Eight Ways to Run the Country ― A New and Revealing Look at Left and Right

Dissatisfied with prior schemes for categorizing political ideologies, Mitchell (Washington bureau chief, Investor's Business Daily) proposes his own typology. He begins by boiling down political differences down to support or opposition to archê (the concept of rank) and kratos (the use of force by the state and others) and then deriving from this distinction the four political traditions of the Anglo-American experience: republican constitutionalism, libertarian individualism, progressive democracy, and plutocratic nationalism. Further identifying intermediate steps between them, he argues that the contemporary American political scene can be characterized as consisting of eight political perspectives: individualist, paleolibertarian, paleoconservative, theoconservative, neoconservative, communitarian, progressive, radical, and individualist. He offers a chapter on each of these perspectives, detailing how they are the result of differing attitudes towards archê and kratos and the positions this leads them towards. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Brian Patrick Mitchell is the former Washington Bureau Chief of Investor's Business Daily. As a veteran political reporter and author, Mitchell has appeared on dozens of television and radio shows, includingFace the Nation, Larry King Live, Today, Crossfire, andNightline. He also has been a guest speaker at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Connecticut, and Catholic University of America.