Culture heroes.(Shelf Life)(Educating for Liberty: The First Half-Century of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute )(Book Review)

AT mid-century, campuses slumbered acquiescently in the culture of entrenched post-New Deal statism. But a man named Frank Chodorov knew that if you were going to change the culture, you had to do it through the kids; accordingly, in 1953, he founded an organization "to promote among college students, specifically, and the public, generally, an understanding of, and appreciation for, the Constitution of the United States of America, laissez-faire (free market) economics, and the doctrine of individualism." The inspiring story of his organization, and its immense influence on America's progress over the succeeding five decades, is told in historian Lee Edwards's Educating for Liberty: The First Half-Century of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Regnery, 343 pp., $27.95).

What sets this fine book apart from the typical work of institutional history is that Edwards stresses the special nature of ISI's product--which is to say, ideas. The passion felt by ISI's founders, backers, and officials for passing on the Great Tradition--the best thought of the Western world--is infectious throughout these pages. "A teacher," Chodorov said, "is a conductor of electricity"; this book demonstrates that ISI has lived up to its high calling, charging up many megawatts' worth of young conservatives.

* Sean Hannity has one of the most likable personas in broadcasting. At the heart of his appeal is the unassuming sincerity in his devotion to some key values, and this emotional candor is on winsome display in his new book, Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism (ReganBooks, 338 pp., $26.95). Today's liberals, he writes, are "far less suspicious than they should be of totalitarian regimes"; their behavior on national security sometimes proves the accuracy of the old joke that a liberal is a guy who won't take his own side in an argument. Hannity, in contrast, is a plainspoken and unabashed defender of our war for American values against global forces of terror and oppression. His concern in this book is chiefly with today's struggle against the Islamofascists, but in an epilogue he expands his discussion to such hot spots as Red China and North Korea; the need for U.S. resolve against evil will not vanish when the current terror war has been won.

* Another welcome voice in broadcasting is ABC's surprising libertarian, John Stossel. In Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media (HarperCollins, 294 pp., $24.95), Stossel describes his progress from chasing small-time crooks to exposing major-league political peddlers of special-interest hoaxery. This memoir is chockablock with great stories. Here's one example, from his years as a consumer reporter:

 
   I had heard some doctors were so 
   greedy they'd perform abortions on 
   women who weren't pregnant. In the 
   era before home pregnancy tests, 
   crooked doctors could take advantage 
   of women whose periods were late. 
   They would simply test the women's 
   urine, tell them they were pregnant, and 
   pretend to give them abortions.... I 
   sent two female researchers to six abortion 
   doctors with samples of my urine. 
   Two of the six clinics told the women 
   they were pregnant and tried to abort 
   them. They only escaped by jumping 
   off the tables and shouting, "No! I've 
   changed my mind!" We got the conversations 
   on tape and broadcast them. 
   Both doctors closed their clinics and 
   disappeared. 

The book will delight all believers in free minds and free markets, as Stossel gives copious ...