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A TRUE highlight of this fall book season is Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights (Rowman & Littlefield, 372 pp., $27.95), by Allen D. Hertzke. The volume tells a story of world-historical importance: how the concern of American evangelicals for Christians being persecuted abroad has quickly evolved into a much broader movement, one that is already transforming U.S. foreign policy and has the potential to win great advances for human rights worldwide.

The movement has its roots in what Hertzke calls "a Christian demographic revolution": the "tectonic shift of the Christian population toward the 'Global South.'" A century ago, 80 percent of the world's Christians lived in the U.S., Canada, and Europe; today, the figure is 40 percent, and continues to decline. "The most dramatic trend," writes Hertzke, "is among the evangelical and Pentecostal population. Since 1970 the evangelical population has grown 207 percent in Africa, 233 percent in Latin America, and 326 percent in Asia, so that perhaps 70 percent of Protestant evangelicals now live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America." Those Christians in the West who have resisted, to some extent at least, the modernist theological tendencies of the past couple of centuries "identify," Hertzke says, with the embattled Bible Christians of the Third World--and "it is this identification that helps animate the Christian solidarity impulse" in the human-rights movement.

The author describes how this cause has united evangelicals with Catholics, Jews, and feminists in coalitions on specific issues; the evangelicals are entering the mainstream of political activism and helping to transform it. It has been an uphill struggle, Hertzke recounts, against soft bigotries: "In [a] New York Times story the Sudan cause was described as a 'pet cause of American religious conservatives.' It is hard to imagine the Times describing the plight of Soviet Jewry as a 'pet cause' of American Jews or apartheid a 'pet cause' of African Americans." But immense progress is being made, thanks to the efforts of the people whose stories Hertzke tells, among them the activist Michael Horowitz (who is Jewish), Nina Shea (Catholic) of Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom, and Virginia Republican congressman Frank Wolf (Presbyterian).

Hertzke, a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma, gives a very detailed account of the lobbying effort in Congress for legislation to make religious freedom a higher priority in U.S. foreign policy. His book is an inspiring chronicle of faith's making a difference in public life, and of the beginnings of a movement whose significance has barely begun to be appreciated.

* Some liberals cringe at what they consider the Hobbesian, dog-eat-dog version of capitalism that prevails in the United States, and they pine for what they view as the kinder, gentler capitalism prevalent in Europe. But Olaf Gersemann, a reporter for Germany's largest business weekly, has seen both types of capitalism up close, and has concluded that the American way is much better at delivering not just high productivity but also economic security. His new book, Cowboy Capitalism: European Myths, American Reality (Cato, 234 pp., $22.95), is rich in statistics that refute the conventional European (and American Left) wisdom about U.S. economic conditions. One typical left-wing gibe is that of German tradeunion official Michael Sommer, who asserts that in America "employees need three or four jobs to feed themselves"; but Gersemann points out that, in fact, only 5.3 percent of employed Americans hold more than one job--and that this percentage has actually declined since the mid-1990s. And, against the "poor get poorer" rhetoric of income-distribution analysis, the author explains why economic "inequality doesn't equal injustice." His book is a helpful depiction of the real American economy--and a valuable corrective for any voter who believes we should turn toward the European model.

* One of the strategic masterstrokes of the abortion-rights movement has been its presentation of the issue as one of men vs. women. What true gentleman, after all, could fail to be stirred by the plight of a member of the fairer sex, oppressed by a boorish patriarchy seeking to strip her of her human rights? In this, however--as in any struggle over moral issues--it's crucial to know who precisely is the David and who the Goliath. That's why it's so important when women come forward to testify that, in this case, the unborn children are the true underdogs requiring chivalrous protection. The Cost of "Choice": Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion (Encounter, 180 pp., $17.95), edited by Erika Bachiochi, is an anthology of essays challenging the claim that a regime of abortion-on-demand benefits women. Among the distinguished contributors are historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon, and Feminists for Life president Serrin Foster.

* Michael Oakeshott: An Introduction (Yale, 209 pp., $30), by Bowdoin professor Paul Franco, is a concise and readable assessment of the work of one of the 20th century's most important conservative philosophers. When Oakeshott died in 1990, the Daily Telegraph called him "the greatest political philosopher in the Anglo-Saxon tradition since Mill--or even Burke." His critique of utopianism and rationalism--as "the politics of perfection" combined with "the politics of uniformity," resulting in a socially harmful denial of "the epistemic value of practical or traditional knowledge"--continues to influence modern conservative thought.

Oakeshott distrusted ideological politics because it turns government into "an instrument of passion"; the conservative impulse, in contrast, tries to leave the passion at the level of individuals and use the state as a moderator or referee. "It is not at all inconsistent," he wrote, "to be conservative in respect of government and radical in respect of almost every other activity."

* As Americans' rage about health costs and medical bureaucracy continues to grow, we can expect the sentiment in favor of a Canada-style single-payer system to re-emerge. Anybody who is tempted by the Canada model should read Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around the World (Rowman & Littlefield, 263 pp., $22.95), by John C. Goodman, Gerald L. Musgrave, and Devon M. Herrick. The authors--affiliated with the valuable National Center for Policy Analysis--demonstrate that, in practice, socialized-medicine systems are debilitated by such problems as "rationing by waiting."

* Daniel J. Flynn doesn't like cultishness: He believes that truth is best sought in a spirit of independent inquiry. Too often, the half-baked views of a political intellectual are swallowed whole by large numbers of people, and congeal into a dangerously influential orthodoxy. In his new book, Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas (Crown Forum, 292 pp., $25.95), Flynn aims at some pretty big left-wing targets, including Herbert Marcuse, Peter Singer, Howard Zinn, and Noam Chomsky, and debunks some of their most harmful ideas. But he also criticizes the influence of two right-of-center icons, Leo Strauss and Ayn Rand. His Strauss chapter is disappointing, echoing as it does the hackneyed far-Left and paleoconservative arguments against the Iraq war; the rest of the book is worth reading.

* Catching Light: Looking for God in the Movies (Eerdmans, 410 pp., $20), by Roy M. Anker, analyzes religious themes in some landmark films, many of them--including The Godfather series, Chinatown, and Star Wars--from the golden age of 1970s Hollywood. Anker can be thought-provoking. I have often wondered, for example, how Steven Spielberg's movies can be transparently immature and--at the very same time--spiritually compelling. Anker writes: "What makes these tales religious is that, in all of them, Spielberg entertains the notion that, given general human flakiness, especially among adults, only the supernatural--specifically some transcendent compassionate Other--seems capable of finally satisfying [the] unfathomable human longing for intimacy."

To read Anker is to re-experience some memorable films from a new and discerning perspective. One highlight is his praise of the greatly misunderstood 1999 Oscar winner American Beauty, which, he writes, depicts "the divine blessedness of the ordinary": "For those who do note the religious substance at the core of this movie, the usual response has been to label it Zen Buddhist ... [But the film] runs counter to central Buddhist teachings, which advise detachment from and rejection of the world. On the contrary, at the end of American Beauty, [Kevin Spacey's character] moves to embrace and adore the profound goodness that resides in the radiance of ordinary life."

* Edwin M. Yoder Jr. is one of the best editorial writers of the past century, and his new memoir--Telling Others What to Think: Recollections of a Pundit (Louisiana State, 245 pp., $34.95)--is a warm and welcome account of his life in and out of journalism. Particular highlights are the charming chapters about his Rhodes Scholar stint at Oxford in the 1950s, and about his friendship with famed editor Willie Morris. Yoder is correct in asserting that "there are no Mozarts of writing," but he has the important gift of making it look easy.

* In The American Catholic Voter: 200 Years of Political Impact (St. Augustine's, 400 pp., $30), New York Conservative-party stalwart George J. Marlin offers a fascinating history of how U.S. Catholics evolved from an embattled minority group--an object of bigotry and discrimination --to a powerful electoral force. Marlin follows the twists and turns in Catholic political allegiance, through its years of support for the Democratic ticket to its current role as a swing bloc.

* Kudos to Eerdmans. The Michigan publisher is filling an important need with Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales (424 pp., $25), its generous new volume of gothic stories by conservative founding father Russell Kirk. The Sage of Mecosta saw his fiction as "experiments in the moral imagination"; this book, in bringing together 19 of the stories, will introduce a new generation of readers to a depth of spiritual insight, vivified by a true artist of the form.

* Last but not least, a massive and winsome gift book: The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker (Black Dog & Leventhal, 655 pp., $60), edited by Robert Mankoff. The book contains over 2,000 cartoons, and includes a two-CD set with all 68,647 cartoons the magazine has published in its eight decades. A browser's delight.

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