Gathers selections from Johnson's writings on history, politics, human nature, morality, and modern culture.

This is the story of New York's feisty Conservative Party, a story that is really the saga of America's tumultuous political maturity from the time of Rockefeller up to Rudy Guiliani.

Even before ISIS launched its ultra-violent campaign targeting Iraqi Christians in the summer of 2014, Pope Francis proclaimed that the current wave of Christian persecution in the Middle East is worse than the suffering inflicted on believers in the centuries of the early Church. Since the Arab Spring and the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, which have thrown the region into utter chaos, Muslim extremists have killed thousands of Christians every year, while destroying and desecrating countless churches. Christian communities in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt have been hardest hit. In his new book, author and political commentator George J. Marlin, chairman of Aid to the Church in Need-USA - an agency under the guidance of the Pope that supports the persecuted and suffering Church around the world - describes the sharp rise in Christian persecution in the Middle East. After brief narratives on the rise of Christianity, Islam, and terrorism in the Middle East, Marlin documents country by country, acts of twenty-first century Christian persecution that is nearing a bloody climax that could produce the unthinkable: a Middle East without Christians and the destruction of an ancient patrimony that has been a vital link to the very birth of Christianity.

It's not easy being Catholic and conservative in secular 'Blue State' New York, but that's what George J. Marlin is, always has been, and always will be. Don't ask him to change. Besides, like America, it's the Empire State that needs to change. Generation after generation of elitists have put in place their plans for making the machineries of state work more efficiently and more equitably, and they've succeeded in wrecking what was never broken in the first place. And Mr. Marlin has a name for political types who think they know better than the rest of us: narcissists. Narcissists have been fouling up societies since the beginning of time. As Marlin writes: Throughout history, a subset of people have viewed themselves as superior to the rest of the population due to their perceived distinctive qualities: intelli-gence, breeding, class, or wealth. These elites have generally held that because they are exceptional persons they were best suited to conduct the affairs of state. They are wrong. But they have succeeded, and they appear to be ascendant in America today, although the Tea Party may have something to say about that. But consider the following contemporary examples: * The elitist imposition of Obamacare upon an unwilling nation * The lionizing by the Left of eugenicists, such as Margaret Sanger and Ruth Bader Ginsburg * The way "Catholic" politicians such as New York governors George Pataki and David Paterson and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani run roughshod over Church teaching * The way contemporary education - from nursery school through college - infantilizes and fails our kids, preparing them poorly for the rigors of adulthood With an acid pen and a ready wit, George Marlin takes on many of modern America's most revered intellectuals and shows conclusively that they're just not as smart as they think they are.

It's not easy being Catholic and conservative in secular 'Blue State' New York, but that's what George J. Marlin is, always has been, and always will be. Don't ask him to change. Besides, like America, it's the Empire State that needs to change. Generation after generation of elitists have put in place their plans for making the machineries of state work more efficiently and more equitably, and they've succeeded in wrecking what was never broken in the first place. And Mr. Marlin has a name for political types who think they know better than the rest of us: narcissists. Narcissists have been fouling up societies since the beginning of time. As Marlin writes: Throughout history, a subset of people have viewed themselves as superior to the rest of the population due to their perceived distinctive qualities: intelli-gence, breeding, class, or wealth. These elites have generally held that because they are exceptional persons they were best suited to conduct the affairs of state. They are wrong. But they have succeeded, and they appear to be ascendant in America today, although the Tea Party may have something to say about that. But consider the following contemporary examples: * The elitist imposition of Obamacare upon an unwilling nation * The lionizing by the Left of eugenicists, such as Margaret Sanger and Ruth Bader Ginsburg * The way "Catholic" politicians such as New York governors George Pataki and David Paterson and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani run roughshod over Church teaching * The way contemporary education - from nursery school through college - infantilizes and fails our kids, preparing them poorly for the rigors of adulthood With an acid pen and a ready wit, George Marlin takes on many of modern America's most revered intellectuals and shows conclusively that they're just not as smart as they think they are.

George J. Marlin, author of "Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party," traces the political and electoral history of American Catholics from the time of Lord Baltimore and the founding of Maryland to the election of George W. Bush. It is an inspiring story of ethnic Catholics who arrived on America's shores with only the clothes on their back to eventually become a significant voice in local and national political affairs.St. Augustine's Press