The point of reading this political book is to enjoy Holmes Alexander's wonderful command of the English language. It's tinged with sadness, of course-- Alexander was retiring from a lifetime of writing (both as a columnist and an author of scholarly works). The introduction by Sen. Barry M. Goldwater helps set the reflective tone.

This was to be Alexander's last charge against the forces he had confronted as a pundit--the sneering liberals, the crackpot globalists, the unthinking geniuses out to appease the Communist bloc. It is also his final written tribute to his American homeland, a place he loved deeply. The quality of his writing demands that, when a culture history of the Right's experience during the Cold War comes to be written, some space will have to be alloted to the career of Holmes Alexander.

Final note--The title is from an encounter Alexader had as a boy with a veteran of the Confederate Army. The grizzled old soldier told Alexander, in reference to the American South's fate after the Civil War: "Never lose a war." Perhaps military hawks will yet latch on to this eloquent motto.