Author
Neal Herrick considers government corruption to be
the predominant problem facing the world today.
Although bribery and influence peddling are the most
visible aspect of this corruption, they are not, in
Herrick's opinion, the most serious. For Herrick, the
more serious aspect of government corruption is the
laws that bribery and influence peddling
produce--laws that favor the corporations--resulting
in, what he calls, a kind of delusional corruption
that leads to unjust and unnecessary wars. After
Patrick Henry is a book about both kinds of
corruption, as they are inseparable and arise from
the same structural failing: the failure to make the
interests of government coincident with the interests
of the people.
Tracing
both forms of corruption back through history,
Herrick gives a brief account of governmental descent
into lawlessness, identifies the constitutional flaw
that led to this lawlessness, and discusses some of
the issues that must be considered in devising
remedies. After discussing the four principles on
which the U.S. Constitution rests, and pointing out
the causal connections between the failure of the
impeachment provisions and presidential wars, eroded
political culture, and civil society complaisance,
Herrick then proposes a constitutional amendment and
a strategy for accomplishing this amendment.
Even
though other contemporary books on political theory
agree that the executive branch is out of control and
must be "reined in," they do not do the
historical analysis necessary, and cannot therefore,
propose a remedy, other then arguing that Congress do
its job.
Table of Contents
NEAL
Q. HERRICK is a retired University of Michigan
academic in industrial relations. He is co-author,
with the
late Howard Sheppard of Where
Have all the Robots Gone and he
served on the Task Force that produced Work
in America published by the MIT
Press.
475
pages, 6x9, bibliography, index
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-55164-320-5 $24.99
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-55164-321-2 $53.99
Politics/History
September
2008
