Underdogma – Book Review

BenBella Books recently sent a review copy of Underdogma : How America’s Enemies Use Our Love for the Underdog to Trash American Power by Michael Prell to me. I was honestly expecting yet another, the Tea Party will save us from the left book, and to some extent, that message is included, but the book goes deeper into just why no one seems to like America anymore – even a large segment of the American population and its leadership.

In his  book, Prell takes a deft swipe at the progressive movement and democratic socialism as a whole. Michael takes the reader through a process of understanding the mechanism he calls underdogma and then laying out how it can be thwarted by defining the term, describing its implementations and then giving Conservatives the recipe to destroy it.

Underdogma is a principle that people will typically root for the underdog and despise the “overdog” in a head-to-head match. The author defines it as, “the belief that those who have less power are virtuous and noble – because they have less power, and that those who have more power are to be scorned – because they have more power”. Prell applies the David and Goliath-like ideology to Israel, America and capitalism.

One of the most vibrant examples of underdogmatism given in the book is the attacks of 9-11-2001. When those planes hit the towers and more than 3,000 innocent Americans perished, he pointed out, the world – even France – cried out, “We are all Americans Now”. We were the attacked, the underdog, but not for long. The liberal media set out almost immediately to change the message. All too soon America was the real terrorist and had brought the attacks on herself. The images of planes flying into the towers soon disappeared and discussions of America’s brutal and unconstitutional treatment of the prisoners at Guantanimo Bay re-took the lead message – America was once again the overdog and was to be despised.

Through about the first third of the book, I wondered if Prell was going to suggest that maybe America would have to become less of a country to regain international respect – the view of President Obama. The apology tour, bowing to every other head-of-state he could and decrying that America is not exceptional. If this is where Michael was going, I wasn’t along for the ride – it wasn’t.

Prell illustrated beautifully how the U.N., unions, and other socialistic, New World Order forces need America to be brought down to their level and how heaping scorn upon the most powerful nation in the world is a necessary step to achieving their end goals.

Understanding that the open society/NWO elements are using the zero-sum lie to destroy our equal-opportunity culture is key. Why do we have to tear down the rich in order for others to succeed? How does one persons success limit another’s? It does not. The book concisely explains how we all benefit from the Marathon oils, Wal-Marts, and Boeings of America and that if we continue bashing them, they won’t exist and neither will anyone else’s chance to create the next great American enterprise.

In the end, Michael Prell does a fantastic job of re-instilling hope that as Ronald Reagan once said, “America is the shining city on the hill”. We are the beacon of hope for oppressed societies. In America,  anyone can become the next Bill Gates, J.D. Rockefeller, Vanderbilt or Dell. What we have to do is re-instill the notion that America is exceptional and that Americans are an exceptional people. We have to be, think and act exceptional. We have to stop trying to destroy those who have achieved great success and spend more energy becoming successful on our own.

This is a book I feel proud to recommend to every free-market Conservative. It is a reminder that the United States is the greatest nation ever conceived. The publication is available from Barnes and Noble here.