Monday, July 31, 2017

America in the Age of Trump By Doug Schoen

America in the Age of Trump
Opportunities and Oppositions in an Unsettled World


By Doug Schoen & Jessica Tarlov

America in the Age of Trump by Doug Schoen and Jessica Tarlov is a bracing, essential look at the failure of a great nation to meet the needs of its people and the challenges of the age—and the resulting collapse of public trust in government, as well as a pervasive crisis of national values, from broken families to a loss of faith in the American idea itself.

This crisis of values occurs just as the country faces an unprecedented array of fiscal, economic, social, and national-security challenges—out of control federal spending, frighteningly large deficits, massive gaps of income and opportunity, cultural division, and a dangerous world in which American power seems increasingly incidental.

In America in the Age of Trump, Doug Schoen and Jessica Tarlov offer a definitive and unique assessment of a nation in turmoil, looking beneath well-known problems to identify underlying yet poorly understood causes. Readers will confront the crises, one by one: of trust, values, and governance; of education, economic opportunity, and fiscal solvency; of national security, domestic tranquility, and race relations.

In America in the Age of Trump, Doug addresses:
  • How Trump can be more bipartisan;
  • Clear plans to fix health care;
  • Plans to fix the budget and entitlements;
  • How to restore confidence in the American system; and
  • How to revitalize defense and bring the country back together.

America in the Age of Trump gathers in one place a clear and comprehensive evaluation of the fundamental issues confronting the American future while offering bold, fresh approaches to meeting these challenges. Other books have described the specter of American decline, but none has been so comprehensive in its diagnosis or forward-looking—and non-ideological—in its remedies, explaining how we might yet overcome national self-doubt to reclaim our traditional optimism, reassert our place in the world, and secure a prosperous future for our citizens.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Doug Schoen has been one of the most influential Democratic campaign consultants for over 30 years. His political clients include New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Indiana governor Evan Bayh, and his corporate clients include AOL Time Warner, Procter & Gamble, and AT&T. Internationally, he has worked for the heads of states of over 15 countries. He is the author of multiple books and is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and various other newspapers and online publications as well as Fox News Channel.


Jessica Tarlov is Senior Director of Research and Consumer Insight at Bustle, the largest independent news and lifestyle site for women. She is a regular contributor on FOX News Channel.

Monday, July 17, 2017

The Challenge of Modernizing Islam By Christine Douglass-Williams

The Challenge of Modernizing Islam
By Christine Douglass-Williams


Can moderate Muslims modernize Islam to be more peaceful and tolerant? In the new book by award-winning journalist, Christine Douglass-Williams, The Challenge of Modernizing Islam she interviews prominent moderate and reformist Muslims on how they intend to challenge jihadism and how they will spread the message of an Islam that is genuinely peaceful, tolerant, pluralistic, and compatible with secular governance, freedom of speech, and the equality before the law.

Some of the foremost moderate and reformist Muslims in the Western world interviewed include the outspoken Zuhdi Jasser, Tawfik Hamid, Sheikh Dr. Subhy Mansour, Raheel Raza, Salim Mansur and Qanta Ahmed.  Christine asks them tough questions about how they deal with problematic Koran passages, how they intend to get their message across to the Muslim world, and more.

Christine can address the following talking points in The Challenge of Modernizing Islam:
  • Anti-Islamophobia motions and drives. The term “Islamophobia” is specific, very different from the term anti-Muslim bigotry, and is also a term which is not supported by genuine moderates and reformists;
  • The turf war raging within Islam and the distinction to be made between genuine moderates and crypto-moderates (usually with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood);
  • The race card and the power it wields to the point of political leaders and authorities compromising Western security and evolved constitutions - and how Islamists choose beleaguered groups to battle their anti-racism/Islamophobia causes, i.e., Black Lives Matter, natives in Canada and the Palestinian narrative;
  • The fake news of the far left in sustaining a victimology narrative and an us-versus-them formula (entrenched in past guilt) used to condition emotions;
  • How the Palestinian narrative of violent “resistance” has now permeated Western institutions and society at large through stealth Islamist infiltration and their messages;
  • How lack of cultural knowledge and how diversity groups/dialogues have been warped and manipulated by Islamists, how important goals toward necessary assimilation have been abandoned and suppressed by Islamic supremacist indoctrination;
  • The bigotry of low expectations and how global brutality and barbarism committed worldwide by “those brown and black people” in the name of Islam and are largely accepted. If called out, the truth-teller is labelled racist and a bigot;
  • Aayan Hirsi-Ali who was called a "white supremacist" by a group of Muslim women.  If white people or Jews were blowing up people globally in the name of Judaism and Christianity today and openly preaching hate in rallies, there would be a huge outcry;
  • The danger of civil war (which Sweden is close to) as a result of escalating rage among law-abiding citizens who are witnessing their fought-for democracy sink into a Sharia pit, where their freedom to speak truth is under attack, where their children's schools are being Islamized, and where they must kowtow to Muslims or be branded racists;
  • The effectiveness of Islamist incursion via the Muslim Brotherhood's fifth column, threats by jihadists and failure by Muslim refugees to assimilate, which are major threats to Western democracy; and
  • How mosques, madrasas, Islamic cultural centers are often radicalized and serve as “safe places” to conquer the House of War. 
Christine was there to witness Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch who recently almost lost his life to radical leftists in Iceland and she was also attacked.  She knows firsthand the dangers throughout the world and offers not only the in-depth interviews in the first half of the book, but also unique solutions in the second half.  She offers a crucial series of illuminating reflections on the challenges the reformers face, the chances they have of succeeding, and the implications of their struggle for the future of the Western world.

About the Author: Christine Douglass-Williams is a nine-time international award-winning journalist and television producer. She is an appointed director with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and an appointee to the Office of Religious Freedom as an external advisor. She also writes for the Gatestone International Policy Council, at which she has served on the Board of Governors. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Jewish Press, Breaking Israel News, Front Page Magazine, and the Hudson Institute, as well as many other news outlets.