Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs
Roads and Serfdom
A Friend of America Issues a Helpful Warning

Sometimes it takes a friend to remind you of who you really are.

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative politician and Minister for the European Parliament (for southeast England). He came to prominence rubbishing Gordon Brown on the floor of the European Parliament. (Actually, the whole raison d'etre of his sitting in that body is to rubbish the EU every time they will let him speak.) The video of this went viral – certainly a first for proceedings of the European Parliament. You should probably watch it.

Hannan has a new book just out – The New Road to Serfdom, A Letter of Warning to America.



    

His basic thesis is that the Obama Administration has been on a comprehensive program of Europeanization – specifically, adopting those habits of Europe that have been most disastrous: centralization of power, large government, crushing regulation, the anti-Democratic transfer of power to appointed (i.e. unelected) officials. He says, "I am living in your future" – and tells us what we can expect on this path, and why we really might want to choose another one.

I have some beef with the book: it's a little breezy; makes and repeats a number of claims – then instead of adducing facts in support and arguing for the claims, goes off on other tangents; tries to be an indictment of the EU, a defence of America and American democracy, a love letter to America, and a few other things that taken together don't fit in a 180-page book; and shoe-horns in the Tea Party, which really is a bit of evidence that he's wrong about where the U.S. is heading. But he is a fine writer, and an excellent thinker, so the time spent with him is both enjoyable and edifying; and, in its way, this is an important little manifesto.

Here Hannan is on the Hoover Institution/National Review Online's video series. It's a good six minutes, and a good little intro to his Alien-style "Keep away!" broadcast.


  america     book reviews     books     politics     video  
about
close photo of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

THE MANUSCRIPT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
PANDORA'S SISTERS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
DON'T SHOOT ME IN THE ASS, AND OTHER STORIES by Michael Stephen Fuchs
D-BOYS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
COUNTER-ASSAULT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book One - Fortress Britain, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Two - Mogadishu of the Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Genesis, by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Three - Three Parts Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Four - Maximum Violence, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Five - EXODUS, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Six - The Horizon, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : NEMESIS by Michael Stephen Fuchs

ARISEN, Book Nine - Cataclysm by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Ten - The Flood by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Thirteen - The Siege by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Fourteen - Endgame by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Fickisms
ARISEN : Odyssey
ARISEN : Last Stand
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 1 - The Collapse
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 2 - Tribes
Black Squadron
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 3 - Dead Men Walking
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 4 - Duty
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 5 - The Last Raid
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