What political books are you reading...

[billc]

I am borrowing this from the rec room but making it Study specific. It might serve to let people know what is out there on the political side of the library.


My next political book is going to be David Mamet's new book "The Secret Knowledge" which comes out tomorrow. He discusses his journey from the political left to the political right, and he might discuss how Brazillian Jujutsu played a part in that process.

http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Knowle...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1306981036&sr=8-1

 

[SensibleManiac]

None, I HATE politics!

Poitics are completely worthless and pointless, except to the politicians!

 

[Ken Morgan]

None.
I'm involved, I talk to these people first hand.

 

[SensibleManiac]

None.
I'm involved, I talk to these people first hand.

My point exactly

 

[Blade96]

Sure. books about soviet politics, under stalin and lenin.

Right now my book called This I Cannot Forget, about Nikolai Bukharin and his wife, written by his wife.

 

[billc]

I just finished David Mamet's "The Secret Kowledge."

From the book:

There is no secret knowledge. The federal government is merely the zoning board writ large.

One may find, in either place, able and even dedicated public servants, but there are no beneficent "experts." For such an expert must be, essentially, but a skilled manipulator of people ( the electorate or the legislature ). He must be, therefore, a politician ( that is, a perpetual candidate ), bureaucrat, or demagogue; or he may be a lobbyist or a theoretician, skilled in manipulating or conspiring with the other named groups.
Our jury trial admits the testimony of experts. But the jury, faced with each side's expert but opposed opinion, usually discards both, judging the experts subporned or misled by either their stipend or their theories. They then retire to their deliberations, realizing that, though each side's evidence is presented as beyond the power of the common individual's understanding, they, the jury, are going to have to figure it out for themselves.
So it is with the rest of our self-government. The problems facing us, faced by all mankind engaged in Democracy, may seem complex, or indeed insolvable, and we, in despair, may revert to a state of wishfullfillment--a state of "belief" in the power of the various experts presenting themselves as a cure for our indecision. But this is a sort of Stockholm syndrome. Here, the captives, unable to bear the anxiety occasioned by their powerlessness, suppress it by identifying with their captors.
This is the essence of leftist thought. It is a devolution from reason to "belief," in an effort to stave off a feeling of powerlessness. And if government is Good, it is a logical elaboration that more government power is better. BUT THE OPPOSITE IS APPARENT BOTH TO ANYONE WHO HAS EVER HAD TO DEAL WITH GOVERNMENT, AND, I THINK, TO ANY DISPASSIONATE OBSERVER.
It is in sympathy with the first and in the hope of enlarging the second group that I have written this book.

My son asked me to explain the difference between a Conservative and a liberal. I went on at some length. He thought for a while and said, " Then, basically, it's the difference between the Heavenly dream and the God-Awful Reality"--a succinct and accurate compression of those views which I have, at somewhat greater, and I hope, excusable length, endeavored to express here.

 

[billc]

My next book may be...

http://www.amazon.com/Your-Teacher-...0777/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1307924464&sr=8-1
\
"Your Teacher Said What?!: Defending Our Kids from the Liberal Assault on Capitalism"

I heard him interviewed on several shows and he had some great points.