Understanding America’s Greatest Existential Threats

Understanding America’s Greatest Existential Threats PDF Author: Dr. J. R. Maxwell
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1525553836
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
In this introductory volume, readers will learn about the vital role that the various Critical Infrastructure (CI) sectors play in America, in the context of homeland security. The protection, maintenance, and monitoring of these interdependent CI assets is a shared responsibility of governments, private sector owner/operators, first responders, and all those involved in homeland security and emergency management. As this foundational learning resource demonstrates, rapidly advancing technologies combined with exponential growth in demand on the aging infrastructure of America’s power grid is setting the stage for a potentially catastrophic collapse that would paralyze each and every facet of civilian life and military operations. This meticulously researched primer will guide readers through the known world of power failures and cyber-attacks to the emerging threat from a High-altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP). A HEMP would cause cascading failures in the power grid, communications, water treatment facilities, oil refineries, pipelines, banking, supply chain management, food production, air traffic control, and all forms of transportation. Each chapter in America’s Greatest Existential Threat (Vol. 1) begins with learning objectives and ends with a series of review questions to assess take-up of the chapter material. Similarly, subsequent volumes will explore HEMP and emerging issues in closer detail with current research and analysis now in development.

Existential Threats

Existential Threats PDF Author: Lisa Vox
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812249194
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
In Existential Threats, Lisa Vox explores the growth of dispensationalist premillennialism alongside scientific understandings of the end of the world and contends that these two allegedly competing visions have converged to create an American apocalyptic imagination.

Understanding America

Understanding America PDF Author: Peter H Schuck
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 0786745487
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 721

Book Description
What is America? Is it a hegemonic superpower, composed of ruthlessly selfish capitalists? Or is it a land of hope and glory, a shelter for the huddled masses, and a beacon of freedom and enlightenment? The definition of this complex nation has been debated substantially, yet all seem to agree on one thing: it is unique. The idea of an exceptional America can be traced all the way back to Alexis de Tocqueville's nineteenth-century observations of a newly formed democracy that seemed determined to distinguish itself from the rest. Little, it seems, has changed. Building on de Tocqueville's concept of American exceptionalism, this collection of essays, contributed by some of the nation's top scholars and thinkers, takes on the weighty task of sizing up America in a way its people and others can comprehend. Far more than simple history, they outline the current state of American institutions and policies -- from the legal system to marriage to the military to the Drug War -- and anticipate where these are headed in the future.

Four Threats

Four Threats PDF Author: Suzanne Mettler
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 9781250244420
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
An urgent, historically-grounded take on the four major factors that undermine American democracy, and what we can do to address them. While many Americans despair of the current state of U.S. politics, most assume that our system of government and democracy itself are invulnerable to decay. Yet when we examine the past, we find that to the contrary, the United States has undergone repeated crises of democracy, from the earliest days of the republic to the present. In The Four Threats, Robert C. Lieberman and Suzanne Mettler explore five historical episodes when democracy in the United States was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. These episodes risked profound, even fatal, damage to the American democratic experiment, and on occasion antidemocratic forces have prevailed. From this history, four distinct characteristics of democratic disruption emerge. Political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power – alone or in combination – have threatened the survival of the republic, but it has survived, so far. What is unique, and alarming, about the present moment is that all four conditions are present in American politics today. This formidable convergence marks the contemporary era as an especially grave moment for democracy in the United States. But history provides a valuable repository from which contemporary Americans can draw lessons about how democracy was eventually strengthened — or in some cases weakened — in the past. By revisiting how earlier generations of Americans faced threats to the principles enshrined in the Constitution, we can see the promise and the peril that have led us to the present and chart a path toward repairing our civic fabric and renewing democracy.

Embracing Communist China

Embracing Communist China PDF Author: James Fanell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1648210600
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description
For decades, the United States has underestimated the threat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In doing so, it has left our country vulnerable to their devious plans—a profound, strategic miscalculation. As a result of this carelessness, the United States is at risk of losing its dominant position in global politics. But how did this happen? How was it possible that the US could lose its dominant position after its Cold War victory and allow the rise of a peer enemy over a short period of time—about thirty years? In Embracing Communist China, authors James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer get to the bottom of this heinous miscalculation. Broken down into three central arguments, Fanell and Thayer lay out not only the reason for China’s rise in power, but how the United States could have prevented it. Due to failures on the parts of the national security commission, strategists, military personnel, and the intelligence community, a historical case of “threat deflation” caused our country to refute all supplied information of China’s growing power. By not taking this seriously, the PRC has risen with the goal of usurping the US as a global superpower. US business interests and financiers trumped strategy. Seeing China as a source of cheap labor for manufacturing, investment, and intellectual labor—including for research and development—the mighty dollar’s influence reigned supreme, overlooking the big picture. With their advancements, China used its political warfare strategy to promote threat deflation under Deng Xiaoping. As such, the PRC—learning key lessons from the Soviet Union’s mistakes in the Cold War—focused on elites from all aspects of US and other Western societies, enriching them and shaping their perception of China and of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while using the enticement of a growing market to influence their behavior. As Americans, we can no longer think of China as a secondary power, but one that is looking to remove the US as the most powerful country in the world. By understanding the profound strategic failures made by the US are we are able to correct them and so defeat the PRC as the we did the Soviet Union.

Defending the Arsenal

Defending the Arsenal PDF Author: Adam B. Lowther
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315460688
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Book Description
This volume takes an unashamed pro-nuclear modernization position and argues for designing and fielding new nuclear warheads and delivery systems (submarine, ICBM, and bomber) while also arguing against signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or agreeing to further reductions in the nuclear arsenal. It also argues that nuclear deterrence remains as relevant today, perhaps more, than it was during the Cold War.

The Great American Backslide and Our Silent Partnership with Darkness

The Great American Backslide and Our Silent Partnership with Darkness PDF Author: M. Rene Lauzier
Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
Change is accelerating and the world of 2023 is unrecognizable from the world that existed just five years ago. In a very subtle and incremental manner, American society has been transformed from what once was the world's premiere super-power, a country that was exalted as an example of freedom, justice, morality, and liberty, into a divided group of many tribes, cultures, and political and special interest groups often lacking a moral compass. We go with the loudest tribe fitting our basic ideals or choose to go it alone. And when we try to avoid the many tribes of destruction, we often tend to adopt the idol of the god of self. Community and unity are being left to die a slow, painful death. America's true north has become obscured because we decided to forego God as the light for our path. This has allowed us to quickly forget the race worth running as well as those foundational values that once comprised what we stood for as a country. But how did we get here and how can the trend of moral decay and divisiveness be reversed? The Great American Backslide came about as a result of not just understanding that our natural tendency as humans is to be selfish and sinful, but knowing we are being given substantial assistance by the dominion of darkness. This book will take us through an analysis of biblical, secular, and non-secular explanations of the existence of evil; how it induces cultural paradigm shifts aimed to ultimately separate us from God; how evil leverages our emotions, our brain chemistry, and our sinful human nature to manipulate subtle and incremental compromises of truth; how evil sustains itself and creates ever-increasing moral decay leading to further evil through a cycle of depravity; and how we can go about living in opposition to evil influences upon our world.

Great Power Peace and American Primacy

Great Power Peace and American Primacy PDF Author: J. Baron
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137299487
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Book Description
This book explains the period of great power peace in the last fifty years and outlines the path to perpetuating it. Drawing on the Realist tradition and challenging conventional wisdom about the causes of American primacy, Baron explores contributions to peace made by the balance of power, nuclear weapons, democracy and globalization.

When the Stars Begin to Fall

When the Stars Begin to Fall PDF Author: Theodore R. Johnson
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 0802157874
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Book Description
A “persuasive . . . heartfelt and vividly written” call to counter systemic racism and build national solidarity in America (Publishers Weekly). The American Promise enshrined in our Constitution states that all men and women are inherently equal. And yet racism continues to corrode our society. If we cannot overcome it, Theodore Johnson argues, the promise that made America unique on Earth will have died. In When the Stars Begin to Fall, Johnson presents a compelling blueprint for the kind of national solidarity necessary to mitigate racism. Weaving together history, personal memories, and his family’s multi-generational experiences with racism, Johnson posits that solutions can be found in the exceptional citizenship long practiced in Black America. Understanding that racism is a structural crime of the state, he argues that overcoming it requires us to recognize that a color-conscious society—not a color-blind one—is the true fulfillment of the American Promise. Fueled by Johnson’s ultimate faith in the American project, grounded in his family’s longstanding optimism and his own military service, When the Stars Begin to Fall is an urgent call to undertake the process of overcoming what has long seemed intractable.

Trump and the American Future

Trump and the American Future PDF Author: Newt Gingrich
Publisher: Center Street
ISBN: 154608505X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Newt Gingrich lays out the stakes of the 2020 elections and what the end results could mean for the future of American citizens. The 2020 election will be a decisive choice for America, especially as we emerge from the coronavirus crisis. Will the American people choose four more years of President Trump to lead us back to strong economic growth, a foreign and trade policy of putting American interests first, dismantling the deep state, and dramatically reforming the bureaucracies? Or will they reject Trumpism and elect the radical Democratic policies of big government, globalism, and socialist policies that Joe Biden represents? Not since the election of 1964 has the choice in an election been so stark. Trump and the American Future by Newt Gingrich will lay out the stakes of the 2020 election and provide a clarion call for all Americans on why it is vital to return President Trump to the White House for a second term. Featuring insights gleaned from the lifetime of experience and access only Newt Gingrich can bring, Trump and the American Future will be crucial reading for every citizen who wants to continue to make America great again.