Reviews for Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism

The average rating for Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism based on 2 reviews is 1 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-04-10 00:00:00 User Novell Not the worst book ever written, but pretty fucking close. I must begin by saying that since Hannity is below a purely academic discussion, resorting to personal insults won't trouble my conscience at all. And since I'd rather flog myself than read more conservative trash, I'm gonna try to get as much in here as possible, but I'm only going to write about issues dealt with in this book. Hmm... Where should I begin my rant about this loser's disgusting work of warmongering propaganda? Should I start with his pathological hatred of anything perceived to be un-American. His complete lack of understanding of any political position to the left of Ronald Reagan, or even George Dubbya? Or maybe with his laughable straw men arguments? These and other would be good starting points. Is he even worth putting the effort into? Yeah I think so, even though I cringe as I recall every twisted fallacy, every cowardly evasion of logic and truth Hannity employs in this putrid collection of pages. I think there was something of a masochistic element to my taking up this book, but for only a dollar at a used book sale, I figured what the hell. It can't be that bad right? Wrong. Well, being unfortunately familiar with Hannity's nightly parade of coarse GOP propaganda, I was relatively sure of the inferno into which I would be descending. What I didn't know was that Hannity has nearly as much hatred for the English language as he does for anything perceived to be un-American or left-wing(although these two domains have no distinction in Hannity's mind). His pathetic writing makes Ayn Rand look like Shakespeare. Now, I know this isn't an English exam, but c'mon Sean learn to write sentences before you graduate to books. At first I went through the book with a pen correcting bad sentences along with factual misrepresentations, but the frequency of these issues gave me writer's cramp in a short time. There is I think an importance to this issue. While the right has a monopoly of radio programs thanks to bigmouths like Savage and Limbaugh, the left has always had superior writers. Except Buckley at his best (and that's still a big stretch), no right-winger has ever approached Orwell, Vidal, Hitchens, Zinn, or even Chomsky at their very best. Even their worst is always readable; Hannity is obviously writing for the Tom Clancy market. Actually, a Tom Clancy thriller is a viable companion to Hannity's book, which is just a digressive tract in favor of the two wars. Starting with the title (which childishly apes the Lord's prayer, but more on that later), Hannity divides the world, in no uncertain terms, into absolutes of good and evil. He actually wastes dozens of pages telling pointless, digressive, and boring stories to support the childish world view Hannity insists is both "innocent and wise." He actually uses his son's fear of the dark as justification of the Cold War or something. He's not joking either. This is "with us or against us" at its ugliest. What's more, he thinks that making an academic discussion of these simple matters is simple-minded! Maybe I missed that Birch society meeting, but I thought intellectualism was good and absolutes were limited to the KKK or the Nazis. It turns out that I had been sadly misinformed on this, and I think Mr. Hannity for his illuminating philosophical discourse. But seriously, Hannity's world view could be summed up as: Republican controlled America should wipe out any and all threats without thinking about "liberal" policies like long-term consequences or the human cost; it's immoral to think about those things. After all, Chamberlain didn't act. What if Reagan hadn't gone into Grenada? I mean there was a deadly threat if ever there was one. And we'd be speaking Iraqi if Bush wasn't a God-fearing patriot. The sad thing is, that could almost be a quote from this book. There are two Gods that dominate this trifling work: the Christian God and the Republican God (Reagan if you weren't sure). Hannity writes of Reagan like a cherished former lover. If we were to accept Hannity's garbage, we would believe that Reagan brought down the Berlin Wall by saying his soundbites and then staring really hard in the wall's direction. I expect this Reagan obsession by now, but it never ceases to amaze me. But what really bothers me is the vile way Hannity uses God to justify his politics and this mess of a book. Firstly, he has the gall to reprint the entire Our Father prayer on the first page; I guess he has to show us how pious and all-American he is. Of course this is followed by his explanation of how his Catholic faith is his moral compass, blah blah blah. If Jesus came back, I find it hard to believe he would be allowed on Fox News, let alone stand with Hannity and justify the Reagan funded slaughter of the Christian resistance in places like El Salvador. Oh, and about the Iraq War: just try and justify that to Jesus, Gandhi, the Founding Fathers, or Edmund Burke(all of whom are cited). I wouldn't digress about the religion thing, but I really think it's important. Keep in mind this is a man who rejects separation of church and state and supported Jerry Falwell. Falwell should be kept out of government as much as Fred Phelps should. And he accuses famously anti-Christian atheist Nietzsche of being essentially a Nazi philosopher and the Superman theory of being pro-Aryan and anti-semitic. Actually, Nietzsche hated despots and anti-Semites; he wrote letters to his sister condemning her for being in a relationship with an anti-Semite. That he was used by the Nazis is not significant, because his philosophy had NOTHING to do with Nazism, quite the opposite actually; he can't help being aped by the wrong people (just like Jesus). The point here is an obvious one: Hannity is ignorant and intolerant of non-Christian beliefs. Hitler's religious views are hazy so he links him to Nietzsche so that he can say that Hitler was an atheist like Stalin, and that's the reason they were murderers. Simply pathetic. So far I've mentioned the morally absolute bullshit, the Reagan bullshit, and the Christian bullshit. Next there's the liberal bullshit, which is the most multifaceted bullshit yet. I'm a Socialist not a liberal, but if there's one thing I can't stand it's misrepresentation. Hannity uses liberal like all the Fox News commentators do: as, depending on the context, a synonym for wimp or transgressive pervert. Like a schoolyard bully, Hannity essentially lashes out at liberal for being bleeding-heart do-gooders; to digress again, why is do-gooder an insult? That makes do-badder a good thing? But that's not the issue dealt with in this book, which is simply Why We Fight for an unnecessary war and without any interesting parts. Liberal opposition to Bush's Iraq War is used to prove that liberals are afraid to protect American values; apparently, if you don't have wet dreams about bombing the shit out of every country that poses a possible threat, than you're soft on absolute evil. And we can't afford that. Hannity at first commends liberal for supporting the invasion after 9/11, but says that in the ensuing years they seem to have lost their spines. Y'know, I don't feel like defending the weak and corrupt Democratic party anymore, so let's go to the real left. It's seems hard for Hannity to imagine that anybody exists in America to the left of a notorious Red like Bill Clinton. He pretty much gives away the game when he quotes Noam Chomsky with almost no commentary; apparently, Chomsky's brief but strong attack on the 2001 invasion is below criticism. This quote is found among several indicating how the "academic left" has gotten away from the simple common sense needed to determine the fates of millions here and around the world. He has to completely misrepresent the left in order to defeat it because there' simply no way he could win a debate with any true left-wing activist. Hannity settles for Colmes, the innefective, Fox News approved conservative liberal. Hannity is fixated on World War II and the Cold War. His WWII is that of John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, not of Dresden or Hiroshima. His Cold War is much the same, except worse. He is obsessed with the phrase "greatest generation" (he always puts the term in quotes which is annoying), and there is a jingoistic element to this. His lengthy digression into the Holocaust is there pretty much for its own sake, but even that tasteless exercise in using the Holocaust (in a very roundabout way) to condemn liberalism is topped by hi denial of Fascism as a right-wing philosophy. Like Johnah Goldberg in his awful book, Hannity says that Hitler and Stalin were both leftist socialists who put the state as their God (just like liberals!). Of course, Reagan is quoted supporting this. That fascism and communism can seem similar as collectivist philosophies is known, but an unwillingness to look below the surface shows what Hannity's style of research is. It shouldn't even be research, it should just be common knowledge, especially for someone involved in politics. And it's cheap and idiotic to compare a liberal to a Nazi because they believe in a state, especially since Republicans are radical statists as well, no matter what they keep saying. I already mentioned Wayne; Gore Vidal said the ideal Republican presidential candidate would have been Wayne, and I think Hannity's views on the Cold War evidence this. He simply can't see a better solution than war. Hannity insists conflict with the Soviet Union was morally unavoidable; tell me Sean, what's the morality of a pushing the world towards nuclear holocaust? Speaking of the holocaust, Hannity unsurprisingly brings that in quite a bit, often to justify America's funding of Israeli terror. These kinds of views are scary but commonplace. This morally absolute and militarily aggressive attitude is repugnant when someone is talking about history, but positively dangerous when dealing with current events. I had to get there sometime: Bush's wars, the impetus behind this sad excuse for a book. His main purpose here, it is quite clear, was to help Bush as much as possible leading up to the 2004 election. I've already written so much I don't feel like writing a whole lot so I'll try to make this brief. I'm opposed to the war in Iraq, and since there is plenty of anti-Iraq war testimony out there, I'll leave it at that. If Hannity could outline a genuine argument, as Hitchens did, for the wars, I would still vehemently disagree but respect him. But I have no respect for this rich, abnormally stupid ape who thinks the answer to all the world's problems is the Military-Industrial Complex and a reading from his bible (that is: Reagan's memoirs). This primate didn't deserve this much time and effort but here it is anyway, but if this review gets to a sane person, at least they'll know I tried.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-06-25 00:00:00 Cynthia Hillman It has taken me three years to regain the brain cells I lost while reading this outrageous blasphemy.