Photos, Philosophy, Politics & Pool...
I have a love/hate relationship with author Niall Ferguson, who is basically the official historian for the powers that be and the way that things are. That doesn’t make him wrong, and he is an excellent writer, but you could drive a truck through his blind-spots. Still, I did learn a few things from this book that I’d never heard...
“We are going through a great crowd derangement. In public and in private, both online and off, people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like and simply unpleasant. The daily news cycle is filled with the consequences. Yet while we see the symptoms everywhere, we do not see the causes.” Murray points out the absurdities and internal...
Is it possible for a book to be TOO logical? Prior to reading this I would have said “no,” but now I’m not so sure. A lot of long boring X = Y + Z sort of statements, mixed in with deep thought about political philosophy and morality. Nozick makes a strong case for a minimal state being the most...
I probably never would have read this book had it not been so highly recommended by various people I respect. This is NOT your usual history book. The writer makes very few comments. It is a collection, albeit a very select collection, of news stories with short time line narratives. It is very well done, in fact. It is all...
Apparently this book was a big influence on former Breitbart editor and Trump advisor Steve Bannon, so I thought I’d give it a try. In a nutshell, the book advances the view that history roughly repeats itself every 80 years. Further, every 80 year period is characterized by four “turnings.” A High, an Awakening, an Unraveling, and a Crisis. In...
There are very few books which have been maligned as much as this one. The title of this book can be misunderstood, and it usually is (by people who have never read past the front cover). Ms. Rand’s definition of selfishness is not where someone has something, and refuses to share it with someone else. What is meant here is...
Antifa are a bunch of idiots who think they are fighting ‘fascism.’ This book attempts to justify their actions with double-speak, self-congratulation, victim-posing, and logical fallacies. I read it – or at least tried to read it – in order to understand my enemy. Unfortunately, they don’t even understand themselves.
This is a book about human genetics, but really more about human history. It’s technical enough to make it interesting, but not enough to make it a textbook. It’s more of a book about human history with genetics being the background. The book walks an interesting line between political incorrectness and straight science. Just enough to make it uncomfortable to...
A critique of the Frankfort School philosophers and their influence on the modern Left. An influence that the typical Leftist is completely unaware of. The book is just okay, but it does have a few gems in it, such as… “What would the Left do without delusion? It is the cornerstone of their philosophy. A desperate desire to look at...
Never heard of this book before. Only read it because the psycho who shot a bunch of people at the Gilroy Garlic Festival recommended it. Not that I’m in the habit of taking advice from psychos, but the news media made such a big deal of it being “white supremacist” literature, I thought I’d see if they were full of...
Part sci-fi, part political philosophy, it’s a thought provoking book. An excerpt below: The Terror had not been just in North America — But it reached its peak there shortly before things went to pieces. “Law-abiding people,” Dubois had told us, “hardly dared go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs...
Way back in 1925, this book proposed both the EU and mass immigration. The author Kalergi received help from the Rothschild and Warburg banking families to further the plan. Not only for the destruction of European nation states but also the deliberate ethnocide of the indigenous, mostly Caucasian race of the European continent. This he proposed should be done through...
I really can’t say enough good things about this book, it’s fantastic. An antidote to the insanity of today’s political climate, and a fascinating romp through the field of moral psychology.
I never knew much about Machiavelli, except that he was a dick. But I didn’t really know that either, that was just the impression I was led to believe by my teachers, media, and popular culture. Instead, Machiavelli and the philosophers who expanded on his findings were great men with keen insights. So much of political thinking is based on...
Follows the friendship of Behavioral Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who redefined our understanding of the way the mind works to make decisions.
Examines the age old dispute between Plato and Aristotle on the nature of “truth”, which continues to the present day. For Plato, truth was an ideal, something that exists outside and above reality, for Aristotle, only experience and observation could reveal what was “true.” In a way, each of these great men had one half of what would become the...
An enjoyable and useful read. Took some notes to remember the key points… 1. Stand Up Straight with your Shoulders Back If you look weak, you’ll be treated as if you are weak. If it appears that you lack confidence, no one will take you seriously. When you stand up straight you are communicating the idea that, “you can handle...
Theory of the book is that the agricultural revolution not only changed mankind’s behavior, but also our genetics. Equal parts biology and sociology, it flirts with the edges of ‘race-realism,’ highlighting how and when the various populations on earth diverged.
Is it possible to learn ‘talent?’ What is talent anyways? A thought provoking book, though I have to admit my attempt to become talented at pool has been underwhelming, lol.
The origins of the Middle-East conflict in a nut-shell. Meddling Europeans and scheming Zionists get together to ensure mayhem for centuries.
What if Joseph McCarthy was right all along? What if the US government had been infiltrated by communists and communist sympathizers? Well, here is the evidence…
A scathing critique of American Conservatives and the birth of the Alt-Right. Core idea is that ideology is a product of people not geography. Theoretically, conservatives were supposed to preserve the ideals and practices that made America great; to remember the reasons America was founded. They have failed. This book is about the ways the conservative movement has betrayed the...
The memoirs of Reinhard Gehlen, who was the general in charge of German Intelligence on the Russian Front during World War Two, and became a partner with the CIA to re-establish intelligence operations in West Germany after the war.
Why did a few small polities in Europe come to dominate the rest of the world? Ferguson attributes this to the West’s development of six “killer apps”, which he claims are largely missing elsewhere in the world – “competition, science, the rule of law, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic”. Ferguson compared and contrasted how the West’s “killer apps” allowed the West...
A sort-of explanation of the New Right and some of its more prominent characters. It’s interesting, but the author spends a bit too much effort espousing his own ideas rather than the ones the book is supposedly about.
Did you ever notice that has been the English speaking people who have defined and defended freedom around the world? Well, they have. And it is an amazing tale.
If there’s one book that I wish I wrote, it’s this one. Despite the constant barrage of doom and disaster, the world is better now than it’s ever been. Don’t believe it? Read this first and get back to me…
Why do people believe things about the world that are wrong? Hans Rosling proposes ten reasons in this great little book.
Falling birth rates and rising immigration are changing the character of Europe into something else. Something not as good.
