Do you Read and or Buy books from authors you usually disagree with?

[Fluffdaddy]

Hi gang

I usually don't buy books/read from right-wing authors. I don't wish to put money in their pockets or rise my blood pressure.

But I been dying to read Pat Buchanan new book Day of Reckoning: (How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart)
I find the premise of this book fascinating, and I found Pat a more traditional conservative that I can listen too and not fear having my head explode.


Does is make me a Bad Liberal and a embarrassment to DU to buy Pat's book? I honestly like to know your opinions


Book Description
America is coming apart at the seams.Forces foreign and domestic seek an end to U.S. sovereignty and independence.Before us looms the prospect of an America breaking up along the lines of race, ethnicity, class and culture.In Day of Reckoning, Pat Buchanan reveals the true existential crisis of the nation and shows how President Bush's post-9/11 conversion to an ideology of 'democratism' led us to the precipice of strategic disaster abroad and savage division at home. Ideology, writes Buchanan, is a Golden Calf, a false god, a secular religion that seeks vainly, like Marxism, to create a paradise on earth.While free enterprise is good, the worship of a 'free trade' that is destroying the dollar, de-industrializing America, and ending our economic independence, is cult madness.While America must stand for freedom and self-determination, the use of U.S. troops to police the planet or serve as advance guard of some 'world democratic revolution' is, as Iraq shows, imperial folly that will bring ruin to the republic. While America should speak out for human rights, the idea that we get in Russia's face and hand out moral report cards to every nation on earth is moral arrogance.While we have benefited from immigration and the melting pot worked with millions of Europeans, the idea we can import endless millions of aliens, legal and illegal, from every culture, clime, creed, and continent on earth, and still remain a country, is absurd.To save America the first imperative is to remove from power the ideologues of both parties who have nearly killed our country.In his final chapter, Buchanan lays out ideas to prevent the end of America.He calls for a bottom-up review of all of America's Cold War commitments, a ten-point program to secure America's borders, ideas to halt the erosion of our national sovereignty and restore our manufacturing preeminence and economic independence, and a formula for finding the way to a cold peace in the culture wars.Buchanan offers a radical but necessary program, for neither party is addressing the real crisis of America -- whether we survive as one nation and people, or disintegrate into what Theodore Roosevelt called a 'tangle of squabbling nationalities' and not a nation at all. IN THIS EYE-OPENING BOOK, PAT BUCHANAN REVEALS THE PERILOUS PATH OUR NATION HAS TAKEN:- Pax Americana -- the era of U.S. global dominance -- is over.- A struggle for world hegemony among the United States, China, a resurgent Russia and radical Islam has begun.- Torn apart by a culture war, America has begun to Balkanize and break down along class, cultural, ethnic, and racial lines.- Free trade is hollowing out U.S. industry, destroying the dollar, and plunging the country into permanent dependency and unpayable debt.- One of every six U.S. manufacturing jobs vanished under Bush. - The Third World invasion through Mexico is a graver threat to U.S. survival than anything happening in Afghanistan or Iraq....IS OUR DAY OF RECKONING JUST AHEAD?

[AlCzervik]

1. i bought Christopher Hitchen's book "God is not great" and thoroughly enjoyed it.

i agree with almost nothing he says politically.

[billyskank]

4. I bought Peter Hitchens' book "The Abolition of Britain"

Peter is Christopher's brother. They hate each other's guts. Peter is a true conservative. Christopher used to be a liberal and is now a neocon. I much prefer Peter. I don't agree with everything he thinks but admire him nonetheless.

[Book Lover]

2. Get them from the library instead

It helps your library branch to have materials circulating, and you are not making an additional book purchase.

[KamaAina]

3. I've heard rumors about Sharyn McCrumb

which would suck majorly. The woman wields a pen like the surgeon's scalpel.

Based on what I've read, though, her characters like to snark on pols of all parties, not just Dems.

[madinmaryland]

5. I read Nixon's memoirs. That's all I can think of.

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. My problem with Buchanan (and Cal Thomas) is his conclusions are often correct,

but his premises are totally fucked up, his hermeneutic is entirely wrong, and his suggestions about what to do are wrong.

He's write - America is a land of Hubris, Ideology, and Greed. But he ain't seeing it where it actually is, sees it where it isn't, and his solution is xenophobic Christian-cum-American-exceptionalism nonsense.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Now and then I read some of hubby's evangelical books. I haven't picked up a

conservative book I disagree with, though.

[applegrove]

8. At times I find myself reading up on what neocons are up to. Important to get

the future think of the other side.

[Fluffdaddy]

9. Exactly, Keep your friends close

But keep your enemies closer

[Deep13]

10. Yup.

I like Christopher Hitchens and the military historian Keegan (forgot his 1st name) even though they both supported the Iraq invasion.

[SOteric]

11. I rarely buy such books, but I often read them.

I won't spend the money on them, but I'll borrow them from the library or an aquaintance that owns the books. In all seriousness I don't think one has the right to pronounce something utter crap until one has read or studied the balderdash in question.

[jonnyblitz]

12. I read the occasional right wing book from my local library.

The last one I just skimmed because it was so nauseating, I couldn't read it from cover to cover. It was "Shut Up and Sing" by Laura Ingraham. it was awful. I also have a book about the neo-nazi William Pierce (who wrote "The Turner Diaries" that inspired Tim McVeigh supposedly) that is supposedly written by a guy sympathetic to him. I read somewhere this book is used as a textbook in college courses. I bought it second hand on line and I haven't read it yet.