FRIDAY?!?!
I’ve had a pre-order in for Larry Correia‘s Monster Hunter International with Amazon since February. It’s in stock now. Yet Amazon informs me that my copy is scheduled to ship “on or about” FRIDAY.
WTF?
Srsly, WTFF?
Tag: books
Quote of the Day
The religious purpose of modern schooling was announced clearly by the legendary University of Wisconsin sociologist Edward A. Ross in 1901 in his famous book, Social Control. Your librarian should be able to locate a copy for you without much trouble. In it Ed Ross wrote these words for his prominent following: “Plans are underway to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education, and mass media….the State shakes loose from Church, reaches out to School…. People are only little plastic lumps of human dough.” Social Control revolutionized the discipline of sociology and had powerful effects on the other human sciences: in social science it guided the direction of political science, economics, and psychology; in biology it influenced genetics, eugenics, and psychobiology. It played a critical role in the conception and design of molecular biology.
There you have it in a nutshell. The whole problem with modern schooling. It rests on a nest of false premises. People are not little plastic lumps of dough. They are not blank tablets as John Locke said they were, they are not machines as de La Mettrie hoped, not vegetables as Friedrich Froebel, inventor of kindergartens, hypothesized, not organic mechanisms as Wilhelm Wundt taught every psychology department in America at the turn of the century, nor are they repertoires of behaviors as Watson and Skinner wanted. They are not, as the new crop of systems thinkers would have it, mystically harmonious microsystems interlocking with grand macrosystems in a dance of atomic forces. I don’t want to be crazy about this; locked in a lecture hall or a bull session there’s probably no more harm in these theories than reading too many Italian sonnets all at one sitting. But when each of these suppositions is sprung free to serve as a foundation for school experiments, it leads to frightfully oppressive practices.
— John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education
Well THIS is Interesting
I received an email this morning:
Dear Editor of The Smallest Minority,
According to Stephen Moore at the Wall Street Journal, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged has gone from fiction to fact in 52 years. If you haven’t already, now is the time to finally read it, and I would be happy to send you a review copy.
Atlas Shrugged has received praise from Business Week, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fox, CNN.com, among others. Below is an article from the Ayn Rand Institute, explaining the significance of Atlas Shrugged and the tea parties that will be going on this weekend, July 4th.
If you like the article, please feel free to reprint it on your site. There are excerpts and other materials available. Please let me know if you’d like me to coordinate an interview with a representative from The Ayn Rand Institute. Feel free to contact me with your editorial needs.
I’m looking forward to working with you on this controversial novel.
This was from the Publicist for a book marketing company. It would appear that another industry has now embraced bloggers and blogs as a new way to reach a mass audience. Pretty cool, though I don’t think I’m her particular target audience in this case.
Oh, and here’s the rather brief article:
The Significance of Ayn Rand’s Novel Atlas Shrugged
From The Ayn Rand Institute
“I refuse to apologize for my ability — I refuse to apologize for my success — I refuse to apologize for my money.”The U.S. economy is in shambles, with every nightly newscast bringing word of new government interventions. Americans are alarmed and desperate for answers: How did we get here? How will we recover? That might sound like a description of today’s world, but in fact it’s also a sketch of the world Ayn Rand created in her classic novel Atlas Shrugged.
The tea parties testify to the outrage that many Americans feel toward Washington’s explosive growth in the past few decades — especially under Presidents Bush and Obama. Atlas Shrugged not only gives voice to this outrage, it provides both a profound explanation of the cause of today’s crisis — and a positive, radical solution to it.
Why is it that every problem seems to call for increased government intervention at the expense of freedom? Why is it that businessmen inevitably take the blame for any crisis? Why are the most competent, most successful Americans smeared as greedy and selfish? To these questions and many others, Atlas Shrugged gives answers unlike anything you’ve ever heard.
“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns — or dollars. Take your choice — there is no other — and your time is running out.”
* * *
“If we who were the movers, the providers, the benefactors of mankind, were willing to let the brand of evil be stamped upon us, and silently to bear punishment for our virtues — what sort of ‘good’ did we expect to triumph in the world?”
* * *
‘Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. You are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will now take the blame. It is your moral code that’s through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality . . . but to discover it.”
Learn the meaning of these quotes — and the revolutionary ideas behind them — by picking up Atlas Shrugged. Discover why Ayn Rand held that nothing less than a total separation between state and economics can save this country. Discover Ayn Rand’s defense of the individual’s moral right to pursue his own happiness — the indispensable precondition of his political right to pursue his own happiness. Discover a gripping novel that challenges today’s intellectual mainstream and provides an alternative to the anti-freedom ideas that are undermining American liberty.
Discover Atlas Shrugged.
Personally, I appreciate her philosophical essays far more than her attempts at novels, but your mileage may vary. I could not get through John Galt’s 70+ page speech, myself.
Can We Actually TRY This
Can We Actually TRY This?
Joe Huffman takes a look at Dennis Henigan’s latest PSH, his book Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy. Henigan’s position:
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Henigan counters with Ozzy Osbourne’s take on that: “If that’s the case, why do we give people guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?”
Joe replies (and I’m doing this post to archive this):
Suppose you were to drop Dennis Henigan and Sarah Brady in the woods with all the guns and ammo they can carry. And a half mile away you drop in an Army Ranger or Navy Seal completely naked, one hand tied behind their back and a patch over one eye. If you tell them only one side can leave the woods alive I’m betting that by the next morning, despite being outnumbered 2:1 and out armed, the warrior will be walking out of the woods fully clothed, armed, and wearing Sarah and Dennis’s ears as a necklace.
Gun are tools used by people. Without the people the guns don’t kill, with or without guns people can kill. Guns just make violence against people easier. Sometimes that violence is for good and sometimes it is for evil. Most of the time guns are used for good. Reducing the access of guns to good people enables evil.
Absolutely.
An Open Letter to Bill Whittle
To: Bill Whittle, [email protected]
Re: “Common Sense” and our need for a new Thomas Paine
Some time back after one of my exceedingly long essays, one of my commenters stated that what this country needs now is a modern Thomas Paine and a new, updated version of Common Sense. I fully concur with that assessment. That commenter also thought that I should be the author. I abjured. I’m a good technical writer, but I know my limitations.
Bill, I’ve read your work ever since you first appeared at Rachel Lucas’ blog as a commenter. I read that first post she assembled out of your string of comments on the meaning and importance of the Second Amendment, and I believe I’ve read every word you’ve written since. (I was honored to be one of those quoted on the cover pages of the first edition of Silent America when it was published.) I am awed by your absolute mastery of topic, provoking use of imagery, and the bone-deep conviction that comes off the pages that you write, often with aching eloquence. In a word, sir, you inspire while you inform.
And inspiration is what we need now.
My only disagreement with you over the nearly seven years you’ve been writing on the internet has been your eternal optimism that everything’s going to turn out OK because, gosh darn it, we’re AMERICANS and that’s what Americans do!
And then eleven days ago you put up Mountains of Money: Do you know how much a $1 trillion is? on PJTV. You concluded that piece thus:
It’s past time to vote these criminals out of office. It’s time we peasants got a wild-eyed mob together. We gather our pitchforks and our torches, we go to Washington, and we track these people down with hunting dogs.
Your optimism has now, it seems, been tempered by the realization of just what our government is attempting, and our apparently absolute inability to stop it or even slow it down through traditional means.
I submit that it is past time for a new, updated version of Common Sense, one that can still reach the “Silent Majority” who remember, as you and I do, what this country has been, is supposed to be, and might one day be again.
I submit that if anyone can do it, it is you, and if it isn’t done then we as a nation surely are. I realize that this is a tremendous burden. It is one that I would shoulder if I truly felt I was capable, but I know my limitations in this regard and I recognize your immense talents, and more than that, your intense desire that we become once again what we should be. You are the right man at the right time, and I implore you to please take up this challenge. We need leaders. We need inspiration. We need to gather again around a core set of beliefs that make sense, or the great experiment that is America will be inevitably dragged down into the mud and mire to the great glee of the self-destructive children who have been taught that nothing’s their fault, nothing’s their responsibility, and nothing should be denied to them – ever.
I’m not saying that you and you alone can save this nation – far from it – but your voice is the one needed to fill the role Thomas Paine filled over two hundred years ago, the one that first inspired the country with the very powerful ideas of his time. We’ve yet to find our Jefferson, our Adams’ (both John and Sam – though I have some ideas on Sam), our Franklin, our Madison, our Washington; but you sir are our Thomas Paine in our time of need. Please, come to the aid of our country.
I realize the timeline is short, but on July 4th there will be another wave of “Tea Parties” in this country, attended by the people who see what you and I see, who know what you and I know, and who need someone to put into unforgettable words the things they know in their hearts. A new edition of Common Sense is needed to give them that. I hope this missive has reached you in time, and that you can see your way to accomplish this task. (I think the blogosphere can handle the distribution end of the pamphleteering.)
Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to further communication with you.
Sincerely,
Kevin Baker
http://smallestminority.blogspot.com
This Makes More Sense Now . . .
This Makes More Sense Now . . .
. . . well, if sense is the right word.
One of the books I picked up recently is Matthew Bracken’s Enemies Foreign and Domestic. Actually, I ordered Domestic Enemies via Amazon and it came in on Thursday, but I bought Enemies Foreign and Domestic at the Funshow Saturday. I’m reading it first. I’m about halfway done.
I now understand the Department of Homeland Security’s “Rightwing Extremism” report we were all talking about a couple of weeks ago.
Apparently someone in the department read it recently.
I bet they had kittens.
Good.
The concept of Personal Sovereignty must scare the piss out of them.
Just not enough, you know, to actually stop.
Oh, I Will SO Be Buying This Book
Oh, I Will SO Be Buying This Book
“And that one?” I pointed to a man up to his chin in boiling blood. He was screaming in agony so his face was distorted, but he looked Oriental.
“New one,” Billy said. “Seung, something like that. Went out and shot a bunch of people in the college he was at. Allen, it puzzles me that a man can shoot thirty-two full-grown men and women before the sheriff’s men gun him down. You’re more his time, maybe you can tell me. Why didn’t someone just shoot the son of a bitch?”
I scratched my head. Billy’s viewpoint seemed skewed, alien.
“Five of them were teachers,” Billy said. “They had to protect their kids. How could they not be armed? It’s as if someone has been taking away their guns.” He saw my puzzlement. “Oh, well. I don’t know how long he’ll be out that deep, but he needs watchin’. Keeps trying to get ashore.” – Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Escape from Hell
Excerpt stolen shamelessly from From the Barrel of a Gun.
My boss and I talked for a good half-hour before work this morning about books. He’d brought me S.M. Stirling’s In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, since he’d just finished it and knew I’d recently read The Sky People. As it turns out, our tastes in fiction are almost identical, though he tends to enjoy the horror genre more than I do. Escape from Hell was one book we both mentioned we planned on reading. On his recommendation I’m going to be picking up some C.S. Friedman soon, too.
Quote(s) of the Day and a Book Review
Quote(s) of the Day and a Book Review
I’ve finished Neil Strauss’s Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life. Some more memorable quotes from it:
As I was standing around the fire one evening, cooking fish that an instructor had taught me how to gut, I found myself immersed in a conversation with the marines.
A younger marine, Luke, was speaking. He had close-cropped black hair, thin lips, and small, sparkling brown eyes. “This is going out on a limb, but I think there will be a revolution in America in the next hundred years.”
“Where’s it going to come from?” I asked.
“Me,” he said without smiling. He paused, then explained. “If you ask anyone in the military, they hate the government. They have all these rules that hold us back and put our lives in danger.”
“If we followed the rules of engagement,” an enormous older marine named Dave added, “We’d be dead.”
—
Cogito ergo armatum sum — I think, therefore I am armed.
—
Of course, now that I’m stockpiling, the first thing all my friends will probably do when there’s a disaster is run to my house.
I suppose they’ll make an excellent source of protein.
Why do I keep making these jokes? Is there a half-truth somewhere in there?
I used to fear being the eaten. Now I fear being the eater.
—
On the way to (EMT) class one night, I say a motorcycle lying on the shoulder of the highway with a man slumped next to it. Every car blew past, paying him no attention. I pulled onto the shoulder, called 911, unzipped my bugout bag, grabbed the emergency first-aid kit, and raced to his side. He wasn’t badly hurt, so I pressed a two-by-four-inch piece of gauze against his arm to stop the bleeding, then secured the gauze with a roller bandage while waiting for the paramedics
Something in me was beginning to change. I’d never stopped to help a stranger before. I’d always assumed someone else would do it – and better than I could.
—
Unlike what the survivalists, the PTs, Lord of the Flies and Sigmund Freud had led me to beleive, it seemed that tragedy also had the power to bring out the best in people. Not just the fire-fighters and police officers who worked around the clock. Not just the local businesses that brought truckloads of supplies for neither monetary nor marketing gain. But even the victims themselves tried their best to help one another.
They might have behaved differently if their lives were still in danger, resources were scarce, and they had to compete to survive. But once they were safe, it seemed that people’s first instinct was to look after one another and support their community. Maybe I needed to revise my Fliesian philosophy. If people were animals, then like most animals, they were essentially harmless most of the time – unless they felt threatened. That’s when they became vicious.
Strauss spends the first half of the book learning to be self-sufficient, independent, and above all, safe. But along the way, he learns an important lesson – surviving by yourself is a hell of a lot harder than surviving in a group. In attempting to “network,” he becomes a certified EMT, and joins the California Emergency Mobile Patrol. And he learns something else – something most “survivalists” I think, never do. I won’t quote the last few paragraphs of the book, because – well, just because.
Don’t buy the book expecting it to be a “how-to” manual for budding survivalists. It is not. It is the story of one man’s journey from milquetoast to self-sufficient individual, one not disconnected from the modern world, but enthusiastically a member of it, while still capable of surviving without it.
It was worth the price, and the time.
Quote(s) of the Day
On the near-simultaneous reference by Michael Bane and Glenn Reynolds, I ordered a copy of Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life, by Neil Strauss. I’m about halfway through it at the moment, and I have to say that so far it’s been fascinating, especially since Mr. Strauss is about my polar opposite from a political perspective. His interpretation of the world is, naturally, colored by his worldview, but a lot of what he says is pretty interesting. Here are just a few quotes from the book so far:
Our society, which seems so sturdily built out of concrete and custom, is just a temporary resting place, a hotel our civilization checked into a couple hundred years ago and must one day check out of. It’s an inevitability tourists can’t help but realize when visiting Mayan ruins, Egyptian ruins, Roman ruins. How long will it be before someone is visiting American ruins?
—
One of the most unsettling things about Adolf Hitler is that he wasn’t an imperialist, like Napoleon or William McKinley. He wasn’t just trying to subjugate other countries. His goal was to cleanse them, to wipe out the so-called weak races and speed the evolution of the human species through the propagation of the Aryan race. And for seven years, he got away with it. Few of the most brutal periods in medieval history – from the sack of Rome to the early Inquisition – were as coldly barbaric as what happened in our supposedly enlightened modern Western civilization.
And though I left the (Holocaust) museum with the reassuring message that the world stood up and said “never again” to genocide, it only took a minute of reflection to realize that it happened again – immediately. In the USSR, Stalin continued to deport, starve, and send to work camps millions of minorities. As the bloody years rolled on, genocides occurred in Bangladesh in 1971, Cambodia in 1975, Rwanda in 1994, and in Bosnia in the mid 1990s.
All these genocides occurred in ordinary worlds where ordinary people went about ordinary business. The Jews were integrated into every aspect of the German social and professional strata before the Holocaust. The entire educated class in Cambodia – teachers, doctors, lawyers, anyone who simply wore glasses – was sent to death camps. And as Philip Gourevitch wrote in his book on the Rwandan massacre, “Neighbors hacked neighbors to death in their workplaces. Doctors killed their patients, and schoolteachers killed their pupils.”
—
So what I ultimately learned at the Holocaust Museum was not “never again,” but “again and again and again.”
—
The lesson of Katrina wasn’t that the United States can’t protect its own. It was that no country can protect its own.
No place is safe, and no government can guarantee the well being of its citizens.
—
The fears of Americans change over time. In late 1999, we feared the collapse of our computer system. Then it was terrorist attacks. Then it was our own government. Then it was global warming. Today it’s economic collapse. Fear, it seems, is like fashion. It changes every season. And even though threats like terrorism persist to this day, we eventually grow bored of worrying about them and turn to something new. Ultimately, though, every fear has the same root: anxiety about the things we take for granted going away.
Let me add to the list:
Nuclear holocaust / nuclear winter
Population bomb / world famine
Peak Oil / energy crisis
Etc., etc., etc.
Although a gun can’t do much harm in a locked box in a plane’s cargo hold, I had no idea it was this easy to fly with a firearm. It was the first time since I began this journey that I discovered a freedom I didn’t know I had, rather than a new restriction.
—
Nearby, a group of (Gunsite) students and instructors were making fun of Democrats, gun control laws, and anyone from California. “There’s no constitutional amendment that’s been more crippled and regulated than the Second Amendment,” a competitive shooter was saying about the right to keep and bear arms.
After eavesdropping a while, I began to realize that all my life I’d been a hypocrite. As a journalist I’d always supported the right to free speech, but been opposed to guns. However, by playing favorites with the amendments, it wasn’t the founding father’s vision of America I was fighting for – it was just my personal opinion.
So far it’s been an interesting read. Given the path that Strauss has detailed through the first half, I’m a little concerned as to where he’s eventually headed, but I’ll soldier on to the end and report what I find.
Oh, and given that first excerpt, you might find this interesting: Future Present
Quote of the Day – SciFi Edition
Quote of the Day – SciFi Edition
From S.M. Stirling’s The Sky People:
As Marc watched, four Gigantosaurs caught a titanosaur calf – a three-year-old weighing a mere thirty tons or so – as it bent its head to drink from one of the streams that veined the plain. The great jaws gaped as the six-ton carnivore reared back, its thick, supple neck curved into an S-shape, then slammed forward.
Even at half a mile distance, the scream of the calf was ear-hurtingly loud, as if God had gotten his toe stuck in a closing door. A stampede went out from the spot like the ripple of a stone thrown into a pond as the plant eaters fled; the armored ones backed into circles, lashing the air with their knobby tail-clubs. The calf and the Gigantosaur went over into the stream in a whipping cloud of spray and flying mud; the others gathered around, dipping their heads to strike like nightmare four-story birds.
After a moment, the flurry of motion died down, and they set their great eagle-claw feet on the calf’s carcass as they worried loose chunks the size of Volkswagens and threw their heads upright to unhinge their jaws and bolt the great gobbets down, rammed backward by the peristaltic motion of their thick tongues. Now and then they would stop to make half-completed strikes and hissing roars at their pack-mates, for all the world like newly elected senators divvying up pork.
It’s now official. I’ll read anything S.M. Stirling writes.
Addendum:
The only difference I ever found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership is that one of them is skinning you from the ankle up and the other, from the ear down. – Huey P. Long
Just thought I’d throw that one in.