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Title: A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America
ISBN: 0767928350
Author:
Jim Webb
Publicate Date: 2008-05-19
Publish: 2008-05-19
List Price: $24.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $12.46
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.98
Amazon Merchant Price: $16.47
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1: Stirred but not shaken
With a Houdini-like narrative, A Time to Fight escapes political partisanship and provides a fresh, honest, and independent missive to the American public on the shortcomings of our nation. Weaving personal vignettes with historical lessons, Webb explains, in an articulate and concise fashion, the challenges our government, and US citizens, face in the years to come. Using family experiences (with particular homage paid to Webb's Uncle Tommy), West Point and Marine Corps leadership lessons, journalistic insights, boxing matches, and White House "inside baseball;" Webb tackles three main themes in his work: economic fairness, leadership in government, and prison reform.
He argues convincingly that the upper class in America, the top one percent, have a disproportionate amount of America's wealth and the middle class and lower classes have been left far behind. Noting that the lion share of culpability for the disparity lies with the Republican Party, Webb also explains that former administrations are partly to blame. In short, Webb calls on his peers and the American citizen to press for more accountability from policy makers.
In peripheral contentions, Webb uses Andrew Jackson's presidential leadership against the nascent corporate bank to illustrate that courageous decision-making has been used by American political leaders. In the Jackson example, Webb examines the apolitical nature of the early-nineteenth century president's decision to curtail the power of the US banking system. Moreover, Webb provides ample evidence, via a review of the "broken" prison system, to illuminate the political distance that his peers keep from "hot" issues, such as the one Jackson faced with the banking system. His point, moral dilemmas should be faced head-on without partisanship or political motive.
Webb uses his sources wisely, but a more robust explanation of his sources, through footnote or endnote, would add further clarity to his narrative.
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2: A New-Found Respect for My VA Senator
My point of view, first of all, is that there is an under-current, of a powerful, select elite who control the market, our politics and news. Most of the media I digest is in the margins.
That being said, I was surprised at the empathy I had for Jim Webb's military perspective. His autobiographical approach to dissecting the time-line of America's political parties gave me a much more human connection to the soldiers who have made history, and who are currently fighting. Webb adds much richness to this work by integrating his own story into his switch from siding with the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. He takes the reader on a journey of how others with his values have changed as the presidency has changed as well.
While I am all-too aware of the corruption of Wall Street and within our justice system, which Webb outlines, there are areas of American (and Middle-Eastern) history in which I have sadly have been ignorant. Webb, if anything, has a strong understanding of the fine points of this history and how it dangerously repeats itself when we are uninformed.
There were many military and political experts with experience who were ignored by the Bush and his cabinet members in regards to the pit-falls of initiating a war in Iraq. Webb, having fought in Vietnam, has visited the darkest places of the psyche and knows that spilling blood comes with great, unseen consequences. It is done only as a last resort. Our occupation over-seas has created more terrorism than his, and others, careful, thoughtful approach. It is more than rhetoric; He has evidence.
It is assuring to see that a Senator can be so openly opposed to a domineering, covertly and overtly aggressive administration. Webb proves the adage that the personal is political and does so with the flow of a gifted writer. Though he offers a general idea to elicit people's passion to demand a change for the better, there could have been so much more. I was left feeling like the book was unfinished. Though the information and the solutions are truthful, it is a somewhat timid truth which only touches the surface a deep ocean of manipulation and anticipated revolution.
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3: Challenge to today's Americans
"A Time to Fight" is largely autobiographical, describing Webb's family background, military career (Viet Nam), writing career (several novels), Washington bureaucrat career (Secretary of the Navy), bitterly fought 2006 Senate campaign, and now his Senate career. Very impressive, obviously.
In the midst of all that, Webb also includes numerous historical references and anecdotes, mostly about military history, politics, and economics.
The rest of the book describes some of America's pressing challenges. Some of Webb's figures are shocking. For example, on the issue of the disparity in wealth between rich and poor, Webb says that J.D. Rockefeller made about 7,000 times the average per capita income in 1894, while today's money managers can make 700,000 times the average per capita income. Webb is concerned about whether the social contract that binds us together as a nation can survive that enormous disparity in wealth or the other problems he describes, such as the Iraq War, the rising power of countries like China, our exploding prison population (largely resulting from throwing thousands of urban blacks in jail for selling pot to suburban whites), the influence of special interests on politicians, and the military-industrial complex.
Making those challenges even more difficult to solve, according to Webb, is the poisonous political environment, where neither side seems to be willing to work with the other side, and where politicians pander to their base constituencies about deeply felt, but ultimately trivial, cultural issues, such as abortion, flag burning, and gay marriage, while ignoring issues that may literally threaten our survival as a nation.
I was a bit disappointed with how vague Webb's prescriptions were for dealing with the challenges he listed, but this was still a very interesting book.
And now, I think I'll check the want ads to see if there are any openings for money managers!
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4: Real Straight Talk from an Actual Maverick
Webb offers some tough policy prescriptions in this well written treatise. These aren't the standard platitudes, and few will agree with everything he says, but he writes with uncommon command for a politician and his call to action is persuasive. There's a lot of biographical insight here, but little self-congratulation. His writes about some topics that simply never get discussed. Indeed, his chapter on criminal justice was probably where his Vice Presidential vetting stopped.
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5: The most important book
James Webb is far and away the finest writer in the
world today.
This book, his latest, is timely and important.
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