3.61

1

Apr 10, 2011

Not the worst book ever written, but pretty fucking close.

I must begin by saying that since Hannity is below a purely academic discussion, resorting to personal insults won't trouble my conscience at all. And since I'd rather flog myself than read more conservative trash, I'm gonna try to get as much in here as possible, but I'm only going to write about issues dealt with in this book.

Hmm... Where should I begin my rant about this loser's disgusting work of warmongering propaganda? Should I Not the worst book ever written, but pretty fucking close.

I must begin by saying that since Hannity is below a purely academic discussion, resorting to personal insults won't trouble my conscience at all. And since I'd rather flog myself than read more conservative trash, I'm gonna try to get as much in here as possible, but I'm only going to write about issues dealt with in this book.

Hmm... Where should I begin my rant about this loser's disgusting work of warmongering propaganda? Should I start with his pathological hatred of anything perceived to be un-American. His complete lack of understanding of any political position to the left of Ronald Reagan, or even George Dubbya? Or maybe with his laughable straw men arguments? These and other would be good starting points. Is he even worth putting the effort into? Yeah I think so, even though I cringe as I recall every twisted fallacy, every cowardly evasion of logic and truth Hannity employs in this putrid collection of pages.

I think there was something of a masochistic element to my taking up this book, but for only a dollar at a used book sale, I figured what the hell. It can't be that bad right? Wrong. Well, being unfortunately familiar with Hannity's nightly parade of coarse GOP propaganda, I was relatively sure of the inferno into which I would be descending. What I didn't know was that Hannity has nearly as much hatred for the English language as he does for anything perceived to be un-American or left-wing(although these two domains have no distinction in Hannity's mind). His pathetic writing makes Ayn Rand look like Shakespeare. Now, I know this isn't an English exam, but c'mon Sean learn to write sentences before you graduate to books. At first I went through the book with a pen correcting bad sentences along with factual misrepresentations, but the frequency of these issues gave me writer's cramp in a short time. There is I think an importance to this issue. While the right has a monopoly of radio programs thanks to bigmouths like Savage and Limbaugh, the left has always had superior writers. Except Buckley at his best (and that's still a big stretch), no right-winger has ever approached Orwell, Vidal, Hitchens, Zinn, or even Chomsky at their very best. Even their worst is always readable; Hannity is obviously writing for the Tom Clancy market.

Actually, a Tom Clancy thriller is a viable companion to Hannity's book, which is just a digressive tract in favor of the two wars. Starting with the title (which childishly apes the Lord's prayer, but more on that later), Hannity divides the world, in no uncertain terms, into absolutes of good and evil. He actually wastes dozens of pages telling pointless, digressive, and boring stories to support the childish world view Hannity insists is both "innocent and wise." He actually uses his son's fear of the dark as justification of the Cold War or something. He's not joking either. This is "with us or against us" at its ugliest. What's more, he thinks that making an academic discussion of these simple matters is simple-minded! Maybe I missed that Birch society meeting, but I thought intellectualism was good and absolutes were limited to the KKK or the Nazis. It turns out that I had been sadly misinformed on this, and I think Mr. Hannity for his illuminating philosophical discourse. But seriously, Hannity's world view could be summed up as: Republican controlled America should wipe out any and all threats without thinking about "liberal" policies like long-term consequences or the human cost; it's immoral to think about those things. After all, Chamberlain didn't act. What if Reagan hadn't gone into Grenada? I mean there was a deadly threat if ever there was one. And we'd be speaking Iraqi if Bush wasn't a God-fearing patriot. The sad thing is, that could almost be a quote from this book.

There are two Gods that dominate this trifling work: the Christian God and the Republican God (Reagan if you weren't sure). Hannity writes of Reagan like a cherished former lover. If we were to accept Hannity's garbage, we would believe that Reagan brought down the Berlin Wall by saying his soundbites and then staring really hard in the wall's direction. I expect this Reagan obsession by now, but it never ceases to amaze me. But what really bothers me is the vile way Hannity uses God to justify his politics and this mess of a book. Firstly, he has the gall to reprint the entire Our Father prayer on the first page; I guess he has to show us how pious and all-American he is. Of course this is followed by his explanation of how his Catholic faith is his moral compass, blah blah blah. If Jesus came back, I find it hard to believe he would be allowed on Fox News, let alone stand with Hannity and justify the Reagan funded slaughter of the Christian resistance in places like El Salvador. Oh, and about the Iraq War: just try and justify that to Jesus, Gandhi, the Founding Fathers, or Edmund Burke(all of whom are cited). I wouldn't digress about the religion thing, but I really think it's important. Keep in mind this is a man who rejects separation of church and state and supported Jerry Falwell. Falwell should be kept out of government as much as Fred Phelps should. And he accuses famously anti-Christian atheist Nietzsche of being essentially a Nazi philosopher and the Superman theory of being pro-Aryan and anti-semitic. Actually, Nietzsche hated despots and anti-Semites; he wrote letters to his sister condemning her for being in a relationship with an anti-Semite. That he was used by the Nazis is not significant, because his philosophy had NOTHING to do with Nazism, quite the opposite actually; he can't help being aped by the wrong people (just like Jesus). The point here is an obvious one: Hannity is ignorant and intolerant of non-Christian beliefs. Hitler's religious views are hazy so he links him to Nietzsche so that he can say that Hitler was an atheist like Stalin, and that's the reason they were murderers. Simply pathetic.

So far I've mentioned the morally absolute bullshit, the Reagan bullshit, and the Christian bullshit. Next there's the liberal bullshit, which is the most multifaceted bullshit yet. I'm a Socialist not a liberal, but if there's one thing I can't stand it's misrepresentation. Hannity uses liberal like all the Fox News commentators do: as, depending on the context, a synonym for wimp or transgressive pervert. Like a schoolyard bully, Hannity essentially lashes out at liberal for being bleeding-heart do-gooders; to digress again, why is do-gooder an insult? That makes do-badder a good thing? But that's not the issue dealt with in this book, which is simply Why We Fight for an unnecessary war and without any interesting parts. Liberal opposition to Bush's Iraq War is used to prove that liberals are afraid to protect American values; apparently, if you don't have wet dreams about bombing the shit out of every country that poses a possible threat, than you're soft on absolute evil. And we can't afford that. Hannity at first commends liberal for supporting the invasion after 9/11, but says that in the ensuing years they seem to have lost their spines. Y'know, I don't feel like defending the weak and corrupt Democratic party anymore, so let's go to the real left. It's seems hard for Hannity to imagine that anybody exists in America to the left of a notorious Red like Bill Clinton. He pretty much gives away the game when he quotes Noam Chomsky with almost no commentary; apparently, Chomsky's brief but strong attack on the 2001 invasion is below criticism. This quote is found among several indicating how the "academic left" has gotten away from the simple common sense needed to determine the fates of millions here and around the world. He has to completely misrepresent the left in order to defeat it because there' simply no way he could win a debate with any true left-wing activist. Hannity settles for Colmes, the innefective, Fox News approved conservative liberal.

Hannity is fixated on World War II and the Cold War. His WWII is that of John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, not of Dresden or Hiroshima. His Cold War is much the same, except worse. He is obsessed with the phrase "greatest generation" (he always puts the term in quotes which is annoying), and there is a jingoistic element to this. His lengthy digression into the Holocaust is there pretty much for its own sake, but even that tasteless exercise in using the Holocaust (in a very roundabout way) to condemn liberalism is topped by hi denial of Fascism as a right-wing philosophy. Like Johnah Goldberg in his awful book, Hannity says that Hitler and Stalin were both leftist socialists who put the state as their God (just like liberals!). Of course, Reagan is quoted supporting this. That fascism and communism can seem similar as collectivist philosophies is known, but an unwillingness to look below the surface shows what Hannity's style of research is. It shouldn't even be research, it should just be common knowledge, especially for someone involved in politics. And it's cheap and idiotic to compare a liberal to a Nazi because they believe in a state, especially since Republicans are radical statists as well, no matter what they keep saying. I already mentioned Wayne; Gore Vidal said the ideal Republican presidential candidate would have been Wayne, and I think Hannity's views on the Cold War evidence this. He simply can't see a better solution than war. Hannity insists conflict with the Soviet Union was morally unavoidable; tell me Sean, what's the morality of a pushing the world towards nuclear holocaust? Speaking of the holocaust, Hannity unsurprisingly brings that in quite a bit, often to justify America's funding of Israeli terror. These kinds of views are scary but commonplace. This morally absolute and militarily aggressive attitude is repugnant when someone is talking about history, but positively dangerous when dealing with current events.

I had to get there sometime: Bush's wars, the impetus behind this sad excuse for a book. His main purpose here, it is quite clear, was to help Bush as much as possible leading up to the 2004 election. I've already written so much I don't feel like writing a whole lot so I'll try to make this brief. I'm opposed to the war in Iraq, and since there is plenty of anti-Iraq war testimony out there, I'll leave it at that. If Hannity could outline a genuine argument, as Hitchens did, for the wars, I would still vehemently disagree but respect him. But I have no respect for this rich, abnormally stupid ape who thinks the answer to all the world's problems is the Military-Industrial Complex and a reading from his bible (that is: Reagan's memoirs).

This primate didn't deserve this much time and effort but here it is anyway, but if this review gets to a sane person, at least they'll know I tried. ...more

1

Jun 25, 2008

It has taken me three years to regain the brain cells I lost while reading this outrageous blasphemy.

1

Apr 18, 2011

I read this in 2006 when I was still politically a conservative Republican. Not anymore.

1

Jun 18, 2009

I had to read this just to see... and I was right. Crap. I can't believe people think like this.

1

Jul 08, 2012

Political hagiographies are my secret guilty pleasure, but this seemed a little sloppily thrown together even for Hannity. It was written for the 2004 Presidential Campaign, so I expected it to be a little dated, but I thought it would at least have been better researched. I considered that maybe I'm not giving him credit for things we didn't know in 2004, but he mainly focused on things that were recognizably crap even when they were Fresh. Most notably he constantly ties the 9/11 attacks to Political hagiographies are my secret guilty pleasure, but this seemed a little sloppily thrown together even for Hannity. It was written for the 2004 Presidential Campaign, so I expected it to be a little dated, but I thought it would at least have been better researched. I considered that maybe I'm not giving him credit for things we didn't know in 2004, but he mainly focused on things that were recognizably crap even when they were Fresh. Most notably he constantly ties the 9/11 attacks to the War in Iraq, where he even parts side with Colin Powell, and the brief intervening history has proven Hannity wrong in this and many other fear-mongering tactics. The greatest value of this book will be to display how prevalent fear was in as an issue going into the 2004 elections. Whether baseless fear was trumped up for political purposes or whether it was well-placed will have to be left to the individual reader.
...more

5

Dec 23, 2008

I am so far enjoying this book, but have a long way to go. Wonderful read - Hannity at his best

I finished the book and enjoyed it and was afraid both at the same time. Hannity not only shares what he knows, he knows what he shares.

1

Aug 12, 2008

I couldn't finish this sorry book. Hannity is a naive literary lightweight with a jingoist agenda. He comes to faulty conclusions. I don't think he and 99 other chimps could write a decent book if they were locked in a roomful of typewriters for a thousand years.

5

Jun 11, 2008

The best and most knowledgable journalist on T.V./Radio today. Very enjoyable book that covers many world events of the last 30 years. Hannity gives people a view of the events from a conservative view, but has reflections of liberal views also. Interesting and entertaining book.

5

Jan 09, 2008

Really good, informatative read. Lots of historical data that helps to explain many things that are going on in today's world. I was surprised at how fast I got through this book. It was easy to understand and Hannity does a good job at keeping your interest level high.

3

Mar 20, 2009

Although I'm a bit more moderate than Sean, I find little fault in this book and agree with just about everything he covers. Liberals will obviously find a lot to get steamed about, conservatives will love it, while a moderate reader will be given a lot to ponder. More than anything, the common approach that we must let history remind us of the dangers of political extremism is conveyed very well.

4

Feb 05, 2009

This book launched my interest into politics. An easy introduction to conservative thought.

3

Mar 04, 2008

I love Sean Hannity!! I was into talk radio there for awhile!! That was before I didn't sleep all day and work all night! :)

5

Jan 31, 2008

Even better than his first. great insights into the '04 elections.

5

Aug 03, 2012

Hannity gives truthful insight to today's biggest issue: national security. Great book, well-written and keeps the reader's attention.

4

Apr 04, 2010

Listening to this on book on tape. It's an older one. but so true in his comments.
So has gotten me interested in politics a little more. My stand is growing stronger.

4

Jun 10, 2010

I read this book years ago..I thought it had good information for the time, but can't give an indepth reason for my rating.

4

Sep 29, 2008

If only we could Sean... This was my first Hannity read after listening to him for three years on the radio. I will be reading it again.

3

Apr 22, 2009

Apart from the fact that this book was an overt attempt to convince people to vote for Bush's re-election in 2004, I really liked it. He talked a lot about what happened in Regan's, H.W. Bush's, and Clinton's presidencies which I was alive for but know nothing about. I agree with a lot of what he says although I don't think our problems are so much about party lines as they are about Liberal/Traditional differences. Liberals are wrong.

5

Dec 25, 2009

We need to gear up and step up and defend our beliefs, liberties and own up to our responsibilities

1

Oct 29, 2019

It is best to get the views of a person or group from that person or group rather than from those that hate them. This holds true with this book. All that Hannity claims are the beliefs of liberals/Democrats are lies and twisted facts. He opens the book with the objections that many had when we were attacked by Osama bin Ladin and Bush went after and killed Saddam Hussein instead. It is true that many liberals/Democrats were angry about that. We didn't want anyone coddled. We wanted the It is best to get the views of a person or group from that person or group rather than from those that hate them. This holds true with this book. All that Hannity claims are the beliefs of liberals/Democrats are lies and twisted facts. He opens the book with the objections that many had when we were attacked by Osama bin Ladin and Bush went after and killed Saddam Hussein instead. It is true that many liberals/Democrats were angry about that. We didn't want anyone coddled. We wanted the perpetrators of that horrendous act to be found and whatever punishment given to them rather than just pick a terrorist any terrorist and call it good. It is interesting how he calls Democrats selfish opportunists - yet, time after time, Republicans vote to give breaks to the rich and none to the poor and middle class. Trump just did that yet again in 2019. Over and over again he makes claims about what Democrats believe without provided support for his opinion. ...more

4

Jun 13, 2017

Obvious liberals will hate it. The book is surprising better than his TV show. Had a lot more hard history than I expected, particularly in dealing with Iran prior to the hostage crisis.

4

Jan 25, 2017

The only reason that I did not put 5 stars for this, is that it was published in 2004 to show the appeasement of the democratic party. The over-all threat to the U.S. is still there, but some of the list of the characters involved has changed. The same evil countries are there still, but there is a lot to happen in the past 10 years to enforce the reason why this book is important to be read by every citizen of the U. S. There are no doubt, many additions to this history, but the answer to all The only reason that I did not put 5 stars for this, is that it was published in 2004 to show the appeasement of the democratic party. The over-all threat to the U.S. is still there, but some of the list of the characters involved has changed. The same evil countries are there still, but there is a lot to happen in the past 10 years to enforce the reason why this book is important to be read by every citizen of the U. S. There are no doubt, many additions to this history, but the answer to all the threats against the evil against the U. S. and Israel is still there. This is a valuable history book to show how our enemies work. ...more

5

Sep 28, 2018

The only thing that I can say about this book is that he writes from the heart and soul, he tells people the way it is without worrying about how it may effect some and we need more people like him to bring out the issues the way that he does. I loved this book.