A few hours after taking this photo I began to regret not arranging for it to show me shaking hands with Flynn (as an expression of my emphatic thankfulness for his distinguishing between liberals and leftists).
One thing I really like about this book is that Flynn makes a sharp distinction between liberals and leftists. He accurately says "liberals love America". I'm a liberal, and this statement seems basically accurate to me. Another thing I like about it is its obvious potential for helping the USA FBI identify persons/groups of potential danger to the national security of the US. Surely Flynn's book and lectures act like a magnet for such persons/groups.
What I object to about this book is the "shallow" (IMO) treatment Flynn gives to a complex subject. My standard of comparision when judging books about politics is the great writing achieved by George Orwell. Some big differences between Orwell and Flynn became apparent to me when I compared how each writer dealt with dilemmas of their opposition.
Dilemmas faced by "The Left" in the United States
In general, persons owning lots of property are able to make money far easier than persons who don't own much property. Societies must achieve a balance between [more here soon]
--failing to address injustices dealt with by "leftists".
--leftists have historically been most focused on remedying injustices resulting from worldwide inequalities of opportunity related to ownership of property.
--Insufficient safeguards against "cardstacking".
E.g., No survey's of "the left". Individual examples of "leftists", only.
--Insufficient safeguards against inconsistent labeling on persons.
E.g., failing to give clear definitions of either a "leftists" or "hate".
complaining about a group of people (in this case, "the Left") that purportedly are distinguished by their beliefs, yet not giving a clear description of exactly what beliefs makes a person a member of the group.
By failing to give a clear discription of what makes a "leftist", Flynn is able to lump together leftists with persons with unknown economic views or rightists economic views. E.g., Bobby Fisher is quoted (an accurate quote describing Fisher's approval when seeing the Sep-11 terrorist attacks on the news), as an example of anti-America sentiment, yet does this support his claim that "leftists" "hate" America? This is questionable...Bobby Fisher has made millions of dollars from chess prizes...he's probably quite wealthy...and I think unlikely to be a "leftist".
Another example is Jessie Jackson. Jackson can't be reasonably labelled a "leftist" because he has repeatedly implored fellow blacks to become capitalists (in the sense of owning lots of income-generating property).
--failing to give sufficient source information to back up reputation-damaging claims.
E.g., his claim that author Naomi Wolf published a wildly exaggerated estimate (150,000 per year!) for how many American women die each year from anorexia nervosa is accurate (understated...Flynn said "tens of thousands"), but Flynn doesn't tell readers where they can find the claim. I found it, but had to waste 25 minutes or so searching for it. (Note: this search was made much more difficult by Wolf's failure to included an index in the first edition of her book The Beauty Myth).
--failing to give an opponents credit for retracting faulty claims.
E.g., in the case of Naomi Wolf's absurdly high estimate for yearly US anorexia deaths, Wolf has abandoned that claim. Immediately after the claim was publically denounced by many people she had a second edition of The Beauty Myth published that