Taking the example of Glenn Beck as a media pundit and propagandist, this timely and provocative book shows how mainstream media fails in its duty—and explains what the American people can do about it. Debunking Glenn Beck: How to Save America from Media Pundits and Propagandists was written in response to Beck's Arguing with Idiots. Its most immediate concern is with exploring the agenda behind Beck's arguments and exposing the flaws in his reasoning. But this book's real mission is something much broader. Using Beck as an example, author Karl Rogers also shows why media reform is so vital to the future of democracy. To make that case, Dr. Rogers offers a detailed discussion of the ideas and ideology at work in Beck's arguments, revealing how the well-known conservative pundit has distorted and twisted facts to misrepresent American history, the meaning of progressivism, and even the U.S. Constitution. The book examines topics ranging from the Second Amendment to health care, education, housing, the Supreme Court, unions, democracy, and government. It concludes by explaining how Americans can revitalize the Constitution as a living document and, by doing so, revitalize public debate and democracy itself.

This book offers a unique approach by using psychoanalytic theory to explain how we can resolve the most important issues facing the world today and in the future. One of my main arguments is that we need to move beyond national politics in order to provide global solutions to global problems. However, there is a misplaced fear concerning global governance, and much of this phobia is derived from a misunderstanding of history and human psychology. Not only do we have to learn to give up our idealized investment in nations and nationalism, but we also have to move beyond seeing the world from the perspective of a victim fantasy. Since we often repress real signs of global progress, we experience the global present and the future in negative ways. To reverse this perspective, we need to first understand the incredible progress humans have made in the last two hundred years, but we also should not ignore the real threats we face.

This important piece of investigative reportage studies the roots of right-wing extremism in American culture and history to understand its modern-day resurgence in the Trump era Just as Donald Trump’s victorious campaign for the U.S. presidency shocked the world, the seemingly sudden national prominence of white supremacists, xenophobes, militia leaders, and mysterious “alt-right” figures mystifies many. But the American extreme right has been growing steadily in number and influence since the 1990s with the rise of patriot militias. Following 9/11, conspiracy theorists found fresh life; and in virulent reaction to the first black U.S. president, militant racists have come out of the woodwork. Nurtured by a powerful right-wing media sector in radio, TV, and online, the far right, Tea Party movement conservatives, and Republican activists found common ground. Figures such as Stephen Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Alex Jones, once rightly dismissed as cranks, now haunt the reports of mainstream journalism. Investigative reporter David Neiwert has been tracking extremists for more than two decades. In Alt-America, he provides a deeply researched and authoritative report on the growth of fascism and far-right terrorism, the violence of which in the last decade has surpassed anything inspired by Islamist or other ideologies in the United States. The product of years of reportage, and including the most in-depth investigation of Trump’s ties to the far right, this is a crucial book about one of the most disturbing aspects of American society.

Since its popularization in the mid 1990s, the Internet has impacted nearly every aspect of our cultural and personal lives. Over the course of two decades, the Internet remained an unregulated medium whose characteristic openness allowed numerous applications, services, and websites to flourish. By 2005, Internet Service Providers began to explore alternative methods of network management that would permit them to discriminate the quality and speed of access to online content as they saw fit. In response, the Federal Communications Commission sought to enshrine "net neutrality" in regulatory policy as a means of preserving the Internet's open, nondiscriminatory characteristics. Although the FCC established a net neutrality policy in 2010, debate continues as to who ultimately should have authority to shape and maintain the Internet's structure. Regulating the Web brings together a diverse collection of scholars who examine the net neutrality policy and surrounding debates from a variety of perspectives. In doing so, the book contributes to the ongoing discourse about net neutrality in the hopes that we may continue to work toward preserving a truly open Internet structure in the United States.

Drawing from the Koran, the hadith, and leaders of fundamentalist groups, identifies the core beliefs that inspire Islamic extremism while debunking commonly held notions about the religion.

The nationally syndicated radio talk-show host offers his views on such topics as family, politics, community, religion, celebrities, drugs, race relations, terrorism, and America.

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice Finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize In the wake of Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election, a deeply reported look inside the conservative movement working to undermine American democracy. Donald Trump is the second Republican this century to triumph in the Electoral College without winning the popular vote. As Zachary Roth reveals in The Great Suppression, this is no coincidence. Over the last decade, Republicans have been rigging the game in their favor. Twenty-two states have passed restrictions on voting. Ruthless gerrymandering has given the GOP a long-term grip on Congress. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has eviscerated campaign finance laws, boosting candidates backed by big money. It would be worrying enough if these were just schemes for partisan advantage. But the reality is even more disturbing: a growing number of Republicans distrust the very idea of democracy—and they’re doing everything they can to limit it. In The Great Suppression, Roth unearths the deep historical roots of this anti-egalitarian worldview, and introduces us to its modern-day proponents: The GOP officials pushing to make it harder to cast a ballot; the lawyers looking to scrap all limits on money in politics; the libertarian scholars reclaiming judicial activism to roll back the New Deal; and the corporate lobbyists working to ban local action on everything from the minimum wage to the environment. And he travels from Rust Belt cities to southern towns to show us how these efforts are hurting the most vulnerable Americans and preventing progress on pressing issues. A sharp, searing polemic in the tradition of Rachel Maddow and Matt Taibbi, The Great Suppression is an urgent wake-up call about a threat to our most cherished values, and a rousing argument for why we need democracy now more than ever.

Working in the tradition of analytic philosophy, Alexander Brown argues that many different forms of political communication (or anti-communication) that often infuriate the public can also be ethically or morally objectionable. These forms include question dodging, offering scripted answers, stonewalling, not listening, disseminating propaganda, pandering, being insincere, giving false denials, issuing revisionist interpretations, refusing to take responsibility, never apologising, boasting, and gaslighting. Brown invokes a host of normative reasons including those having to do with epistemic arrogance, interference in autonomy, and violating the right to be heard. This is not to say that, all things considered, politicians should never engage in dubious political communication. Sometimes these are necessary evils. Brown argues, however, that further moral inquiry is needed to show why they are evils, and to determine when the use of these rhetorical tactics can be excessive, unreasonable, or out of place. Key Features: • Identifies and conceptualises forms of dubious political communication • Develops an ethical evaluation of political communication • Considers possible justifications for the use of dubious political communication • Makes practical recommendations on how to regulate unethical political communication

It's almost a universal phenomenon. Nobody knows when, how, and why it started, but society somehow allows their political leaders to get away with nearly anything, up to and including murder- at least in many countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Central and South America. Here in these United States of America, no one is suggesting (at least not me) that our political leaders are guilty of committing murders. To the extent that anybody can accuse them of such, it's their enacting of lax gun laws at the behest of the NRA. Thanks to these laws, anyone applying for a permit to buy an automatic assault weapon is no more subjected to rigorous background check than they are buying candy. By this and this alone, U.S. politicians are partly to blame in the deaths of innocent people. Anyway, this book is not about murders or guns. In a way though, it's about "death"- the death of reason and sense in politics. It's about some insidious behavior that politicians get away with. Society itself is to blame for tacitly permitting politicians to engage in such a behavior. So here in the United States, as is the case everywhere, politicians get away with too much: Corruption; lying or showing a disdain for facts; being lazy; stealing; and cheating on their spouses. We also allow them to make promises that they can't possibly keep- or never keeping promises that they can easily keep. We have put the bar for tolerable behaviors, or conduct expected of our leaders, very low. We have reached a stage where the moral code of our politicians is on par with, if not worse than, that of criminals. Well, this author decided to draw a line, a "red line," if you want to be dramatic, on dumbassedness- or rather- on the dumb things that the people we look up to in society, especially our political leaders, say. They can get away with lying, being corrupt, etc., but they will not be let off so easily for saying things that are decidedly dumb. Just as Iran will hear from Israel and the U.S. if its nuclear (or as George W. Bush would say, "nucular") ambitions crosses Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu's somewhat arbitrary "red line," politicians here will hear from me if and when they cross my own arbitrarily laid "dumbassedness" red line. Like most citizens, I'll tolerate- barely- such maladapted behaviors of our politicians as corruption, cheating, infidelity, lying, not keeping campaign promises, etc., but not dumbassedness. This is what this book is about. This author's blood boils when he hears these stupid politicians, like Indiana's U.S. Senate candidate, Richard Mourdock say such things as, "A woman being raped and conceiving as a result, is in God's grand scheme of things." That is, God wanted it that way, and therefore that the victim shouldn't be allowed to terminate such a pregnancy. Unlike most books, this is not one long, continuous story. One need not necessarily start reading from page one or chapter one successively to the last. One can jump around, or even begin with the last chapter. Every chapter is a stand-alone chapter. There is no "continuity" to worry about if you decide to read the book in a sort of haphazard manner. You're going to encounter unbelievable dumbassedness of our politicians on every page.Politicians and other leaders of society may get away with having the morals and ethics of alley cats, but I ́ll be damned if I ́ll let them get away with the immaturity of pre-adolescents and the dumbassedness of a jackass. This is my raison d ́etre, or if you want to be "religious" about it, it ́s my calling.Let me add that had my sense of self-preservation not been so heightened, I ́d have moved to Russia to take on Emperor Vladimir Putin.But I don ́t like having Polonium-210 as part of my diet. Thank you and enjoy. Kabembo Chinku.

This volume is the first to offer a comparative analysis of religion in militaries worldwide.