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Irvine Review / March 2003 Larry Elder's Showdown with the Left By Courtney Rosenbladt Showdown: Confronting Bias, Lies, and the Special Interests that Divide America, by Larry Elder (St. Martin.s Press, 368 pp., $24.95) "WARNING! The zone you are about to enter contains hard facts. Some may find hard facts objectionable: communists, socialists, statists, victicrats, and weekend golfers may wish to lower the volume in order to avoid discomforting enlightenment." So begins The Larry Elder Show every day on KABC; the same warning also applies to those wishing to embark upon Larry Elder.s new book Showdown: Confronting Bias, Lies, and the Special Interests that Divide America. .The Sage from South Central. is a nationally syndicated talk show host. But beyond that he has written two books: the New York Times best-selling The Ten Things You Can't Say in America and, now, Showdown. He also writes a weekly column and has hosted a television show. As a black libertarian, Elder is fiscally conservative and socially liberal, and is critical of both major political parties. Although he believes they are different in ideology and rhetoric, he sees few differences in their actions. "Both parties," writes Elder, "participate in the creation, expansion, and defense of the welfare state." Just as The Ten Things You Can.t Say in America "rips off the cover of political correctness," Showdown continues the campaign toward "a world of limited government and maximum personal responsibility." These are the two principles Elder finds missing in the government and lives of many Americans. According to Elder, one of the main problems is "America has become a nation of excuse making, blame pointing government-dependent people.victicrats." Elder confronts this destructive mentality. Elder.s primary demand is to get the government out of our lives. According to Elder, "On September 11, 2001 our government failed to live up to its most important responsibility: to protect its citizens. It failed because it uses its $2 trillion budget to meddle in our personal and financial affairs and to provide goods and services that Americans can and should provide for themselves." Elder says that the government has its hands in several areas where they don.t belong. He lists education, health care, and retirement, to name a few. According to Elder, "the government has simply created problems that could not have happened in a free market system." "Would parents," asks Elder, "if they paid directly from their hard earned salaries tolerate the waste, inefficiency, poor discipline, and low academic standards that we see in inner city education, wouldn.t paying customers demand quality, value, and service?" Elder argues that beyond the lack of quality in the public schools, we also need to look to the parents: "When parents don.t care, kids won.t care and all bets are off." He also sites teachers who claim that kids with behavior problems in schools have parents who are the least involved in their lives. In the chapter .More Dads, Less Crime," Elder claims that "irresponsible breeding[.]remains America.s number one problem." According to Elder, the lack of fathers "hurts children by making them less trusting and less capable of committing to others." He argues that the lack of a father in a child.s life, although not without hope, has proven to have irreparable damages: "A recent study blames absentee, non-involved fathers for increasing the odds of a life of crime." Simply put, "Dads matter." Besides criticizing the government and the lack of personal responsibility in America, he also takes on "the well-meaning liberals." In the chapter .Liberal Fascism: Stealing Freedom with Compassion,. Elder sites FDR as the main culprit behind modern liberalism. "Today.s liberals," says Elder, "as with the well-intentioned Roosevelt, bulldoze over the constraints placed by the limited-government-supporting Founding Fathers. The it-takes-a-village crowd simply pours it down our throats like castor oil while telling us that it.s good for us." Without the liberals where would we be? We would be smoking in bars, riding bicycles without helmets, and carrying guns. Elder sites exhaustive evidence that the laws and regulations advocated and passed by many liberals fail to do what they are designed to do. "But the nanny-staters," says Elder, "--those who believe the government should care for us as if we were children -- remain undaunted." Elder also argues that the liberal agenda is further promoted by bias in the media. "A biased media," says Elder, "means information not given, a perspective not offered, resulting in popular misunderstanding of important issues." It is not so much that what they are reporting is false, it is what they fail to report that is the problem. According to Elder, "The media routinely ignores counter views from economists, scholars, and non-liberal members of academia." How does Elder suggest we combat lack of balance? "Read defensively." Elder is infamous for unabashedly committing the heinous crime of criticizing the black leadership in this country. As a result, he has received names such as "Uncle Tom" and the "Trojan Horse," to name a few. In his criticism of the "black victicrats," Elder blames the black leadership for helping to perpetuate the victim-mentality that is prevalent in their rhetoric: " .Black leaders. use hysterical, inflammatory, and absurd language to trumpet the .poor-me. line.thus the black victicrat mentality demands not just equal rights, but equal results, a goal that damages the psyche of both blacks and nonblacks." One of the biggest problems is that "black leaders continue fighting against white racism as if conditions remain unchanged since those of the Jim Crow south." Elder argues that many black leaders fail to recognize the real problems that blacks face in America. "The black leadership," says Elder, "continues to fight racism, while placing less emphasis on improving schools, the reward of hard work, and avoiding irresponsible breeding.[they] defend the government monopoly on education, even as a majority of inner-city elementary school kids cannot read, write, or compute at grade level." Elder also blames the media for continuing to condescend to the black victicrat mentality. How about those Republicans? While the Republican party is supposed to stand for limited government, it often fails to do so. "Believers in freedom and limited government," says Elder, "see a Republican Party that often abandons its principles and unnecessarily compromises its values." According to Elder, "Many quite understandably, see Republicans as Democrat-lites." Larry.s suggestion: think libertarian, "the real difference." So, what will it take to kill the Minotaur and still have hope to make it out of the labyrinth alive? Elder offers a prescription. Because of "the necessary money and resources [needed] to protect us against our foreign and domestic enemies," Elder sees the war on terror as a perfect opportunity to fight another war: "the war against the welfare state." According to Elder, "the president faces a historic opportunity.now is the time to deliver simple, plain spoken lectures to the American people on the perils of ever growing government." Americans can help win this war by "understanding that a growing welfare state weakens our nation, strengthens our enemies, and hinders our ability to prosecute and win this war on terrorism." Elder closes with this hopeful plea: "Lead Mr. President. This historic opportunity exists now. Seize it, Americans will follow." Let's be honest: I am a talk radio junkie. I have listened to just about every conservative talk show host you can name. But I always find myself turning back to the .Sage.. Why? Because Larry Elder demands something on his show that even the some of the best conservative thinkers can sometimes forsake: reason. Even when listeners call agreeing with his views, he does not tolerate fallacious arguments. I knew when I opened my personally signed copy of Showdown what would find, and I was not disappointed. Elder.s writing style is clear and to the point. But someone new to Elder.s ideas may find them shocking or refreshing, depending on the perspective of the reader. One of the most remarkable aspects of Showdown is that Elder defends his arguments through exhaustive evidence and research. Consistent with the values Elder promotes on his radio show, Elder demands reason. Courtney Rosenbladt is a third year classics and history major, and is vice president of the Ayn Rand Society. Alex Alonso interviews Larry Elder What Do You think of Larry Elder? , Post your views on the message board. News Topics | Home | Research | History | Blood Gangs | Crip Gangs | People| Life in a Gang | Gallery | Iraqi Cards | Memorial | Migration | Graffiti | Resume| Injunctions Homicides | Maps | Contact

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