Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph

by Dennis Prager Narrated by Erik Bergman

Overview

In this visionary book,*Dennis Prager, one of America's most original thinkers, contends that humanity confronts a monumental choice. The whole world must decide between American values and its two oppositional alternatives: Islamism and European-style democratic socialism.

Prager-a bestselling author, columnist, and nationally syndicated radio talk show host who is read and heard by millions of people in America and abroad-makes the case for the American value system as the most viable program ever devised to produce a good society. Those values are explained here more clearly and persuasively than ever before.

Still the Best Hope deals with three huge themes: The first is perhaps the most persuasive explanation for why Leftism has been and will always be a moral failure, despite its acknowledged appeal to many people of goodwill. The second explains why fundamentalist Islam, despite its historic and growing appeal, cannot make a good society. But Prager holds out hope for an open and tolerant Islam and explains why it will emerge from faithful American Muslims. The third is a singularly persuasive defense and explanation of what Prager calls the ""American Trinity"": liberty, values rooted in the Creator, and the melting-pot ideal. These values are inscribed on every American coin as ""Liberty,"" ""In God We Trust,"" and ""E Pluribus Unum,"" and they are the reasons for America's greatness. Without them, America will cease to be an exceptional nation, and therefore cease to be America.

Prager shows why these values can and must be adopted by every nation and culture in the world, why Americans must relearn and recommit to these values, and why America must vigorously export them. For if the world does not adopt American values, the result will be chaos and barbarism on an unprecedented scale.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

The culture wars rage on in this vigorous right-wing polemic. Conservative talk-show host Prager (Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism) fires salvos at “Islamism,” the redoubt of terrorists, anti-Semites, and theocrats, but his focus is the ideological struggle between “Americanism”—defined as low taxes, small government, religion, and militarized patriotism—and “Leftism,” the big tent of everyone from Karl Marx to the Democratic Party. Short on substantive policy analysis, he relies on broad, biting sociocultural caricatures: conservatives value liberty, reason, moral standards, hard work, earned rewards, faith, self-reliance, and manliness; leftists value authority, emotionalism, moral relativism, sexual license, unearned welfare handouts, spurious equality, nihilism, victimhood, and effeminacy. Prager scores entertaining points against left-liberals’ excesses—overblown health crusades, moral hypocrisies, profane celebrities, avant-garde art installations—while tossing off conservative briefs on everything from affirmative action to global-warming denial. Unfortunately, he often succumbs to the same kind of exaggerations and inconsistencies that he attacks. (He condemns leftists for hysterically equating the Guantánamo Bay prison to the Soviet gulag, for example, then offers the banning of incandescent lightbulbs as a latter-day example of leftists’ “Totalitarian DNA.”) There’s juicy red meat here for Prager’s fans, but other readers may find it underdone. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management. (Apr.)

Library Journal

Heard on 120 stations nationwide, Prager plumps for American values—liberty, natural rights, and the melting-pot ideal of national unity—which he sets against four basic alternatives: Islamic totalitarianism, European-style democratic socialism, state-run capitalism (as in China), and chaos. Those who remember the controversy surrounding Prager's accusations regarding Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison will wonder about this book. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173757135
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/24/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

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