Death by Liberalism: The Fatal Outcome of Well-Meaning Liberal Policies

Dunn, a novelist and military encyclopedist, indicts liberals for interventionist big-government policies that have sparked "mass negligent homicide." He finds fault with fuel-efficiency standards that promote unsafe small cars, environmental regulations protecting mountain lions, and the phase-out of ozone-depleting chloro-fluorocarbons. The author makes a cogent case against several misguided government policies, from destructive urban renewal schemes to asbestos-abatement hysteria, but inflates the particulars into an attack on liberal "rationalism," the desire to use reason to solve human problems and a refusal to acknowledge that "this is not a universe governed by logic." Insufficient citations and such claims as "no one goes without [medical] care" in the U.S." sap the book's authority and might well prevent Dunn's own "well-meaning" arguments from finding wider credence. (Jan.)