商品簡介
In this volume, Edwards argues that conservatives today have abandoned their principles and have become champions of that which they once most learned. The conservative movement - which once nominated Burry Goldwater for president, and later elected Ronald Reagan - was based on a distinctly American kind of conservatism that drew its inspiration directly from the United States Constitution-in particular, an overriding belief in individual liberty and limited government. But today Edwards argues, the mantle, of conservatism has been taken over by people whose beliefs and policies threaten the entire constitutional system of government. By abetting on imperial presidency, he contends, so-called conservatives have gutted the system of checks and balances, abandoned due process, and trampled upon our civil liberties. Today's conservatives endorse unprecedented assertions of government power - from the creation of secret prisons to illegal wiretapping. Once, they fought to protect citizens from government. intrusion; today, they seem to recognize few limits on what government can do. The movement that was once the Constitution's - and freedom's - strongest defender is now at risk of becoming its most dangerous enemy, Edwards ends with a blueprint for reclaiming the essence of conservatism in America.
作者簡介
Mickey Edwards has taught at Harvard and Goorgetown and is now on the faculty of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International affairs and a vice president of the Aspen Institute.
