Customer Reviews

No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

Pathetic self justification from a man with no values who betrayed the conservative movement. In an ideal world this book would have been a prison memoir. Instead we the people must be satisfied that this grub has left the Congress.

Save your money and your time!

The plot of this book is based loosely on the 1986 movie of the same name (No Retreat, No Surrender). In the movie a young karate student hones his fighting skills by training with the ghost of Bruce Lee. He eventually becomes so good that he defeats the evil karate-master Ivan Krushensky, who is played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. In the book, the part of the student is played by Tom Delay, the part of Bruce Lee is played by Jesus, and Krushenky is played by Ronnie Earle. I enjoyed the movie, but I have to say that the book makes little sense -- why would someone who terminated life support for his own father make a big public stink about someone else's decision to terminate life support for his wife? Also I don't understand why Jesus would help someone who blamed the Columbine massacres on the teaching of biology in high school. I don't think Bruce Lee would have done that. The authors of the book should have followed the plot of the movie more closely.

I picked this book up on a whim at my local library. I had read a couple of politically oriented books at that time, one from a moderate republican's perspective and another from a more liberal perspective, so I thought it would be interesting to get insight into the thinking of the modern conservative.

I'm sure there are good intellectual arguments for the core principles of the modern conservative movement (on a surface level I tend to agree with a good number of them), but don't look for them in this book--they aren't there. While Mr. DeLay does list the core principles of the conservative movement from his perspective, he doesn't discuss them on an intellectual level. Instead, he resorts to the type of sloganeering that infects so much of our modern political discourse (convervatives and liberals alike).

Mr. DeLay starts by sharing his experience on a layover in Havana in 1959. He attributes the nasty treatment his family endured as leftist tyranny and asserts that liberalism in the US is just a precursor to the same thing. From there DeLay states what seem to be at the core of his belief system: "There is a God and...there is absolute moral truth" followed by "Human life is not about the state but about God and his unfolding will for every individual."

In the second chapter Mr. DeLay lists his political manifesto. It starts with his religious beliefs followed with some issue-specific agendas (e.g. abortion should be illegal, we should abolish certain government agencies, Congress should be able to overule the Supreme Court, etc). There wasn't any discussion, just a list.

Like many politicians at both extremes, Mr. DeLay's actions in congress at times violated his own principles when the outcome of an issue didn't suit him. For example, on page 5 Mr. DeLay says that state and local governments that are closest to the people have the greatest authority to shape their lives. In the case of Terri Shiavo, however, Mr. DeLay was eager to usurp the authority of the state government when the court upheld, after years and years of appeals, that the feeding tube should be removed from Terri Shiavo. A look at Mr. DeLay's voting record shows many instances of him voting on legislation in ways to contradict his stated core principles. Mr. DeLay seems to be a "the end justifies the means" kind of thinker.

Mr. DeLay makes some self-assessments in his book that I think were pretty accurate. He says that he isn't particularly introspective, he says he isn't an "idea" person, he states that he isn't very articulate, and he indicates he is a slow learner. I found myself agreeing with all of those statements when I finished the book.

The best part of this book was Mr. DeLay's description of how he worked the system to get legislation passed. Unfortunately it wasn't very detailed. I followed up my reading of the book with some wikipedia reading on the subject and got much more useful information.

The rest of the book rarely rises above sloganeering: liberals are evil people who want to take away our freedoms and destroy America. I can't recommend this book to liberals who are interested in understanding the intellectual underpinnings of modern conservative thought, and I can't recommend the book for conservatives either--they've heard the slogans before just like everyone else. I can, however, recommend the book as an example of the way shallow thinking and use selective evidence has distorted our political system. While this book is an example from the Right, there are plenty of examples from the Left too.

In the end, I'm glad I didn't spend money on it, but I'm disappointed I wasted time on it.

Even with the gung-ho title like "No Retreat, No Surrender" this book is hard to place. Neither an apology (modern tearful `I'm sorry') nor apologia (classical defence), also neither a biography nor revenge (Nancy Reagan's "My Turn"), neither a dirt dishing nor confessional, it is all an insider's view of a fluffy and obvious world of cheeze-O sleeze-O power brokers that can be had for the price of a [...] ...all of the kind that true conservatives (such as myself) feel most betrayed by. You'd think someone once this powerful would have been either more Machiavellian or more self-debasing by now. But where DeLay's tough stances are right he fails to see he has debased his coinage and arguments by selling for geld the very fundamental idea he was placed in Washington by his constituents for: small federal government. He did zero for that effort, and conservatives and Democrats for different reasons enjoyed seeing the back of him over it.

This entire book is unlike Charles Colson's "Born Again" or anti-communist faith-based turn like Whittaker Chambers's "Witness," both of which the anti-communist and evangelical rhetoric are borrowed from. While DeLay's entry to the field is competently (ghost) written (thanks Stephen Mansfield), this is neither a page-turner nor so horrible you quit. This is a ham sandwich with Miracle Whip on white bread of an autobiography.

And that is what ultimately is the problem with "No Retreat, No Surrender." My own politics probably corresponds with 90% of Delay's lip-service, but the fact is he is not a grand figure in the intersection of faith and public life like Colson or Chambers, for he stands for no big ideas, and what little big idea he did stand for (small government conservatism) he squandered at the public trough and sticking the bill to John Q. Public in the name of beating the Democrats at their own game simply because he had power. It did not work. And by betraying his ideals because of power, giving lip service while being a hypocrite (we are all guilty of this) and ultimately taking the low-brow cheap irresistible grace method out ("boohoo...I cheated on my wife in Texas and Washington, but now I'm Born Again!") DeLay does not for an interesting figure make, neither for contemporary affairs, nor for history. He is a stereotype, and a dull one at that...a commodity pol who will be replaced by someone more effective or more colourful at the next turn of Fortuna's wheel. That he wrote this book at all is merely evidence that he hasn't realized he's left the stage for good and been written out of the show and subsequent appearances. Probably misses those checks and steak dinners, of which a book tour is now a low-rent ironic reminder of the Washington pleasures he once so richly stuck his nozzle deep in the trough of.

Pitiful excuse for a human being. Remember "Crybaby Newt"? This guy makes him look like John Wayne. DeLay always was fond of saying he "walks with God", but that's only because no one else would dare be seen with the creep. The only thing I'll miss about him being out of politics is the shame and corruption he brought to the Conservative Party.

Don't look for a sequel to this piece of garbage anytime soon. DeLay will likely be too busy dodging his future fellow inmates who want to do to him what he did to America.

Should've titled it "I Retreat, I Surrender", cause that's exactly what the little weasel did when the going got the least bit tough. What a coward. Buy this book--only if you have absolutely nothing else to house-train your dog with...

What a piece of worthless flotsum. Those that would part with the money to read this are probably of the mindset to enjoy it but for the rest it is simplistic, mind-numbing gibberish written by a man adept in pandering to the defective. I picked it up at a local library, curious if he had any insights- he doesn't!

This book from the guy who RESIGNED his office in disgrace, handed his leadership post to the democrats, and ran away from Texas.

Apparently the new trend with corrupt Republicans is to write your memoirs before you really have to go to court for money laundering, maybe then you'll garner the kind of public sympathy you desperately need. Is it a cosmic coincidence that Tom Delay's biography is being released at right around the same time the Bush White House is finding itself embroiled in yet another scandal? "No Retreat, No Surrender" is not so much a biography as it is a printed axe grinder. DeLay dedicates most of the book to trashing and bashing his fellow right-wing comrades, maybe in an effort to get some payback for only having radical mouthpieces like Sean Hannity (who writes an introduction to the book) as his support group when his closet skeletons came out dancing before the world. For the well-informed this will prove to be a rather boring read, as DeLay goes through the usual "how I rose from humble roots to the seat of power" memories, including a bizarre, almost racist description of his family fleeing Cuba after the 1959 Revolution, he then makes room to describe things about people we already know. He paints New Gingrich as a fat model of vanity, an ego-driven politician with some smarts but no tactic made worse by his fascination with himself, is this really news to anyone about Gingrich? I'm surprised Sean Hannity even wrote the intro to this book, I doubt he read it, DeLay goes on to pretty much trash the entire Republican Party because they were never as conservative and radical as he would have liked. The most ridiculous passages in the book deal with the Iraq war as DeLay continues to promote ideas that have long since been dismantled about "spreading freedom" and pretty much staying the course in what is an ever growing bloodbath in an ill-conceived imperialist campaign. Let's be honest here, DeLay is awaiting trial for laundering cash in Texas, he has little authority to bash anyone considering he's just as crooked. Don't get me wrong, I would be scared witless in an America ruled by Newt Gingrich, but DeLay's book is nothing more than just pure axe grinding, this man is bitter about his situation and he decided to take out in the disquise of a "biography." True, DeLay doesn't come across as utterly insane like Bill O'Reilly or Hannity, but he's just blowing steam and at the same time promoting conservative slogans that are quickly dying in an American landscape tired of war and social inequality.

Am I missing something here??? Didn't Mr. Delay "retreat" and "surrender" when he dropped out of his re-election campaign and resigned from congress???

re·treat: withdrawal from position: a withdrawal from a position or point of view to one intended to lessen conflict

sur·ren·der: give up possession of something: to relinquish possession or control of something because of coercion or force

If Mr. Delay was half the man he claims he is in the premise of his book, he would have stuck to his guns to the very end, Rocky Balboa style. Instead, like a little girlie man, he quit and wrote a book. What a loser.

Appearing on Hardball with Chris Matthews to promote his new book, No Retreat, No Surrender, it's clear former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) didn't write it and perhaps never even read it before it was published.

Matthews asked DeLay about passages in his book where he described former Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX) as "drunk with ambition." Amazingly, DeLay denied writing that, even after Matthews showed him the underlined passage in his own book.