tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79529845624317368662024-03-13T11:58:45.397-07:00Lynne's LikesLynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-59242620310096314602019-11-12T06:40:00.004-08:002019-11-12T08:18:02.429-08:00Growing Pains: An Autobiography, with a Forward by Ira Dilworth - Emily Carr<br />
There will never be another Canadian artist like Emily Carr, who died at age 73 in 1945 and was an honorary member of the Group of Seven. Genius that she was, today’s audience of art lovers would never get to experience her talent. In these liberal, see-yourself-as-victim-first times, her masterful work would never get off the ground. Her penchant for painting and writing about, and even living with, Canadian aboriginals would be denounced immediately and ferociously by the cultural misappropriation police. More on that later. Thankfully, Carr -- who, though pursued by several potential partners, never married or had children – made it to national treasure-hood.<br />
<a name='more'></a>As the book’s title indicates, from almost the beginning, Carr agonized in both her painting career and her non-professional life, typifying in some ways the quintessential image of the struggling artist who in the end becomes a reverberating success. There is only one word – along with its derivatives – that adequately describes her art productions: stunning. Her writings, including four books, all of them autobiographical to some degree, are also engrossing and delightful. The subject of this book review, <i>Growing Pains</i> – one of two books by Carr published posthumously -- portrays her as whip-smart, hilarious, caustic and oh so patriotic.<br />
Anyone who has discovered the joy of gazing at oil paintings created in the modernist and post-modernist age knows well how these illustrations can capture your imagination, make a mockery of your sense of reason and flow efficiently into your psyche, just as Vincent Van Gogh’s blue “Irises” does so smoothly on a gloomy spring day. Painting in the same general period, though a somewhat later time than the Dutch post-impressionist, Carr was less interested in poppies and other vase-filled designs than she was in Canadian landscapes, churches and portraits of Indian chiefs and totem poles.<br />
Indeed, Carr – the second youngest of nine children whose parents had passed away by the time she was 19 -- loved visiting Indian lands, and returned to them often throughout her life. From her first stay at a mission house on Vancouver Island in 1898, she discovered her innate adoration of everything outdoors, a part of herself that clashed powerfully with her deep, urbanized English roots. So enamoured was she by life in the wild that her first experience in an Indian village at age 27 impacted her art and soul for the rest of her life.<br />
The first time she went to stay in a Native community, it was almost by accident, as she was casually invited by a religious missionary working with her sister. Emily excitedly agreed to go to the tiny west coast village near Ucluelet for the express purpose of making art. The indigenous people there -- called Nootka by the English but formally referred to as the Nuu-chah-nulth – welcomed her and the accompanying missionaries, but not exactly with open arms. “The slow, heavy Indians had not decided whether or not to accept religion,” Carr wrote. “They accepted missionary ‘magic’ in the shape of castor oil and Epsom salts. But religion? They were pondering.”<br />
Carr discovered when she landed in Ucluelet that she was no city girl, though referring to her hometown of Victoria, British Columbia, where she was born and died, as a “city” could be considered a stretch in the late 19th century. “No part of living was normal,” she wrote in <i>Growing Pains</i> of Ucluelet. “We lived on fish and fresh air. We sat on things not meant for sitting on, ate out of vessels not meant to hold food, slept on hardness that bruised us; but the lovely, wild vastness did something to it all. I loved every bit of it – no boundaries, no beginning, no end, one continual shove of growing – edge of land meeting edge of water, with just a ribbon of sand between.”<br />
More significantly, she discovered that those talented professional painters she trusted to disseminate art knowledge were wrong. “To attempt to paint the western forests did not occur to me,” Carr wrote, describing her earliest career opinions. “Hadn’t those Paris artists said [they were] unpaintable? …. I would have to go to London and to Paris to learn to paint. Still, those French painters who had been taught there said, ‘Western Canada is unpaintable!’ How bothersome!” Thus, she hardly tried to produce anything important: “I nibbled at silhouetted edges. I drew boats and houses, things made out of tangible stuff. Unknowingly, I was storing, storing, all unconscious, my working ideas against the time when I should be ready to use this material.”<br />
One of her enduring successes was preserving and uplifting beautiful parts of aboriginal culture, which she naturally saw as moribund and threatened. By today’s guidelines, she handled the native community in a kindly but patronizing way, an unforgivable miscalculation in contemporary social regulations. If her work with aboriginal culture is legendary and unparalleled, its success is not universally recognized. By the 1980s, Carr was being harshly criticized for cultural misappropriation. Given today’s hair trigger accusations of this kind against any white person’s effort to describe or portray aboriginal life, it is a safe bet that, if Carr had lived 50 years later, she would not have produced her spectacular and introspective Indian art. She would certainly never have written <i>Klee Wyck,</i> an endearing collection of short stories telling about her experiences in aboriginal villages and for which she won the Governor General’s award in 1941.<br />
By the 1980s, books by writers of European descent on aboriginal culture were different in critical ways. For one thing, they were intensely politically correct, focusing only on native victimhood caused by colonialism and all its subsequent and ongoing "violence." It may not be wrong philosophically to, as a society, focus on blame and victimhood, but it is an extremely difficult cycle to break, as we are witnessing decades on. One book that lead the way in such matters is <i>Dispossessed, Life and Death in Native Canada</i>, by Geoffrey York of <i>The Globe and Mail,</i> a copy of which the author very kindly handed to me soon after it was published in 1991. It is concerned with the torturous existence of Native Canadians and their understandable rising militancy against their oppressors and situations. The cadence and phraseology in the book are so negative and hopeless, I could not read past chapter two, though my opinion is not a reflection of the volume’s general readability; it stayed on <i>The Globe and Mail’s</i> best sellers’ list for 48 weeks.<br />
After learning about Carr’s penchant for the outdoors, it is not surprising to read how much she hated London, England, her parents’ birthplace. She called it “unbearable” when she was being polite and in a generous mood. Some times and areas of the city were better than others, she explained, for instance on Sundays when the streets were unpopulated because the stores were closed and everyone was in church. She also appreciated the parks, such as the famous Kew Gardens, though the restrictions at these natural oases were burdensome. The gates were plastered with so many annoying rules: “Nobody is allowed in these gardens unless respectably attired. No person may carry a bag, parcel or basket into the gardens; all such impedimenta [no, that is not a typo] to be checked at porter’s lodge,” and so on.<br />
Having trouble breaking into the artists' world back in Canada, she had to toil to get paid. Among the jobs she detested, but needed to do to make ends meet, included running a boarding house and teaching. She despised being a landlord, but not as much as she hated teaching art to unappreciative students. But she hated neither of these jobs as much as she hated displaying her precious art to intensely negative critics. “In spite of all the insult and scorn shown to my new work I was not ashamed of it,” she wrote of one of her Canadian shows. “It was neither monstrous, disgusting nor indecent…. What would Westerners have said of some of the things exhibited in Paris – nudes, monstrosities, a striving after the extraordinary, the bizarre to arrest attention.” At one point she said, “I would rather starve” than acquiesce to the demands of reviewers.<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> There is not a <span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">scintilla of doubt that, if we were able to glimpse her early school report cards, they would sternly emphasize, “Emily does not play well with others.” But in the end her life did indeed work out well, and she eventually caught the attention of, then revelled in the support of, some significant people. Her appreciation for the help given to her by Lawren Harris, one of the earliest members of the Group of Seven, as well as several important others in the art world, who saw the obvious potential and beauty in her work, is described in loving terms in </span></span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Growing Pains.</i><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Dear Carr friend Ira Dilworth -- professor, musician, conductor, editor and CBC employee -- wrote that he was honoured and at a loss for words to write the Foreword for </span><i>Growing Pains. </i>Yet<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">, he </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">stated eloquently: "I know how courageous your life has been, how dauntless your purpose, how unshaken and unshakeable your faith that this is not all, that we go on. I know how intensely you have felt the influence of nature -- its loveliness, its deep solemnity, its mystic, overwhelming power to strike awe and sometimes terror in our hearts." To complete his thoughts, Dilworth felt the need to append with the calming, subdued Thomas Hardy poem </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Afterwards</i><span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">, which wistfully asks how the reader will look upon the artist after death. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">This book, like almost all books reviewed on Lynne's Likes, is available on Amazon.ca</span><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-5410112962800112462019-03-18T13:30:00.000-07:002019-03-19T20:51:19.942-07:00The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, More Prosperous America – Arthur C. BrooksIt is impossible, as a conservative, not to agree with the thesis of American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks in his 250-page, 2015 book, <i>The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, More Prosperous America.</i> It is also, however, hard to adjust to his writing style. Unlike most of his popular contemporaries in the conservative writing community, he has not got a callous or sarcastic bone in his body. I would describe him as a sweet and gentle conservative thinker and writer. He even dares to use the hated liberal term “social justice” to describe his conservative formula for fixing American poverty. But despite his soft demeanour, he certainly knows what he is talking about, arguing convincingly that – regardless of endless pressure from government bureaucrats, the mainstream media and academia for the realization of a hard-left liberal agenda -- conservatives really do have a chance to change society for the better.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
Like many present-day conservatives, Brooks was once a “liberal bohemian,” as he himself says. In fact, and impressively, he was a musician who played French horn with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra after he dropped out of college. He eventually went on to earn university degrees, including one or two through correspondence, in economics and public policy, and to teach at the University of Syracuse. Also like many former liberal communists, he reasoned his way out of the morass and into a conservative mindset, ultimately ending up as president of the American Enterprise Institute. The AEI, he says proudly, “is the highest temple of the conservative intellectual movement.” It is an 80-year-old, highly influential Washington D.C.- based think tank that takes no government funds.<br />
Sadly, Brooks says, millions of poor Americans think that “the American Dream is no longer within their reach and that conservatives don’t care.” But we do care, he implores, and sets out to prove that – more than compassionate conservatism, which assumes that conservatism needs the qualifier because it does not have compassion built in -- the conservative heart is real, intellectually sound, and can be effective in getting proper policies into place. The book, <i>The Conservative Heart,</i> is Brooks’ rough blueprint to start to get this done. <br />
As evident from the book’s title, the plan is more ambitious than simply raising the living standards of poor Americans, most of whom have cars, cell phones and colour televisions. Truly, like everyone on the right, Brooks would like to see many, many conservative policies in place. To do this, to advance a feasible, constructive, national and long-term right-wing program -- such as put forward by the widely admired, currently quiet, Tea Party – the smaller campaign must transform itself from a protest movement into a social movement, a la the civil rights fights of the 1960s.<br />
As for the individual -- the building block for a better America -- Brooks knows honest work, however menial, is vital. Work gives a person not just a livelihood but also a sense of dignity, and dignity, in turn, leads to happiness, and happiness, as almost every American knows, is fundamental to a good life and even good nationhood. The pursuit of happiness is entrenched in the United States Declaration of Independence, where it is listed as one of the “unalienable” rights – along with life and liberty -- given by God and to be protected by government. Though not formally a constitutional right, pursuing happiness is legally important in America. <br />
Before you laugh at the idea of legally protecting happiness, consider recent developments in certain lower jurisdictions as well as in some other countries. According to a 2016 article in the <i>Columbia Undergraduate Law Review</i>, entitled “Constitutional Considerations of Happiness,” while it is true that both life and liberty are protected by the American constitution, “happiness goes unmentioned in the highest law of the land. The Declaration has no standing in the legal system of the United States; nevertheless, the pursuit of happiness has an important role in American legal history and is becoming increasingly significant internationally.” For example, protections of the pursuit of happiness are being entrenched in various state and national constitutions, “and have even been cited in some of the United States’ Supreme Court’s landmark decisions on marriage. The emergence of legal protection for considerations of happiness, despite its omission in the supreme law of the land, demonstrates this right’s power in the American consciousness.”<br />
Of course, happiness is only possible under capitalism. An unabashed cheerleader of free enterprise, Brooks bemoans the fact that conservative proponents of the only successful economic system in human history have been put on the defensive of late. “For the past 20 years, our movement had basked in the glow of capitalism’s victory over the socialist alternative. But now, it seemed to many that the weaknesses in our economic status quo had finally come home to roost.” What he calls a “crisis of American free enterprise” is reflected in general opinions and attitudes. A survey taken five years ago found “84 percent of Americans are unaware that worldwide deprivation has fallen as dramatically as it has over the past three decades. Indeed, more than two thirds [of Americans] actually think global hunger has gotten worse, in direct contradiction of the facts. Capitalism has saved a couple of billion people and we have treated this miracle like a state secret.”<br />
Obviously, there are a lot of components to fixing poverty in America, including understanding it as more than just a lack of material goods. Brooks argues that almost 100 percent of Americans, on both the left and the right, believe that compassion and fairness are integral to resolving the poverty crisis. And he correctly states that the issue comprises four parts: “American poverty goes far beyond financial need, as though that weren’t bad enough. Of course, many low-income Americans do enjoy great lives filled with faith, family, community and work. But on average, poor communities are disproportionately deprived of these four secrets to happiness.”<br />
Herein lies the crux of the poverty debate between a liberal and a conservative. The former defines the problem in strictly dollar terms, and sees government as having the obligation to alleviate poverty by simply redistributing wealth. The latter defines poverty as an emptiness of the soul. Brooks does not clearly tell us how to bridge this wide divide, nor how to cease the spreading social malaise that deems God and religion are useless, the traditional family is dead, neighbors are strangers, good steady jobs are a thing of the past, and no-skill jobs are for kids.<br />
Brooks uses intriguing examples to make his points, from third world garbage dumps to Washington D.C. slums. But first he explains how the Great Society as announced by President Lyndon Johnson on May 22, 1964 – a speech which interestingly placed pursuing happiness as the ultimate goal – only jumped on a racing freight train. In other words, the grinding poverty that Johnson bemoaned and introduced widespread programs to alleviate was being greatly lessened already, thanks to capitalism. Says Brooks: “Almost all of the decrease in poverty [after the war] took place before Johnson’s policies went into effect. It was a vibrant economy that did the trick…. As a result of this economic expansion, the poverty rate had already fallen from 25 percent in 1950 to 19.5 percent the morning Lyndon Johnson strode to the podium in 1964.”<br />
The story of how Dallas Davis got involved in the Doe Fund’s “Willing and Able Program” is a tale of redemption that grabs your heart and does not stop squeezing. Brooks tells how Davis -- whose addiction to drugs led him, no surprise, to desperation, loneliness and prison -- gets involved when he is free in a program that offers him everything he could ever want, including sobriety, friendships, community, routine, expectations of others, and a paying job – picking up garbage. There are other examples in the book that are both fascinating and hard to believe. But Brookes, the gentle writer, does not lie. Everything he claims is backed up in 20 pages of endnotes. <br />
I give this book five stars.<br />
<br />
<br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia,Utopia,"Palatino Linotype",Palatino,serif; font-size: 15.4px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif; font-size: 110%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 1.4; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">This book, like almost all books reviewed on Lynne's Likes, is available on Amazon.ca</span><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<br />
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-4597711219081493322019-01-13T10:58:00.002-08:002019-03-20T13:24:58.097-07:00Silent Coup: The Removal of a President -- Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin. <b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>This book review is dedicated to my dear friend of 41 years, Elaine Dupont, who died suddenly January 1.<br />
When it comes to past American presidents, none is so intriguing as Richard Milhous Nixon. Paranoid, uncharismatic, vindictive and viciously hated by the liberal establishment, he was a politician with a very long and controversial career. At the same time, he was inarguably one of the most effective American leaders of the 20th century who, on both the foreign and domestic policy sides, succeeded in unprecedented and lasting ways. To wit: he ended the Vietnam War, opened the door to China, and instigated Détente while easing nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union through the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. On American soil, according to the Richard Nixon Foundation Library and Museum website, he was no less effective, introducing measures that put an end to the worst of organized crime, founding the Environmental Protection Agency and initiating and overseeing the peaceful desegregation of southern schools.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
Personally, I credit Nixon, and those famous <i>Washington Post</i> reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, for my career, which began with my entering university in 1977 as a political science major – my honours thesis was called "Nixon Versus the Press: A Study of Inadvertent Aggression" -- and then going back to school in 1981 as a journalism student. But my interest in American politics began earlier, coming to me by osmosis at a young age, since my American mom and informed dad were close watchers of that national scene. I’ll never forget my mother’s carefully laid plan to pack up her family and race all of us to Parliament Hill to die with Canadian MPs during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Her week of crying after President Kennedy’s assassination is etched on my six-year-old brain. When I was older, I observed as my parents were fascinated and argued over Nixon’s long political life. <br />
They were both against him during the McCarthy era, which ended before I was born, though I clearly recall them talking about it historically when I was a child. They laughed at Nixon when he quit politics after he lost the 1962 California gubernatorial race, quipping to journalists, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” And I listened in amazement as they fought vigorously over whether there was in fact a “New Nixon” when he ran for and captured the presidency in 1968.” My mom insisted, “No – he’s the same ol’ tricky Dick.” We all know who went down to defeat in that parental argument. <br />
Nixon’s political career began in 1946 -- when he won the Republican seat of California’s 12th Congressional District by exploiting a tactic he would come to use in successive campaigns, i.e., communist-baiting his opponents – and ended when he resigned as the 37th president in 1974, about 28 months before his historic second term was constitutionally scheduled to end. Indeed, his entire life history, from 1913 to 1994, is well known by devotees to the Nixon file, and has been poured over, picked apart, analyzed, torn asunder and, yes, laughed at in countless books, essays and news articles. Though virtually each individual volume and piece of course has its own slant on the facts and misinformation of his complicated and extraordinary story, none deviates quite so far from the standard fanatically-ambitious-Nixon-being-his-own-worst-enemy line as <i>Silent Coup: The Removal of a President,</i> by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin. <br />
It probably doesn’t hurt to know that the authors of <i>Silent Coup</i> – a small print, 500-pager written in 1991 and revised in 1992 – are both liberal Democrats. As stated on the book’s jacket, Colodny is “an investigator and political analyst” and Gettlin is “a national reporter… involved in investigative reporting.” They take the position that Nixon was the victim of a multi-layered conspiracy involving none other than Watergate celebrities John Dean, Alexander Haig and Bob Woodward. <br />
As detailed in the book, John Dean, when he was White House counsel, became intensely involved in all events surrounding Watergate, including the planning of the June 1972 crisis-instigating break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, and later the cover-up, including helping to arrange hush money payments for the burglars. Dean eventually pleaded guilty to a single felony count of obstruction of justice in return for being a key witness for the prosecution. His testimony alone was largely responsible for convicting five major Watergate conspirators, among them Nixon’s “Berlin Wall” top advisers H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman as well as former attorney general John Mitchell. For his cooperation, Dean’s sentence ended up being only four months instead of potentially four years. <br />
In a nutshell, the authors claim that Dean orchestrated the burglary in order to find and destroy information on his future wife, who allegedly worked as a call girl for the DNC. What tends to throw at least a cup of sand on this argument is the fact that Dean successfully sued <i>Silent Coup</i> publisher St. Martin’s Press as well as author Colodny, though the results of both lawsuits are subject to non-disclosure agreements, saving everyone some embarrassment. Dean, however, is quoted as saying he was happy with the outcome. <br />
Alexander Haig’s US army career was distinguished and honourable, his political career, not so much. A general who earned more than 40 medals – including 24 air medals that are awarded for single acts of heroism – he served in both the Vietnam and Korean wars before he entered presidential politics in various positions that saw him constantly involved in one controversary after another. He served under three presidents, including as chief of staff for Nixon after Haldeman unceremoniously left. If he sometimes had delusions of grandeur, Haig gets high marks for keeping the government running while Nixon was preoccupied with Watergate. Haig was reportedly instrumental in getting Nixon – and effectively himself – a pardon once Gerald Ford took office. Haig worked for only a couple of months under Ford and years later was named secretary of state for Ronald Reagan. Laughingly, Haig ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1988.<br />
The authors of <i>Silent Coup</i> argue that Haig – who unintentionally invented Haigspeak, a language, <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">according to a dictionary or neologisms, </span>“characterized by pompous obscurity resulting from redundancy, the semantically strained use of words, and verbosity” -- was the infamous Deep Throat source for <i>Washington Post </i>reporters Woodward and Bernstein. These were the nobody journalists who quickly became world-renowned and are credited with starting the government/press avalanche that ended in Nixon’s downfall. Colodny and Gettlin make much of the fact that Haig knew Woodward when the latter was a Naval officer. That conspiracy has also been somewhat muted since, in 2005, former FBI deputy director Mark Felt revealed he was indeed the devastating Deep Throat leak.<br />
In a C-Span interview in 1991, Robert Gettlin admits that the pair never intended to write a book about Watergate, but rather, about Woodward as a journalist after Watergate when, as <i>Post </i>editor, he was involved in the Janet Cooke affair. Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize for a fantastic story that turned out to be fabricated. Gettlin and Colodny wanted to analyze Woodward’s supposedly unethical journalistic methods based on Cooke and other issues. “It was only once we learned about Woodward's military background,” says Gettlin, “[and] his relationship with Haig, that the whole string began to unravel, and we found this incredible story about what was really happening during the Watergate period.”<br />
In reviewing the book – which I read several years ago – I am reminded of the cornucopia of characters, secret connections and surreptitious acquaintances among Washington and New York insiders, from Pentagon officials and White House aides, to big name journalists and everyone in between. Even for non-Nixon enthusiasts,<i> Silent Coup</i> is a fun, detailed read, and most of the facts are believable on their face, but overall the book is too complicated to make a proper summary. I would conclude, if there truly was a subversive coup to remove Nixon years before the final act, it was not a carefully planned or coordinated effort. The book fails to pull all the loose ends of any conspiracy together. <br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">This book, like almost all books reviewed on Lynne's Likes, is available on Amazon.ca</span><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-79051480739687137862018-12-09T16:47:00.003-08:002019-01-13T11:08:24.606-08:00Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Great Betrayal: The Story of Abortion in Canada -- C. Gwendolyn Landolt & Patrick RedmondWhat more can be said about Pierre Elliott Trudeau that hasn’t already been written in the 40-odd books on him available on Amazon? According to C. Gwendolyn Landolt and Patrick Redmond -- authors of <i>Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Great Betrayal: The Story of Abortion in Canada </i>– plenty. Obsessed with getting the Charter passed as the main part of a new, repatriated constitution for the country, Trudeau was tireless and aggressive in designing the foundational document he wanted, one that would both enshrine Canadians’ individual rights -- to be defended by the newly empowered courts -- and still preserve the supremacy of Parliament. That this goal was impossible and contradictory never seemed to bother him, as he insistently and arrogantly pursued his dream, ignoring strenuous and reasonable arguments. But Trudeau’s truculence and discourteousness are not revelations.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>What the authors convey, for the first time in one convenient manuscript, is how he and some of his Liberal cabinet colleagues deliberately deceived influential Canadian leaders, many of whom were fooled into thinking that somehow the unborn could be protected under the new constitutional system, and that somehow abortion, already legal for more than a decade, could possibly be further restricted or rescinded. After all, the Supreme Court would remain subordinate to the federal legislature, and consequently abortion on demand and other secular revolutionary institutions would not directly result from the Constitution Act, 1982. These feckless leaders were reassured over and over again that Parliament would retain its supremacy after patriation. Instead, in their role as Charter adjudicators, the courts arguably became the most powerful branch of the Canadian government, in practice if not in political theory.<br />
Indeed, according to the authors, such judicial authority has made this country a secular wonderland playground, opening the door to official Canada embracing, in just under four decades, a host of unprecedented anti-society policies and practices. These include not only gay marriage and euthanasia, both introduced after a recent parliamentary resolution and a Supreme Court decision, respectively, contradicting the exact same questions. Other destructive innovations include prostitution, medical marijuana, so-called safe-injection sites -- in communities that don’t want them – as well as, most horrendously, nation-wide publicly-funded abortion, permissible long past survivability, up to and including the day of birth.<br />
The 217-page book, put out by the Toronto-based Interim Publishing Company in 2017, is really more of an academic report than a page turner. It tells a significant story of how this constitutional revolution was set up to come about, how Canada’s top politicians manipulated and deceived their way into getting the Charter. It seems like virtually everyone important in official Ottawa – including Trudeau, his cabinet, Supreme Court Chief Justice Bora Laskin, justice department lawyers, newspaper editors, professional organizations, and unconvinced or unconcerned Catholic clergy – collaborated to get the Charter passed. <br />
In <i>Betrayal,</i> Redmond and Landolt analyze Charter history during her time as legal counsel for Campaign Life, demonstrating her profound understanding of the critical issues that lay ahead. Reproduced in the book are many of her eloquent, prescient 40-year-old letters railing against an “entrenched Bill of Rights, which is in sharp departure from the British Parliamentary tradition…. There would appear to be a somewhat curious inertia on the part of many Canadians on the proposed” new constitution. She explains this as a lack of awareness “of the tremendous implications that an entrenched Charter will have on their lives.” Indeed, in 1981, few opponents predicted what Landolt saw: “The most important effect of an entrenched Charter of Rights would be that it would give rise to a shift in power from Parliament, which is subject to public opinion, to the Supreme Court of Canada, which is not. This shift in power would open the door to a wide list of areas in which, for the first time, the judiciary, rather that the legislature, will have the final say.”<br />
Like so many – maybe all – of the public and righteous battles in Landolt’s career, this one was doomed to fail. But nothing can stop her from fighting, particularly for the unborn. Soft spoken, unassuming, polite to a fault, and with an eternal bonfire fueled in her belly, this Canadian lawyer and anti-feminist cannot be dissuaded from her mission. After losing the Charter fight more than 35 years ago, she founded REAL Women, the only conservative women’s organization in Canada that is national, pro-life and pro-traditional family. Through this organization, Landolt -- and like-minded Canadian women -- have been constantly drumming socially conservative ideas into the public square, including by participating in dozens of legal cases in which a conservative voice would otherwise not be heard. Under her leadership, they have been supporting time-honoured moral behaviours, archetypical family values and religious freedoms.<br />
REAL Women is only one of several groups that Landolt has co-founded – the others being Right to Life in Toronto and Campaign Life Canada, both also fiercely pro-life – but no doubt the first is the one she is now most famous for. Perhaps infamous is a better label, at least among the predominant female elites of Canada. She is a sharp thorn in their side, the side of the left wing, liberal media darlings – Status of Women Canada types -- who like to claim to speak on behalf of “the women of Canada.” In a Sun News interview about five years ago, now on You Tube, Landolt says: “If a man stood up and said he spoke for the men of Canada, he’d be laughed off the stage.”<br />
What clearly bothers feminists so much about Landolt – happily married to a now-retired medical research scientist with whom she raised five well-adjusted, university-educated, productive children -- is that she manages a highly challenging and successful career that she started in a male-dominated industry at a time when the vast majority of professional women were becoming secretaries, teachers or nurses. “No feminists helped me,” she says in the Sun News interview, echoing the very words of Margaret Thatcher, another high achieving, pro-family leader determined to keep the world on the straight and narrow. <br />
A graduate of the University of British Columbia, Landolt was called to the BC bar when probably under a dozen women were members in the entire province. In her varied career, she has worked as a prosecutor, as a private practitioner and as a federal government lawyer specializing in immigration law and aboriginal issues. A constitutional expert, she has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada more than 20 times.<br />
The other author of <i>Great Betrayal</i>, Patrick Redmond, has some unusual credentials. He received a BA in African history from Montreal’s Loyola College, then an MA in Swahili from Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University, and a PhD in African history from England’s University of London. After teaching university in the West Indies and Nigeria, he returned to Canada to work at IBM for 31 years. He joined the pro-life movement, including the York South Right to Life organization, of which he was president for many years. The author of three other books – including <i>Irish Life in Rural Quebec: a History of Frampton</i> -- Redmond entered politics as a candidate of the Family Coalition Party, running in three elections. <br />
Now National Vice-President of Real Women of Canada --which stands for Realistic, Equal, Active and for Life -- Landolt’s impact within the organization is tremendous and unmatched, so much so that some REAL Women members worry what will happen to the group when she retires -- or expires, which is more likely to happen first. Though she is not credited with writing the group’s newsletter REALity -- which comes out six times a year and rarely shows a byline – its eight dense pages of honest, hard-hitting facts clearly reflect her immense legal and political knowledge and tireless work. REALity reports on all the significant issues of the day, everything from Parliamentary shenanigans, controversial legislation, evasive and clueless politicians and the liberal media, to the homosexual agenda, the ineffective, left-leaning United Nations, and even the growing problems in ultra-liberal Europe. REALity is the only lay magazine in Canada that will speak out bluntly on the medical and physical consequences associated with male homosexual relations.<br />
If the italicized quotes are too frequent and too long, and the seemingly tangential details a bit too numerous – the book does after all begin with policies of the Catholic Church as far back as 1864 -- <i>Betrayal </i>is nevertheless an important addition to the collection of material revealing the late Pierre Trudeau’s true, unflattering and aggressive nature, his deceitful and callous personality. <br />
<br />
This book, like almost all books reviewed on Lynne's Likes, is available on Amazon.ca<br />
<br />
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-46869039102590032132018-10-17T08:44:00.001-07:002018-10-17T20:20:10.154-07:00Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, 5th Edition -- Thomas SowellConservative black academic and economist Thomas Sowell, at 88, is a living legend. In my opinion, he should be sought after for comment and advice by every single publication and news program on every single economic, social and political issue facing any country. In my opinion, he gets the answer right virtually every time. A Marxist during his 20s, he reasoned his way out of that cockamamie phase, and ever since he has been forming and sharing his succinct, genius and profound ideas with the world.<br />
<a name='more'></a> Based on his extensive and ivy league education and career – Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, UCLA Los Angeles, Stanford, Brandeis, University of Chicago -- you'd be forgiven for thinking he grew up privileged. You'd be wrong. Born fifth in a poor family in Gastonia, North Carolina, his father died even before his birth, to a mother who worked as a housemaid. He ended up being adopted and raised by a great aunt and her two adult daughters. According to Sowell, as described in his autobiography, <i>A Personal Odyssey</i>, and as stated in Wikipedia, "his childhood encounters with white people were so limited that he did not know that blond was a hair color." More than just a brainiac-in-training, Sowell -- the first in his family to advance beyond grade 6, and who was forced to temporarily drop out of school at age 17 due to family problems -- was ultimately drafted to serve in the Marines for two years during the Korean War. At one point in his young life, he tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers.<br />
After enjoying numerous of his reflective, pithy and sagacious comments on the internet, I wanted to read one of his 54 books, which cover a wide array of topics, from Marxism, black rednecks and cosmic justice to affirmative action and late-talking children. Since he is first and foremost an economist -- he received his doctorate in 1968 from the University of Chicago, where he studied under George Stigler, an eventual winner of the Nobel Prize in economics -- I decided on <i>Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, 5th Edition.</i><br />
This was a perfect choice. For one thing, surprisingly -- and despite being 704 pages (though I read the Kindle version) on an inherently complicated topic – the book contains not a single graph throughout to confuse the reader. Though I took an economics course from an independently-minded pro-capitalist octogenarian in grade 13 – “communism and fascism are 100% identical” -- it wasn’t enough. I know little about the subject; I avoid reading economics articles in the news and I tune out whenever those know-it-all radio journalists start expounding about the economy and government economics policy. Sowell’s book, prepared in a writing style that can be generously described as desiccated, purports to fill in my many knowledge gaps on the subject. It pours forth its wisdom in increments, from easy definitions, to straightforward examples, to sound conclusions. Indeed, the examples are plentiful and international. He refers, economically speaking, to Russia, China, Mexico, Brazil, Africa, even Canada, to name a fraction of the places referred to in <i>Basic Economics.</i> <br />
"What is Economics?" asks the author, currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institute of Stanford University, near the beginning of the book. Without getting too specific yet, he launches into a quote by his hero Stigler: "Whether one is a conservative or a radical, a protectionist or a free trader, a cosmopolitan or a nationalist, a churchman or a heathen, it is useful to know the causes and consequences of economic phenomena." In other words, economics affects us all, so we should know how and why. Before moving onto juicier subjects, Sowell defines and explains such terms and topics as price, scarcity, productivity, as well as the social science itself: “Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternate uses.” <br />
Personally, I find that definition a lot to chew on. Throughout my reading of the book, I kept coming back to the idea of “alternate uses.” Though he uses the two-word term quite often, he does not elucidate satisfactorily on it. In fact, he never seems to explain exactly what it means. Instead, he offers this: “If each resource had only one use, economics would be much simpler. But water can be used to produce ice or steam by itself or [in] innumerable mixtures and compounds in combination with other things.” He states the same points with respect to petroleum and iron ore. But what I still don’t understand is why. If, hypothetically, each of these substances had only one use, for example, to drink water, why couldn’t the distribution or sale of water be included in the science or definition of economics? Why is “alternate uses” fundamental to the definition? This question bothered me as I poured over every chapter of the book.<br />
But that was a small problem compared to the fascinating and general facts I learned. Indeed, Sowell’s ability to turn seemingly logical economic aphorisms into myths knows no bounds. For example, too often, the economic policies of governments have the precise opposite effect of what they are meant to have. Take for instance, minimum wage laws and rent controls. Regarding the former, “making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount,” thus making that worker unlikely to be hired or kept on. “Yet minimum wage laws are always discussed politically in terms of the benefits they confer on workers receiving those wages. Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of government-mandated minimum wage, because they either lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force.” Sowell gives examples of this travesty in different places around the world.<br />
Regarding rent controls, it falls under this economic principle: the quantity of something demanded – including apartments for rent – “varies according to how high or low the price is…. Some people use the price-controlled goods or services more generously than usual because of the artificially lower prices and, as a result, other people find that less than usual remains available for them.” Under rent controls, Hollywood stars keep empty apartments in New York and San Francisco for off season use, thus lowering the number of places available for people who live in those cities. So, instead of creating affordable housing for low-income residents, rent control mostly creates no-housing for these needy people. <br />
If it isn’t already obvious, I’ll spell it out: Sowell is an outspoken advocate of minimal or no government interference in the economy. On a recent podcast he insists that the humungous bailouts after the 2008 mortgage disaster were wrongly applied. He writes in<i> Basic Economics: </i>“Even after it became a political axiom, following the Great Depression of the 1930s, that the government had to intervene when the economy turned down, that axiom was ignored by President Ronald Reagan when the stock market crashed in 1987…. Despite outraged media reaction to his failure to act, President Reagan let the economy recover on its own.” Sowell then quotes<i> The Economist</i> as saying this inaction led to 20 years of “steady growth and low inflation.” <br />
You may not remember every detail you learn in this book, but it will definitely raise your IQ and give you lots of information tidbits to throw out at parties to impress your friends.<br />
<br />
<br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia,Utopia,"Palatino Linotype",Palatino,serif; font-size: 15.4px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21.56px; orphans: 2; position: static; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; width: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif; font-size: 15.4px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 21.56px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</span><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<br />
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-16938914079034062512018-08-23T07:30:00.000-07:002018-08-29T07:31:34.052-07:00Operation Medusa: The Furious Battle That Saved Afghanistan from the Taliban -- David Fraser and Brian HaningtonKilling Taliban terrorists is like playing a game of Whac-A-Mole. It doesn't matter how many times you smash the mole -- in this case, the enemy Taliban -- making it scurry into its dark hiding place. It leaps up again somewhere else, as healthy and energetic as ever, ready to be chased and smacked down again. Like the mole, the Taliban is forever the malevolent underdog. Unlike the mole, it flies out of its hole with deadly force.<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> Any soldier who fought the Taliban in the most recent of some 13 Afghanistan wars -- dating back to 1709 -- the one that commenced in October 2001, knows this game well. To this day it is being played out violently in that part of the world, almost two decades after the terrorist organization transformed itself into a murderous insurgency following its quick ouster as an ultra-oppressive Afghanistan government. The fundamentalist Islamic Taliban regime fell fast and early in the 2001 fighting -- which started less than a month following the 9/11 attacks on US soil -- and it "folded like a cheap lawn chair," according to one Ottawa writer, but unfortunately it has never been eradicated.</span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>That is not for want of trying. As explained by retired Major-General David Fraser and Ottawa writer Brian Hanington in their 2018 book<i> Operation Medusa: The Furious Battle That Saved Afghanistan from the Taliban</i>, this Canadian-led manoeuvre -- which took place September 2 - 17, 2006 in an area of Kandahar Province about 20 miles west of Kandahar City -- came as close as any other effort.<br />
Written in the first person by Fraser -- with a highly praising foreword by General David Julian Richards, Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, a retired senior British Army officer -- the book describes what was a hugely risky venture from the start. Indeed, as the book's inside flap succinctly states: "the odds were solidly against Fraser's forces." The casualty numbers alone do not convey the danger: six Canadian and twelve British personnel were killed, while more than 50 were wounded; the toll on the Taliban was between 1,000 and 1,500. The battle grounds themselves were fraught with hazards. They were on enemy turf, where the Taliban itself emerged in 1979 out of the Soviet-invasion-rejecting Mujahidin. The Canadian-led International Security Assistance Force had to deal with hidden weapons in "every farmhouse, school, grape hut and tunnel." This Battle of Panjwaii -- the second of 2006 -- turned into the bloodiest fight in NATO's history. I do not want to give away the drama and substance of the fight, the details of which are painstakingly yet eloquently outlined in six middle chapters. <br />
But perhaps more importantly, the first 13 chapters explain the background and lead up to the operation. As Fraser summarizes in the preface, the "battle was furious [and] uniquely complex." The biggest military fight of Canadian soldiers since the Korean War, and carried out under command of NATO's ISAF, Medusa took about a year to plan. In that planning and deployment, "[a]lmost immediately, things began to go wrong. As the obstacles mounted, we learned enough to understand deeply that the outcome of a fight on this scale with the Taliban was uncertain. The competing priorities of governments, departments, regions, militaries, agencies and even other wars made every single day a high-speed chase along multiple tracks. Even in the retelling, the sheer number of factors that affected us can be hard to keep straight."<br />
In the chapter called "Tally," Fraser asks if the battle was worth it, if the war itself was too high a price for what was achieved. Before answering, he sums up the "bleak statistics" of death. These include some 50,000 Taliban fighters, including boys, though many insurgents are still around to menace the elected Afghanistan government -- corrupt as it may be -- and innocent civilians of the fledgling democracy. They also include: about 38,000 members of the Afghan army; 30,000 Afghan civilians, including women and children; among the US coalition forces, about 3,500, including 163 Canadians; and some 2,000 civilian contractors. The good? Five million children went back to school. About three million displaced citizens returned to Afghanistan. A staggering 80 percent of the adult population turned out for the first ever presidential election. A free press emerged. The economy slowly came to life. "By the end of 2006 there were sixty eight women parliamentarians."<br />
So, was it worth it? "Operation Medusa was a costly and necessary fight," Fraser continues, "that achieved a temporary effect that allowed the coalition and the Afghans to move on. We did not lose this battle. Had we, the consequences would have been grave. The Taliban would have proven the inability of the Afghan leadership to govern; NATO would have been seen as an entity incapable of either protecting or fighting; Canada would have born the brunt of the criticism for NATO's failure;" and there would have been "political fallout" in Canada and Europe. <br />
So in a word, yes, it was worth it. Though "conducted at great expense, Operation Medusa gave hope and opportunity to people, two precious gifts we all take for granted in Canada."<br />
If you are not a member of the armed forces or a fan of military books, the 250-page volume is not exactly easy reading, especially in the beginning. For example, the book liberally employs more than 120 different acronyms throughout, abbreviations that become familiar by flipping back and forth to the four pages of explanations at the back, a section called Decipher. <br />
Refeshingly, Mother -- a nickname for Sergeant Bill Irving, a tough, no nonsense tactical commander, "foul-mouthed as they come" -- is quoted at the start of most chapters, offering his simple philosophy of life and Harley Davidsons, and describing in plain English his love of his troops and his family.<br />
Another literary technique in the book which is intriguing and unusual -- and which has "style of Brian Hanington" written all over it -- is short titles. Each of the 20 chapters and the epilogue have one word titles, such as "React," "Bleed," "Slaughter," and "Weep." The five appendices have slightly longer labels in the contents and titles, but are shortened to one word on the tops of the pages inside, including Decipher, Honour and Track. Personally, I like brevity in writing so this method of describing sections is appealing, but it might not suit everyone's taste. <br />
Another Hanington style is long, long cutlines. A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but why not include the 1,000 words anyway? Not that there is anything wrong with lengthy captions. A student of Hanington's early in my book-writing career, he taught me to put lots of information under a photo as a way of squeezing extra facts, maybe odd facts, into the larger story. Where else would the authors include the syrupy details about Mother, who by the way got his nickname from his adoring regiment for his heart of gold. Caught off guard in a restful moment, Mother -- wearing camouflage, a bullet proof flak jacket and military-issue boots laced to the middle of his shins -- is looking unusually restful as he drinks his tea, delicately holding the plate and chalice in his hands, pinky squarely pointed in the air. "I am intrigued that a man to whom I have entrusted my life and whom I respect to this day," says David Fraser in the cutline, "can sip tea out of a cup and saucer with the proper finger etiquette." <br />
This is an important book on Canada's strength and morality, and it should be required reading in every high school classroom teaching Canadian history.<i> Operation</i> is a must-read for any serious student of Canadian politics. <br />
<br />
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-66830460924995057612018-06-20T07:52:00.003-07:002018-08-28T07:59:07.143-07:00Disraeli: A Biography -- Stanley WeintraubUniversities are known to whine that their tenured professors don't publish. This could never be said about Pennsylvania State University professor Stanley Weintraub, author of some 40 serious books, many on late 19th century literary giants. But as prolific a writer as Weintraub is, it is a bit of a wonder that his dense 700-page life story of Benjamin Disraeli isn't a smoother read. Though thorough -- detailing the only Jewish British Prime Minister's life from childhood to the exact moment of his death on April 19, 1881, at 76 years old -- <i>Disraeli: A Biography</i>, published first in 1993, is choppy, if precise. Chronicling his years in sequential order, it seems like the author is afraid to omit any trifling fact in the rough source material he employed to complete the work. His liberal use of quotation marks is to the point of excessive, often interrupting the flow of sentences. It's as if the book is meant to be studied as opposed to read leisurely, which perhaps is excusable since the author was an esteemed professor for more than three decades.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
None of this is to imply that Weintraub, who earned a doctorate in English from Penn State in 1954 before joining its faculty two years later, is simply an academic snob. Quite the opposite. Indeed, a second lieutenant Korean War vet, he earned a bronze star for heroic service. Moreover, he is reportedly the world’s foremost authority on George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, critic and infamous, if influential, political activist. Working at the same university his entire career, Weintraub ultimately attained the prestigious position of Evan Pugh Professor of Arts and Humanities, with emeritus status upon retirement in 2000. For 20 years until 1990 he was also Director of Penn State's Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies.<br />
Besides Disraeli's severe financial problems; his marriage for money to a woman 12 years his senior; his several bad novels; his success at ushering in the Second Reform Act 1867, which, according to Weintraub, "would double the electorate;" and his severe and painful gout as he aged; three other things jump out in my mind a year after closing the last page of the biography. These are: Disraeli's two secret out-of-wedlock children, a scandal that Weintraub is reportedly the first to reveal; his long-time and deep resentment toward Whig leader and political opponent William Gladstone, a former Conservative; and his constant letters to his beloved older sister Sarah. <br />
As a Jew -- though raised from age 12 in the Anglican Church, a fact that did not erase his Jewish status with the Jewish community, his English compatriots or God -- Benjamin Disraeli had somewhat limited career choices in mid-19th century England. Pushed to become a lawyer by his father Isaac, Disraeli lasted only two years apprenticing with a London firm, afterward turning his attention first to writing, then to stock speculation in mining, then to publishing, and finally back to writing. By June 1825, he owed 7,000 pounds, some $800,000 US in today's market. It would take 25 years to repay his creditors. <br />
As a writer Disraeli could not earn enough to pay his debts and support his lifestyle, even though some of his later books were critical successes. He used "silver fork fiction" as a means to inflict vengeance on his business adversaries, a tactic that contributed to his negative reputation and that resulted in years of terrible relationships with some important people. Over his life, between 1826 and 1880, he finished 15 novels, eight non-fiction books, one play and one book of poetry. He left one uncompleted manuscript when he died. Part of my complaint about Weintraub's work is his integrating the content of Disraeli's books into the story of his life, quoting from them extensively. It can be confusing trying to decipher Disraeli's life from his fiction. <br />
As a young man, Disraeli was the perfect mid-19th century London dandy -- polished, flamboyant, informed, opinionated and funny -- entertaining the city's rich ladies who continually invited him to regular and rotating dinner parties, where he ate sometimes his only meal of the day. Though his family of origin could probably have been described as almost upper middle class, it was quite impossible for him to maintain the status; his burdensome debts were exacerbated by his continued borrowing for his lavish and extensive travels. What gave Disraeli a steady foundation and ultimately saved him from financial ruin was his marriage in 1839 to widow Mary Anne Lewis, a caring woman he eventually came to love and enjoy, and who he outlived. It was her support that allowed him to thrive.<br />
In fact, it was with the help of Mary Ann's first husband -- who died the following year in 1838 -- that Disraeli was elected to Parliament as a backbencher in 1837, thus achieving the double good fortune of beginning his political career and avoiding debtors' prison. He was prime minister twice, briefly from February to December 1868 and then from 1874 to 1880, and is credited by most historians -- those who believe he possessed genuine opinions throughout his career and was not merely mouthing proper political statements to stay in Parliament -- with launching and designing England's modern Conservative Party. Others give that honour to Prime Minister Robert Peel, who split the original party in 1846 over the controversial proposal to repeal the corn laws -- which meant stopping the tariff on grain imports -- thus paving the way for Disraeli's historic leadership. <br />
Was he the most effective British prime minister of the 19th century? With his focus on international relations and strong British imperialism, most political historians say yes. Certainly Queen Victoria loved him more than any of her other PMs, a total 33, including 10 in the UK and 23 in the colonies. As was his wont with the ladies, he flattered the queen, helping her to come out of her ceaseless mourning for her late husband Prince Albert, who had died in 1861, the same year as her beloved mother. This accomplishment may very well have saved the British monarchy. Though Victoria continued to dress in black for the rest of her life, she was elated by Disraeli's success in pushing through the Royal Titles Act 1876, thus making her Empress of India.<br />
As Weintraub writes: "Victoria presided at a celebratory dinner, startling her guests, including Disraeli... [and] the undersecretary of India, by wearing masses of jewels given to her by Indian princes and maharajahs. On the queen's short, stout figure the baubles were incongruous, but the display demonstrated how much the title meant to her."<br />
There is much untidiness in Weintraub's book. As British critic and novelist David John Taylor -- who also found a couple of unimportant errors in<i> Disraeli </i>-- aptly puts it, "some of the longer sentences, bristling with sub-clauses, begin to resemble expanding suitcases." Taylor adds: The political background, too, is thinly sketched. Professor Weintraub has written a discursive and slightly garrulous book, which occasionally threatens to collapse under the weight of incidentals."<br />
Am I saying don't read it? No. I would almost never recommend that about a distinguished professor's tome. It is worth the slog just to find out how, on certain levels, Disraeli redeems himself. I would say, don't get bogged down in the minutiae, and enjoy the major experiences of this most important historical figure.<br />
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-63340178957257960392018-05-22T11:12:00.001-07:002018-05-22T11:15:11.951-07:00Limit(less): A Guide to Optimizing Diagnosis, Management and Outcome in ADHD -- Dr. Alan BerzenWhy on earth would anyone read a book on ADHD, that fad, fake and persistent diagnosis that became wildly popular among teachers and lazy parents about 30 years ago, and that attached to normal but rambunctious kids who had a hard time listening and who couldn't focus in school? For a great reason: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is real, always has been and, fortunately, always will be.<br />
Why fortunately? According to Toronto Paediatrician Dr. Alan Berzen, author of <i>Limit(less): A Guide to Optimizing Diagnosis, Management, and Outcome in ADHD</i>, people who have the condition -- up to 12 percent of the population -- have a gift which allows them to both hyper-focus and "think outside the box," two positive attributes that can enhance life and come in extremely handy for someone struggling with ADHD's difficult side effects and its co-morbidities. <br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a> The main challenge for parents, doctors and teachers with respect to ADHD -- which is in fact genetically based and under-diagnosed -- is to properly treat it, thus helping affected kids be able to have the best possible life experiences. To this end, Dr. Berzen has designed an excellent formula, outlined in this fast-paced, delightful and informative 150-page self-published book.<br />
About this subject, Dr. Berzen should know what he is talking about. Not only has he been a children's doctor for the last 35 years -- watching his ADHD patients suffer, helping them cope, and finally, witnessing them, with the right support, flourish -- but Dr. Berzen himself, he openly admits, has the condition. For him it went undiagnosed for decades. Don't be fooled. Just because he sailed through medical school, set up a successful practice and established a happy marriage with three fantastic children, does not mean he was always fulfilled. Indeed, as the paediatrician explains, before dealing with his ADHD, he was dogged by mental and emotional problems, and he suffered quite terribly: "I never felt my life was complete.... I was plagued with what appeared to be anxiety. Small thing seemed to trip me up. This was extremely frustrating." <br />
Untreated, ADHD causes unnecessary issues around self-esteem and ego, problems everyone agrees can wreak havoc in a child's life. As adults, as Dr. Berzen himself experienced, around the simplest aspects of life, ADHD can cause needless suffering, including confusion, procrastination, forgetfulness and avoidance, all of which can lead -- separately or together -- to serious and financial consequences, as well as agonizing aggravation.<br />
So what does <i>Limit(less)</i> -- meant for professionals and parents alike -- cover? Every important element of ADHD, from biology and neurology to diagnosis and treatment. Gratifyingly, the book is written in a way that people with the condition can take advantage of its lovely wisdom: every one of the 16 chapters contains an easy, numbered summary at the end, which the author urges readers to use, before reading the chapter itself.<br />
In keeping with his belief that ADHD is a good thing, Dr. Berzens is unhappy with the words "deficit" and "disorder" in the acronym. Indeed, he believes the term ADHD is a "huge misnomer, and should be changed... [to] 'attention variability personality.'" He explains that part of the condition finds children very easily focussed on such things as Lego or video games, so therefore parents think their child cannot possibly have ADHD. "'Attention deficit' suggests that an individual never focuses, which is completely incorrect. In ADHD the individual has variable focus, hyper-focusing (singular focus) on things they are genetically predetermined to be interested in... and hypo-focussing (no focus) on things they are not interested in."<br />
Nevertheless, some facts about ADHD -- a condition which can be controlled but can never be outgrown -- are disturbing. These facts have been learned through medical studies, and are therefore credible, acceptable and believable . For instance, people with ADHD often have a "patchy ego," wherein an individual's choices are limited by feelings of vulnerability. This vulnerability is a natural reaction to the individual's inability to learn from making errors. People with ADHD are sometimes dangerous risk takers. The condition's effects have been shown to be associated with high school making drop out rates, teenage pregnancy, criminal activity, and job and marriage failure.<br />
Dr. Berzen's remedies for childhood ADHD are not necessarily easy. He does not eschew drugs in every case, but he insists that medical treatment must be coordinated with social, educational and psychological assistance. Key of course are the parents, who must monitor daily homework without fail, ensure as much as possible adequate sleep every night, and try and arrange organized sports as well as music lessons. These latter activities have shown to have positive results for ADHD children.<br />
<i>Limit(less)</i> is not available at Amazon but only through Dr. Berzen's office. To arrange for a copy, please call 905-764-5114.Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-34338036545422350782018-04-23T16:43:00.002-07:002018-08-28T07:59:20.830-07:00A History of the English Speaking Peoples -- Winston S. ChurchillA knowledgeable student of British history I could never be, what with all those Dukes, Earls, Edwards, Elizabeths, Catherines, Mortimers and Somersets, to name only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of titles and families. Who is a Plantagenet, who is a Lancaster, and which color rose won which wars, when? All fascinating, but too much memory work. That's why reading Winston Churchill's <i>A History of the English Speaking Peoples</i> -- particularly<i> The Birth of Britain,</i> the first in the four-volume series -- is so necessary and exhilarating. His narration moves you along as if on a conveyor belt, rapidly story-telling his way through the centuries, revealing each monarch's triumphs, foibles and disasters, describing battles like he was actually there, detailing important information that sits neatly at the back of your mind, ready to be accessed the next time the Black Death or Edward I comes up in polite conversation.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
If you love the intricate bloodlines of English monarchs -- going all the way back to the House of Wessex and King Egbert (802-839) -- the intrigue of medieval royal courts, and excess details of long forgotten wars, <i>A History</i> will fill your heart. So far, I've only read the <i>Birth of Britain,</i> which itself is divided into three books and thirty chapters, and which has no table of contents but an excellent index. It ends with the War of the Roses and the reign of Richard III. <br />
<br />
British history, told well, is as exciting as a Mexican drug cartel soap opera. Take, for example, the indefatigable Henry II who ruled from 1154 to 1189 and who created "one of the most pregnant and decisive reigns in English history," according to Churchill. Siring eight legitimate children with Eleanor -- and others with others -- Henry managed to accomplish more in his 56 years than probably any monarch after or elsewhere. He unified a large swath of land that would come to known as the Angevin Empire, including England and Wales as well as parts of Ireland and France. This achievement, however, came at a price, and "[it] was indeed more impressive on the map that in reality," writes Churchill. "A motley, ill-knit collection of states, flung together by the chance of a single marriage."<br />
<br />
Ruthless and stubborn, Henry clashed endlessly with the French King Louis VII, his power-hungry sons and even his wife, who ultimately left him. Yet, he triumphed in numerous ways. He succeeded in laying the early foundation for the continuing purpose and functions of British royalty, as well as in establishing momentous legal and political structures that endure to this day, including the very Common Law under which our modern justice system operates. His reckless and ultimately lethal battle with the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket set the stage for the tug-of-war between church and state that endured for centuries.<br />
<br />
Then there is Richard II. It is not uncommon for the Shakespearean tragedy of the same name to be considered the definitive image of the infamous, stand-offish, wasteful, oppressive and disturbed ruler. But Churchill defends this king, who ruled from 1377 to 1399. "The character of Richard II and his place in the regard of history remain an enigma," he concludes. "That he possessed qualities of a high order, both for design and action, is evident." Later he writes: "We have no right in this modern age to rob him of [the] shaft of sunlight which rests upon his harassed, hunted life.... He fought four deadly duels with feudal aristocratic society. In 1386 he was overcome; in 1389 he was victorious; in 1397-98 he was supreme; in 1399 he was destroyed."<br />
<br />
It is truly impossible to separate the writer, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, from his works, which number more than 40 books in some 60 volumes, and countless articles and speeches. Best known as the Hitler-conquering British Prime Minister between 1940 and 1945, he remains the greatest political hero of the 20th century, bar none. Less well know is the fact that he was first and foremost a well-paid journalist, earning $100,000 as a writer in 1939, or $1.3 million U.S. in 2016 figures. He lived extravagantly, almost beyond his means. At different times he had to lay off his considerable household staff or had to rely on his considerable libel suit winnings to stay financially afloat.<br />
<br />
Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, "he is celebrated for his wit and colourful quotations, [but] it is for the impact of his speeches and broadcasts that he is now justly remembered as a Man of Words," says the International Churchill Society website. "Whether warning of the dangers of fascism, rallying the British nation against attack or wrestling with the problems of the Cold War, ‘he mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.’"<br />
<br />
As a brave man of action, he held military positions for 29 years from 1895, including as a major and a lieutenant-colonel. He was stationed in Cuba, India, Egypt, Sudan and on the front lines of World War I. As the website states, he "even took part in one of the last British cavalry charges in history." After being elected to Parliament at the age of 25, he eventually served, besides as PM, in several other top positions, including as First Lord of the Admiralty, Minister of Munitions and Chancellor of the Exchequer.<br />
<br />
As we know, he antagonized his colleagues in Parliament, where he loved to arrogantly and often belligerently dazzle them with his wit and intellect. He switched political parties, more then once. Some dared accuse him of being racist and a war-monger. He saved the world from tyranny so, if he had some old fashioned colonial ideas, we can forgive him. Love him or hate him, he is studied probably more than any man in history, born after 1850. <br />
<br />
A brilliant self-taught student -- duly impressed with America and Americans -- he was the quintessential renaissance man, with varied and eclectic tastes and hobbies, and a complex personality, thus handing Churchillian researchers no shortage of angles to analyze. Churchill sometimes suffered with depression. He struggled with a lisp despite being a "professional speech-giver." He allegedly cheated on his wife in the 1930s. He loved animals, painted pictures and flirted with Islam though he was reportedly anti-religious. He loved alcohol as a somewhat heavy drinker. He took playful baths almost every afternoon of the Second World War. Instrumental in moving aeroplanes into combat roles in the First World War, he at one time took flying lessons. He invented one of the most effective armoured fighting machines, the tank. Though he ultimately supported it, Churchill dared in 1922 to criticize the Balfour Declaration, that crucial 1917 public statement by the British government proclaiming support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in the area known as Palestine.<br />
<br />
The title<i> A History</i> suggests there are other competing written narratives on the subject, or that there could be one day. So far, none exists to my knowledge that challenges Churchill's authoritative work, at least none that focuses on the particular sections of history that he spotlights. Linearly, and politically, he chose to focus his four books from the time of Julius Caesar's first invasion of Britain about 50 years before the Common Era, up to 1914. <i> A History's</i> four volumes -- also titled<i> The New World, The Age of Revolution and The Great Democracies</i> -- underline Churchill's belief, or rather his understanding, that a "special relationship" has always existed between England and its former English-speaking Crown colonies, including Canada, Australia, America, South Africa and others.<br />
<br />
Though he began<i> A History</i> in 1937, it was not published until 1956, his having been interrupted by, among other hindrances, World War II and a second stint as prime minister between 1951 and 1955. Indeed, he was in his 80s when later volumes were finished. As noted by one critic, regarding the opinion of Clement Atlee -- the Labour Party prime minister who took power in 1945 -- "a full one-third of the last volume was devoted to the military minutiae of the American Civil War. Social history, the agricultural revolution, and the industrial revolution hardly get a mention. Political opponent... Atlee suggested the work should have been titled, 'Things in history that interested me.'"<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, the series was a bestseller and was reviewed positively in both Europe and North America. As noted on Wikipedia, J.H. Plumb of the Daily Telegraph wrote: "This history will endure; not only because Sir Winston has written it, but also because of its own inherent virtues — its narrative power, its fine judgment of war and politics, of soldiers and statesmen, and even more because it reflects a tradition of what Englishmen in the hey-day of their empire thought and felt about their country's past."<br />
<br />
I give this book five stars.<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-10087299154673287262017-04-23T09:15:00.002-07:002018-08-29T11:06:17.402-07:00Stirred by a Noble Theme: God's Heart, Israel and the Nations - Annie Elliott<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">It's not a
terribly long book, about 200 pages, but <i>Stirred by a Noble Theme: God's Heart, Israel
and the Nations</i>, by Christian pastor and personal friend Annie Elliott, delivers
a religious, spiritual and powerful punch, and one overriding message. That message,
simply enough and painstakingly documented using Biblical literature, is that the
land of Israel, for all eternity, belongs to God
and the Jewish people. Period, end of argument.</span></div>
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">Written and published in 2016, the book,
according to Elliott, was divinely inspired. And it was produced quickly, in about
one month, during her 30th trip to Israel, where she has been leading
and accompanying different North American Christian groups for at least two
decades. She explains: "I felt an invitation from God Himself to come to His beloved City of Jerusalem to sit alone with
Him, to pour through the scriptures and capture His heart and His passion for Israel and the
nations. There was an overwhelming sense of needing to be in His covenant land,
in His Covenant City, among His covenant people."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Elliott completed the last couple of
chapters at home, in Ottawa, while sitting in
the prayer chapel on Parliament Hill "overlooking the Peace Tower
and the Prime Minister's official office."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A devotional tone carries throughout the small
volume, and certainly sets a sombre mood. This is not the kind of sit-back-and-learn
reading I want to do every day -- more the morning pitch for prayers or <i>Tehillim</i>
(Psalms) -- but nevertheless it is an important book for anyone who wants to
understand, on religious grounds, why Israel deserves to exist. Anyone
who understands God intellectually knows the land of Israel
belongs to Him and the Jews. But for someone grappling with the concept of God and
wondering what's behind the eternal conflict in the Middle
East, Elliott sets the record -- at least the religious record --
straight.<span style="margin: 0px;"></span> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The book begins with an unusually high
number of pre-chapters: a loving, Christian dedication to Jesus; acknowledgements,
beginning with God Himself; endorsements; a forward by retired Israeli
ambassador to Canada Alan Baker, 2004 - 2008; an Introduction with a beautiful
poem -- presumably written by the author, entitled God's Noble Theme; and,
finally, a prologue.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>After that, through ten chapters, the
author purports to prove -- in exhausting and exquisite <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Biblical detail -- that God adores Israel and the
Jews and that He bestowed this piece of sacred property upon them. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>There are few pages in<i> Stirred </i>that are
not graced with scripture, from both the New Testament and Hebrew liturgy. Obidiah,
Psalms, Proverbs, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Ezekial, Isaiah, the Jewish Minor
Prophets, Kings, Joel, Revelations, John, Romans, Colossians, and of course Exodus: these books, and more,
are all cited and the quotes explained at length. And they all lend credence to
the argument that the land
of Israel belongs to God and
God's Chosen People.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But Elliott does not have complete tunnel vision. She
cites the words of such modern giants as Winston Churchill and she analyzes some
political and historical facts to help prove her case. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Elliott has particular fun with the Biblical
statement: "For the day of the Lord upon all nations is near; As you have
done (to Israel),
it shall be done to you; Your reprisal shall return upon your own head." In
this vein, she chronicles dozens of "prophetic parallels" and
"catastrophic connections," many within the last 30 years. For each
event and statement that targets Israel
negatively, she argues that a concurrent cataclysmic happening is the direct
result of the threat to the Holy
State. Most of these
connected instances relate to statements by political leaders about a
Palestinian state followed by horrendous and fatal weather storms.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>As momentous and close in time as they
are, these situations are frankly not convincingly God-inspired.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Elliott, who is clearly on a mission of
love, puts a special focus on Canada's
relationship with Israel,
an appropriate spotlight since Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, between 2006
and 2015, boldly supported the tiny embattled country like no other
international leader. He made Canada Israel's staunchest ally in the world for
a time. In January 2014, as Elliott reminds us, Harper addressed the Israeli
Knesset, praising the country for its resilience and as "a great example
to the world. It is a story, essentially, of a people whose response to
suffering has been to move beyond resentment and build a most extraordinary
society -- a vibrant democracy, a freedom-loving country." It's hard to
remember the last time a non-Israeli world leader proudly declared such obvious
truth about Israel.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But Elliott is not superficial enough to
take everything Harper said about Israel at face value; she knows Canada's
official policy never changed during his almost ten years at the helm. Indeed,
she says, after pages and pages of praise for Harper's words, "Some of the
statements in 'Canada's
Policy on Key Issues in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict' stand in glaring
violation and contradiction to the Word of God. Canada's official position clearly
supports a 'two-state solution.' Canada
has joined the peace talks and 'land for peace' proposals in an effort either
to support and/or pressure Israel
to divide her covenant land with intent to create a Palestinian state."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>For many who love Israel, including myself, it is<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>argument enough that this sliver of Middle East land<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>has sufficient guns and military know-how to probably
guarantee its continued survival. For such apparent war mongers, we don't need
Biblical or even secular arguments to prove the blameless nation's right to
exist. It's already been shown over and over that the enemies of Israel will
never be swayed by words. Nevertheless, I am grateful and enriched for having
read Elliott's book. </span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br /></div>
Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-77082163735368415132017-03-02T11:48:00.003-08:002018-08-28T08:00:34.593-07:00Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas HardyFor me one of the best parts of reading 19th century British literature is imagining the author's 19th century British experiences and perspectives. Compared to what we now enjoy just over 100 years later, Thomas Hardy's were extremely limited. It's fascinating to picture him, hunched over his desk -- in Higher Brockhampton, Dorset, England, where he lived for all but five of his 87 years -- under a dim, recently-invented electric light bulb, writing with an unperfected, recently-invented ballpoint pen, or possibly with a revolutionary yet antediluvian typewriter. Under such conditions, employing his collective historical knowledge and exceptional talent, he produced dozens of short stories, hundreds of poems and 15 great novels, among them the 1889 masterpiece <i>Tess of the D'Urbervilles.</i> <br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">Apart from the material frustrations, it is also interesting to picture his doing all this literary work without the benefits of modern conceptual understandings -- religious, secular and, yes, sexual -- that we take for granted. Indeed, the repressed Victorian morals that seem laughable to so many in virtually every area of life today -- from Hollywood, to music, to even the primary public school classroom -- were absolutely legitimate and severe in Hardy's time.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This state of affairs ensured that <i>Tess</i> was censored and serialized before being published in 1892 in book form. Moreover, the only sex scene -- which may very well have been a rape -- was virtually eliminated from the text. Don't feel too blind-sided when you discover Tess Durbeyfield is pregnant in "Phase the Second," yet you don't remember how and when Alec D'Urberville -- her thirty-second cousin -- made it happen. Deliberately ambiguous, it is easy to get confused and miss the implied sex scene altogether.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Unbelievably -- and despite the strict and oppressively disapproving mindsets of his fictional characters -- Hardy, as he did in all his novels, was pressing hard against the social and religious boundaries of Britain's restrained Victorian society. He was pushing for wider acceptance of non-Christian behaviours and attitudes, as well as elevating the dignity and strength of the lowly and impecunious rural peasantry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Mirroring somewhat his own life, Hardy created the rebellious Christian, the carefully-named Angel Clare, who eventually marries Tess. Angel had balked at becoming an Anglican priest like his father and brothers, thus disappointing his devout parents. Instead, he trains to manage a dairy farm, falling in love with Tess, one of the milk maids, during one such apprenticeship.</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We learn Angel had briefly met but ignored Tess years earlier in her own hometown. Is this hidden symbolism? It most certainly is, but just how it is allegorical is complicated, in fact too hard to figure out without more thought, time and research than I have right now. Something for the reader to discover. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>On their wedding night Angel admits to Tess that he once had an affair with an older woman, which naturally prompts a relieved Tess to reveal her extra-marital rendezvous with Alec. His own transgression notwithstanding, immediately Angel cannot accept his wife's pre-marital indiscretion, perhaps believing she did not resist Alec's advances enough. After making some fairly quick arrangements, he abandons her, travelling to Brazil to be a dairy farmer and to "find himself." Meanwhile, Tess experiences seemingly endless struggles to survive, but survive she does, that is, until an apologetic Angel returns.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Not wanting to give away any more of the plot, I will just say this: it is hard to conclusively decide which of Tess' paramours -- Angel or Alec -- is responsible for committing the most harm against her. Another question for the reader to decide.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Like virtually all 19th century novels, <i>Tess </i>moves slowly but deliberately, providing page-turner excitement by merely hinting at the tragedies to come. The prose meanders through Tess' depressed and depressing circumstances, as it provides a rich impression of her potency. But w</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">hat happens to the book's characters -- how their lives are impacted by the author's profoundly intriguing plots and themes, which are clearly recognizable in other Hardy novels -- is almost secondary to way Hardy presents these actors. Their complicated personalities come to life through their thoughts and dialogue -- as well as their actions -- leaving the impression that Romanticism really does imitate life. He also seems to effortlessly paint the gleaming beauty of countryside England, the breathtaking historical landscapes and properties over which his people travel and work and hide. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Hardy, who was inspired by the poetry of William Wordsworth and in turn touched the writing soul of D.H. Lawrence, was highly conflicted by the diminishing rural world and rapid industrialization. In such light, he sympathized with and clearly adored his main character Tess. He made her impoverished for sure, but also physically strong and tenacious, emotionally compassionate and mature, mentally tough, honest, loyal, gutsy and entirely dignified, save for her few errors in judgement about love and anger. But those problems can be directly traced to the restrictive society in which she lived. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Of course, the reader of <i>Tess </i>falls in love with Tess the character, too, which makes finishing this book highly disappointing. Is there any better type of novel to read?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial";">As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial";">
<b><i><u><sub><sup><strike><br /></strike></sup></sub></u></i></b></span><strike><br /></strike>Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-19014132515800318452017-01-24T19:33:00.002-08:002018-08-28T08:01:03.835-07:00Most of These Stories are Somewhat True - Jeff MackwoodThe 2015 soft-cover book titled <em>Most of These Stories are Somewhat True (Naughty and Nice),</em> by Ottawa's Jeff Mackwood, is pure delight in 228 pages. Okay, some of it is a little annoying, but then I'm pretty sure that doesn't bother the author, who I only met after the book was published. It could be called an autobiography in 101 vignettes, which together draw the picture of a man who - though he claims to be secretly introverted - comes across as highly confident, mentally healthy, physically strong and tall, extremely smart, competent, articulate, funny, well-travelled, tough and athletic, a guy with a terrific family and an interesting, humorous way of interpreting his own unique experiences. But because of the title, the reader is frequently left asking: Is this true or is it a somewhat bold-faced lie?<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
The very first story, called "Opportunity from Tragedy," is an excellent example of this dilemma. It relates how Jeff, himself, on his own initiative - as a young public servant working for Atomic Energy of Canada when the Challenger space shuttle blew up 73 seconds after take-off in 1986 - got in touch with NASA soon after. He brokered a $3.3 million US deal that was instrumental in restarting the American shuttle program, and launching his incredibly successful career in the National Research Council aerospace program. Hmmm. True? Such official and lucrative serendipity couldn't happen for me or anyone on the low social rungs that I hang out with, but for Jeff, yes, it certainly, probably could happen. From reading almost the entire book, it is obvious he is just that kind of uber-capable person, which is partly what makes him annoying.<br />
But you quickly find him so cute and funny that you forget how maddeningly close to perfect he is. Close, but no cigar. Thankfully, Jeff has an endearing, rough-around-the-edges, hyper, impulsive, Type A, mistake-prone, slightly vindictive - even a bit reckless - personality, which was coddled and nurtured growing up in rural Ontario where, during winters, he could be found dangerously racing - on the oldest model ski-doos ever made - all over Renfrew County with a dozen like-minded friends.<br />
An engineer with a degree from Ottawa's Carleton University, Jeff was born and raised in Pembroke, Ontario, a small town 146 kilometres north west of Ottawa. Though his career involved the heights of technology and science, not to mention world-wide travel, his roots are decidedly, and touchingly, rustic and small town. I cannot find the particular story again, and forget what it is called, but I was impressed that he and his young pals in Pembroke - besides playing year-round hockey on Howe Street - used to enjoy trekking through the woods with their guns to shoot tin cans and wild animals.<br />
Jeff - who is a shockingly heavy social drinker with an expensive taste for scotch malt and fast vehicles - has a big mouth to match his fully developed "homo sapiens" (his term) sarcastic mind. His mind and mouth have gotten him into trouble more than a few times, for example, with the Catholic Church just before his beloved and religious father's funeral. He sexually harassed a female customs agent at the Ottawa Airport by asking - and I quote - "Then I guess the chances of you and me having unprotected sex tonight are pretty slim?" This latter "mistake" got him a full rectal exam, courtesy of Immigration Canada. Somehow, I completely believe this latter story, fittingly called "Snap of Rubber Gloves." Who could make that up? Then there's "Broken Noses," a self-deprecating story of how his nose got so big. Who <i>would</i> make that up?<br />
Jeff is the husband of a talented member of the biggest and best Masters swim team in Canada, a team I also happen to be on. His wife, my team mate, is a brilliant, dedicated nurse and a wonderful and kind person, so I immediately offered to host a book signing party in May 2015, about four months after <i>Most of These Stories</i> came out. The party was successful but small. Though all 320 members were invited - I have a huge back yard, comprised mainly of City of Ottawa hydro property - about a dozen close knit swimmers attended, food was eaten, soft drinks and beer were enjoyed, books were given away and sold, and Jeff tickled everyone's funny bone by reading aloud five or six humorous two-page stories. He also read a couple of the total five or so serious, sad pieces, which are well-written to incite tears.<br />
In "A Note About the Book's Title," I notice Jeff originally wanted to include "Dead Lawyers" in the title, in a way that portrayed dead lawyers as a humorous but positive thing. People who know me know I love a joke at the expense of just about anyone or any group, almost without exception, but not lawyers. I have made it part of my non-practicing legal career - including in an unsuccessful bid in the last bencher election - to try and help reverse the undeserved bad reputation of lawyers in general. Which means I'm relieved that Jeff could not find a dead lawyers title to fit his great collection of stories.<br />
<br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-36602676964435295512017-01-01T10:12:00.001-08:002018-08-28T08:01:25.621-07:00The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1933 - 1972 - William Manchester<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">Talk about
a trip down memory lane. Every famous and notorious occurrence that took place
from the Depression until Watergate -- as well as some not-so-famous events --
is recounted in <i>The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932 -
1972</i>. William Manchester's
1400-page tome, which made the <i>New York Times</i> best seller list in 1975, begins
with a long reach back to the darkest days of the darkest decade. It moves
forward one excruciating, exciting -- and yes, even the odd boring -- year at a
time until, some 40 chapters later, it finishes at the beginning of Richard
Nixon's second term as president. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In scope, the book goes far beyond
politics. Goodread website summarizes it perfectly: the book "e<span style="color: #181818; margin: 0px;">ncompasses politics, military history, economics, the
arts, science, fashion, fads, social change, sexual mores, communications,
graffiti - everything and anything indigenous that can be captured in print." </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">It is easy
to envision poor Manchester
-- without the advantages of a computer and the Internet -- sitting huddled over his desk and typewriter, in danger of thousands of books, newspapers and reports towering
over and collapsing on top of him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The sheer size of <i>The Glory and the Dream</i>
makes it difficult to know which sections to discuss and which to ignore, which
to praise wholeheartedly and which to criticize negatively. Yes, incredibly,
there are a few topics that this brilliant liberal writer covered forty years
ago that remain in dispute, all these years later. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>His meticulous rendition of Harry Truman's
admirable presidency -- including Truman's assiduous campaigning and shocking
triumph over Dewey in the 1948 election -- is absorbing, and a gratifying
reminder that a Democratic president could be<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>dignified, humble, respectable and reasonable
in international relations, not to mention decidedly not wealthy. But Truman,
probably the last president to not care obsessively about polls, struggled with
seemingly insurmountable social, economic and military problems after the Second
World War. These included but were not limited to: exploding black markets in
everything from cars to nylons; paralyzing and debilitating labour strikes in
the mining, steel, oil, lumber, textile, automobile, electrical and railroad
industries; and a massive but dwindling and restless armed forces still stranded
overseas, from Manila to Germany, staging "Wanna-Go-Home riots."
These <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>demonstrations "horrified"
the venerable <i>New York Times</i>, which bemoaned the "breakdown of Army
discipline."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Manchester
was deadly serious in his work, but he could not help being humorous when such
an attitude was called for. For example, in his "Portrait of an American,
the Edsel" -- and quoting Time Magazine -- he described the famously
failed automobile as "a classic
case of the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time" and "a
prime example of the limitations of market research, with its 'depth interviews'
and 'motivational' mumbo jumbo." But there was more, he said. The car
resembled an egg, a horse collar, Bugs Bunny and -- "this may have been
inspired by malicious counter public relations of General Motors or Chrysler --
a toilet seat."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>With the death of Manchester in 2004 -- and the death of Pulitzer-prize
winning author David Halberstam a few years later -- a genre of modern American
historical political writing died also. Only Theodore H. White, a highly
skilled political writer who also won the ultimate journalism prize -- and who died
in 1986 -- matched their style and competency, their ability to convey facts
and truth fairly, objectively, and densely, to detail fascinating stories intriguingly,
without the arrogant stridency so commonly used today. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Not that arrogant stridency isn't a
captivating writing style, at least when coming from a brilliant right wing
perspective -- Mark Steyne, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, please step forward
and bow. And despite his magnificent talent, Manchester was not above adopting an approach
that skewed perfect reality. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>For example, Manchester's
sections on McArthyism -- including the sub-topics of Alger Hiss, Whittaker
Chambers and the House Un-American Activities Committee -- are long on pejoratives
about the Wisconsin senator's shortcomings, Hiss'
charms, Chamber's eccentricities and HUAC's declining prestige. Manchester gives disproportionately little attention to the
drunken politician's crusade victories in uncovering potentially dangerous communists
-- including Alger Hiss -- in the U.S. government. A proven liar and,
surprisingly, still controversial figure, Hiss served prison time for perjury since
the statute of limitations prevented him from being prosecuted for more serious
crimes. Manchester's
book treats him with more than a little undeserved sympathy. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>No surprise there, though; Hiss was a handsome
Harvard law graduate -- though ultimately disbarred -- and a darling of the
left who quickly captured the deep affections of 1950s New Deal liberals. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But it hardly matters what Manchester's political
leanings were. His retelling of modern history is jam-packed with undisputed
facts, like the writings of his cohorts mentioned above. None of these authors ever
showed a hint of rough edged-ness in their work; none can ever be accused of producing
belligerent, error-ridden commentary such as found in so much present day liberal
authorship, speeches and interviews. Their work never incorporated the hatred
and anger now almost ubiquitous among die hard liberals.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Manchester,
among the skilled men of letters who wrote with sophistication, elegance and
even subtlety, produced his important work at a time when the vast majority of
North Americans believed everything Walter Cronkite said on the CBS evening
news, unquestioningly. Consumers of information then may have been more naive than
they are today, but at least they could still properly trust the talent and
knowledge of able journalists and historians. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>No one questions Manchester's greatness in his field. Born in Massachusetts in 1922, he
authored 18 books translated into 20 languages. He began his professional life in
the military, ultimately fighting in the Pacific War until June 1945, where he
was seriously wounded in the last battle on the Island of Okinawa.
He was awarded a Purple Heart. His writing career began soon after in the exact
same way most journalists got started in those days, as a low level </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">copyboy
for a newspaper, in this case the <i>Daily Oklahoman</i>. In his spare time he earned
a bachelor of arts degree in 1946 from Massachusetts State College and a
master's degree the following year from the University of Missouri.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Manchester is </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">most famous for his three-part
biography, </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><i>The
Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill</i>, </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">a trilogy that remained
incomplete at the time of the author's death. Before he died he assigned Paul
Reid -- a one time journalist at the <i>Palm Beach Post</i> -- to finish the work. The
first two parts had been published in the 1980s. The final and long-anticipated
third volume was released, to my husband's utter delight, in November 2012.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">I was introduced to Manchester by my mother, who ran out to buy
<i>The Glory and the Dream</i> -- a title taken from a William Wordsworth poem,
"Ode: Intimations of Immortality" -- </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">when it was
released in 1974. I watched her relish this book, just as I witnessed her eternal
joy reading several Theodore H. White books, including <i>The Making of the President, 1972</i> and <i>Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon</i>. She also loved David Halberstam's <i>The Best and
the Brightest,</i> and later,<i>The Powers That Be</i>. Deficient subtitles to explain
their substance, I will fill in the blanks. The last two books are detailed accounts about, respectively:
the reckless decision-making during JFK's administration that went into escalating the Vietnam War; and the media in America, particularly CBS, <i>The New York Times,
The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post </i>and <i>Time. The Seattle Times</i><span style="margin: 0px;">
labelled </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">the
latter book a "monumental X-ray study of power." Is it any surprise
that I would want to share my mother's reading experiences? <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Today, amateur historians may be more
inclined to turn to a 350-page Bill O'Reilly book, a breezy read on everything
from Jesus Christ to John Kennedy. Sure, enjoy those books -- I've heard they
are good, though I've not read them, and they support good charities -- but
don't deprive yourself of Manchester's
work in the process of learning modern American history.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<b><i><u><sub><sup><strike><br /></strike></sup></sub></u></i></b></span><br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-10075479475999971032016-11-20T09:39:00.002-08:002018-08-28T08:28:12.929-07:00Conservative Confidential: Inside the Fabulous Blue Tent - Fred Litwin<span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">Fred Litwin,
a good friend, is a highly intelligent, ambitious, capable and successful Ottawa businessman. He is,
as well, a book worm, a news hound, a partisan political activist and a man of
integrity with an open mind and an eye for the patently ridiculous. Having said
all that, it's a bit of a curiosity that Litwin -- author of the 2015
<i>Conservative Confidential: Inside the Fabulous Blue Tent</i> -- didn't find his way
a lot sooner into the amazing turquoise gazebo of the conservative movement.
After all, he was coming from the very middle of the absurdly irrational and
tottery liberal red pergola.</span></div>
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;">But hey, everyone at their own pace, is
my motto. If it took a terrorist event as large as 9/11 to thoroughly awaken
Litwin, and others, out of their left wing delusions, then all I can say is, at
least some lasting positives came out of that horrendous catastrophe. Fred,
welcome to the fold. </span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The founder of the local, ground-breaking
-- though currently inoperative -- Free Thinking Film Society has written an interesting,
informative and provocative book, which focuses almost entirely on his
intellectual and emotional reactions to relatively recent events in politics.
The well-written autobiographical narrative begins on the very morning of the
commercial airplane attacks in September 2001. His prose cannot help but
transport the reader back to those terrifying moments we all experienced, as he
himself is reliving them. Is it an accident? Is this really happening? Who did
this?</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Litwin moves on to trace his maturation
from gregarious gay liberal to virtually full-blown conservative, albeit with a
few lingering progressive overtones. Touching on the two overriding themes of
the book, he says, profoundly, in the introduction: "I never lost a friend
by coming out as a gay person, but I lost friends coming out as a
Conservative."<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Of course Litwin's awakening <i>per se</i> is
not unique. Thousands of writers -- myself included -- have felt a visceral
compulsion to write about our experiences of how we came to rational thinking
from the far left. He mentions several, including the well-known David Joel Horowitz, a New York-born Berkeley graduate and founding president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Everyone's
migration rightward is fascinating in its own way. What I found so interesting in Litwin's
account is the incredibly wide circle of friends, pundits and even politicians
who seemed to let him down. From Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky to Jean Chretien
and Hedy Fry. He ended up in fights on the internet and at dinner parties,
arguing the side of George Bush. It must have disgusted his friends.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>His reaction to the attacks of 9/11 -- he
was horror-struck -- matches the vast majority of humanity's. But his unmet
expectation that committed leftists would somehow have appropriate and helpful
responses and explanations is, well, frankly, naive. The hard left of the past
20 years can no more be expected to feel sorry for America under attack by
radical Muslims than Allied soldiers would have sympathized with dead Nazis. Fred's
naivety, however, is more than made up for by his fast-paced, well researched
arguments.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I especially appreciated his support for
Bush's invading Iraq
and his unimpeachable stand regarding weapons of mass destruction. As he proves,
President Bush did not lie. Indeed, Litwin's arguments about WMD could have
been written by right wing commentator and lawyer Ann Coulter, an influential conservative
pundit whom Litwin says he dislikes intensely. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><i>Conservative Confidential's</i> eight
chapters each deal with recent political issues and how the author personally experiences
them. This writing style can come across as sanctimonious -- as can be seen every
day in the comments sections on the internet -- but that is not the case with
Litwin: he is impressively knowledgeable about every topic he touches upon,
including but not limited to: Israel; international Islamic extremism;
political intrigue and left wing bias at the CBC; and, fascinatingly, how
Canada's professional gay establishment has hoodwinked the international gay
community. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The last chapter, called "My Dinner
with David," tackles an especially divisive subject, counter-jihadism --
or the "anti-Islam right" -- which Litwin discovers lives closer to
home than he is comfortable with, and to which major leaguer Horowitz comfortably belongs. The David he refers to is writer, poet and
retired English teacher David Solway, author of more than 10 books, including
an intriguing parable on John Franklin's disastrous attempt to find the Northwest Passage. Litwin's and Sloway's falling out
occurred, you guessed it, at a dinner party, and resulted from their furiously opposing opinions on counter-jihadism, or whether Muslims in general are trying to take
over the world.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Perhaps,
just maybe, Litwin -- showing a touch of his latent naivety -- comes across as
ever so slightly disingenuous when he is shocked that some of his new found
"respectable" conservative friends do not think that Islam the world over is fundamentally a wonderful religion, full of great people who love democracy and want the
best for everyone. Most rational conservatives agree Islamic extremism is only
one side of the international Muslim experience. But even for them (myself included) it took a lot of
reading and soul-searching after 9/11 -- and, for Ottawa locals, attending more
than a few Free Thinking Film Society events dealing with the subject -- to discover
and admit that violent, repressive Sharia law (including as it is found
embedded in Saudi Arabia and other underdeveloped countries) does not represent
the best Islam has to offer. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> In conclusion, f</span>rom Litwin's reasoning and clarity of
thought, it is obvious he was primed and ready to switch sides. He needed a
definitive push. How unfortunate the push was so lethal.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<br /></div>
Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-10864658341826240832016-09-15T12:11:00.002-07:002018-08-28T08:27:47.353-07:00In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! - Ann CoulterUltraconservative and super-rational pundit Ann Coulter finished her ninth blockbuster -- <i>In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!</i> -- in time to boost Donald Trump's dipping presidential campaign, the one where he alone has been focussing on immigration problems and solutions, the most pressing issues facing America. She turns a phosphorescent spotlight back onto the Republican, Democratic and media culprits who are helping to destroy America. I know, the claim is extremely harsh, but the brilliant and hilarious Coulter proves her devastating declarations again and again, using her trademark writing tactics: authentic statistics and facts, humour through obvious sarcasm, humour through clear exaggeration, and detailed footnotes, lots of footnotes.<br />
<a name='more'></a>It cannot be a coincidence that within three weeks of the publication of <i>In Trump</i> -- which I electronically scheduled weeks earlier to drop into my Kindle on the late August release day -- the billionaire maverick candidate rose slightly but significantly in the polls, and according to some, even surpassed the now-ailing Hillary Clinton.<br />
In a nutshell, there is not much shocking to say about this book. It is vintage, caustic, uproarious Coulter, who (alone among American commentators) has been fiercely defending Trump since the start of his presidential campaign, while contradicting and correcting the mainstream and conservative press regularly. It's now to the point that many of her fans -- like me -- rarely bother to tune in to the conventional media for news about American presidential politics. We wait anxiously for her weekly columns.<br />
Written more quickly -- and therefore with relatively fewer citations than she is used to using -- in order to beat the November election, <i>In Trump</i> will educate and entertain Coulter fans, but her enemies, predictably, already think they are tasting blood. There is a lot of the usual name-calling and dismissing of Coulter: she is racist, past her best-before date, unimportant, unpopular and simply wrong. Funny how her detractors virtually never offer hard facts to contradict her work, unlike what she does constantly and with devastating effect with respect to their work.<br />
In <i>In Trump,</i> as in her last book -- another New York Times Best Seller, <i>Adios America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole</i> -- she points a laser focus at the facts and figures of US immigration policies and their negative results since Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration act -- a law which has attracted an endless stream of third world immigrants, known collectively as a new Democratic voting bloc -- and particularly since 9/11. These topics are comprehensively, depressingly, even frighteningly, detailed in <i>Adios America.</i> A lawyer with a discerning eye for the most negative impacts of policies and lawbreaking, Coulter relates in both books the violent, culturally destructive, and unfairly -- if not illegally -- expensive consequences of both legal and illegal immigration. <br />
From 2001, some two million Muslims have entered the country legally. Coulter and Trump have their fingers squarely on the pulse of that vast part of the American nation that, rationally, does not want so many invited Muslims living inside the US borders. Superficially, it may sound racist to not want unlimited Muslim immigration, but Coulter -- who is no more racist than Harper Lee -- explains it this way: "Billions of people don't live in America. We can admit them or not admit them for any reason we choose."<br />
Feigning offence at such ideas, the <i>Washington Post's</i> Philip Bump once intoned: there is, "in fact, no reliable evidence that a large percentage of Muslims in the United States... support doing harm to the country or plan to commit acts of violence". Retorts Coulter: "There's evidence that some of them do. Why do we need to take that risk?... We want remarkable immigrants, not immigrants whose main selling point is 'hasn't gunned down fifty people in a gay nightclub yet.' Anyone with a brain cell could see that admitting Muslim refugees increased the odds of a terrorist attack in a way that admitting white Western Europeans would not."<br />
About the unknown number of non-Muslim illegals, who have trekked, stowed away and slithered across the US-Mexican border, Coulter is unmoved by their fake righteousness and sob stories. Settling into California and increasing numbers of other unsuspecting states and communities -- where in terms of taxes they pay, for obvious reasons, only the sales variety -- these uninvited non-Americans are costing the humble American taxpayer untold billions. <br />
Who is to blame? Coulter notes there is no shortage of elected and bureaucrat culprits, but the greatest fault probably lies with the lying, lazy press. "Islam's PR Agency: The American Media," is the title of chapter ten. Coulter extensively and audaciously covered this topic in her 2003 NYT Bestseller, <i>Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right</i>. For those familiar with this latter work, Coulter's calling the media a PR agency for Islam is neither a surprise nor, for once, an exaggeration.<br />
In<i> In Trump,</i> as well as many recent columns, Coulter pinpoints dozens if not hundreds -- no doubt representing a total thousands -- of instances where the press, even some of the normally conservative kind, protect, hide and, maybe most disingenuously of all, downplay the ethnic and religious identity of terrorists. This happens, she points out, not only in the US but in many other developed countries as well, all with a supposedly energetic and aggressive free press. Why is this type of reporting wrong? Obviously, and according to Coulter, because it is deceptive and misleading, an immoral and potentially dangerous attempt to fool Average Joe and Jane Public into believing that increasing local Islamic terrorism is a myth. <br />
This is how chapter 10 begins: "One thing the guys who planned 9/11 never expected was that Muslims would become a protected class in America. They must have thought, 'Boy are we going to be hated!' Instead, since that attack, we've admitted another two million Muslims, we almost built a mosque at Ground Zero, colleges are teaching classes on 'Islamophobia'... and the US State<br />
Department tells Muslim countries, 'We are pleased to present you with this check for 100 mosques.'<br />
"Importing millions of immigrants whose religion teaches them we are Satan -- when we don't have to take any -- [is] the new Selma," a reference to the imperative and long over-due voting and civil rights movement of the 1960s. "We are supposed to accept that Islamic terrorism... [is] just part of life, a wonderful slice of the vibrant fabric of America. If you disagree, you [are] a racist."<br />
After the murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 by a Muslim army major screaming "Allahu Akbar," President Obama told citizens not to "jump to conclusions," in other words, not to conclude automatically that the violence was an act of Islamic terrorism. Soon after, on "Meet the Press," army chief of staff General George Casey stated: "As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that is worse." That must have been comforting to the families of the victims.<br />
The night of the December 2015 San Bernardino attack, one of a dozen major Islamic terrorist assaults since 9/11, news reporters were in their element. Those from ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox News, were reminiscing about some solo white male psychopathic murderers, who clearly belonged, says Coulter, "in straightjackets" inside locked state mental hospitals. Instead, the press should have been informing readers and listeners that the attack was done by two people, in fact two Muslims.<br />
"The media threw everybody off the scent with a report from the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> claiming that one of the perpetrators had gotten into an argument with someone at the community centre and stormed back twenty minutes later, guns blazing. This was an incredibly important detail to be dropped into the news cycle, because it clearly pointed to workplace violence. Except, apparently, it wasn't true -- which the <i>Times</i> discreetly admitted a month later.<br />
"It was just invented by some anonymous law enforcement official, passed on to the newspaper, and injected into the breaking news coverage. This prevented virtually every analyst on TV from suggesting the attack was terrorism for at least another twenty-four hours."<br />
The press uses other tricks to divert attention from the widespread problems of immigrant welfare fraud and violence, violence which includes but is not limited to: clitorectomies, honour killings, child rapes, gang brutality and just plain rampant physical abuse in families. Besides ignoring the data that tell these bureaucratic and horror tales -- data Coulter seems to have no problem finding -- the mainstream press has a host of cute sleight-of-hand tricks, like referring to third-world-culture-clinging-second-generation-non-English-speaking-immigrant criminals and terrorists as "home grown" and "American." Her book is full of these examples. <br />
Getting back to Trump, he is the only politician in modern American history to actually speak publicly and practically about solving immigration problems, which only non-elitists seem to identify as critical. Coulter, for some reason, is the only American political writer to document and cheer on Trump's attractiveness to the forgotten classes. It is painful to watch old favourites like Charles Krauthammer, Meagan Kelly and the Bushes condemning Trump and totally missing the major points, including that <i>he is</i> the 2016 Republican candidate. He has a lower chance of winning when so many well-known talking heads, so many from his own party, can't stop publicly hating him. How are they going to react when Trump wins? I am sure he will forgive them. Will they forgive him, or themselves?<br />
Predictably, Coulter is being pulverized without mercy by the same liberal press she has denounced decisively and ferociously for about two decades, but she expected that reaction, no doubt. If possible, the criticism is almost over-the top: at least one commentator has accused Coulter of being hugely embarrassed and ashamed because Trump has retreated on some of his immigration pronouncements, as if she is developmentally slow, too slow to predict he might alter his statements. Yes, she is disappointed: “I think this is a mistake. It sounds like it’s coming from consultants,” Coulter said on the MSNBC program "Hardball" with Chris Matthews. Does she sound ashamed and embarrassed? She knows this is politics, forever fluid. Trump was never going to follow her advice stringently. And whatever else is going on in her wickedly intelligent head, what she really wants, besides helping to save her great country, is to sell books.<br />
As of writing, <i>In Trump We Trust</i> is already 17th on the NYT Bestsellers List, only ten below <br />
<i>Crisis of Character</i>, a book about scandalous behaviour by the Clintons, written by one of their own secret service agents. Interestingly, a version of that latter book has already been produced, by Coulter almost 20 years ago. It was her first, and her first NYT bestseller, written in 1998. It is called <i>High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton.</i> In those days I had no Kindle, which is fortunate, because ten years later Ann Coulter herself signed my copy. <br />
<br />
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.<br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-72998573064526563012016-08-26T08:21:00.001-07:002018-08-28T08:27:27.529-07:00My Shoes are Killing Me - Robyn SarahI am convinced the goal of most solemn poems is to remind the reader that a hollow, perpetual depression is lurking just underneath the surface of everyday feelings. Joy is fleeting. True happiness is an illusion for all but children. Contentedness is only for those who don't think too deeply. Those are my thoughts after reading and rereading the 35 poems in My Shoes are Killing Me, the most recent book by award-winning Canadian writer Robyn Sarah. If I am right, then, ironically, Sarah triumphs with My Shoes -- the only book of hers I have ever read -- by igniting especially despondent feelings, the ones rational people presumably spend much of their lives running from. Good work Robyn, you've ruined my day. <br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
To illustrate my point, here is part of her gracefully depressing poem "Impasse:"<br />
<br />
<br />
As Illness makes us live hour by hour,<br />
revising our day as we go.<br />
<br />
As winter plants a great snowy<br />
foot in our path<br />
<br />
As glass baffles the fly.<br />
<br />
How rosy can you be<br />
without money?<br />
<br />
As war when it comes. If it comes.<br />
<br />
A boarding pass for a defunct airline<br />
found in the lining of an empty purse.<br />
....<br />
<br />
Suddenly the line goes dead.<br />
<br />
We are without a map.<br />
<br />
In truth, My Shoes -- also the title of a longish verse inside -- is a difficult book for me to review because I know the author, or rather the author's family. So I must tread carefully, but still be brutally honest, so you, precious reader, will continue to trust my book reviews as gospel. The other reason My Shoes is difficult to review is simply that it is poetry, a sophisticated art type I have never completely embraced, except for awhile in primary school -- Rudyard Kipling -- and during a few courses in university, when some Canadian and 16th century poems were forced on me as a kind of test of my maturity.<br />
Reading and grasping most good poetry requires lingering patience, quiet meditation and a sort of eerie emotional connectedness with the carefully chosen words. These are all feelings and activities from which I normally shrink. And, except for many of the famous and outstanding renaissance poets -- the most brilliant and profound thinkers probably in all eternity -- I am usually unsure which poet is faking talent and who really has it. <br />
Having said all that, am I even qualified to evaluate Robyn Sarah's work, which, over the years, has won all kinds of Canadian literary honours, most recently the Governor General's Award in 2015? The answer of course is a resounding yes, but only because all art is ultimately subjective. In fact, I can say with reluctant confidence My Shoes -- though deeply sombre and melancholic -- is a powerfully inspiring collection. It's an intimate peak into Sarah's memories, which are obviously and completely sane, and therefore unsettling. You can't help but ask yourself, with some trepidation, are her ideas prophetic? Do they represent the sad, dismal future of my emotions and thoughts? I am forced to answer, again with some fear, absolutely maybe. <br />
Yet her poems also somehow ignite a low-key but exciting idea, the notion that with time perhaps comes starker clarity and a more profound but spiritual longing.<br />
The poems concentrate, nostalgically, on Sarah's personal and, at times, emotionally tragic history, her "mistaken happiness," "her numb, wasted days," "her hazardous past." This is part of "Fall Arrives:"<br />
<br />
<br />
Comes a day when we accept <br />
the imperfection of our lives<br />
and begin to hope <br />
for a perfect death.<br />
Goodbye my illusions<br />
Anger of my hunger.<br />
....<br />
<br />
Sarah was born in 1949 in New York City, but she grew up a full-blooded Canadian, in Montreal. She attended McGill University. Starting to write the moment she could pick up a pencil, Sarah has amassed a small mountain of published work, including several volumes of poetry, short stories and one book of essays about poetry. For awhile she was the editor of Porcupine's Quill. She at one time taught English literature at Quebec's Champlain Regional College.<br />
Among her widely recognized distinctions since 1990 are a CBC Literary Award, a National Magazine Award and, last year, the Governor General's Award for English-language Poetry. What do these honours say about Sarah's academic approach to writing? At first glance, they would seem to imply that her work belongs in the modern Canadian literary categories of avant-garde and progressive. I assume this not because I am particularly appreciative or knowledgeable of the genre, but because I notice she shares the stage and some leftist/feminist awards with several, more famous, uber-liberal Canadian women writers, including "national treasure" Margaret Atwood, whose work I stopped reading about 40 years ago. <br />
But association-by-shared-awards is not always a fair assessment. And in Sarah's case, with respect to My Shoes anyway, there isn't really anything distinctly socialist or even overtly political to pin on her. She does, however, occasionally mention Israel and that country's desperate wars, but in a way, thankfully, that does not denounce the successful, besieged state. <br />
And then there is this cryptic little gem -- that totally reads like a bit of healthy conservative, if unexciting, thinking -- called, "it is not in great acts:" (The table of contents uses no capitals for this poem's title, unlike every other poem's title.)<br />
<br />
people don't want a destiny<br />
they want a little house, means<br />
enough to feed their children<br />
a doctor when they need one<br />
new shoes, little pleasures<br />
people don't want a mission<br />
they want a little leisure<br />
....<br />
it is not in great acts<br />
<br />
it is not in great voyages<br />
what we long for is with us, passing too quickly<br />
....<br />
<br />
Do yourself a favour and buy this tiny green book. It won't take but a few hours to read twice and absorb the penetrating conceptualizations. You may shed a few tears, but your heart and inner child will thank you.<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-33217596462431069392016-08-02T16:24:00.000-07:002018-08-28T08:26:31.323-07:00An American Life - Ronald ReaganThough it may seem an odd choice for this summer's reading, President Ronald Reagan's autobiography -- <i>Am American Life</i> -- contrasts nicely with the chaotic fracas that is US election year 2016. Written in 1990, only two years after he left office, the overall book -- which is 748 pages, though I read it on Kindle -- especially with respect to his profound challenges as a child and a young man, grips the soul and amazes the mind. But it also leaves the reader with a melancholy sense of emptiness, a desolate feeling of dejection and longing. It was sad to regularly look up from the Kindle, stare off into space and remember that those incredible political days are long over. Reagan's near destruction of liberalism seems like a century ago.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Parts of the early section of the book are a nostalgic, peaceful read. They echo times that harken back to a harsher but somehow less complicated era, the one that included Reagan's hardscrabble childhood in rural Illinois and Chicago. Born in 1911, he begins his life in Tampico, Galesburg, Dixon and a string of other small towns, where his alcoholic, dreamer father Jack held a series of jobs -- usually selling shoes -- and where he and his older brother Neil changed schools constantly. <br />
Despite the poverty and addiction in the household, they grew up relatively happy and healthy, largely due to the incredible wisdom, kindness and devotion of their mother Nelle. Though the brothers knew there were problems in the house, though they heard their parents' loud fights through walls, though Jack went away sometimes for days without warning -- or, vice versa, Nelle and the kids had to sometimes leave the house quickly and spend several days at one of her siblings' places -- despite all that misery, Nelle knew to never directly burden her young boys with adult problems. Because of her -- and their father's not infrequent periods of sobriety -- Ronald and Neil largely felt normal, happy and secure.<br />
Reagan was 11 years old when he learned about his father's specific illness from his mother. Decades before "alcoholism is a disease" was common knowledge, Nelle -- without the help of a single Al-Anon meeting -- sat her sons down and explained: "Jack had a <i>sickness</i> that he couldn't control.... She said he fought it but sometimes lost control and we shouldn't love him any less because of it because it was something he couldn't control. If he ever embarrassed us, she said we should remember how kind and loving he was when he wasn't affected by drink."<br />
Though sheltered, Reagan was still deeply affected by his father's drinking. His earliest serious love, Margaret, whom he met at church and hoped to someday marry, almost broke up with him when he explained that his drunken father was a good person who was sick and couldn't help himself. Never having heard such nonsense, Margaret got upset and nearly dumped him.<br />
He described how, as a boy, he once had to drag his drunk, unconscious father into the house from the porch. He'd thought about stepping over him and going straight to bed, but he couldn't. "When I tried to wake him he just snored -- loud enough, I suspected, for the whole neighborhood to hear him. I grabbed a piece of his overcoat, pulled it and dragged him into the house, then put him to bed and never mentioned the incident to my mother."<br />
Reagan confessed he struggled his whole life with insecurities he believed were the result of growing up beside his father's alcoholism, which caused his family to move so much, and him to have to continually make different new friends. Even as president, as cheerful and gracious as he was to every person he met, as close as he ultimately became to many people -- including Canadian First Couple Brian and Mila Mulroney -- he claimed in the book that he always held back part of himself, for safety. <br />
Both Democrats, Jack and Nelle were also both Christian, he a mostly non-practicing Catholic and she an active member of the Disciples of Christ. Despite widespread racial segregation at the time, the Reagan parents were both passionately anti-racist, and drummed into their children's heads that skin colour, among other traits, was irrelevant when judging character. Nelle pushed her children to bring home their black playmates for visits and meals. Nelle was exceedingly kind-hearted, and never stopped doing good deeds for the needy, sick or bereaved. Where Jack could be harsh and cynical, she never stopped seeing the best in people. Clearly, her sunny nature rubbed off on her youngest son.<br />
Reagan's core beliefs in families as the bedrock of America -- and America as the greatest nation on earth in which families could flourish -- were learned in childhood.<br />
<br />
I grew up learning how the love and common sense of purpose<br />
that unites families is one of the most powerful glues on earth and<br />
that it can help them overcome the greatest of adversities. I learned<br />
that hard work is an essential part of life -- that by and large you <br />
don't get something for nothing -- and that America was a place that <br />
offered unlimited opportunity to those who did work hard. I learned<br />
to admire risk-takers and entrepreneurs, be they farmers of small mer-<br />
chants, who went to work and took risks to build something for them-<br />
selves and their children, pushing at the boundaries of their lives to <br />
make them better.<br />
<br />
In high school Reagan acquired and nurtured the talents that would advance his careers in Hollywood, Sacramento and Washington. At Dixon High, where he graduated in 1928, he played in the football and basketball leagues, headed the student council as president and he took part in school plays. A strong swimmer all his life, he worked as a lifeguard at Dixon's Lowell Park for six years, reportedly saving 77 people from drowning in the dangerous Rock River.<br />
Enrolling at Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois, as an economics major, Reagan was not the best grade earner. He had a "C" average by graduation in 1932. But he had dreamed for years of attending Eureka, where Margaret went, and he made it through financially, barely, by begging, borrowing and dish washing. He loved the small town atmosphere that a school of 250 students naturally had. It forced extra-curricular activities on everyone, which Reagan relished. Maybe his grades were low because he was so busy between classes. He played football under a coach he was sure didn't like him; he swam on the school team; he acted in plays of the drama club; he debated in the debate club; he wrote for the college paper; he edited the school yearbook; and he was president of the student council. How could he have had time for studies? But he loved every minute of his years at Eureka, especially when his older brother later joined him, at a lower college year.<br />
It was at Eureka where he got his first taste of how great it feels to make a resounding speech. Students were angry over Depression cutbacks, and Reagan excited the crowd with his supportive statements. He was overwhelmed by the thrill he experienced after stimulating the listeners. After the strike, the college president resigned, almost certainly at least partly as a result of Reagan's leadership. After college, Reagan continued to struggle. Ambitious but floundering for a career in the midst of the Depression, he agonized about his future, and his father's failures. He tried radio sports announcing before he got into acting, two more fascinating and positive parts of his life.<br />
Interestingly, more than a few critics have denounced <i>An American Life</i> for its lack of historical value. But it must be asked: how can the details of the youthful struggles -- in his own words -- not be of historic importance when we're talking about an extremely impressive political leader, probably the greatest US president of the 20th century? Why are the circumstances that made a genuine world leader not considered crucial for historians? If not so much now, certainly in 200 years? <br />
The book goes on to describe his life as a Hollywood B movie actor, as a twice-elected president of the screen actors' guild -- where he worked hard to root out Hollywood communists -- as the mouthpiece for General Electric Theatre, as a cheerleader for Barry Goldwater, and of course as Governor of California. At some point he switched parties from Democrat to Republican. He is virtually silent about his failed first marriage and magnanimously quiet about problems with his adult children, a testament to his discretion and graciousness regarding private experiences, especially those which, if discussed, could potentially be hurtful to others. Nor does he focus excessively on the extreme verbal abuse he received from the media and liberals in general.<br />
Funny, for me, the stories during his years as president -- about Reagonomics, about supply-side economics, about firing the entire workforce of striking air traffic controllers, etc. -- are not the most interesting parts of the book, maybe because we've read about these events and issues countless times over the years by other writers. His relationship with Nancy, with whom he had unbelievably few arguments, makes for engaging reading. A few parts of the book are boring or seem forced. For example, his take on the Middle East and Israel sounds artificial and hollow, and his endless descriptions of his ground-breaking dealings around the high stakes international nuclear arms talks are tedious. His personal relationships with successive Soviet leaders (as they kept dying) are less than fascinating, but his closeness to Mikhail Gorbachev is reminiscent of the hope that President Reagan brought the world. <br />
To move off topic for a minute, to focus on a glaring contrast to the Reagan years, the current president's more recent mission of hope has brought no end of national and world crises: Ten trillion dollars added to the national debt; 700 billion dollars being taken out of Medicare for Obamacare; the rise of ISIS, which may very well have been prevented had Obama stayed longer in Iraq; Syria's civil war, now in its fifth year; the Iran deal, which gives the terrorist state 150 billion dollars for -- wink, wink -- peaceful uses of nuclear power; race relations in America knocked back 50 years; welfare, disability payments and use of food stamps at an all time high; sky high unemployment; blocking Keystone; and on and on and on. (This incomplete and brief overview of Obama's mess was created with the help of a few writers and websites, including Townhall's John Hawkins.)<br />
To finish this review, I can't let the moment pass without mentioning two points. One is that Reagan history has been mangled and revised, to the point that "liberals suddenly love [him]," says American Enterprise Institute Fellow Steven Hayward, writing in a riveting 2011 cover story for <i>Commentary</i>. "They have taken to celebrating certain virtues they claim Reagan possessed -- virtues they believe are absent from the conservative body politic today -- while looking back with nostalgia at the supposed civility of the political struggles of the 1980s." He adds: President Obama's appropriation of Reagan's persona, which has been expansive, "was and is disingenuous on every level." <br />
Second, just about every false accusation, scandalous recrimination and defamatory denunciation being launched against 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was hurled at Reagan during his presidential tries. The specific negative comments, exaggerations and outright lies differ between 1980 and 2016, but the finely tuned liberal practice of vilifying certain powerful or potentially powerful Republicans is in high gear now, and it was in high gear then. Thirty-six years apart, the two left wing campaigns are identical in tone, intensity, hatred level and goals. It is true that Trump is certainly not Reagan, and Trump's detractors additionally include too many conservatives. But to say Reagan did not bring out the worst fear mongers of world destruction is simply to forget, or revise, history.<br />
Overall, <i>An America Life </i>is one of those feel good conservative American treatises, uncomplicated in outlook and attitude, full of gung ho Yankee patriotism and oozing that infectious cheerfulness Reagan was famous for.<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-78760775975368773652016-06-15T11:18:00.002-07:002018-08-28T08:24:38.250-07:00What's So Funny?: Lessons from Canada's Leacock Medal for Humour Writing, by Dick Bourgeois Doyle AND Stephen Leacock: Selected and Introduced by Robertson Davies, by Stephen Leacock<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Have you ever wondered about the first 67 winners of Canada's Stephen Leacock Award for Humour? Me neither. Until, that is, I was presented with a delightful book on this very subject -- </span><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">What's So Funny?:Lessons from Canada's Leacock Medal for Humour Writing</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> -- written by Dick Bourgeois-Doyle. Don't be put off by his Victorian-inspired name. He is really quite down to earth. And he is an expert on, among other subjects, the history of science and creativity in Canada. Besides writing quite prolifically -- "contributing to many books, articles, TV features and radio programs," as his biographical sketch states on page 253 -- Bourgeois-Doyle works full time in the federal government. He is currently the Secretary General of the National Research Council of Canada.</span></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> You are probably wondering how an elevated public servant -- he was at one time chief of staff and director of communications to the minister of science and technology -- has managed to pull off such time-consuming extra-curricular publication feats. I know it was my first question when I met the author at a summer evening event at Carleton University's MacOdrum Library in 2015. Though the event was forgettable, his answer was not. It was actually his wife who replied, and I paraphrase: "People always ask this. He never uses government time for his outside activities. He is up late every night, writes all weekend and he is very organized and efficient at using his time."</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> </span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Now that we are thoroughly reassured that our tax dollars in this case were never spent improperly, we can carefully assess his after-work work, or, if you'd rather, we can do a book review of his book reviews. I can say right off the bat that his writing work does not suffer from any kind of bureaucratic day-job-fatigue. </span><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">What's So Funny?</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> is well-researched, well written, exquisitely illustrated, interesting and, well, funny.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> "When you have a central character like toothless Percival Leary," writes Bourgeois-Doyle, describing the main character in</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">King Leary</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">--</span></i></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> the 1988 Leacock award book -- "who feels his body withering away, has outlived all of his friends and spends his nursing-home days watching a roommate gurgle and belch, the options for a dramatic story might seem limited." But author and winner Paul Quarrington apparently manages to pen an hilarious tale in </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">King Leary,</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> the only book in the list of 67 that focuses on hockey, a major Canadian national obsession, though, for some good reason, not Canada's national sport. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> The book is fiction, and it's written from the perspective of an octogenarian former hockey star, but </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">King Leary</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">, says the reviewer, transports the reader back to some exhilarating Canadian hockey years, those that included King Clancy, a defence-man with the Senators when they won the Stanley Cup twice in the 1920s</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> My second reaction after receiving <i>What's So Funny?</i> as a gift was to refresh my memory about Stephen Leacock's humour. I had an old paperback copy of Penguin Books 1980 compilation of his short stories -- which is essentially all the fiction he ever wrote -- called simply </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Stephen Leacock: Selected and Introduced by Robertson Davies.</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> Leacock did write a couple of dozen non-fiction books, including on humour, history, biography and political science. Robertson Davies, a winner of the Leacock award in 1955 for the Canadian classic </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Leaven of Malice</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">, tells us in the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Leacock</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> introduction how the famous humorist, who was born in 1869 in England and died in 1944 in Canada, lived right through the middle of Queen Victoria's reign. This no doubt influenced his haughty attitude and his dry, ironic, sarcastic and mocking sense of humour.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> Born into wealth on both sides of his family, Leacock nevertheless experienced poverty, according to Davies, probably after his father abandoned the family of 11 children around 1888. This forced the young Leacock to quit his classes at the University of Toronto and enrol in college to become a high school teacher. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">As an adult Leacock was temperamental, which made it difficult for him to take orders from bosses. Luckily for him he was accepted as a professor at McGill University and subsequently, wrote Davies, he became "one of the most popular comic writers in the English-speaking world."</span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> Is he still so popular? Probably not. Even today's most highly literate readers hold an insatiable demand for instantaneous emotion, including laughter. Indeed, so many once delicate appetites for humour have become for the crude and obscene. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Leacock's subtle and tasteful irony, cynicism and wit -- especially when discussing politicians, bankers, wealthy businessmen and professors, and even potential sex -- require patience, and an appreciation of what makes Canada unique to laugh at. This should not be interpreted as anything negative about of Leacock; it would be wrong to say his brilliant work ever got old.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> In Leacock's longish story, the acclaimed 114-year-old Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, this is how the author described a man requesting from recently-elected local politician Edward Drone -- of the fictional and adorable Canadian village of Mariposa -- a job for his son: "Erasmus Archer asked [Drone] if he could get his boy Pete into one of the departments in Ottawa, and made a strong case of it by explaining that he had tried his cussedest to get Pete a job anywhere else and it was simply impossible. Not that Pete wasn't a willing boy, but he was slow -- even his father admitted it -- slow as the devil, blast him, and with no head for figures and unfortunately he'd never had the schooling to bring him on. But if Drone could get him in Ottawa, his father truly believed it would be the very place for him. Surely the Indian Department or in the Astronomical Branch of in the New Canadian Navy there must be any amount of opening for a boy like this?"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> What's So Funny's?</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> reviews all are short, an average two pages each, so it is true some of them leave you wanting more. Which I guess is somehow the point, to prompt the reader to get and read the original for complete satisfaction. Having myself read only two or three of the reviewed books -- Canadian novels are not my first choice for reading -- still, because I do love humour (I did amateur stand up comedy from 2008 to 20014) I may someday scour the library for some of the others. Among the 67 reviews, there are some of virtually unheard of writers, such as Harry Symons, Angeline Hango and Jan Hiliard; and some of famously hilarious authors, including Sondra Gotlieb, Gary Lautens, Mordechai Richler, Arthur Black, W.O. Mitchell and Stuart Maclean. There is at least one review of a discredited activist, the indomitable, prolific and controversial Farley Mowat, who is funny yes though also dishonest. (I think he liked to quote Mark Twain: Why let the truth ruin a good story.)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> Most gratifyingly, Bourgeois-Doyle reviews the odd less well known writer, including Ernest Buckler, who I would never have thought of as a humorist. As a teen, I read and totally fell in love with Buckler's 1952 novel </span><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">The Mountain and the Valley</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">, the furthest thing, as I recall, from humour that a person could possibly get. Though, according to Bourgeois-Doyle, </span><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">The Mountain</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> is "consistently ranked as one of the best novels in Canadian literature," I could never find, and believe me I tried, another person who liked the book. Even my well-read mother could not finish it. Given to me by my best friend in 1975, the book's overly verbose descriptions of Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley enchanted me, perhaps because I was a teen, or maybe because I was reminded of the rural and bucolic upbringing of my father in that same province. Whatever the reason, I will never forget the profound joy Ernest Buckler brought me at 16 years old. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> But as winner of the 1978 Leacock Medal, Buckler's </span><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Whirligig</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> does not get strong accolades from Bourgeois-Doyle, who is clearly enthusiastic about most of the books he reviews. About </span><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Whirligig,</span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> he states, the content might actually belong in a Bad Poetry Contest.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> Try as I might I could not find any reference to the intriguing pair of sketches in every chapter, a drawing of the book being reviewed and one of the author. My conclusion is that Bourgeois-Doyle himself did them. These rough illustrations are every bit as charming as six-day-old puppies. It is worth the price of the book ($20) just to enjoy these jagged diagrams.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> One final point. Bourgeois-Doyle clearly hopes his book will make it into</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Canadian classrooms: every chapter is called a lesson and ends with a writing exercise. For example, "Explain how you could get a raise from being fired from your current job." My gleaning of these interesting and simple exercises brought me to the inescapable conclusion that one does not have to read the preceding chapter to complete them. Which makes them perfect for a classroom creative writing activity!</span></span></div>
<br />
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.<br />
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-35603755946999009452015-12-27T06:43:00.001-08:002018-08-28T08:23:08.150-07:00The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration -- Ta-Nehisi CoatesFrom the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, America's incarceration rate doubled. By the mid 1990s, it had doubled again. "By 2007 it had reached a historic high of 767 people per 100,000," says author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates in the October 2015 cover story of <i>The Atlantic</i>, in an article entitled "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration." He adds that the United States "now counts for less than 5 percent of the world's inhabitants -- and about 25 percent of its incarcerated inhabitants. In 2000, one in 10 black males between the ages of 20 and 40 was incarcerated -- 10 times the rate of their white peers. In 2010, a third of all black male high-school dropouts between the ages of 20 and 39 were imprisoned, compared with only 13 percent of their white peers."<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
One could, if she were so inclined, focus on the incredible, positive statistic that a full two thirds of black high school dropouts between 20 and 39 years old are law abiding and not in prison. But that is not the focus of Coates' <i>Atlantic</i> piece. No, his aim is to convince readers that America's imprisonment rates and policies are about as bad as they get anywhere in the world, and that they cause untold harm to the black family in particular and the black community in general. <br />
I'm not the first -- or most eloquent -- writer to criticize Coates' <i>Atlantic</i> article. But I am probably the first to include a harsh critique of the magazine piece on a book review website. Why did I do this? Simply because the article is twenty-four pages long, with chapter-like sections, so it is similar to a small book.<br />
It is hard to deny that Coates -- who has been described as a feminist and who writes widely on the black community -- has put his finger on a relentless problem that needs addressing regarding America's prison system. There's always room for improvement in any gigantic national government program. And who is to argue against the notion that prison rates of black men hurt the black community, at least to some extent?<br />
The major problem is, however, Coates argues – albeit somewhat obliquely – that black imprisonment is part of a deliberate attempt on the part of law-makers to sweep the social and personal challenges faced by mostly male African-Americans under the rug, so to speak, thus transforming the criminal justice system into a sort of welfare system where so-called criminals are really just legacy victims of slavery forced against their will to become wards of the state. Prisons are merely the places where these wards are housed.<br />
Absurd? You can decide for yourself when you read the article. I for one am unconvinced, for two reasons. <br />
To begin with, the cases Coates presents, obviously to put a human face on the statistics he cites, involve individuals who either were or have been in prison for crimes like murder and armed robbery, acts for which virtually every American would demand incarceration. Given the magnitude and underlying causes of the problem he is attempting to expose, these examples are, to say the least, bizarre. The article opens, for instance, with a depressing full-page-and-a-half photo -- carefully set up -- depicting a sad elderly black woman standing in a gloomy living room holding a framed picture of her son who has been in prison for forty-one years. Why? He shot a cab driver in the back of the head when he was sixteen. Like most <i>Atlantic</i> readers, I feel sorry for her loss. But I also feel sorry for the unacknowledged loss of the family of the victim of this heinous crime, and I blame the kid who pulled the trigger for both losses – not the system.<br />
The second reason I remain unconvinced is this. If African-Americans are the deliberate targets of a policy of mass incarceration, then why is only one third of black high school dropouts between 20 and 39 years old in prison? As disturbing as that number is, there is the flip side, as noted in my second paragraph. If there really is a deliberate policy of mass incarceration as Coates implies, it has been an abject failure. <br />
Why is it that the overwhelming majority of those living in “disadvantaged” communities never commit a crime? Is it possible that they understand that, despite the disadvantages their communities face, they and they alone are responsible for their own behaviour? What leads a sixteen year old teenager to blow the head off an innocent and unsuspecting cabbie when most of his peers growing up in the same community and sharing the same disadvantages would recoil from committing such a depraved act? It seems to me that this is an important question… unanswered, and even unasked. <br />
While no system is perfect, the truth is that in America, as is the case throughout the western world to the greatest extent possible, justice is blind, including color blind. Where blind justice doesn’t exist as a matter of policy, this is invariably -- and ironically -- due to the ministrations of those who want to introduce race into the system as a means of rectifying real or imagined historical wrongs. Either way, crimes should be and almost always are decided case by case, on an individual basis. It should be no other way. All of which belies the notion of a deliberate policy of mass incarceration as posited by Coates. <br />
To his credit, throughout his article, Coates points to what he considers to be the failings of the justice system, and in so doing, he makes good and important points. He interviews individuals who inform about their lives and frightening prison experiences and generalizes correctly about indigent and severely addicted and mentally ill criminals. He also describes how upstanding blacks looking for jobs are sometimes unfairly treated by employers as though they are hardened criminals.<br />
But here too, Coates presents only one side of the story. Prisoners in general are of course not throw away people, and most prisons can actually provide a viable community and a dignified life. Long term jail sentences can result in many positive outcomes. For instance, prison can reform criminals so that they mature and become honest and caring. These new attitudes can help other prisoners and, on the outside, can help ex-cons become productive members of society, even if only as volunteers. Prison can help convicts get an education and/or job skills, making them employable on the outside. Many alcoholics and drug addicts in prison get clean and sober, allowing them to view the world -- maybe for the first time -- realistically. Some inmates turn towards spirituality and organized religion, an uplifting experience for them and others in many, many ways. <br />
At the risk of offending my guilt-ridden liberal friends and readers, black Americans are as proudly American as anyone else, including those white Americans who trace their lineage back to shores of Plymouth Rock. I believe black Americans are the embodiment of American exceptionalism, to use a curious term which describes the wonderful uniqueness of America. They fundamentally represent the ideal, and the reality, that race and ethnicity do not, and should not, be an impediment to success, however one defines that term.<br />
One need only witness the pride of African-American athletes and African-American fans who, alongside their fellow Americans of every race, close their eyes and raise their hands to their hearts as they sing their national anthem. Are they nursing their resentment over the suffering of their slave ancestors, or are they honouring a country so deeply committed to its founding principles that it fought a bloody civil war to eradicate the last vestiges of slavery? I think the latter scenario is far more likely.<br />
The only other point I'd like to address quickly is this. Paragraph one of the article begins a long description of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report "The Negro Family." Coates alleges this report can be blamed for helping launch America's era of mass incarceration. After re-reading this whole section three times, I am not able to find the specific connection between Moynihan's report and mass incarceration. Maybe Coates is referring to the report's lack of recommendations, though he does not say this. Moynihan originally advocated a guaranteed minimum income, a government jobs program, recruiting more blacks into the military, giving them better access to birth control, and integrating the suburbs. <br />
Though you can see I would argue with his focus and some of his conclusions, Coates' long piece is nevertheless probably worth reading. Well written, it includes many important statistics and a great deal of information. And if you are a conservative like myself, it is an interesting presentation of opposing analysis and opinions.<br />
<br />
To read the article, copy and paste this link into your browser:<br />
<br />
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/ Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-76294228589589752322015-11-11T13:31:00.002-08:002018-08-28T08:22:48.516-07:00The Problem of Pain - C.S. LewisPublished in 1940, <i>The Problem of Pain</i> – the first in a popular<br />
series of six volumes on Christian doctrine written by C.S. Lewis – is a<br />
short, 157-page book that packs a major philosophical punch. For a patient, curious reader -- not normally your humble reviewer -- <i>The Problem</i> is a smoothly articulated, intuitive journey through the mind of a brilliant academic, one who reverted back to his faith in his early thirties after an intense period of informed and thoughtful atheism.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Born in Belfast in 1898, Clive Staples Lewis demonstrated a penchant for<br />
independent thinking early, insisting on changing his name to Jack - a name<br />
that obviously did not stick - when he was only four years old. If there is<br />
any doubt about his superior brainpower, his illustrious career - teaching<br />
at Oxford University for more than thirty years, then at Cambridge for ten<br />
more until his death in 1963 - should stamp it out completely.<br />
My point here is that anything Lewis has to say about the “problem”<br />
of pain and God is not likely to be superficial clap-trap, so despite the<br />
fact that I am neither a Christian nor the sort of patient, curious reader<br />
his writings typically attract, I decided to give them a shot.<br />
"If God were good, He would make His creatures perfectly happy, and<br />
if He were almighty He would be able to do what he wished. But the creatures<br />
are not happy." In this brief statement, at the very beginning of Chapter<br />
Two, Lewis summarizes the issue. Put another way, he asks how a loving and<br />
powerful God can allow so much pain and suffering to be experienced by<br />
humans. <br />
Apparently, Lewis writes, "God lacks either goodness, or power, or<br />
both. This is the problem of pain in its simplest form." To up the ante<br />
slightly, he also insists that if God is not good, there would not be a<br />
problem of pain.<br />
My introduction to Lewis began when my mother read aloud to me the second<br />
in the <i>Narnia</i> series <i>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</i> when I was eight<br />
years old. Reportedly one of the best selling books of all time, it carried<br />
me into a blissful fantasy world, though the Christian allegories whizzed<br />
right past my slowly developing little Jewish girl mind. <br />
(Interestingly, <i>The Lion</i> did inspire me to start writing my own "magical<br />
doorway" book, in which my elaborately enhanced siblings and I escaped<br />
through our home's ominous grey oil furnace into a purple forest with orange<br />
birds and yellow rabbits. Almost immediately I learned that fiction writing<br />
was not in my future.)<br />
The dilemma confronted by Lewis in <i>The Problem of Pain</i> is obviously<br />
not uniquely Christian, nor was it particularly new to the twentieth century.<br />
How to reconcile pain and suffering with a just and loving God is a question<br />
that has troubled people of faith throughout history. Indeed, the Book of<br />
Job, an early inscription in the Hebrew Bible, deals with the matter in a<br />
direct and unflinching manner. <br />
Job was an unfailingly righteous man who was given every blessing a<br />
person could want: a beautiful, healthy family, a thriving business and<br />
great wealth. Gradually, through a series of tragedies, everything he<br />
cherished was taken from him until he was poor, sick and without family. His<br />
friends begged him to repent his sins, since they could not conceive of such<br />
losses occurring without sin. But Job steadfastly refused, insisting he had<br />
always been nothing but a good and righteous man. <br />
Eventually, Job confronts God, demanding that He explain why He has<br />
inflicted so much agony on a faithful and righteous servant such as him.<br />
God answers by posing His own question in what might be described as an<br />
uncharacteristically sarcastic tone: "Where were you when I created the<br />
universe?" <br />
The meaning and power packed into that one statement is nothing<br />
short of stupendous. First, God acknowledges that Job’s afflictions<br />
originate with Him, thus confirming that pain and suffering are not<br />
necessarily a punishment for any transgressions, but are nevertheless part<br />
of the master plan. Second, God asserts that His master plan – including,<br />
presumably, the role pain and suffering play in that plan – is beyond the<br />
comprehension of mere mortals who are themselves, after all, just a part of<br />
the master plan. <br />
Satisfied at least that he is not to blame for his or his family’s<br />
suffering, Job accepts with humility that there are limits to human<br />
knowledge – an important lesson in epistemology – and remains a faithful and<br />
a righteous man. His life improves. He marries again, has more children, a<br />
new business, and his wealth is restored. He is also now wiser, particularly<br />
about God, understanding that if God is good, then everything he does must<br />
also be good, including even what appears to us, from our limited<br />
perspective, to be bad. <br />
This does not mean that within the context of our human perspective<br />
we are not obliged to be concerned with the welfare of our fellow human<br />
beings and alleviate their suffering whenever and wherever possible. (We are<br />
so obliged, and that too is part of the “master plan”.) It simply means that<br />
the existence of pain and suffering as we experience and understand it is<br />
not, ultimately, incompatible with a good and just God, nor is it a very<br />
sophisticated argument against His existence.<br />
Lewis eventually comes to this same conclusion, but by taking a<br />
different route and a few side streets, most of them involving Jesus. He<br />
makes numerous discoveries along the way, including, for example, that<br />
unhappiness is inseparable from the free will with which human beings are<br />
endowed by their Creator.<br />
Lewis’ approach to addressing the problem of pain and God is<br />
methodical. He begins with a discussion of how there is obviously much<br />
suffering and other evils in the world, most or all of which have existed<br />
since prehistoric and pre-religious times. He points out how a pessimist<br />
might address the issue by asking: “If the universe is so bad, or even half<br />
so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the<br />
activity of a wise and good Creator?”<br />
Lewis says all religions which adhere to the notion of a loving and<br />
good Creator began from three fundamental elements, with Christianity having<br />
one extra. They are: the experience of the Numinous (a sense of awe or<br />
dread); morality; and the Numinous as the guardian of morality. Christianity<br />
includes Christ, who for some is the ultimate redeemer.<br />
Lewis argues that it is impossible for certain non-natural things --<br />
for example, fear of dead bodies (which, he points out, are the most<br />
harmless kind of bodies that exist) -- to have been invented without some<br />
kind of spiritual experience by pre-religious humans. From such a<br />
non-empirical experience, Lewis deduces, humans must have learned about<br />
spirituality through a non-empirical source, namely, God. Thus religion,<br />
Lewis suggests, is born alongside such non-natural human elements as awe,<br />
dread and morality.<br />
Awe and dread are connected in the sense that humans feel awe, not<br />
as normal or natural fear -- of for example a tiger in the next room -- but<br />
as a religious sense of overwhelming spirituality, or Numinous, which he<br />
defines as "an object which brings about a sense of dread within us." It is<br />
impossible to have this feeling "from the facts of the universe" he argues.<br />
Moreover, it is impossible to be too smart or too intelligent to overcome<br />
Numinous; hence, I would conclude, the countless numbers of intelligent<br />
thinkers who continue their dedication to organized religions. <br />
Morality, the other element that exceeds the reality of the natural<br />
world, Lewis refers to as a feeling of guilt, or "oughtness" which, like<br />
awe, can never be explained by the physical universe. "Morality," he says,<br />
"like Numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be<br />
'given' in the facts of experience." Going one step further, these various<br />
moralities -- as part of different religions -- are both approved and<br />
disobeyed.<br />
Lewis insists that morality has nothing to do with the natural world<br />
and that, like awe and dread, must have somehow come from the spiritual<br />
realm that was revealed. His insistence that religion combines awe/dread and<br />
morality is coupled with his curiosity about why this is so, since they do<br />
not connect naturally.<br />
"The actual behaviour of that universe which the Numinous haunts<br />
bears no resemblance to the behaviour morality demands of us," he says. "The<br />
one seems wasteful, ruthless and unjust; the other enjoins upon us the<br />
opposite qualities." Somehow, in the assembling of religions by God and<br />
humans, these disjointed elements are integrated. <br />
On God's freedom, Lewis says, it "consists in the fact that no cause<br />
other than Himself produces His acts and no external obstacle impedes them -<br />
that His own goodness is the root from which they all grow and His own<br />
omnipotence the air in which they all flower.” Yet, the nagging question<br />
persists: How can this omnipotent and wise God allow pain to exist in His<br />
world?<br />
Lewis explores God's intrinsic goodness: “If God is wiser than we His<br />
judgment must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in<br />
His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil." It sounds almost like<br />
we've come full circle back to the Book of Job -- a part of the Bible Lewis<br />
mentions more than once -- but that does not mean that <i>The Problem of Pain</i><br />
should be put down after a few chapters. The book is replete with one<br />
fascinating insight after another into both the human condition and how<br />
religions began, so it is a must for anyone who has an urge to discover such<br />
mysteries.<br />
<br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-80250405673425236172015-09-25T07:47:00.000-07:002018-08-28T08:21:36.593-07:00Climate Change Debate - Four BooksEvery time I see a new book denouncing climate change -- a.k.a. man made global warming, or MMGW -- I jump at it. The subject fascinates me. How, I wonder, can reality continue to be rejected. In all of human history, I'm quite sure, there has never been a more contentious scientific debate. Not even the most impassioned flat earth campaigns could match the recalcitrance and quantity of falsehoods emanating from the MMGW controversy. Some well-known believers have even dared go on record suggesting "deniers" be imprisoned. How do we stop this insanity? With each new published book I fantasize that finally, the alarmists will be forced to admit defeat and come down to pleasant, cool earth.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Yes, the issue is difficult. In fact, it's next to impossible for non-scientists -- including failed presidential candidate Al Gore -- to completely understand the technical facts. Deciphering truth from the jillions of units of misinformation being churned out -- often from computers that can't actually distinguish a climate crisis from a dating website -- is futile for a lay person. <br />
Also, the contradictions are legion. Writer A: Last year was the hottest on record! The polar bears are going extinct! A full 97 percent of the world's scientists are in consensus that global warming is destroying the planet! Writer B: There has been a steady decline in global temperature for 16 straight years! There are more polar bears than Mother Nature can feed properly! Science is about reliable testing and retesting; consensus is for opinions and politicians!<br />
Who do we trust? A good place to start might be the eminent scientists, climatologists and other Ph.D.s who make the soundest arguments, those found in Mark Steyn's latest book, <em>A Disgrace to the Profession: The World's Scientists -- in their own words -- on Michael Mann, His Hockey Stick, and their Damage to Science, Volume I.</em> Steyn, who compiled and edited the chapters, is a well-known author (of four previous books), journalist and defender of free speech.<br />
It is important to mention the professional relationship between Steyn and Mann, in case you aren't aware of it. The latter is suing the former and several others in the District of Columbia Superior Court for defamation. Steyn et al allegedly libeled Mann by allegedly calling the Hockey Stick graph allegedly -- I am being abundantly careful -- fraudulent. Steyn regularly updates readers of his blog on how the case, started in 2012, is dragging on interminably.<br />
Michael Mann needs no introduction. He is the Yale-and-Berkley-educated physicist and mathematician, now a climatologist at Penn State University. He is also the inventor/creator/discoverer of the (in)famous hockey stick graph, what Steyn calls "the single most influential graph in climate science. It leapt from the pages of a scientific journal to the posters and slides of the transnational summits, to official government pamphlets selling the Kyoto Protocol, to a starring role on the big screen in an Oscar winning movie [An Inconvenient Truth], to the classrooms of every schoolhouse in the western world." Also, a version of the hockey stick featured prominently in the influential United Nation's 2001 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.<br />
The hockey stick graph purports to demonstrate that, for about 900 years -- represented by the long handle lying flat -- the world experienced almost no climate variation. Then, the blade of the stick shoots straight up for about 120 years, from the start of the industrial revolution. The blade also signifies a coinciding increase in atmospheric CO2 -- that would be the critical plant food we exhale with every breath -- which is also ostensibly threatening the planet's existence. (Despite what some alarmists say, CO2 is not pollution.)<br />
Their message: Industrialization -- that magnificent, massive engine of change that has done more to uplift humankind out of the virtual stone age than the wheel and the electric nail polish drier combined -- is killing us by releasing too much CO2, which is heating the atmosphere, and causing MMGW. The only problem is, the hockey stick has been almost completely discredited, which is the fundamental point of Steyn's book.<br />
To educate readers, Steyn quotes about 150 Ph.D. scientists from every corner of the earth. He even uses the statements of a few liberal scientists who actually believe in MMGW, but who have no trouble denouncing the hockey stick. <br />
Unfortunately, Steyn quotes fired controversial University of Ottawa physics professor Dr. Denis Rancourt, who was sanctioned for, among other misadventures, awarding every student in his class of 23 an A+ after one semester. But the rest of the scientists in the book are obviously exceptional scholars, with so much integrity they are barely known outside professional circles.<br />
The 12 chapters are each organized into ten or so bite-sized sections, which highlight an individual scientist's criticism of the hockey stick. Steyn's helpful and often hilarious insights and comments are peppered throughout.<br />
Steyn at one point complains that writing out the credentials of each contributor was cumbersome. It is easy to see why. Almost every name is followed by a full 100-word paragraph of accreditation. Here is one, of average length: The late Dr. Jerry D. Mahlman: "Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Princeton. Senior Research Associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Pioneer in the use of computational models top examine the interaction between atmospheric chemistry and physics and one of the first scientists to raise concerns about ozone depletion. Recipient of the Rossby Research Medal of the American Meteorology Society, the US Government's Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive and Gold Medal of the US Department of Commerce."<br />
Several of the hockey stick's most obvious problems are easy to grasp. The 900-year long handle completely ignores two indisputable eras, the Medieval Warm Period, from about 950 to 1250 A.D. and the later Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850. For proxy measures, Mann and his team used only a few trees, including one California bristlecone pine, which is certainly old, but whose rings cannot determine climate. As stated by Dr. Jeffrey Foss, author of the 2009 book <em>Beyond Environmentalism: A philosophy of Nature</em>: "tree rings are not a reliable proxy for temperature." After more critical analysis, Foss concluded, succinctly: "wrong tree, wrong proxy, wrong location, wrong method."<br />
You will love the 12 chapter titles, written in Steyn's proverbial acerbic inflection, among them: "Mann is an island," "Mann of the hour," "Mann o'war," "Mann overboard," and my personal favorite, "Mann boobs." <br />
<br />
Ever so briefly, my next book review is of <em>Climate Change: The Facts.</em> It was put together by members of Australia's Institute of Public Affairs and edited by Alan Moran, an official in the royally-named Victorian Department of Minerals and Energy. Promoted constantly, along with <em>A Disgrace</em>, by Steyn on his website, <em>Climate Change</em> comprises 22 essays on the science, politics and economics of MMGW. As one of the contributing writers, Steyn says he is "honored to be alongside some of the most eminent scientists and some of the most rollicking commentators."<br />
Others include climate change denier blogger Anthony Watts, author and expert on the IPCC Donna Laframboise, English columnist and novelist James Dellingpole, and Cato Institute director of the study of science Patrick Michaels.<br />
The sixth chapter called "Forecasting Rain" has a particularly interesting take on the why it's so hard to make the international paradigm shift to "no MMGW." The writers -- Queensland University researchers John Abbot and Jennifer Marhohasy -- first point out MMGW's lack of practical utility yet its tremendous political value. They continue: MMGW "is a theory that accords with the mood of our time, the zeitgeist, which assumes that man's greed is despoiling the earth and that political action based on scientific consensus can save the planet.... This is why credible scientific rebuttals fail to achieve its overthrow." <br />
Unlike <em>A Disgrace</em>, this book includes full essays and comprises three major sections -- the science of climate change; the economics and politics of climate change; and the climate change movement -- in 20 chapters. Though overly complicated in some places, the book appears, in general, to leave no fossil unturned on the thorny topic of MMGW. If you finish this book and still believe in the alarmists' absurdity -- that the climate is changing rapidly and dangerously -- then you may not see the light on this issue until Greenland is finally forced to change its name.<br />
<br />
Even more briefly, two older but excellent books might as well be mentioned here. I read them a few years ago and they both struck me as reliable, intellectually consistent and full of common sense. One is <em>Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam</em>, by Brian Sussman, a former science reporter and a well known television-turned-radio personality in uber-liberal San Francisco. Reportedly he enjoys irritating the sophisticated elites in that city, and is wildly successful as a result.<br />
Published in 2010 by WorldNetDaily in Washington, D.C., the 224-page book is as satisfying as it is coherent, entertaining and informative. <em>Climategate</em> offers up a simple, compelling theory: MMGW is a deception of the highest order, and all those high profile advocates are just in it for their own advantage. They want to re-engineer society according to their own vision and become extremely wealthy in the process. Sussman reveals that it was his simmering anger at this chicanery that prompted him to write the book. Yes, he names names.<br />
Besides covering all the MMGW topics, he also holds lowly misunderstood coal up to the light. He praises the raw material -- still a major source of power for some 48 percent of homes worldwide -- saying it is now an abundant, clean and cheap energy source. He says, "coal should have a bright future in North America" since "soot, sulfur and nitrogen oxides are no longer problems" in coal's production and use in the U.S. In his characteristic upbeat tone, Sussman explains, with certainty, that even coal-related fly ash is not a health concern to humans.<br />
<br />
One final book I recommend is:<em> The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism</em>, by Christopher Horner, a Washington lawyer, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and an outspoken critic of the science of MMGW. Almost 350 pages, and quite humorous throughout, <em>The Guide</em> deals with just about everything on MMGW. But Horner takes particularly harsh aim at the leading alarmists, who are almost invariably on the left. He exposes radical environmentalists' manipulative methods for getting their way, their way being a complete stranglehold on society. If driving your car is causing global warming and air problems in Africa and Europe, then only world government can save us all. Indeed, MMGW is the eternal justification for endless government growth. It's a liberal's greatest aspiration come true. <br />
-------------<br />
<div>
UPDATE</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The indomitable Mark Steyn writes about my above reviews and the ensuing ferocious debate on his blog. You can read his column by clicking the link below.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.steynonline.com/7231/chance-of-precipitating-the-end-of-your-career-97" moz-do-not-send="true">http://www.steynonline.com/7231/chance-of-precipitating-the-end-of-your-career-97</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
Thanks Mark! And thank to all my followers too!</div>
</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get these on Amazon.ca.<br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com168tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-65783220391550768712015-08-21T08:47:00.002-07:002018-08-28T08:17:45.486-07:00The Hand that Rocks the World: An Inquiry Into Truth, Power and Gender - David Shackleton,<em>The Hand that Rocks the World: An Inquiry Into Truth, Power and Gender,</em> by Ottawa's well-known men's advocate David Shackleton, is one ambitious undertaking. Shackleton’s goal is to lay the groundwork for a new social science discipline, one that will guide humanity to truth and wisdom. According to Shackleton, once this innovative psychosocial regimen is established and put into practice, it will lead to -- among other previously unattainable accomplishments -- the eradication of the psychological blocks that prevent men and women from understanding and accepting one another other fully. Applied properly, the new social science will ensure both sides learn precisely how the two groups can fit snugly together into the same world, and live happily ever after.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Is such a utopia possible, or even desirable? Probably not, but that doesn't mean someone can't try, and Shackleton, an engineer by training, gets an A+ for effort. Indeed, in working with extremely complicated issues -- including, among others, evil, truth, love, wisdom and spirituality -- his is a gallant, maybe even heroic, attempt.<br />
Shackleton integrates his own -- sometimes quite traumatic -- experiences with his extravagant, "dualistic balance" theories on human behaviour and thought, as well as his reasonable but not entirely original hypothesis about four-stage psychic development from denial to enhanced knowledge and consciousness. The latter scheme is not dissimilar to what Alcoholics Anonymous calls a spiritual awakening after years of denial, a system he also credits.<br />
But after 346 pages of dense, difficult reading, this reader remains unconvinced, and even a little pained that after all that work, no hitherto unknown psycho-social truths are uncovered. His dualism idea looks eerily similar -- though not precisely like -- Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis model. Dualism itself, Shackleton admits, has origins as far back as Plato and takes substantive but useless form with Descartes, though the three hypotheses do of course comprise different elements. <br />
Shackleton begins his book by insisting that we, as humans, must seek out and embrace truth no matter how much pain it causes. Sounds good, but then he goes on to write on page twelve that: "It is clear that we need this understanding urgently -- our inability to comprehend and therefore manage our own behaviour and that of our societies has led us to the brink of disaster. Environmental destruction, climate change, economic collapse, fossil fuel depletion, overpopulation -- any of these could lead to devastation on a scale we haven't seen in centuries, if ever, and all of them together represent a most urgent call for us to wise up, to grow up, to begin to get a handle on our own behaviour on this planet. To begin, in short, to understand ourselves."<br />
Whoa! Wait a minute! Climate change? The man- made variety -- to which I am sure he is referring -- is an ideological assertion, not an empirical, that is to say demonstrable, fact. Serious demographers don’t talk about over-population anymore – instead, they talk about population decline. Environmental destruction can mean anything to anyone. Where is it happening? From what I read, we are steadily improving in every single area of environmental concern. Economic collapse is also meaningless. Greece, North Korea, even backwards and corrupt African countries, have functioning economies, albeit not conforming to the highest practices and standards. Moreover, the Western world is nowhere near falling to those levels. And we are not in imminent danger of running out of fossil fuels. It may happen someday, but not for centuries, by which time mankind will have perfected the next generation of mass energy-producing technology.<br />
Given the absence of facts in the above quote from <em>The Hand,</em> one wonders how much genuine truth-seeking Shackleton actually engages in.<br />
Perhaps the most striking illustration of Shackleton’s failure to adopt his own professed standards of intellectual rigour is his assertion that Hitler, Stalin and McCarthy all belong in the same category. My reaction was, Really? McCarthy on par with Hitler and Stalin? McCarthy may have been a buffoon and a drunkard, but serious historians (as opposed to ideological polemicists masquerading as historians) all agree that, personality flaws notwithstanding, McCarthy was almost completely right about communists in the U.S. government. More importantly, unlike Hitler and Stalin, he never killed anyone, let alone orchestrated the mass murder of millions. Shackleton’s comparison isn’t just absurd, it’s self-evidently so, causing one to question – once more – how serious a “truth-seeker” he really is.<br />
In Shackleton's best chapters, he is discussing the marvellous attributes of and positive differences between men and women. In particular, I was brought to tears when he described how, as the Titanic sank, one of the richest men in the world put on his best clothes to die, as he watched the women of even the lowest classes row away to safety. The three middle chapters on evil are definitely food for thought. In one section, he goes to some lengths to show that both men and women suffer from violence in society, yet women unfairly and irrationally receive 98.2 percent of the attention from media and elsewhere. In fact, worldwide, more than 75 percent of homicide victims are male. Where's the outcry? <br />
I can get on board when Shackleton states that modern feminism is evil and hurtful to both genders, and I agree that the best method for change is to approach feminists and policy-makers without anger and recriminations and with a whole heart desiring of fundamental and common sense transformations. I don't think I am yet quite as serene as he is to make generous offers of conciliation. <br />
There is a chapter on abortion wherein the author purports to apply his theory. I will leave that to other readers to decide for themselves how well it works.<br />
In the end, I can't get past the troubling fact that someone who claims to be interested in pursuing truth is jumping off from positions that are so obviously unsupported by facts. And in all honesty, I would have put the book down after fifteen pages, but I promised the writer I would do this review. <br />
<br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-17110195298030090842015-08-07T12:01:00.001-07:002018-08-28T08:17:04.582-07:00Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town - Jon KrakauerJon Krakauer's most recent book, <em>Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town,</em> published in 2015, helped this reader (your humble book reviewer) to partially understand the rape culture that has gripped university and college campuses across North America. I first came across the term "rape culture" in 2014 when the University of Ottawa suspended its hockey team after a complaint of sexual assault involving some of its players. The accusation was commenced while the team was playing against Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. A week later, a student union rep got on the radio and started ranting against the "rape culture" in universities across Canada.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>My first reaction was to laugh. "How could there be a rape culture at schools? That is absurd," I protested. On my Masters swim team -- which happens to practice at the U of O -- some of us who work out in the afternoons mocked the notion of a rape culture: "Oh, I am sooooo scared," I play acted, holding my curled fingers to my teeth, as my team mates laughed. "Please, please, don't rape me!"<br />
Then I was slapped in the face, metaphorically of course. Watching Dr. Phil one afternoon -- yes, I am a big fan -- I found myself eating crow as he interviewed a crying, remorseful Cory Batey, one of two 21-year-old Vanderbilt University football players convicted of raping an unconscious female student in the men's dorm. (The two players were granted a new trial due to jury bias and released from prison on bail in June this year.)<br />
It took very little internet research to learn that sexual assault just by football players in colleges and universities is up an astonishing 300% in only the last five years.<br />
Jessica Luther, an American freelance journalist, activist and feminist sports enthusiast, is writing a book on the college rape culture, specifically sexual assault and college football. She blogs on "Power Forward: At the Intersection of Sports and Culture," where she is putting together a wide-ranging list of all known and reported rapes on campuses in the U.S. that are related to college football. She explains: "I am trying to create as comprehensive a list as I can. A big part of the reason for this is that whenever you try to argue that there are patterns in behavior in our society, people demand that you give them every single last example before they will even begin to listen to your argument.... So I’m being pre-emptive on that count."<br />
According to her list so far, in all of the 1970s, there were about five college football-related sexual assaults. In the 1980s, there were nine such rapes. In the 1990s, there were 27. From 2000 to 2009, 25. Between 2010 and March of this year -- in less than half the time -- there were 43. And remember, these numbers are only related to college football. Statistically, college football players cannot represent, among entire student bodies, the only perpetrators involved in this exponential increase in crime.<br />
Krakauer's book jacket notes that the U.S. federal justice department investigated some 350 sexual assaults in Missoula, which the local police had dealt with, between January 2008 and May 2012. Unfortunately, the narrative continues, most of the assaults were mishandled by both local and university authorities, a typical scenario throughout the country. Moreover, the justice department released a report stating that about 110,000 women between 18 and 24 are raped in the U.S. each year.<br />
When the blinds are lifted, it is clear that rape can be a messy, complicated and controversial circumstance, that is, when it does not involve a child or a stranger. In such cases where rape is committed by someone well-known to the adult victim, chaos looms large, involving such factors as alcohol and drugs, misunderstood cues, aggressive flirting, instant changes of hearts and minds, reckless acts, and sometimes brazen lies.<br />
In the book, Krakauer is very much the victims' advocate. It is clear as day, though, that each woman he focuses on who was raped behaved in an unadvisable, even foolhardy, way. But sadly, their behaviour is perfectly acceptable among most young people today. Indeed, in each case, the young woman's reckless actions certainly lead to the dangerous situation. For instance, one victim agreed to sleep in the same bed as the alleged rapist, and both were highly intoxicated. She said she expected no intimacy, but her bed mate disagreed, insisting there was consent.<br />
Of course, irresponsible behaviour or not, it's totally wrong to sexually assault a person. I adopted the mindset that the girls were faultless, and thus I was able to happily devour Krakaur's marvellously written book just the way it was presented. As we know from his previous books -- especially <em>Into Thin Air, </em>his account of treks and deaths on Mount Everest in 1996 -- he has a way of totally captivating the reader. In<i> Missoula</i>, in his exceptional prose, he meticulously details the specific rapes by different young men that took place in and around the University of Montana, including one against a childhood friend by a Grizzly linebacker from the beloved U of M team, one against an acquaintance and one by the Grizzlies' star quarterback against an almost girlfriend. No stone is left unturned, both before and after the rape incidents. The trial at the end of the book will have you biting your nails while you teeter at the edge of your seat.<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-91600508498687218162015-07-13T14:48:00.001-07:002018-08-28T08:16:32.050-07:00Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now - Ayaan Hirsi Ali Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a gutsy, smart and beautiful woman. Moral, sincere and extremely courageous, she wowed the world in 2007 with the publication of her life story in <em>Infidel: My Life</em>, a New York Times runaway bestseller. <em>Infidel</em> chronicles her extraordinary and terrifying personal experiences from the time she was a child growing up as a Muslim in clan-based, war-torn and impoverished Mogadishu. The victim of female genital mutilation, she survived family beatings, war and famine under several different African and Middle-Eastern dictators. Covered from head to toe, she lived as an ultra-religious young woman in Kenya. Ultimately, she fled to Holland as a refugee to avoid an arranged marriage. And these were her easy trials!<br />
<a name='more'></a>Her next book, <em>Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey through the Clash of Civilizations</em> - which I did not read - continues the story of her challenging life as an ex-Muslim. Hirsi Ali herself - who now lives and works in the United States and is a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government - at one time called <em>Nomad</em> her most provocative book, probably because in it she ostensibly encourages moderate Muslims to convert to Christianity. A few years on, after observing the Arab Spring, she reportedly rescinded this view, and even revoked her stand that Islam is beyond redemption.<br />
Enter <em>Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now</em>, her third and possibly most controversial published work. If her earlier stories angered the devout Muslim world -- and helped precipitate her needing 24/7 physical security -- this 270-page book is probably sending her enemies into paroxysms of rage. In terms of audacity, <em>Heretic </em>is off the charts. But in terms of scholarship, and even as a polemic, it fails the simplest tests. I am left feeling that Hirsi Ali should stick to writing her personal memoirs.<br />
My problems begin with the notion of reform, the theme of the book. To me it seems someone advocating reform should be able to find a few positive things to say as a starting point. From my reading, Hirsi Ali does not say one upbeat word about Islam, its history, its holy book or its most observant, non-violent - whom she calls Medina - adherents. In other words, not only is the book - appropriately - a full blown denunciation of extreme, radical Islam. It is a general put down of all run-of-the mill Islamic viewpoints and practices as well. <br />
Among the five major changes Hirsi Ali calls for are: "Ensure that Muhammad and the [Koran] are open to interpretation and criticism;" end the "supremacy" of Sharia law over secular law; "end the practice of 'commanding right and forbidding wrong;' and abandon the call for jihad." I am no expert on Islamic theology, but these ideas are clearly fundamental to the religion, and severely altering any one of them substantially would blow a massive hole in basic Islam.<br />
Hirsi Ali also takes on the doctrine that life on earth is temporary and therefore subordinate to the afterlife, and that only Allah is permanent. Another core teaching in the Koran, this is something that all devout Muslims believe. There is nothing inherently violent or dangerous in such a conviction, yet Hirsi Ali insists that it too be removed from the faith system.<br />
Thus, hers is not a call for reform. It is a call for the complete gutting of what makes Islam a religion in the first place. After all, if there is no Allah, if the Koran does not represent Allah’s word, or if Mohammed was not a true prophet, then what’s the point? The whole religion is a hoax with no legitimate claim to authority. One does not need to be a theologian to see, without making any value judgements, that Hirsi Ali is essentially calling for nothing less than the ruinous dismantling of the 1400 year-old religion.<br />
Whether she advocates genuine constructive reform of Islam or its wholesale reinvention after expunging its distinctive and definitive doctrines, it is clear that Hirsi Ali believes the religion is hopeless in its present form. She may be right, but if so, how does she explain the fact that the many -- the majority -- of Muslims in the world live in relatively secular, more or less pluralistic, societies, are not violent, and yet believe deeply in their faith, however they define it? Hirsi Ali herself makes this important observation, but seems unconcerned – if not unaware – that in doing so she is undermining her own thesis. <br />
Like Hirsi Ali and all reasonable people, I despise and fear Muslim terrorists, and places like Saudi Arabia scare me to death. I am not one of those apologists proclaiming Islam to be a religion of peace. I am, however, a thinking human being and as such, I wish “experts” would spend a bit more time exploring this peaceful/violent contradiction. As for Hirsi Ali, I find her lack of curiosity, strangely, curious. <br />
Another problem is that the author seems to be confusing the word "reform" with “dilute” or “weaken”. The Protestant Reformation, to which she refers continually, was hardly a liberal event (or series of events). On the contrary, the movement Martin Luther precipitated served to harden and strengthen Christians’ attachment to the Bible and to Christ, not loosen it. There can be no comparison with what she is calling for with respect to Islam. Protestant reformers of old were no more interested in making Christianity weaker or easier to follow than Henry VIII was interested in staying married to Anne Boleyn.<br />
And the principle of <em>cuius regio, eius religio</em> (part of the Treaty of Augsburg of 1555), to which Hirsi Ali also refers, did not, as she implies, lead to the separation of church and state. On the contrary, it reinforced the symbiotic relationship between church and state by explicitly conferring on governments the absolute right to dictate the religious beliefs and practices of those living within their individual jurisdictions without interference from other governments. National sovereignty, not religious liberty, was the great innovation embodied in <em>cuius regio, eius religio.</em><br />
Finally, Hirsi Ali, who has rejected her faith completely, is not the sort of expert one would expect to be advising religious adherents on how to run their faith programs. Generally, fundamental religious changes arise, usually gradually, from the experiences, ideas and debates of those practicing within the movement. This has been the case over and over through the centuries with developments in both Christianity and Judaism, the two other major world religions besides Islam that base their beginnings in the Hebrew Bible. It would be unthinkable – not to mention unreasonable – for the Pope to turn to an "apostate" for advice on Roman Catholic doctrine, which is among the kindest names being used to describe Hirsi Ali by her enemies.<br />
That is not to say that she should not write her opinions on how to "reform" Islam. Free speech for everyone, I say. But let's not pretend her advice is being taken seriously by even the most peaceful mucky mucks of the Islamic world. <br />
What can I conclude? That Hirsi Ali's writing talents are amazing; her religious advice abilities, not so much.<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7952984562431736866.post-43651697938878985742015-06-16T12:31:00.002-07:002018-08-28T08:15:56.201-07:00Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths about Marijuana - Kevin SabetPublished in 2013, it would be a mistake for present day governments to ignore <i>Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths about Marijuana.</i> It was written by Kevin A. Sabet, an assistant professor of psychiatry -- though not a medical doctor, his detractors remind us -- and Director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and of Oxford University, where he received his Doctorate in social policy, Sabet is enemy number one to the frenzied, far-flung and demanding hurry-up-and-legalize-marijuana industry.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Sabet -- who has served both Republican and Democratic federal administrations -- is not an hysterical opponent to the pro drug group; indeed, he does not even reject every form of lawful weed. This more aptly describes your humble book reviewer. No, Sabet makes allowances for all kinds of sanctioned toking, including for certain medical illnesses, as well as by making laws regarding possession and small-time dealing completely inconsequential. So it is simply ludicrous that he draws such vehement reactions. More on that later.<br />
Though rarely acknowledged, marijuana policy is always an ideological issue, with both sides usually having non-mysterious emotional ties to their position. Is it any surprise that the majority of those who favour legalization have smoked up since they were teenagers? Is it surprising that many anti-legalization zealots have suffered due to addiction or addicted relatives? Thus, it is praiseworthy that Sabet appears to remain relatively neutral on the subject, as he successfully rises to the challenge of explaining why weed is no better for society than cigarettes, and may be worse.<br />
<em> Reefer Sanity's</em> seven myths include: Marijuana is harmless and non-addictive; Smoked or eaten, marijuana is medicine; Countless people are behind bars simply for smoking marijuana; The legality of alcohol and tobacco strengthen the case for legal marijuana; Legal marijuana will solve the government's budgetary problems; Portugal and Holland provide successful models of legalization, and; Prevention, intervention and treatment are doomed to fail -- so why try?<br />
In disproving these myths, <em>Reefer Sanity</em> -- which I read as an e-book -- is carefully argued. The evidence is backed up by the most recent and scrupulous research and professional opinions. Many scientific medical clinical trials are cited in both the text and almost 250 footnotes In fact, some of the reading is quite laborious.<br />
In dealing with the first myth, Sabet lists numerous former users, scientists, health experts and others -- including editorial board members -- who have thoroughly changed their positions with respect to marijuana's affects on the human mind and body, because of recent research. In 1997, Britain's The Independent launched an ultimately successful campaign to decriminalize the drug. "If only we had known then what we can reveal today," began an apology editorial in the paper ten years later. "There is growing proof that skunk [high potency marijuana] causes mental illness and psychosis." <br />
The notion that grass is the same potency as it always was -- a common argument by the pro-drug side -- is soundly crushed in this book. Sabet explains that, though roughly the same number of people smoke up as did in 1991, emergency room visits relating to the noxious substance had increased nearly twenty-five fold by 2008, from 16,251 to 374,000 respectively.<br />
From the pro-legalization group, there is no end to the condemnation, name-calling and outright vilification being hurled at Sabet personally. He's been called everything from an idiot, a monster, a liar and a non-physician, to -- and this might be the worst -- a "headline-grabbing right-winger" obsessed with "moral entrepreneurship."<br />
Take writer and physician Sunil Kumar Aggarwal, for example. He is supported by countless marijuana proponents and addicts, as evidenced in the lengthy comments section of his 2013 on-line article, entitled "5 Biggest Lies from Anti-Pot Propagandist Kevin Sabet." The piece is published on the "progressive, liberal, activist" news website AlterNet.<br />
After castigating Sabet for his Oxford degree, Aggarwal -- identified as a New York-based physician -- blasts him for co-founding Project SAM (Smart Approaches for Marijuana), an organization dedicated, according to its website, to science-based marijuana education and sound public health dope policy. <br />
The five myths in Aggarwal's article include: There’s no need to smoke it; The plant has dangerous unknown elements; Marijuana use stunts intelligence; Today’s pot is much stronger than it used to be; and 1 out of 6 youngsters get hooked. Here is how he deals with the last myth: "Eager to diagnose, the studies [used by Sabet] ignore the impact that aggressive policing of cannabis has on users. The illegality of marijuana not only affects what subjects will be willing to disclose to researchers, but the stress of engaging in behavior that can lead to 'social death' -- suspension, arrest, loss of job, benefits, etc. -- may be more psychologically trying than the drug itself."<br />
If that last statement sounds reasonable to you, you must read <i>Reefer Sanity.</i> <br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.</div>
<br />Lynne's Likeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10286133367624771941noreply@blogger.com1