Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the tension between civil rights and public safety has dominated public discourse. On issues ranging from racial profiling to military tribunals, Americans have had to ask whether it is possible for the United States to defend itself against terrorism without violating the values and principles that lie at the heart of its democratic order. In Rights vs. Public Safety after 9/11, some of the nation's leading legal experts and social critics confront this question head-on. The contributors offer measured, often communitarian, approaches to topics such as the changes in United States immigration policy after September 11th, the practical and moral difficulties of racial profiling, the ethical dilemmas of an emergency response to a bioterrorist attack, and the role of the government in promoting national service. This balanced compilation of essays highlights where government will need to expand its authority in the fight against terrorism, where it risks overreaching, and how this new era might strengthen American society.

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the tension between civil rights and public safety has dominated public discourse. On issues ranging from racial profiling to military tribunals, Americans have had to ask whether it is possible for the United States to defend itself against terrorism without violating the values and principles that lie at the heart of its democratic order. In Rights vs. Public Safety after 9/11, some of the nation's leading legal experts and social critics confront this question head-on. The contributors offer measured, often communitarian, approaches to topics such as the changes in United States immigration policy after September 11th, the practical and moral difficulties of racial profiling, the ethical dilemmas of an emergency response to a bioterrorist attack, and the role of the government in promoting national service. This balanced compilation of essays highlights where government will need to expand its authority in the fight against terrorism, where it risks overreaching, and how this new era might strengthen American society.

The author gives expert form to the beauty and mystery of the most abstract of mathematical disciplines - algebra. He brings to life the cast of characters each of whom, through the centuries and across the world, played a role in its history.

This book is mainly a collection of essays I published between 2001 and 2013. Most of those essays appeared on VDARE.com, an online magazine dedicated to frank discussion of the National Question. The penultimate essay in this collection defines the National Question and offers an answer to it. That essay also describes the work of VDARE.com in more detail. It concludes with an unofficial VDARE.com mission statement.

There is no irony in the fact that H.L. Mencken is a tall figure in the history of letters, and Robert Rives La Monte is wholly forgotten. La Monte, who worked at the Baltimore News as well as being an editor for the International Socialist Review, was a true believer in the promise of Socialism. Here he writes six letters trying to convince H.L. Mencken to reject his selfish ways and become a comrade in the revolution, to usher in a perfect world of total equality and universal brotherhood. Mencken, long time writer for the Baltimore Sun, editor of The American Mercury, and prolific author and essayist, was the absolute worst choice of target for an evangelist of the common man. There have been few who were as openly resolved to a robust Nietzschean individualism. And so, in one of the turn of the last centuries greatest "flame wars," we have the Bard of Baltimore's six responses to those appeals. The battle of the "collective good" versus "individual liberty" still rages in pitched battles. La Monte's voice is rightfully now just one of many faceless advocates of class-warfare, and Mencken's personality survives as the greatest advocate of social Darwinism and thus ultimately Mencken's own views. "(It) shows how (Mencken's) political thinking had solidified-hardened, really. The law of the survival of the fittest, he declares, is "immutable," thus making socialism an absurdity; human progress is the product of the will to power, and all social arrangements failing to take this fact into account are doomed to failure; inequality is natural, even desirable, both in and of itself and as an alternative to mob rule; the world exists to be run by "the first-caste man." -Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken "The argument ofMen versus the Manis one we are still having today. The content of the argument is the relative desirability of two approaches to our social life. On the one hand is proposed a society ofmen: a society in which none is allowed to rise too high above another, a society that subtracts great resources from the more able in an effort to raise up the less able. On the other hand is a society ofthe man: a society in which individuals are left to do what they can with their inherited capabilities, in conditions of maximum personal freedom and minimal state control." -John Derbyshire, from the preface

This book is mainly a collection of speeches made and essays published in 2013. Most of the material appeared on VDARE.com, an online magazine dedicated to frank discussion of the National Question, which embraces issues of immigration, population, race, culture, language, religion, and national identity.

To his fellow conservatives, John Derbyshire makes a plea: Don't be seduced by this nonsense about "the politics of hope." Skepticism, pessimism, and suspicion of happy talk are the true characteristics of an authentically conservative temperament. And from Hobbes and Burke through Lord Salisbury and Calvin Coolidge, up to Pat Buchanan and Mark Steyn in our own time, these beliefs have kept the human race from blindly chasing its utopian dreams right off a cliff.
Recently, though, various comforting yet fundamentally idiotic notions of political correctness and wishful thinking have taken root beyond the "Kumbaya"-singing, we're-all-one crowd. These ideas have now infected conservatives, the very people who really should know better. The Republican Party has been derailed by legions of fools and poseurs wearing smiley-face masks.
Think rescuing the economy by condemning our descendents to lives of spirit-crushing debt. Think nation-building abroad while we slowly disintegrate at home. Think education and No Child Left Behind. . . . But don't think about it too much, because if you do, you'll quickly come to the logical conclusion: We are doomed.
Need more convincing? Dwell on the cheerful promises of the diversity cult and the undeniable reality of the oncoming demographic disaster. Contemplate the feminization of everything, or take a good look at what passes for art these days. Witness the rise of culturism and the death of religion. Bow down before your new master, the federal apparatchik. Finally, ask yourself: How certain am I that the United States of America will survive, in any recognizable form, until, say, 2022?
A scathing, mordantly funny romp through today's dismal and dismaler political and cultural scene, "We Are Doomed" provides a long-overdue dose of reality, revealing just how the GOP has been led astray in recent years-and showing that had conservatives held on to their fittingly pessimistic outlook, America's future would be far brighter.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to embrace the Audacity of Hopelessness. "
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"From the Hardcover edition."