Guardian of the Republic

March 17, 2014
This thin political memoir by former Florida Congressman West, writing with Hickford, chronicles his heroic fight against adversity, as well as detailing his noble convictions and courage as a black Republican. This ambitious 53-year-old former Army lieutenant colonel’s upward-bound story shifts in tone between grandiose and faux folksy, with West referring to himself at one point as a “simple fella from the inner city.” Despite his 22-year Army career and time in office, his reflections on the political process and social redemption are shallow. Though his instincts about limited government will appeal to right-wing readers, this self-declared ronin (a samurai warrior who has no lord or master) who also invokes Plato’s guardians and Republic in his title, cannot do justice to the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, or Booker T. Washington. References to organizer Saul Alinsky suggest a conspiratorial line of thought about progressive opposition. West’s solutions and reform plans recycle familiar Tea Party shibboleths, and though they will convince many sympathetic readers that he is a patriotic American, others may question his capacity for innovative public policy.

March 1, 2014
Part memoir, part political manifesto, from a controversial conservative who sounds like he's preparing to run for public office. There is no doubting his sincerity or the courage of his convictions, as West details his formative years as the African-American son of a close-knit family that stressed education and had generations of military service. The turning point for the author came when he was a battalion commander and received information that an Iraqi policeman had been conspiring with terrorists to help ambush American troops. "The policeman had been stonewalling our interrogators, and we needed results," he writes. "So I made the decision to put additional pressure on him with a psychological intimidation tactic. I drew my pistol and threatened to kill him if he did not provide information." He got his information but lost his command, received a fine and a reprimand, and left the military with an honorable discharge. He subsequently served a single term as a Florida congressman and has been a commentator on Fox News. West, whose political positions aren't as distinctive as his military experience, believes black voters are ill-served by a Democratic Party that takes them for granted: "[W]hen the left wins, our community loses. The result of such blind loyalty is that many black voters have come to resemble Vladimir Lenin's 'useful idiots.' " The Lenin reference isn't gratuitous, for the author sees signs of communism, or at least creeping socialism, throughout a government that has grown bloated while betraying the principles of the Founding Fathers. "On college campuses," he writes, "there are far too many political science departments following the dogma of Marx rather than Jefferson." So what about the Republican Party? It is "slowly diluting itself into oblivion as it listens to talking heads say it can only be successful as 'Democrat Lite.' " With his philosophy shaped by the likes of Ayn Rand, no one will tag this author Democrat Lite.

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