Western Democracy: The First Mover Disadvantage

What happens when yesterday’s winning formula becomes today’s liability?

In this bold and thought-provoking book, Western Democracy: The First Mover Disadvantage, the triumphs of Western democracies are reexamined as the seeds of their current struggles. Once hailed as the pinnacle of governance, freedom, and prosperity, the West now faces mounting challenges: unsustainable welfare states, deindustrialization, entrenched interest groups, and a paralyzing inability to adapt to shifting global dynamics.

Meanwhile, China has risen as a global powerhouse by learning from—and improving upon—the West’s model. By blending state-led planning with market innovation, China has avoided the pitfalls of short-termism and systemic inertia. Its unparalleled adaptability and strategic foresight have propelled it to the forefront of technology, infrastructure, and economic development.

But this isn’t just a story about decline or rivalry. It’s a call to action. The book argues that for Western democracies to remain relevant, they must rediscover the innovative spirit and pragmatism that once defined their success. It also challenges long-held assumptions about U.S.–China relations, proposing a future of collaboration over confrontation in addressing global challenges like climate change, artificial intelligence, and economic inequality.

Compelling, provocative, and deeply insightful, Western Democracy: The First Mover Disadvantage will change how you think about the past, present, and future of global power. Will the West cling to its outdated playbook or dare to weave a new path forward? The answer may shape the 21st century.

Unforced Errors: 15 Bad Decisions That Changed American History

Americans often use terms such as “To err is human,” or “nobody’s perfect,” or “we all make mistakes.” Of course, this is true, as it is for all of America’s leaders through the years.

This book is about decisions made in politics or public policy that may be considered unwise; bad decisions that had unintended negative consequences for the decision-maker. This will not include personal decisions like deciding who to marry or whether to get divorced but rather to look at those political and policy decisions that can be considered, at the very least, unwise. Similarly, Kennedy’s decision to visit Dallas in November 1963 led to his death but doesn’t really qualify as a decision of real political or policy calculation. Lincoln going to Ford’s theatre would be in that same category.

Instead, Unforced Errors lists 15 political calculations made by political figures, often at the pinnacle of their own success, which changed American history.

Tears of Love

Everybody wants freedom. Every nation seeks it. Every organization demands it. The press, too, fights for its freedom. From the Garden of Eden to the present day, the quest for freedom has continued unabated. Yet, no one has ever truly defined what freedom is, making it a deeply subjective concept.

The British press is one of the freest and most powerful in the world, but its perception of freedom is its own. When press freedom collides with the idea of perceived press freedom in an era of political correctness, the consequences are profound. This book delves into that very collision, exploring its impact on society and media integrity.

A must-read for anyone interested in the power of the press, this book reveals how the British media shapes, influences, and even alters public perception.

In today’s world, information is everything. The speed at which it flows has transformed the world into a global village. But what happens when that flow is controlled, manipulated, or misunderstood? This book seeks to answer that question.

The Way of Undoing

The Way of Undoing: Capitalism, Trauma, and the Return of Wonder is an intimate personal exploration of possibility and discovery through stories and adventures great and small.

The author’s search for reconciliation with a war-traumatised father traces the origins of transgenerational trauma from capitalist roots to today’s internet, where data, information, and misinformation streams have taken the place of dialogue and storytelling. Climate change and pandemics have thrust Western culture upon an emotionally stuck world and challenge the collective human story that we, and the author, are writing as we live.

Tulip for Tebeau

Pioneers and their schools have long had a mutually beneficial bond. This symbiosis was eloquently articulated by a Duke University resident, Broadbent, at the dedication ceremony for the Samuel DuBose Cook Center for Social Equity: “You have led a remarkable life and we are today annexing your name to the fame of this school. Some might say we are honoring you by naming the Center after you, but everyone knows the truth - we are honoring ourselves and this Center by appropriating your enduring legacy.”

Cook, a distinguished political scientist, made history in 1966 as the first Black professor to receive tenure at a predominantly White southern university in the United States. By affiliating themselves with his pioneering work, schools like Duke aim to share in the honor and social capital of civil rights icons. Yet as Broadbent suggests, the true beneficiaries of such naming opportunities are arguably the institutions themselves.

The Prince of Evolution

The Prince of Evolution is the evolutionary reframing of one of the most important and controversial political texts in history. It reframes Machiavelli’s The Prince as a text expressing a revolutionary political theory that expresses an evolutionary ‘best practice’ framework for political competition.

By applying the two patterns of evolution, natural and artificial, discovered by Charles Darwin and David R. Wood. In doing so it reveals new insights and value to be derived from Machiavelli’s original text. Most importantly, by providing an evolutionary framework for every human relationship that has ever existed, and reframes Machiavelli, the man, to be just as human as you or I.

The Prince of Evolution is a groundbreaking work that will disrupt the entire field of political science. And the way we all look at organizations, communities, and ourselves.

The National Debt and Our Grandchildren: Should We Worry?

Throughout our history Americans have embraced the myth that our national debt is immoral and destructive.

This deeply rooted belief goes back to our Founding Fathers: Jefferson excoriated debt as “the greatest of dangers to be feared.” Andrew Jackson demonized debt as “a national curse.” Current political leaders continue to endorse this negative view of our national debt. Obama said that incurring debt was “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic.” John McCain condemned it as “generational theft.”

In this book, the prize-winning economics professor Arthur Benavie, demonstrates in clear and non-technical language that belief in this myth has repeatedly blocked our federal government from creating jobs and investing in our children’s future.

Benavie describes the many occasions, including from the administrations of FDR to Obama, where our leaders were faced with severe political retribution at the mere suggestion that their policies would increase the national debt.

Belief in this myth presents a continuing danger to the wellbeing of our children and grandchildren. Benavie examines several ways to disempower it.

The American

America has gone beyond ethicality. Education is not lacking in ethical behavior, although it is lacking in morality. Children know too well what is good and what is bad. If parents were to fail in teaching so, the entire system will take care of teaching it. America has gone so far by making law enforcement greater every day, that it is becoming unethically ethical. When all is enforced, all actions are watched, and everyone is afraid. When people are afraid, they become violent.

Plantation Negroes of the 21st Century

Has the Black race been ostracized into a purgatory world where it is neither free nor enslaved and where the landscape looks remarkably like the Old Plantation?

Dr. Claud Anderson, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce, says: "Black folks in proportional comparative terms are regressing. Blacks have been socially engineered into the lowest levels of life... and are now more hated than at any time in the last 50 years."

Dr. Anderson does not come right out and say that Blacks are still stationed near the Old Plantation, but he comes awfully close...

The road that has led the Black race to this perilous moment in time leads us back to a host of villains. The White ones we all know about, the Black ones, Negroes, who prey on their fellow Black sufferers, we conveniently choose to forget about-those House Negroes, that Malcolm X warned us about?

This book will name and shame... the Plantation Negroes of the 21^st Century.

Mourning Bands On

Mourning Bands On is an accessible journey into the hypersensitive world of today’s American law enforcement. The reader is brought into the law enforcement world through an introduction to the history, function, and development of the American police model. With an understanding of policing’s role in American society, the reader is then immersed into the raucous and contentious cultural upheaval which American policing is currently experiencing.

Using well-known examples, the reader is challenged to consider how American culture is affected by critical incidents and the portrayal of those events in our media intensive world. The reader will review the cases in the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, as well as others. The cases are presented as a narrative of events supported by the findings and legal conclusions of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Each incident is reviewed with a view of how the incident effected American society and brought change to American culture and thus policing.

The reader will experience how American policing has changed through legislative, societal, and cultural pressure resulting from the reviewed critical incidents. With an appetite for more, the reader is encouraged to further explore the relationship between societal norms and American policing.

The work concludes with a final challenge to the reader. How do we, as a society, reform American policing to move forward after this unprecedented period of cultural change? The author offers several possible reforms to enact, what can you add to the conversation?

Man, God, Religion, and State

Man, God, Religion, and State, is a reflection on our physical, philosophical, and political, past, present, and possible future. This book may challenge the religious views of some readers, but it is not my intention to cause offence to any religious believer. We are all living in a time of anxiety and insecurities, which may prevent us from embracing our humanity. But we should never allow either the pain and sorrow of the past or the threats and fears of the present to obscure our vision of what is just and truthful. Our present socioeconomic relationships are based on injustice and falsehood, which is unsustainable. We must therefore adjust our level and rates of consumption before we cross the line of no-return. In this sense, Man, God, Religion, and State is a warning to us all.

Humanity in Trouble and Our Failure to Act

Mankind is on a crash course with destiny and doesn’t seem to have a clue! We are witnessing rapidly accelerating global warming of our own making that could potentially result in species extinctions, including our own. Witness widespread signs of the impending disaster including super storms, record drought, floods, forest fires and climate refugees. Dangerous nuclear saber rattling by Russia and North Korea is on the upswing and the Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens to expand to Western Europe. The increasing number of fascist, autocratic, dictator-run states such as China, North Korea, Turkey, and Brazil are snuffing individual freedoms, denying social justice and fanning the flames of global conflict.  The world’s population is rapidly approaching eight billion and is well past the point of Earth’s ability to sustain us. Crushing poverty, starvation, and dozens of militarized religious and ethnic conflicts. We have polluted our planet with toxic chemicals, oil spills, reckless dumping of trash on land and sea, contaminating the oceans with fish and fowl killing plastic waste.

This book is the result of overwhelming outrage and disappointment with our species, our failure to adequately address worldwide problems that threaten our very existence. We (if there is a ‘we’) should be embarrassed and ashamed. Nature has endowed us with near perfect bodies and amazing brains and for the most part we squander our evolutionary inheritance. And the greatest gift of all, consciousness, is under-developed in most of us. In this collection of essays, the author offers insights into the human condition, the reasons we have run afoul of the natural order, along solutions to alleviate human suffering on an individual and global scale plus some playful jabs at our human folly.