Citizenship Without Illusions: review 3

This review of my new book is posted at Faithful Intellect: Citizenship Without Illusions by David T. Koyzis. The author calls himself David without listing a surname. He presents a rather full outline of the book's contents along with several takeaways from each chapter. Here is an excerpt:

Writing about politics and religion requires navigating a mine field and Koyzis does it splendidly. He does a good job of presenting both sides while maintaining a nonpartisan perspective throughout the book. I also appreciate that the book is not too US centric. Koyzis is an American who lives in Canada and had family in Europe. This global perspective adds insightful comparisons that highlight what is common across countries and what makes the US unique.

Here is another excerpt on an issue that I am pleased to see highlighted:

My last takeaway is the way our current electoral system in the US doesn’t work well. It was enlightening to learn about the ways other countries try to balance the local/territorial-based needs and the geographically dispersed political positions/parties. In some countries you vote for individual candidates, while in others you vote for a particular party. In some you vote for both. I don’t see the electoral system changing any time soon in the US, but I think it would go a long way to create more moderation that aligns better with what most Americans actually desire.

My fervent hope is that my book will help to stimulate a discussion about electoral reform in the United States. We are already discussing it here in Canada, although the major political parties are unenthusiastic for the obvious reason that the current first-past-the-post system artificially props them up. But Americans desperately need to jump start a conversation on the issue, because the current polarized climate has reached crisis levels, and the electoral system only exacerbates the divisiveness.