Home page Order
Book covers
Material taken from Amazon.com
Government by Political Spin
by David Dr Turell, David J. Turell
List Price: $14.99
Price: $14.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. See details.
Availability: This title usually ships within 1 to 2 months. Please note that special order titles occasionally go out of print, or publishers run out of stock. These hard-to-find titles are not discounted and are subject to an additional charge of $1.99 per book due to the extra cost of ordering them. We will notify you within 2-3 weeks if we have trouble obtaining this title
Product Details
* Paperback: 272 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.66 x 8.42 x 5.79
* Publisher: Huntington House Publishers; (February 1, 2000)
* ISBN: 156384172X
* Average Customer Review: Based on 2 reviews. 5 stars
All Customer Reviews
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Bravo!, May 22, 2000
Reviewer: A reader (Texas)
Finally, a book about the current political and societal state of this country by a scientific mind that uses reason and logic, not emotion, as the fundamental basis for the analysis and conclusions. If 51% of the voting population had 60% of the doctors wisdom and ability to reason the country and the society would be far better off and maybe self-reliance would make a comeback. Don't let the title persude you that this is another book whining about politics by a guy whose guy lost. Not the case. The doctor offers analysis and solution of not only political issues, but also deals with issues of detrimental attitudes and mindset prevalant in our society today. This is one of those rare books that while providing signficant enciteful information and data, also challenges the reader to think, reason and analyze on their own. Think about the next gift your gonna buy for that friend that just cannot grasp reason and logic when coming to conclusions and opinions about politics and societal issues and maybe a little of Dr. Turrel's medicine in this book might help.
Was this review helpful to you?
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
What A Find!, April 6, 2000
Reviewer: A reader (The USA)
Wow! I highly recommend this book to anybody frustrated with the way our government functions today. (And whom could that possibly exclude!) Indeed, I could not put it down. Dr. Turell not only frames the problems driving us up the proverbial wall in today's society, he takes the extra step: He offers solutions. From our health care situation to how we, as a nation, have developed a victim mentality, he lays his premises out in simple, clear terms.
His ideas are fresh and innovative. His work is well researched. His conclusions, obviously well formulated and intelligent. And to top it off, his writing style is friendly, avuncular.
This man deserves to be heard. He has convinced me it is time to stop looking "out there" (to the government, to the lottery, to frivolous law suits) for answers. Moreover, he has showed me how.
I repeat: What a find.
Review by Daniel James Sundahl, Ph.D., Russell Amos Kirk Professor in English and American Studies, Hillsdale College,
Hillsdale, Michigan
DIAGNOSING THE BODY POLITIC
by
Daniel James Sundahl
Review of Government by Political Spin, David J. Turell,
M.D., Huntington House Publishers, 2000, Preface, 259
pages.
Most good books are conversations charged with
passionate viewpoints. Some books are passionate to the
point of anger; the authors are jeremiahs soured with
frustration.
In his Government by Political Spin, David J. Turell
comes before the public with such passion and frustration,
entering the world of journalism as a diagnostician, not as a
belletrist or man of letters. It's perhaps better that way.
Albert j. Nock would have liked this book, likewise
Frederick Bastiat, and even Ludwig von Mises. Nock's
thesis in Our Enemy the State, of course, concerns a
theoretical discussion on an increase of state power and a
corresponding decrease of social power. As political
theory, it is historically grounded with additional
commentary on the historical 1930s. I mention Nock's
little book at the beginning here because it seems to me
good background to Dr. Turell's Government by Political
Spin.
The body politic presents itself to Dr. Turell, a family
internist. Metaphorically, the body politic complains of a
dis-ease, the nature of which seems to correspond to a
decrease of social power and an increase of state power. A
political adventure for Albert J. Nock becomes a medical
adventure for internist, David J. Turell.
In eight chapters, Dr. Turell provides a diagnosis
merciless in its documentation. There is no doubt as to
the nature and cause of the dis-ease. The evidence Dr.
Turell presents, collected over a nine-year period, is
symptomatic of the process of an illness about which Nock
theorized: the decrease of social power and an increase of
state power.
The diagnosis rests on an extraordinary array of facts
from which surmisings can be made. In chapter 7, for
example, titled "Bean Counters, Apathy, and the Political
Pendulum," Dr. Turell makes the diagnostic claim that
"there is a large segment of our population that is
dissatisfied with the way our government is being run."
The theoretical likelihood is that such dissatisfaction will
occur as a consequence of the decrease of social power
and an increase of state power. The evidence? "In 1960,
sixty-three percent of voting-age Americans turned out to
vote in the presidential election. That dropped to just
over fifty percent in 1988, bounced back to fifty-five
percent in 1992, but was just under fifty percent in 1996."
Dr. Turell believes that decisions not to vote come as the
result of apathy, anger or disaffection. In other words,
why bother when elections and re-elections are the result
special-interest groups and lobbyists. An increase in state
power and a decrease of social power leads to
disenfranchisement.
This is a powerful book of diagnosis. It is not a style-
setting book as is the case with Albert J. Nock's little
book. Dr. Turell hopes to lead us out of the clutches of
statism not with another book of political theory, however .
Rather, Dr. Turell argues that an overdose of power is like
an overdose of medicine. That overdosing will continue
unless the political body begins to solve its own problems.
"We have an overwhelming need to get founding-father-like
people to Washington," Dr. Turell argues in his book's
introduction. Indeed, we have an overwhelming need for a
national leadership who will diligently place the citizenry's
interests above the state's interests.
But the social power of the body politic has atrophied
to the point in which we are like beggars, hat in hand on
the stairs to the doors of the state house. Reading Dr .
Turell's book passionately reminds us of the dire need to
convert that accumulation of state power back into social
power. If not, the atrophied body politic will be beyond help.
Beyond help, it will waste away, beyond cure, beyond
saving.