The title of Stephen Baskerville’s most recent book, published in 2024 and titled Who Lost America? is so sweeping that one might expect a 5,000-page work. Instead, it’s only 216 pages and well worth reading a second time.

Baskerville’s book is not merely academic. It is meant to awaken readers to what he sees as an existential crisis for American freedom and identity. Its strength lies in connecting many threads—law, culture, family, institutions—creating a coherent narrative of decline, and not just in isolated issues.

For those who already share concern about “wokeness,” judicial overreach, decay in traditional morality, etc., this book offers a more systemic lens: it helps explain how we got here, not just that we are here, and proposes solutions.

The author uses the term “Communist” provocatively. It is not that the U.S. has formally become a Communist state in the Soviet-style sense, but that radical Left ideologies, institutions, practices, and power structures have assumed so much control over so much of public life that we hardly notice it. This includes government, public schools, higher education, family and criminal courts, social service agencies, churches, the media, and more. Baskerville argues that there has been a decisive shift: a consolidation of power by Leftist actors who have used crises (such as COVID-19, social unrest, and stolen elections) to push through changes that weaken constitutional constraints, civil liberties, and traditional social structures.

Baskerville blames the professional political class of the Right for letting the Left take power. He faults the professional political Right for fighting “communism” — the last war — while being happy to repeat old slogans to raise money.

Who Lost America? goes on to explain how the Left took over. The author acknowledges that the Left used Cultural Marxism, race, gender, oppression, weakened family ties, morals, etc., but he then introduces what he calls “The Iron Law of Washington”: People who are paid to solve problems acquire a vested interest in perpetuating the problems they are paid to solve.

He cites the recent Covid crisis as an example — the government created the virus (crisis), with lockdowns as a solution (control), printed money as another solution, then mandated vaccines as yet another solution — all along creating more control, more debt, and more bureaucracy.

But it’s the arena wherein men have lost power to women that Baskerville is a true expert. His 2006 book Taken into Custody was a pioneering work that described how divorce courts and social service bureaucracies — created to “help” solve family problems — instead created huge bureaucracies that ruined marriages, families, and damaged children. These in turn required more bureaucracy, including prisons, increased law enforcement, and social services; all needed to fix the problems caused by the other bureaucracies. Power was gradually transferred from men to women; the universities were feminized, also the professions — even the military — and whole new professions such as social work, day care, and psychological therapy were created to help transfer power from men to women.

In Baskerville’s view, this is the nexus of the problem: Fatherless families prompted the creation and expansion of bureaucratic solutions, including courts, law enforcement, and social work, all of which are intended to fix the resulting problems, instead taking even more men away from the family.

After explaining how the Iron Law of Washington created this mess, how does the author keep his promise in the book’s title to tell us “what to do about it”?

He does so by recommending the dismantling of no-fault divorce laws and restoring the traditional marriage contract. He argues that this single reform would send shockwaves through the family, welfare, judicial, economic, and even military structures.

He writes that stronger marriage laws would stabilize households by eliminating easy divorce, restoring men’s parental rights, and ensuring property security. This, he says, would reignite the motivation of men to study, work, serve in the military, and build prosperous families. In turn, cohesive families would produce children with respect for authority, moral values, and community.

Baskerville promises these changes would reduce the need for welfare. With intact families, women would no longer rely on welfare, therefore erasing its main justification. The destructive cycle of poverty, crime, and substance abuse tied to fatherless homes would sharply decline. Ghettos would dissolve, inner cities could thrive again, and child abuse—portrayed as nearly exclusive to single-mother households—would plummet.

The author emphasizes that removing no-fault provisions would reestablish the courts as protectors of genuine justice, while restoring constitutional guarantees of due process, habeas corpus, and property rights. Economically, families would resume their role as engines of prosperity.

Finally, the author envisions churches as central players in this restored order. As guarantors of marriage contracts, they would regain authority over family life, which would distinguish true churches—defenders of marriage—from false ones that fail in this duty. This renewed role could refill pews, revive moral authority, and even replace welfare with traditional poor relief tied to sexual morality.

Who Lost America? is an excellent read.

To read the entire book, go to Amazon to order!

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