4 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
The Right to Nominate by Thomas E. Peterson is a nonfiction book intent on restoring the power of government back to the people. Peterson titles the book after his proposed amendment to the constitution that would allow us to once again have true, representative government.
Peterson’s book is a timely narrative of the era of politics we currently live in. Anyone baffled by the election of Donald Trump or the popularity of “outsider” candidates like Bernie Sanders needs to read this book to break free of their status quo thinking.
Peterson is a brilliant constitutional mind who truly understands the country our founders meant for us to have, versus the one we currently live in. Peterson goes in depth into our history (concrete history, not modern revisionist) and the mindset of the electorate and expertly diagnoses the state of our republic and why people are so frustrated to the point they are rebelling against the establishment. Best of all, he does it without once mentioning anyone involved in the 2016 election or recent administrations leading up to it. Peterson’s focus is on you and your rights, exactly how we got to this place from our country’s inception, and how and in what ways we can actually fix it.
I found this book therapeutic and enlightening. Peterson’s narrative voice is like a loving parent or teacher telling you a story you know in part, but can’t clearly express in your own words because you lack complete knowledge. He has an answer to everything you ever wanted to know, and he tells you in a way that is thoroughly engaging and devoid of boring passages. If you are taking notes as I was, it can seem repetitive at times (especially in later chapters), but I assume he wrote it with the belief that repetition of main points would be helpful to the average reader who may not be as attentive as I had to be to write this review. Despite that, he still managed to hold my interest because so much of what I learned was new and relatable.
Every once in a while Peterson throws in a creative analogy to dress up his text with vivid imagery that is entertaining and can inspire beauty or humor. Among my favorites was this excerpt:
Peterson writes as if he knew the framers of our constitution personally, and he tells their stories in such an engaging way that by the end you’ll feel as if you knew them too. He takes these revered figures and humanizes them, revealing their faults, thoughts, and feelings in intimate detail. At times I almost felt like I was there, watching our constitution come together and then erode with the subsequent fights and toxicity that gave birth to the current political climate we now deal with. The founders had an original plan for our democracy that is not being carried out by our system today. Instead of a government controlled by the people, we have a government controlled by parties who rarely represent the will of constituents. The people are unhappy because they feel they’ve lost control and they have no means of disciplining politicians except through elections—a mostly binary choice between two establishment candidates who typically abandon all their promises until it’s time to campaign again. Peterson argues that the only cure for this flagrantly unconstitutional abuse of the electorate is the right to nominate.You’d have an easier time getting the Framers to accept and put on stinking, filthy wet underwear fished out of a sewer beneath a prison than to accept the present-day party attitude toward money in politics.
Peterson goes into great detail over his proposed amendment and explains how it would work, how to implement it, and why we need the right to nominate to recruit upstanding, non-party citizens to congress. It’s an exciting development and solution to our current problems which Peterson convincingly argues for and writes into a law our politicians could vote on and pass immediately—if any had the gumption and love of democracy they lay claim to. The text itself is professional looking and numbered footnotes link to sources in the back of the book that can be read and then easily return to the main text by tapping the link to the last page. I only noticed three typographical errors within the text in some of the later chapters. Therefore I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars.
Peterson expertly guides his readers through the forgotten annals of history to the formation of our great constitution and in the process reveals a surprising number of revelations. He doesn’t just gripe and complain, but offers a new idea and solution that he clearly explains and writes into an amendment that is constitutional and one our founders would approve of. Every American should read this book because it concerns us and how we can restore our government and truly make it the way the fathers of our country intended: of, by, and for the American people.
******
The Right to Nominate
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Like Momiji1987's review? Post a comment saying so!
