Liberty Under Siege: American Politics, 1976-1988

by Walter Karp

Book Overview

Liberty Under Siege is an extraordinary book. Here, finally, is a reveille for reality, a call to stop this long intoxication with illusion and look at what has been happening to our republic. Walter Karp combines the passion of Tom Paine with the urgency of Paul Revere to sound a patriot's alarm for his country.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805008594
• ISBN13: 9780805008593
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Must Read

It is critical that Americans more thoroughly understand the processes and motivations of its governmental leaders, and Walter Karp certainly offers a perspective that goes against the grain of popular perception. His critique of the political parties' perfidy during the Carter and Reagan years is thoroughly compelling. His writing style is a bit histrionic, but then the topic may well require it. In addition, the issues revolving around the corruption and misuse of presidential power during the eighties, the siphoning of funds from the general coffers into the hands of the extremely wealthy, and the enrichment of special interests all perfectly mirror the Bush administration's crimes. Those on the right side of the political spectrum should be outraged by the policies high government purports to implement under the guise of conservative principles.

a brilliant, exhilarating take on a decade of american politics

The late Walter Karp, the great overlooked political writer of the last 50 years, turned the full force of his scathing wit and brilliant intellect on modern American politics in "Liberty Under Siege," the last book published during his lifetime. The book was condescended to by reviewers, and it never found the audience it deserved. Never mind the fact that the events Karp is writing about took place two decades ago. You can't understand politics as it works in our country today unless you read this book. His opening chapter, describing the quiet patriotism and pride that flowed through America during the bicentennial, is genuinely stirring, but the rest of the book describes "Oligarchy's" relentless attempt to tear down the old republic and replace it with a cold and ruthless empire whose citizens "dwell in darkness," forbidden to congregate in public forums, hypocritically lectured about the evils of alcohol and drugs, ignored and lied to by their leaders, who take their money and use it to wage foreign wars, oblivious to the hungry and sick in their own land. There are no heroes in this book, not even Jimmy Carter, who comes across less as a "tribune of the people" than a sort of well-meaning schmuck who lacks the fire to stand up to the party system. If Carter had appealed to the people just once, he might have exposed Congress's mendaciousness and saved his presidency, but he seemed unable to believe that his own party would deliberately unite against him, even as the idiotic Ted Kennedy tried to stage a coup d'etat against him. That they did indeed betray Carter is proven by the fact that, after Reagan's election, the Democrats rallied behind the new president. What kind of "opposition" party is this? Ronald Reagan, the "vile tyrant" with "an appalling capacity for repelling truth and believing falsehood" arouses Karp to blistering diatribes: "Reagan is ignorant, deliberately, willfully ignorant, scarcely knows who works for him, rarely asks a penetrating question. . . . His arms control proposals sound fairer to him if he does not know and so he never inquires." Reagan's economic policies he deems "a tyrant's crime against a free people's freedom to decide their own fate." The book ends with a long look at the Iran-Contra scandal, in which Watergate is replayed with a happy ending for the "truthless man" in the Oval Office. Karp was fond of quoting Charles Peguy: "The triumph of the demagogue is short-lived, but the ruin is eternal." Grim as its outlook is, the book is also exhilarating. Beside Karp, the political commentators we've got today seem a watery, dull bunch. No writer since H.L. Mencken has been so brilliant in denouncing the "lying pantaloons" in Washington, and few writers since the 19th century have been so eloquent in their defense of "the old America that was free and is now dead."