The following is a brief excerpt from a review posted on PopandPolitics.com:The road to hell is paved with good intentions, so they say. In general, civilized humanity is a well-meaning lot. We act in ways that, in most cases, are only looking out for each others' best interest. Many of the greatest intellectual theories and philosophies are espoused with the best intentions for the greater population in mind.
Collectivism, for example, comes out of the idea that we should all help each other and share resources so that nobody suffers. We all rise as one or we fall. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that in theory, but as my father would say, it just doesn’t work with people. The same could be said of liberalism.
Liberalism at its core is the belief and/or practice of maximum choice. Lots of energy and change should be the lifeblood of society. Fearlessness and tolerance are liberalism's creed, and when you look at it from that angle, liberalism is not, by itself, a horrible philosophy. After all, when we speak of the modern day political and economic arenas, we say liberal democracies and liberal free markets are favorable to conservative regimes and command economies.
However, liberalism carried too far breeds chaos, as most Western conservatives will tell you. Today’s stalwart liberal believers will espouse all kinds of tools and programs infused with their belief system -- and do so without regard to outcome measurements and accountability. Criticism of liberal programs is met with hostile counter-rhetoric and apologies/excuses. The very people who are defined by a desire to help the most people in the end do more damage than good by trying to get the square peg of collectivist and humanistic thought into a naturally competitive societal round hole.
Now many conservatives have written books about all of this and have made a mint in doing so, but best selling author of “Useful Idiots” and former speech writer for Nancy Reagan, Mona Charen, has really nailed the history of liberalism's political and sociological failure in her new book, “Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (And the Rest of Us).” Charen's book is not in any way a ranting, Savage/Hannity-style tome of angry condemnations. Instead, it is actually a well-researched history book of how liberal policies were enacted over time and of their measured effects on our society far and wide. Continued
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