According to Deiuliis, there are four types of people: Creators, Enablers, Servers, and Leeches. The first three actually bring something of substance to the economic table, while the fourth tries to devour whatever lands on the plate before the others have a chance to take a seat. After reading his book, readers will be able to identify which is which—especially the Leech, because his book primarily targets that fourth group—and how the Leech preys on the success (mild or wild) of the other three. His primary target? Government entities.
Leech Power
This book will anger conservatives and liberals alike, though most likely for different reasons. While conservatives prefer less government, liberals prefer more. Depending on the social-political perspective, the solution is the problem or the problem is the solution. But it would be unfair to suggest that liberals prefer a wasteful government. Deiuliis’s book is an indictment of the Left, not liberals.When it comes to Leeches, as the author calls them, he breaks the leeching process into three categories: Training Grounds, Funding Sources, and Leech Power Centers. His first target, as aforementioned, is government, and that entity shows up throughout the book by its power to conjoin with other Leeches.
The first conjoining is between government and academia (the primary training ground). Academia has become somewhat of an easy punching bag for the Right, and unfortunately for good reason. The author discusses how expensive tuition has become and that the cost has not kept up with inflation, but has far exceeded it. Not only has school become unaffordable (despite millions of students attending every semester), but those who graduate are saddled with slavish debt.
But debt is only part of the problem. Students are graduating with degrees for which there is little to no market. So not only are students dealing with mass debt, they also have few to no options in their field. Deiuliis notes that, despite this obvious disparity in debt to income, academia still encourages the impressionable to pursue such degrees.
The author specifies problems within the arts departments. In his chapter, “Hijacking STEM,” there seems to be hostility toward STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) through grant provisions and the lack of recognition for the benefits provided through STEM. Deiuliis also accuses the Left of using pseudo-science alarmism to create a pseudo-humanitarian crisis by way of climate change.
Not only has the arts (or humanities) departments become hostile to STEM, but it has also become hostile to itself by recently restricting free speech in the classrooms. The author pulls examples from universities across the country to demonstrate how students, professors, and administrators have fallen victim to the intolerance of unpopular opinions.
Deiuliis states that the Funding Source is, unfortunately, the people through taxation. His is not an anti-tax thesis, but rather a whitepaper on how a massively corrupt bureaucracy utilizes taxation to fund its wasteful spending. The wasteful spending doesn’t simply stem from bad legislation, but from the deep pockets of federal agencies that must be filled.
Federal agencies and the federal government are typically low-hanging fruit when it comes to highlighting their shortcomings and corruption. Deiuliis highlights state and local governments as well, using horrifying debt numbers to boot.
Homework Done
Without a doubt, the author has studied the many problems plaguing the average citizen: rich or poor, educated or uneducated. It seems to be a lifetime of study dedicated to sounding the alarm regarding the demise of everyday liberty.“Precipice” is not a treatise of a disgruntled citizen blathering on about how inefficient, wasteful, and power-hungry the American government (at all its levels) is. He provides far too many sources for that. Hearing about the ills of academia, the government, the activists, the global community, and the like, are common refrains.
But Deiuliis hits the reader with so many numbers, percentages, legal decisions, recent historical moments, legislation, and more that it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to argue his points. In the same vein as a Thomas Sowell book, Deiuliis has written an onslaught of disturbing truths for which many Americans should be very upset.
