Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest ofUs) [Mass Market Paperback]

Mona Charen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2006

The New York Times bestseller about the harm that liberal do-gooders have wrought on those they’ve tried for decades to help

Liberals from Capitol Hill to Hollywood, from our major news organizations to our leading universities, are convinced that they know what’s best for America’s poor and middle class. And they are equally convinced that anyone who disagrees with them isn’t just wrong, but morally inferior, cold hearted . . . maybe even evil.

But consider the mess liberals have made of education, race relations, crime, welfare, homelessness, and just about every other domestic issue over the past four decades. It’s a wonder they’re still so smug and self-righteous.

Bestselling author and columnist Mona Charen now offers a comprehensive look at the damage caused by decades of well-intentioned liberal "big-heartedness." She shines the spotlight of truth on the nation’s best-known—and most dangerous—do-gooders, including Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Jesse Jackson, Al Franken, Maureen Dowd, Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Katie Couric, Gloria Steinem, and Hillary Clinton.

Mona Charen holds the do-gooders accountable for their bad ideas, and refuses to let them hide from the real world facts that disprove their naïve theories.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From its provocative title, to its headshots of liberals that conservatives love to hate (Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore, Rosie O'Donnell), Charen signals right away that she will make no attempt to bridge a widening divide. She does make an attempt to add some empirical weight to the usual vitriol of liberal bashing, however. This polemic includes over 20 pages of footnotes to back up its various claims and offers a partial bibliography for those wanting to read more written by those who share Charen's political leanings. But even with the citations, Charen's argument (over six chapters) is simple in every sense: everything that has gone bad in American society is the fault of liberal policies and the countercultural movements of the 1960s, and everything that is getting better is the consequence of the leadership of a few (visionary) politicians on the right. Charen makes frequent use of quotes from a range of people in the "do-gooder" camp (although she seems oddly fixated on Moore, Jesse Jackson and the editorial page of the New York Times), but this is largely a cherry-picking exercise rather than a more thoughtful attempt to evaluate the core assumptions and values that guide liberal policy makers. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

"Charen’s new book . . . comes at the perfect time. . . . Her book is not only an easy read, but her wit and humor make it truly enjoyable."
—Betsy Hart, Chicago Sun-Times

"The indispensable Mona Charen devotes her new book . . . to depicting the severe price that America has paid for past acts of ill-considered liberal beneficence. The array of facts Charen assembles, from crime to welfare to education, is daunting and definitive. . . . To read this excellent book is to receive a keen insight into why America has moved so far in the conservative direction in recent years."
—National Review

"Following up on her bestselling Useful Idiots, Charen seeks to debunk liberal discourse and unearth the facts that never make the New York Times."
—Christopher Benson, The Weekly Standard

"Anyone who does not understand the utter cynicism of politics does not understand politics. An education on that subject can be found in Mona Charen’s incisive new book, Do- Gooders."
—Thomas Sowell, Capitalism Magazine

"Do-Gooders abounds in powerful data."
—Front Page Magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Sentinel Trade (April 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595230173
• ISBN-13: 978-1595230171
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,182,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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125 of 148 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Six powerful and well written essays on important topics, February 28, 2005

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us) (Hardcover)

While the bestseller lists usually contain one or more conservative books providing a survey of what is wrong with liberal thought or how liberals are undermining America, this book deserves to be set apart and taken much more seriously. Rather than a glib survey of the popular scene with sharp barbs tossed at the usual suspects, Mona Charen provides us with six powerful essays. She is a former White House speechwriter, and her gift for fashioning vibrant and passionate prose in the service of a well constructed argument shows in every page of this book.

These essays take on liberal articles of faith and leftist bureaucratic groupthink. Mrs. Charen demonstrates how the culture of non-judgment and soft punishment is connected to the great increase in crime for the past several decades. She shows how blind the establishment has been to why Giuliani's policies in governing New York actually had an impact.

She also illuminates how the race relations industry stifles progress and demagogues the issue of race in our country. Her discussion of the predictable (and predicted) debilitating influence the creation of "entitlements" has had on our country. To the point that one Supreme Court justice actually compared the entitlement of welfare to a medical license or a license to practice law. It is as if all jobs were sinecures and it was up to the government to allocate them according to their whim. You will just shake your head when see the foolishness of these policies laid out in this essay.

Of course, more than one person predicted that these policies along with other changes in our culture would lead to fewer strong families and the cost this would have on children. Many bought into the notion that if the adults were happier divorced then the children would be happier. Those that said this was lunacy were shouted down. Nowadays, it is clear that government policies have made a powerful contribution to weakening families and harming children. Again, read what Mrs. Charen says and you will learn how this has been a decades long fiasco.

The author also does a fabulous job in demonstrating how the homelessness crisis was a pure creation of the left on the one hand emptying the mental hospitals directly onto the streets and then misrepresenting both the mix of who was actually homeless and how many of them there were. Under Reagan and the first Bush there were gillions of them. Under Clinton, none. Under Bush II we are back to at least a kajillion. Ho, ho, ho.

No one is taking lightly those truly in need and we all should help out local programs at our churches and homeless shelters and the Salvation Army to get food and shelter to all in need. The point here is the naked politics of the reporting on this issue.

The last essay is on the tragic destruction of our public schools over the past several decades. The growth of the education bureaucracy has taken needed resources away from the classroom. The establishment cries for more money even when we spend hundreds of billions of dollars and keep increasing the amounts tossed into that sink hole. Yet what our students actually know shrinks - but they feel really proud of themselves and are experts on popular culture.

If you are going to get just one book on important current issues I would recommend that you give this book serious consideration. Strongly Recommended.

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Do-Gooders = Do-Badders, November 7, 2005

By 

Martin Asiner (jersey city, nj United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us) (Hardcover)

Up until the Vietnam War. Democrats and Republicans quarreled incessantly over a wide range of issues, but one issue that they always agreed on was national security. That feeling of solidarity began to corrode as pro-Marxist thought began to infest America's colleges and mass media. Vietnam drew the battle lines. Iraq etched this line indelibly in the minds of the Left. Mona Charon sees this demarcation as an unbridgeable gulf that has led to a dissolution of much of the promise that used to be called, in pre-politically correct days, as the American Dream of true hope and sustained progress. In USEFUL IDIOTS, Charon takes the Left to task as she notes how liberals have ruined America in foreign affairs and now in DO-GOODERS, she does much the same as she focuses on how liberals have exacerbated a wide spectrum of domestic calamities ranging from urban crime to welfare abuse to homelessness and finally to the collapse of our educational system.

Charon does not intend DO-GOODERS to be an even handed book. She intends it as a polemic against a mindset that places the rights and welfare of the unworthy individual against those of society at large. Charon notes how the Left has taken the traditional credo of America--the rights of the individual must be respected by the collective mass--and have transformed it into the rights of the individual must always supercede the rights of the many. She notes that the America of 2005 is one that would hardly be recognizable to the traditional Democrats of JFK, Hubert Humphrey, and Scoop Jackson. The police are hamstrung in their efforts to control crime. Welfare is seen as a socialist right rather than as what had once been viewed as a somewhat repugnant alternative to poverty by an earlier generation. Modern educational pedagogy stresses esteem and multiculturalism over what used to be called the ABC's. Charon notes that liberals are united in their efforts to remake America into what passes for culture in France and Germany. She wisely points out that both of those countries suffer from social ills that this country has avoided. The recent riots in France serve as a sobering harbinger as to what might lie ahead for the United States should the radical Left tilt of the Democratic Party continue unabated. DO-GOODERS is a timely book that proves once again that those who think that they know what is best for the rest of us do not even know what is best for themselves.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Emancipation doesn't mean being led astray, October 17, 2005

By 

F. A. C. Naaijkens (Holland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us) (Hardcover)

Original socialists (sic) wanted to emancipate the honest workman. Undereducated, he was not well equipped to improve this position or negotioate.

At least in Europe, there was some success... between 1880 and 1920! They got -somewhat- liberated.

Ever since, instead of freeing people, the socialist wanted to develop a nanny state, where Mother Knows Best(tm). And as the State grew, freedom deminished.

It's pretty amazing so many people still fall for the trap of the Do-gooders, who lead people to believe they can get all kinds of freebies on OTHER man's wallet.

Yet the only thing they achieve, is distributing money OUT of the wallet of average people, making them more dependent, and less able to lead their own lives, and make ends meet.

Now everybody turns to the state for answers. Most money is however wasted to endless bureaycracy, not end-goals.

Do-gooders very eloquently shows how this develops, the attitudes, reactions of people. Real world examples. I just hope many people read this. Once you do, not only do people immediately recognise them to be true, they might see the emerging trend.

I don't remember who said this: "Knowledge is favourable to liberty. Educate the people and they will apply the remedy."

This is another startingpoint.. A good one, too.