A Liberal Tool Kit: Progressive Responses to Conservative Arguments

David Coates

Bloomsbury Publishing, Jul 30, 2007 - Political Science - 216 pages

This book brings together in one place the liberal and conservative arguments that face the Republican and Democratic parties in the run-up to the 2008 election. In each chapter, David Coates lays out the popular conservative case and then presents a point-by-point liberal response. Each chapter challenges right-wing ways of framing the issue and pulls discussion back into the civilized center of American politics. The sources and evidence sustaining both conservative and liberal arguments are listed in endnotes and developed more fully on an associated blog site.

A Liberal Tool Kit helps to redress the conservative bias in the way news and arguments are generally reported. Coates argues that conservative media outlets are currently more powerful and numerous than liberal ones, contending that conservative arguments tend to be presented more clearly than their less simplistic, more nuanced liberal alternatives. In this book, he presents the complexities of the conservative arguments while at the same time clarifying liberal positions in straightforward, everyday language, so leveling the playing field.

About the author

David Coates holds the Worrell Chair of Anglo-American Studies, Department of Political Science at Wake Forest University, USA. He previously held personal chairs at the universities of Leeds and Manchester, UK. He is the author of The Labour Party and the Struggle for Socialism and Models of Capitalism: Growth and Stagnation in the World Economy (translated into Chinese and South Korean) and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. David Coates is Worrell Professor of Anglo-American Studies at Wake Forest University. He was previously Professor and Director of the International Center for Labor Studies at the University of Manchester. He has written extensively on contemporary political economy, the war on terrorism, and the politics of labor. His previous books include Prolonged Labour: The Slow Birth of New Labour Britain (2005), Blair's War (2004) with Joel Krieger, and Models of Capitalism (2000).

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Liberal Tool Kit: Progressive Responses to Conservative Arguments
• Author: David Coates
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007
• ISBN: 0275998673, 9780275998677
• Length: 216 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / American Government / National; Political Science / General