Asymmetric Books and Literature

If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans by Ann Coulter

I just did a dishonest thing. I sat at Borders and read IDHABTBR and then placed it back on the shelf without paying for it (They did get $10:00 in coffee and carrot cake as well as whatever an American Girl book costs).

Anyways, IDHABTBR is a collection of Coulter's witty remarks. She divides the book by subject (Communism, Hillary Clinton, Colleges, etc.) and introduces each one of those with a little essay.

The book makes for fun light reading. The quotes are more sledgehammer than rapier, but the essence of political humor- to lampoon things that are essentially true but unacknowledged- is here. My favorite: "For liberals, having been blacklisted is like having been descended from the Mayflower" (or something like that).

My friend turned me on to this video of Joanh Goldberg on the Daily Show. Since I'm in the middle of reading Liberal Fascism, I interrupted my normal youtube viewing, Cumbia videos, and gave it a shot.

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning by Jonah Goldberg

Jon Stewart is totally at a loss here and out of his depth which is usually shallow enough for even him to reach the bottom. Notice how Stewart completely misses the point. He swallows the line that modern liberals are for individual freedom. Really? So, mandated health care, universal and compulsory pre-school, higher taxes, hate crimes, hiring and firing rules, and light bulb inspections translate to greater liberty? Right.

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning by Jonah Goldberg

I'm breaking records getting through Jonah Goldberg's new book, Liberal Fascism. It's very good, especially as history; a little too colored by modern arguments, perhaps, but very good nonetheless. I'll have a more thorough review once I'm finished, but I'd like to offer one semi-pro criticism:

Jonah weakens the glue with which he attaches fascism to the left by missing the main reason the left hates what they consider fascism. Yes, in tactics, liberals with their statist solutions to perceived problems resemble fascists much more than conservatives who generally feel that suffering is relieved a little at a time and through individual virtue.

But, liberals don't hate Nazis for their progressive tax rates, mandatory kindergarten, or forced vegetarianism. The left hates Nazis because Nazis wanted to rid the world of "inferiors," the very people the left likes, and subjugate the non-preferred (gays, Jews [it's OK to hate Jews if you're a poor Palestinian, though], Gypsies, non-whites, etc) instead of offer them affirmative action.

The left also shuns Mussolini, with his glorification of ancient Rome, a "strong" society.

They don't mind Communists because Communists (Castro, Che, Chavez, Ho Chi, Lenin, Sean Penn et al.) supposedly fought for the underdog. In other words, had Hitler just exterminated Sam Walton, jocks, and cheerleaders, the left would be wearing T-shirts of Hitler in a beret. Had Mussolini been Maya, liberal educators would give East LA school children Mussolini coloring books.

To make my point, let's use Goldberg's own examples:

Like Nazis, MECHA and Afro groups spend valuable brain cycles pondering race, including concepts such as "whiteness." Both Nazis and MECHis distinguish whites from other races, but the left isn't concerned so much in thought as in who's thinking. Thus, disadvantaged, powerless (Remember, think like a leftist.) racists can think any foolish thing they desire while white people must show proper deference to the "colored."

In another chapter, Goldberg points out that it was Germany's working class who supported Hitler. That's true, but Hitler didn't promise them dominion over the German elites; he promised all Germans power over their junior humanity.

Pan's Labyrinth
(In Pan's labyrinth, summary execution is fine if you're killing fascists.)

Finally, Goldberg recounts how the left turned on Mussolini after Mussolini decided to enter WWI. Well, Mussolini traded the goal of every worker being equal for every Italian being equal or, worse, that Italy be more powerful than other nations like Ethiopia. Of course they'd change their minds.

In summary, the left hates those who suggest that people or societies aren't equal and loves those who think that they are. What people actually do is much less important.

Goldberg may address this issue later on, but if he doesn't, he'd have misunderstood part of the left aversion to fascism.

Wow! What a story! What a great interview with Dennis Prager! I bought the book immediately after hearing this obviously intelligent, tough Marine (a great combination). After I read it, I want to give it to my students, many of whom face the very choice that Martinez faced. I have more to say later, but you should listen below.

Listen to Dennis interview Marco.

Hard Corps: From Gangster to Marine Hero by Marco Martinez

I think I'll follow Rowling's advice and question authority: Children don't need any more encouragement to be gay. And, we're tolerant enough, thank you. If children's books are to have messages, the messages should encourage children to strive for a traditional family. After all, it takes no courage whatsoever to be tolerant; it only requires not caring. Which message is more counter-cultural in 2007?

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If you're interested in the history of Western Art and it's relationship to larger themes like religion and nature, but prefer learning in little, bite-sized chunks, the Guide to Imagery series is indispensable. Each book in the series takes a theme, like the New Testament or pagan gods and goddesses, and shows how artists have represented them over the years, paying special attention to the little bits of visual code (imagery) that recurred in a subject's depiction.

The art is beautiful, the magnum opera of Western civilization and a reminder when artists strived for beauty over shock and a more confident Europe sought to glorify its heritage and ideals in its art.

The editors order each of these high-quality paperbacks logically. The Old Testament book, for example, divides the paintings by the order their subject appears in the Bible and not the date of the work itself, which is a beautiful way to read, as it allows one to follow along with one's scripture reading. If you've already read the Old Testament, the Imagery book on the Old Testament becomes a sort of Bible picture book.

Each page features some encyclopedia-like information on the subject itself ("Zeus was god of...") and captioned lines pointing to the symbols contained in each painting. It's all very interesting.

This page is from the New Testament Book.

If one must find fault with these books it's that they're a little small at about 8"X5." It is a book on paintings, after all, and I, for one, would have liked to see the works of art in a little more detail-perhaps about the size of a notebook.

One must also bear in mind (what does that mean? "Bear in mind?") that the books are feather-weight reading, fun to thumb through and to pick up a few facts, but the books don't have an overarching theme, place the paintings in their contemporary cultural context, or even have a point to make; it's just the facts.

Old Testament Figures in Art (Guide to Imagery) by Thomas Michael Hartmann

Nature and Its Symbols (Guide to Imagery Series) by Stephen Sartarelli

Gods and Heroes in Art by Lucia Impelluso

Gospel Figures in Art by Thomas Michael Hartmann

Artists' Techniques and Materials (Guide to Imagery Series) by Antonella Fuga

Angels and Demons in Art (Guide to Imagery Series) by Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia

Icons and Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church (Guide to Imagery Series) by Alfredo Tradigo

I'm going to buy the latest Harry Potter Book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The only thing is that I haven't read any of the previous books or seen any of the movies except the Phoenix one. Am I making a big mistake? I was careful to read the James Bond books in order.

Big mistake to read out of order.

I read Godless last year, but since it came out on paperback, I thought I’d discuss it a little here. The term "Godless" refers to those people who, according to Coulter, have replaced traditional religion with liberalism, a quasi-religion many people confuse with a political philosophy. Coulter makes her case by outlining some of the most strongly-held beliefs of the modern left and, finding no logical or physically evidential backing for them, pronounces them indicative of a self-justifying faith. Coulter’s book is a brisk read and not without worth, but it fails to accomplish its most lofty goal-of discrediting left political opinions by analogizing them with religion.

If Coulter were merely saying that people who don’t accept a Christian conception of the world (original sin, et al) are unlikely to advocate the same policies as their Christian brothers, Godless would be wholly accurate if a little banal. It’s when she makes a case for liberalism itself being a religion that Coulter begins to strain, for taken too far, one may apply Coulter’s criteria for opinion as faith to everything from sports fandom to numerous aesthetic appreciations (“he replaces love of God for a love of painting”).

In other words, unless one assumes that faith is the natural state of man and that whatever he cares about most becomes his religion, the thesis falls apart. Coulter doesn’t consider that people can see the same set of facts and arrive at a different conclusion just because they have different goals. For example, when Coulter makes the point that left policies in the sixties resulted in more crime, she’s correct, but the left didn’t relax criminal penalties to reduce crime; they reacted to some of the real abuses in the system at the time and desired a more equal and just criminal system, or proponents of a lax policy could have believed that, the nation being fundamentally corrupt, poor people had some crime coming to them. Those who thought being nice to criminals would reduce crime were guilty of embracing an incorrect theory or of fundamentally misunderstanding human nature, but does that mean that it’s a new religion?

On abortion, liberals don’t believe a fetus deserves protection and that a woman should control her own body. Given that postulation, why would they outlaw abortion? Indeed, do all moral postulations necessarily come from religion? Utilitarianists just think that moral actions are those that lead to the least pain (although masochists may disagree with that basis. Plus, you have to decide that's the goal in the first place. I don't know, maybe Ann's right.)

And who says atheists can’t find some things worthy of respect without calling it “piety”? Can’t liberals have reverence for Roe without it being spiritual?

And, then, why would she want to call mainstream left belief, religion? At some level, isn’t Coulter, conspicuously necklaced with a cross on the cover, insulting religion, implying as she does that religious belief is completely divorced from experience or scientific proof? She might as well say that wanting government to solve social problems is as silly as Christianity is as silly as tree worship.

If one finds Coulter’s "big idea" lacking, one can find value in Coulter’s individual arguments. Her attacks on left causes are each devastating except for the ID one. She knocks teachers down a peg (I’m a teacher, but I don’t like teachers’ propensity for bellyaching and self-importance); points out the contradictions and ironies inherent in liberals’ approach to race(her summaries of the Clarence Thomas and Willie Horton affairs are wonderful); and recounts how liberals react negatively to criticism as if disagreement over policy were akin to blasphemy. I personally can attest to the last one. When I pointed out that the American Psychological Association validated the research in Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve, a liberal friend of mine reacted like a Hezbollite after having read the funnies section of a Danish newspaper.

Which brings me to the most maddening part of the book: The last third is devoted to “debunking” Darwinism. Now, how much do you think Ann Coulter knows about evolution and biology? My feeling is that she knows barely enough to launch an attack against liberals. To be fair, she thanks Michael Behe, the ID godfather, for his “assistance” with the chapter, but I’d rather read a book by somebody who knows about the subject first hand than what is in Godless, essentially, an extended footnote.

As for the "Jersey Girls," a group of 9/11 widows who parlayed people’s sympathy into political influence; I understand what Coulter's saying when she criticizes them. I think less of people who use up good will for advantage in an unrelated enterprise and so does everybody else. Ann Coulter is the only one with the bravery (or tactlessness if you prefer) to say so.

As to Coulter’s writing style, whatever I say can’t compare to the description given to Coulter’s prose by the inimitable Florence King.

Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter

The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism by Michael J. Behe

STET, Damnit! by Florence King

Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) by Charles Murray

Mark Steyn is a great writer. How do I know? In America Alone, he takes the potentially dismal subject of Muslim terrorism/encroachment upon Western society and breathes enough life into it to compel this busy gent to finish his economical (214 pages) book within a few short hours. With a right-left combination of information and insight followed up by a jab of humor, this is the one indispensable Clash of Civilizations book and the one to pass on to your un-hip friends who should number many on this side of the pond (I understand that Europeans are already aware of the issues, although their individual reactions vary from welcoming to radical to thoroughly head-burying).

Mark Steyn’s thesis is that sometime within the next hundred years, Europe will become a Muslim continent resulting from a combination of weakness on the part of native Europeans and enthusiastic self-confidence of the part of Muslims. In other words, lacking the will to defend their culture (see Zinn for how), the demoralized Westerner will abandon their own gelding to hop on the strong stallion of Islam, forsaking liberal democracy for the new caliphate and, thus, leaving America alone.

Unlike global warming, a concern for which Steyn mocks as an example of Western mental flaccidity, Steyn gives real-life examples, not just computer-model gimmickry, to support his thesis which one may divide into two categories, demographic and moral. To wit: Yemen will, by the middle of the next century, have more people than Russia; a third of all children in some parts of France and the low countries are Muslims- and many of these are “disaffected” (excusably violent); indigenous European populations will soon reach the point of no return-a population dynamic from which no nation can grow while the non-indigenous, mostly Muslim, population will skyrocket; Westerners, especially women, are converting to Islam in growing numbers; many examples of self-hating, and culturally suicidal Westerners and naive, strength-sapping, political correctness; many more examples of committed Muslim evangelists of both the terrorist persuasion and the peacefully ambitious type.

Steyn also delves into Muslim-irrelevant Euro-defects like its unsustainable social programs, its male non-maleness, and its permanent ennui, all part of a party-animal present-tense attitude towards life.

The arguments above may be familiar, but some of the issues discussed in the book are completely original to me. In an echo of the Alaska purchase, Steyn posits that Russia will have to sell its land in Siberia to either China or some other nation because it lacks the people to exploit it. He says that Japan, because it chooses not to allow immigration, will be a pure example of national demographic Hara-kiri. How about Steyn’s prediction that China will not achieve world dominance because of its low birth rate? Good stuff.

America Alone isn't just polemic spin, for although one can defend the current European state of mind (you're only here a short time-why sweat the long-term stuff), one can claim the metrosexual is an improvement over his brutish forefathers, and one can argue about whether Europe will be better as a wholly or significantly Muslim continent (I'm sure my Muslim friends would say it'd be an improvement), I think one would be hard-pressed to dispute the facts as Mark Steyn presents them.

As critical as the above information is, what really makes this book indispensable is Steyn’s wit and power of observation. The book’s tone is fatalistic in that Steyn believes it’s far too late for a call to action amongst Europeans, but it’s also somewhat whimsical-even gay. Steyn infuses America Alone with a kind of gallows/Duck Soup/ “I can’t believe these guys are winning” humor that existed in the times proceeding other societal catastrophes. Every other page contains one such gem, so I just opened it at random and picked one. The passage I happened upon has Steyn’s response to Observer editor Will Hutton’s negative comparison of the American revolution to the French variety:

Well, you never know. It may be the defects of America’s Founders that help explain why the United States has lagged so far behind France in Technological innovation, economic growth, military performance, standard of living, etc.

His reflections on Canadian cross-dressing, Danish road signs, and French cheese aren't to be missed.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK is the perfect summation of the state of the Western man.

The book isn’t without his faults. Steyn drops his bucket in the demography well a little too often, even after he’s made his point abundantly clear or is exploring another issue altogether, but it’s a little rough patch on the otherwise perfectly green field of an intellectual playground.

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It

In Anchorman,The Legend of Ron Burgundy, the very funny Will Ferrell movie from 2004, Veronica Corningstone vies to become San Diego’s first female news anchor. Dismissive and bemused at first, her male co-workers scramble to derail her promotion until, having been continually bested by Ms. Cornerstone’s superior reporting skills, they cede their own dominance of the news room to the sexually integrated future. The victories of Ms. Corningstone and her successors are, in 2007, so complete that few could imagine any people having opposed them in the first place, accounting, no doubt, for the inherent humor of the situation.

Yet few social movements assault societal convention without encountering some resistance. Sometimes, the defeat is complete as in the example above and the combatants move on to struggle over new territory. Every now and again, however, the besieged manage a counterattack. Thus, Promise Keepers maneuver to attack the marginalization of the father and husband. Tinker Bell stickers on the back of minivans fight the move, now mostly routed, towards female masculinization. Bridezillas boldly proclaim that weddings are important.

Although still too close to call, the feminized man and the dangerless society are two developments that suddenly find themselves battling a stiff insurgency. The feminized man gained ground against their hirsute cousins throughout the second half of the twentieth century, reaching their farthest advance when Ricky Martin's frosty hair intersected with the metrosexual phenomenon. Spike TV, exxxtreme sports, the heroes of 9/11, and the realization by most that a society can't cruise into utopia without encountering some ruffians along the way have each sniped at the flank of the femiman columns.

Related to the first, the dangerless society, distinctive for its inclination towards protecting people from climbing ladders, jumping on trampolines, eating hamburgers, going broke, and working machinery has so far steamrolled a disoriented and unfocused opposition, but people like Mark Steyn in his latest book, America Alone, have begun constructing a coherent enough argument in favor of the moral character that develops from fending for oneself, if not danger in and of itself, to possibly slow the powerful nannies and their attorney mercenaries who wish to pull every bootstrap in America.

A side effect of these two trends has been what Christina Hoff Summers calls the “war on boys,” a crusade against those rough barbarians whose disposition for adventure sometimes results in scraped knees, assertive students, and hurt feelings. According to Summers, professional educators have essentially diagnosed boyhood as a social disorder and have proceeded to implement strategies to curb the impulses that first grade teachers find disruptive, but that a nation finds indispensable when it needs to invent, explore, and fight.

One can reasonably speculate that women account for two thirds of all entering freshmen in colleges, for example, because everything from the way schools teach math to the Oprah Book of the Month Club-inspired stories in the literature books have been designed to be as appealing to boys as the latest issue of Teen Beat.

Compound this with the fact that divorce and the Maxim culture deprive many boys of their fathers and you can imagine the extent of the problem.

When my family arrived from Los Angeles to see their dad graduate from Army Engineering School in Ft. Leonard Wood, MO, I took them to the book store to find them an alternative to cable television.

By and by, I happened upon an attractive hard-bound book called The Dangerous Book for Boys (DBB) by Conn and Hal Iggulden. I purchased it after thumbing through the book for a couple of minutes, and subsequent readings have made DBB my preferred light reading. Not only is DBB fun, but as it may prove itself an effective second wave to Bennett’s Book of Virtues in the war against the anti-boy education bureaucracy, I now consider DBB’s purchase by parents of boys to be somewhat of a civic duty.

Basically, DBB distills a certain kind of boyhood experience now out of reach for the reasons discussed above, as well as politically neutral factors such as increased urbanization, and assembles them in one volume.

The Igguldens don’t divide the nicely illustrated DBB into themes titled “sports” or “history,” but opt instead to intersperse topics in a seemingly random manner so that a page teaching basic Navajo code-talking is beside one on how to make a water bomb. One can divide the entries by purpose, however. DBB entries include encyclopedia-like references like the aforementioned Navajo code; lessons on basic school skills like grammar and arithmetic; history readings; advice for boys; and How-tos on building things and playing games.

So, DBB functions as a sort of almanac or textbook when it teaches boys how to fish, build tree houses, fold paper airplanes, and hunt. It dips into science, biology, how to navigate using the stars, and, of course, dinosaurs and bugs, as well as provide lists of things every educated person once knew 60 years ago like the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The history readings focus on great men and war, two subjects painted with only the broadest strokes in today’s school textbooks. Here, we get diagrams explaining Napoleon’s Waterloo strategy. The heroes aren’t blabberers, victims, or impeders of robber barons; they’re doers and scrappers like Robert Scott, arctic explorer, and RAF Nazi fighter Douglass Bader.

Like the C.B. Colby books of my youth, DBB offers histories of artillery and other practical items.

DBB gives solid advice unlikely to be dispensed by the school psychologist. In regards to the fairer sex, boys should impress girls by playing sports, listening, and keeping clean. Boys shouldn’t tell too many jokes or buy flowers. And, for goodness sakes, they shouldn’t, under any circumstances, sign valentine cards with their name.

The book also has a healthy dose of fun stuff to do that doesn’t require batteries like chess, marbles, stickball, and some paper and pen games for those moments in between classes.

DBB resembles its spiritual predecessor, the Book of Virtues, in that it features stories and poems with currently under-emphasized or ridiculed themes like bravery (in the traditional sense of word; i.e, calling the ACLU to sue the school because the principal told you to remove your Buck Fush t-shirt is not brave), honor, duty, etc; and by authors unjustly ignored by modern curricula like Shakespeare or denigrated outright like Rudyard Kipling.

Finally, the whole book can be summed up by three dangerous pages. One is a list of essential boy gear that includes such items guaranteed to get you expelled like a Swiss Army Knife, compass, handkerchief, box of matches, shooter (marble), needle and thread (for sewing up injured animals), pencil and paper, flashlight, band-aids, and fishhooks (all for about $60.00 at the PX). the other page shows the proper way to hunt (with a gun, no less) and cook a rabbit.

If the previous paragraph strikes you as cool, purchase this book.

The Dangerous Book for Boys by Hal Iggulden

The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men by Christina Hoff Sommers

The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories by William J. Bennett

Frogmen Training, Equipment and Operations of Our Na by C.B. Colby

Anchorman - The Legend Of Ron Burgundy (Unrated Widescreen Edition)

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It by Mark Steyn