The Coercive Utopians: Social Deception by America's Power Players

By Erich Isaac and Rael Isaac

Book Overview

Signed by authors on ffep. This book is a sociological and political revelation of how America's elite manipulate our society. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0895266180
• ISBN13: 9780895266187
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Regnery Gateway
• Length: 325 Pages
• Weight: 1.48 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Coercive Utopains

However anarchical their rhetoric, triumphant socialists unfailingly turn totalitarian. This is the message of The Coercive Utopians: Social Deception by America's Power Players, by Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, c. 1983). They argue that "utopianism, by its inherent logic, leads to coercion" (p. 8). The book comes commended by one of America's preeminent philosophers, Sidney Hook, who said: "I have rarely read a book which has contained such challenging information, and which raises so many troubling questions about the good will and bona fides of many organizations soliciting public support. The Isaacs' book should be read by all intelligent laymen who are active in public affairs." Illustrating one of the facts that elicited Hook's alarm was a 1980 decision of the General Conference of the Methodist Church to financially support communist regimes in Cuba and Vietnam as well as the PLO. Aligned with the National Council of Churches, which encouraged its functionaries to disguise how the organization's funds were spent, the Methodists were simply one of the mainline denominations supporting Marxist movements that promised to inaugurate perfect societies. To one Methodist spokesman, the church's mission was to establish "'solidarity with the poor and the powerless'" (p. 20). Church delegations visited Cuba and inevitably found what they hoped for--a wonderful, egalitarian society. Other representatives visited Vietnam and wrote glowing reports of the communist transformation taking place following the war. They found grounds for praising Pol Pot's movement in Cambodia and gave financial support to Robert Mugabe as he began his brutal rule in Zimbabwe. Linking arms with radical religionists, environmental utopians sought to restore the planet to a pristine "Mother Earth" condition. With Earth Day in 1970 the environmental movement began to shape the nation's consciousness, prodding Congress to pass laws designed to "produce the perfect environment" (p. 49). To get clean air and water, to protect endangered species, to banish toxics of all sorts, became morally obligatory and justified a massive expenditure of public funds. Yet "no reasonable standards satisfy the perfection-seeking environmental organizations" (p. 56) and laws passed decades ago are now used to restrict personal liberties in unimagined ways. "The distinguished sociologist and historian of ideas Robert Nisbet sees environmentalism as a revolutionary social movement. Indeed Nisbet sees it as potentially the third great social movement of Western civilization after Christianity and socialism, and one, ironically, that strikes at the roots of that civilization. If environmentalists as such do not `hate the system' they hate what is vital to the system--the development of energy sources, with the most environmentally benign source, nuclear energy, assuming a literally demonic character. Nisbet sees the reason for the movement's fasc

"Power players"?

At first glance, you might think this book is "dated" - it looks old. Not many pages into it, though, you realize exactly how it retains its accuracy.A good American Christian might wonder why all his donations to the little white church on his corner seem to wind up financing another diatribe about the evils of American society, culture, and free market economics - while supporting radical revolutionary "workers paradises" from which the workers are fleeing in droves. He might wonder more why those diatribes and those sentiments of support for generic-Shining Path marxists come from his ostensibly "religious" leaders.This work lays out the "who" - but not necessarily the "why." Knowing who is important - because good American Christians who think they are doing the right thing by supporting the National Council of Churches are being profoundly deceived. And the NCC is only one example; the Isaacs name many more names.If you choose to support violent left-wing revolutionaries, that's your choice. If your money is being taken from you without your knowledge by organizations that you believe are furthering your religious beliefs, that is theft - and citizens need to know these things.