Search results for ""Author George J. Marlin""

It’s not easy being Catholic and conservative in secular ‘Blue State’ New York, but that’s what George J. Marlin is, always has been, and always will be. Don’t ask him to change. Besides, like America, it’s the Empire State that needs to change. Generation after generation of elitists have put in place their plans for making the machineries of state work more efficiently and more equitably, and they’ve succeeded in wrecking what was never broken in the first place. And Mr. Marlin has a name for political types who think they know better than the rest of us: narcissists. Narcissists have been fouling up societies since the beginning of time. As Marlin writes:Throughout history, a subset of people have viewed themselves as superior to the rest of the population due to their perceived distinctive qualities: intelli-gence, breeding, class, or wealth. These elites have generally held that because they are exceptional persons they were best suited to conduct the affairs of state. They are wrong. But they have succeeded, and they appear to be ascendant in America today, although the Tea Party may have something to say about that. But consider the following contemporary examples: * The elitist imposition of Obamacare upon an unwilling nation * The lionizing by the Left of eugenicists, such as Margaret Sanger and Ruth Bader Ginsburg * The way “Catholic” politicians such as New York governors George Pataki and David Paterson and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani run roughshod over Church teaching * The way contemporary education – from nursery school through college – infantilizes and fails our kids, preparing them poorly for the rigors of adulthood With an acid pen and a ready wit, George Marlin takes on many of modern America’s most revered intellectuals and shows conclusively that they’re just not as smart as they think they are.

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Among all the fifty-six men who have served as New York’s governor, none was more complicated, self-righteous, pugilistic, and exasperating than Mario Cuomo. As governor, Mario Cuomo is remembered most for his advocacy of the “personally-opposed-but” position on abortion that led to confrontations with Catholic Church hierarchy, and for dithering about his presidential ambitions, that led the media to dub him the “Hamlet on the Hudson.” His political style reminded many of Machiavelli; Cuomo styled himself a successor to St. Thomas More. In this political profile, George J. Marlin sets the record straight on Mario Cuomo. Marlin traces Cuomo’s political rise and documents how and why he abandoned his public opposition to abortion to be elected New York’s chief executive. In great detail, Marlin describes the protracted conflict between Cuomo and his church on abortion and refutes the governor’s claim that his “position on abortion is absolutely theologically sound.” Marlin critiques Cuomo’s famous 1984 Democratic convention speech as nothing more than the usual high-toned partisan liberal bromides that offered little, if anything, that hadn’t been touted by his party for half a century. The book also uncovers New York State’s fiscal, economic, and social decline during Cuomo’s 12 years as governor. It explains why voters repudiated Cuomo’s version of a welfare state when he sought a fourth term in 1994 and why, in the words of his son, Governor Andrew Cuomo, his father was “more accomplished as a speech-giver than as a governor.” Marlin skillfully separates the Cuomo “Public Intellectual” myth from the political man. Mario Cuomo, three times Governor of New York, an eloquent hard edged Catholic from Queens, dominated not only his home state but national liberal politics in the age of Reagan. Whether the subject was police or theology, Cuomo rhetorically overpowered the reporters who covered him. But he’s finally met his match in George Marlin’s Mario Cuomo The Myth and the Man. Marlin’s extraordinary equipment; a former candidate for Mayor of N.Y.C., former executive director of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, author of books on Catholic voters and the Archbishops of New York, has made him the ideal author of what’s sure to be seen as the definitive political biography of Mario Cuomo. — Fred Siegel, Author, The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life and The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities. “It’s easy to forget what an important and fascinating figure Mario Cuomo was during New York’s raucous political heyday of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, when the likes of Hugh Carey, Ed Koch, Al D’Amato, and Rudy Giuliani strode the political stage. Thankfully, George Marlin’s wonderful new Cuomo biography will help everyone remember both the good and bad of the remarkable man who served three terms as governor, turned down a seat on the Supreme Court and rejected the chance to run for President. Here are both Cuomo’s successes and failures — and of the latter there were many. An important work that helps restore our collective memory. — Fredric U. Dicker, the New York Post’s longtime state editor and a TV and radio commentator, covered six governors during 40 years at the state Capitol in Albany. George Marlin is virtually peerless in blending high principle with knowledge of street-level politics and the nuts-and-bolts of otherwise mundane governance to produce readable, yet deeply insightful, social and political portraits. Mario Cuomo: The Myth and the Man, examines in fine detail one of one of New York state’s most consequential, if also deeply flawed, 20th-century gubernatorial incumbencies. Plus, readers get a bonus: Insight into what shaped the career of Mario Cuomo’s Democratic superstar son, Andrew. Marlin has been in the trenches himself and thus can separate blarney from beefsteak – which this fine volume once again demonstrates. —Bob McManus, Contributing Editor, The City Journal, was the New York Post’s Editorial Page Editor (2000-2013), and The Albany Times Union’s Executive City Editor (1975-1981). “George Marlin not only captures the political life and journey of Mario Cuomo, but details his policy approach that led to the near demise of the Empire State. Fortunately, the Conservative Party of New York was there to carry the torch and provide the margin of victory for George Pataki ending the senior Cuomo’s reign.” —Michael Long, State Chairman, Conservative Party of New York (1988-2019) “For both better and worse, Mario Cuomo was the quintessential American Catholic politician of an entire postwar generation: ambitious, brilliant, articulate, serious about his faith, and flexible in how and where he applied it. George Marlin is a writer of considerable skill, and he uses here it to produce a provocative, absorbing portrait of the man and his career. —Francis X. Maier, Senior Fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

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George J. Marlin, author of "Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party," traces the political and electoral history of American Catholics from the time of Lord Baltimore and the founding of Maryland to the election of George W. Bush. It is an inspiring story of ethnic Catholics who arrived on America's shores with only the clothes on their back to eventually become a significant voice in local and national political affairs.

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It’s not easy being Catholic and conservative in secular ‘Blue State’ New York, but that’s what George J. Marlin is, always has been, and always will be. Don’t ask him to change. Besides, like America, it’s the Empire State that needs to change. Generation after generation of elitists have put in place their plans for making the machineries of state work more efficiently and more equitably, and they’ve succeeded in wrecking what was never broken in the first place. And Mr. Marlin has a name for political types who think they know better than the rest of us: narcissists. Narcissists have been fouling up societies since the beginning of time. As Marlin writes:Throughout history, a subset of people have viewed themselves as superior to the rest of the population due to their perceived distinctive qualities: intelli-gence, breeding, class, or wealth. These elites have generally held that because they are exceptional persons they were best suited to conduct the affairs of state. They are wrong. But they have succeeded, and they appear to be ascendant in America today, although the Tea Party may have something to say about that. But consider the following contemporary examples: * The elitist imposition of Obamacare upon an unwilling nation * The lionizing by the Left of eugenicists, such as Margaret Sanger and Ruth Bader Ginsburg * The way “Catholic” politicians such as New York governors George Pataki and David Paterson and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani run roughshod over Church teaching * The way contemporary education – from nursery school through college – infantilizes and fails our kids, preparing them poorly for the rigors of adulthood With an acid pen and a ready wit, George Marlin takes on many of modern America’s most revered intellectuals and shows conclusively that they’re just not as smart as they think they are.

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This is the story of New York's feisty Conservative Party, a story that is really the saga of America's tumultuous political maturity from the time of Rockefeller up to Rudy Guiliani.

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Even before ISIS launched its ultra-violent campaign targeting Iraqi Christians in the summer of 2014, Pope Francis proclaimed that the current wave of Christian persecution in the Middle East is worse than the suffering inflicted on believers in the centuries of the early Church. Since the Arab Spring and the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, which have thrown the region into utter chaos, Muslim extremists have killed thousands of Christians every year, while destroying and desecrating countless churches. Christian communities in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt have been hardest hit. In his new book, author and political commentator George J. Marlin, chairman of Aid to the Church in Need-USA – an agency under the guidance of the Pope that supports the persecuted and suffering Church around the world – describes the sharp rise in Christian persecution in the Middle East. After brief narratives on the rise of Christianity, Islam, and terrorism in the Middle East, Marlin documents country by country, acts of twenty-first century Christian persecution that is nearing a bloody climax that could produce the unthinkable: a Middle East without Christians and the destruction of an ancient patrimony that has been a vital link to the very birth of Christianity.

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