast, readable, and frighteningly accurate history of the economic myths and political rhetoric that have taken over the American mainstream, with a very clear explanation of just how this was done. But make no mistake, this isn't just about America. This same school of thought is what quite literally and directly set up Pinochet in Chile and crippled the Chilean economy for generations, and that moved directly into UK politics from Thatcher onwards. Turn on any political program in just about any country, now, and you will hear so many of the same arguments - evidence for these arguments doesn't matter so much. People unfortunately don't know where a lot of this comes from; they just believe it because they keep hearing it everywhere. From the Austrian school of economics and Jim Crow to James Buchanan, the Cato Institute and the Koch empire, this book sheds light on just how few people have managed to persuade millions to vote against their own self-interests, while (ironically) selling the idea that self-interest is all that ever influenced anything - and it sheds a lot of light on how they move when they can't win a vote. Read this book. Know thy enemy.

• Great and essential reading on a topic that should be important to everyone. I am glad I picked this up and and even happier having read it all

• It's a very interesting research done by the author, using plenty of sources and references to construct a quite disturbing narrative of our current politics.

Purchase links