[quote]Waittz wrote:
Atlas Shrugged and if there is a liberal equivelant for fiction. [/quote]
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
Never mind, you wanted an equivalent and Dr. Seuss was superior.
1 Like
[quote]Waittz wrote:
Atlas Shrugged and if there is a liberal equivelant for fiction. [/quote]
There really isn’t one. A combination of Grapes of Wrath, Mockingbird, and the New Testament, probably.
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]Waittz wrote:
Atlas Shrugged and if there is a liberal equivelant for fiction. [/quote]
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
Never mind, you wanted an equivalent and Dr. Seuss was superior. [/quote]
Damned near pissed myself in laughter. Well done.
The Bible. As many religious threads get brought up and criticisms of Judeo-Christian theology and Christian Theism get criticized based on out of context passages from the Bible, I think it’s incumbent for those discussions that the participants have actually read the book and know what it actually says.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]H factor wrote:
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
[quote]H factor wrote:
Constitution and Bill of Rights should be a no brainer, but reading them doesn’t really “prepare” you for some of the arguments surrounding their meaning. If you haven’t studied those both go find your history teachers and punch them in the face. [/quote]
On this I would recommend something read by every first-year law student in the USA:
Emmanuel Law Outline, US Constitution
It’s easy to read, factual, no agenda. It’s like a Cliff’s Notes, but for law students.
By far the easiest method to use to understand the BOR and Constiution.[/quote]
Will look into it, thanks. [/quote]
Going to second that. Sounds like a really good source.[/quote]
You can generally find them used at a local law school book store for less than $10. I bet ebay has them, too.
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
1984 - Orwell - Very good social commentary as it pertains to blind political allegiance. Every time I see some wingnut on facebook or the news talking about jailing political opponents of theirs I cannot help but think of this book
[/quote]
Pretty sure this was read as a “how to” guide by the current admin.
[/quote]
1984 is about the control of information and manipulation of the language to create truths since things are defined by what they are called. GWB did this before Obama was in office and GWB was far from the first to do it.
An invasion and occupation is named: Operation Iraqi FREEDOM.
Enemy soldiers have certain rights. Terrorists, who are criminals, have certain rights. A new term was created (or an old term redefined), enemy combatant, to circumvent those rights.
A law that gives the govt greater powers at the expense of private citizens’ rights is called the PATRIOT Act.
Then you have the WMD fiasco and something that could have been pulled right from the pages of 1984, “Mission Accomplished.”
Neither Obama nor GWB invented Newspeak. Don’t let your bias control your perception. That’s how you end up manipulated by political rhetoric. [/quote]
Affordable Care Act
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
1984 - Orwell - Very good social commentary as it pertains to blind political allegiance. Every time I see some wingnut on facebook or the news talking about jailing political opponents of theirs I cannot help but think of this book
[/quote]
Pretty sure this was read as a “how to” guide by the current admin.
[/quote]
1984 is about the control of information and manipulation of the language to create truths since things are defined by what they are called. GWB did this before Obama was in office and GWB was far from the first to do it.
An invasion and occupation is named: Operation Iraqi FREEDOM.
Enemy soldiers have certain rights. Terrorists, who are criminals, have certain rights. A new term was created (or an old term redefined), enemy combatant, to circumvent those rights.
A law that gives the govt greater powers at the expense of private citizens’ rights is called the PATRIOT Act.
Then you have the WMD fiasco and something that could have been pulled right from the pages of 1984, “Mission Accomplished.”
Neither Obama nor GWB invented Newspeak. Don’t let your bias control your perception. That’s how you end up manipulated by political rhetoric. [/quote]
Affordable Care Act[/quote]
Israeli Settlements.
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
1984 - Orwell - Very good social commentary as it pertains to blind political allegiance. Every time I see some wingnut on facebook or the news talking about jailing political opponents of theirs I cannot help but think of this book
[/quote]
Pretty sure this was read as a “how to” guide by the current admin.
[/quote]
1984 is about the control of information and manipulation of the language to create truths since things are defined by what they are called. GWB did this before Obama was in office and GWB was far from the first to do it.
An invasion and occupation is named: Operation Iraqi FREEDOM.
Enemy soldiers have certain rights. Terrorists, who are criminals, have certain rights. A new term was created (or an old term redefined), enemy combatant, to circumvent those rights.
A law that gives the govt greater powers at the expense of private citizens’ rights is called the PATRIOT Act.
Then you have the WMD fiasco and something that could have been pulled right from the pages of 1984, “Mission Accomplished.”
Neither Obama nor GWB invented Newspeak. Don’t let your bias control your perception. That’s how you end up manipulated by political rhetoric. [/quote]
Affordable Care Act[/quote]
Israeli Settlements. [/quote]
True, it’s stupid to call a suburb of a Jewish town in a Jewish country a “settlement.”
I guess the Bronx is a a NYC Settlement.
[quote]pat wrote:
The Bible. As many religious threads get brought up and criticisms of Judeo-Christian theology and Christian Theism get criticized based on out of context passages from the Bible, I think it’s incumbent for those discussions that the participants have actually read the book and know what it actually says. [/quote]
I agree but probably for different reasons 
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Gear idea for a thread, Aragorn!
The stuff on the Constitution and the BOR and the personal letters of the Founding Fathers goes without saying. Absolutely essential. There is something about reading things that they wrote. Like they’re rubbing off on you. Not sure if it’s been mentioned, but I’ll add the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Short, ridiculously candid, and absolutely spilling over with wit and wisdom and comedy. Good portrait of what it means to live the life of a statesman philosopher, while still finding the time to chase French prostitutes through the streets of Paris.
I also vigorously second 1984, and add in Animal Farm. The big problem with almost all “paranoid fiction” is that it is written by paranoid people, and paranoid people tend to be addled bundles of neurotic cowardice. It’s usually a mess, in other words. But prose does not get more clear-minded than under Orwell’s pen, making this one of those very rare cases of intelligible paranoia. In fact, I will throw in “Politics and the English Language,” which is probably even more essential than either of Orwell’s other two works. It turns out that everything he advises against doing in that essay has been adopted as a sacred method of operation by the modern political machine.
Civil Disobedience, Thoreau. Contrary to popular Jeffersonian myth, this book made famous the phrase, “that government is best which governs least.” A half hour’s worth of reading that will make you want to start a tax revolt.
The Power Broker by Bob Caro. Don’t read this one, because you’ve got a life to live, and it’s over 1200 pages long. I was forced into it in grad school, and was unhappy pretty much the whole way through. And Caro’s writing style gets tiresome after about 100 pages. But, it’s the closest thing there is, and probably the closest thing there ever will be, to God’s Truth about political power in the United States of America.
Also, Thucydides and Homer. We’ve been doing the same shit for millennia. Only difference is that they cooked their meals over a fire and we cook ours in microwaves.[/quote]
True story about Civil Disobedience–that book is sitting at home, along with Thucydides. Homer is a badass, but I place him more in the historical fiction category than historical insights. 1984 is scarily accurate though, which makes the paranoia all the more slippery: there’s a lot of that book happening in various flavors. Second your comment on Orwell’s prose.
Have not read “Politics adn the English Language”. Looks like that’s now on my list as well!
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
1984 - Orwell - Very good social commentary as it pertains to blind political allegiance. Every time I see some wingnut on facebook or the news talking about jailing political opponents of theirs I cannot help but think of this book
[/quote]
Pretty sure this was read as a “how to” guide by the current admin.
[/quote]
1984 is about the control of information and manipulation of the language to create truths since things are defined by what they are called. GWB did this before Obama was in office and GWB was far from the first to do it.
An invasion and occupation is named: Operation Iraqi FREEDOM.
Enemy soldiers have certain rights. Terrorists, who are criminals, have certain rights. A new term was created (or an old term redefined), enemy combatant, to circumvent those rights.
A law that gives the govt greater powers at the expense of private citizens’ rights is called the PATRIOT Act.
Then you have the WMD fiasco and something that could have been pulled right from the pages of 1984, “Mission Accomplished.”
Neither Obama nor GWB invented Newspeak. Don’t let your bias control your perception. That’s how you end up manipulated by political rhetoric. [/quote]
Affordable Care Act[/quote]
…has just about nothing to do with Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Orwell went so far as to declare that every serious word he wrote after 1936 had been written for the cause of democratic socialism. He would have been stewing in his filth, Indian-style in a drum circle, rubbing arms with Occupy protesters in 2011. And he would have absolutely loved the thought of subsidizing health care for poor people with the money of their socioeconomic superiors–in fact he would have thought of it as caring for the Proles by (partially) dismantling the apparatus of the Inner Party.
That’s what the author thought, but what of the book itself? Well, there are several things in contemporary politics that deserve to be called “Orwellian.” Big Brother’s Big Evils, as characterized in the book, lie in: surveillance, erasure of history, denial of due process, perpetual war, and, in many ways most importantly, control of sex. Note that it is through sex that Smith makes his stand against the oppression under which he lives.
Surveillance: Patriot Act; Snowden.
Erasure of history: everybody tries it to some degree, but the Swift Boat Campaign and the Birther nonsense win out here. Big time.
Denial of due process: Conservatives and liberals; Obama wins out for his eagerness to execute American citizens.
Perpetual War: Conservatives by a hundred thousand miles.
Control of sex: not a huge issue anymore, but even here on this board you’ll see the lunatic religious right’s flirtation with the criminalization of consensual sodomy.
Both parties, particularly the idiot fringes of both parties, are to some extent “Orwellian.” But the big shame about his masterpiece is the way in which it’s become a dull weapon for the hyperbolic hyperventilator.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Gear idea for a thread, Aragorn!
The stuff on the Constitution and the BOR and the personal letters of the Founding Fathers goes without saying. Absolutely essential. There is something about reading things that they wrote. Like they’re rubbing off on you. Not sure if it’s been mentioned, but I’ll add the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Short, ridiculously candid, and absolutely spilling over with wit and wisdom and comedy. Good portrait of what it means to live the life of a statesman philosopher, while still finding the time to chase French prostitutes through the streets of Paris.
I also vigorously second 1984, and add in Animal Farm. The big problem with almost all “paranoid fiction” is that it is written by paranoid people, and paranoid people tend to be addled bundles of neurotic cowardice. It’s usually a mess, in other words. But prose does not get more clear-minded than under Orwell’s pen, making this one of those very rare cases of intelligible paranoia. In fact, I will throw in “Politics and the English Language,” which is probably even more essential than either of Orwell’s other two works. It turns out that everything he advises against doing in that essay has been adopted as a sacred method of operation by the modern political machine.
Civil Disobedience, Thoreau. Contrary to popular Jeffersonian myth, this book made famous the phrase, “that government is best which governs least.” A half hour’s worth of reading that will make you want to start a tax revolt.
The Power Broker by Bob Caro. Don’t read this one, because you’ve got a life to live, and it’s over 1200 pages long. I was forced into it in grad school, and was unhappy pretty much the whole way through. And Caro’s writing style gets tiresome after about 100 pages. But, it’s the closest thing there is, and probably the closest thing there ever will be, to God’s Truth about political power in the United States of America.
Also, Thucydides and Homer. We’ve been doing the same shit for millennia. Only difference is that they cooked their meals over a fire and we cook ours in microwaves.[/quote]
True story about Civil Disobedience–that book is sitting at home, along with Thucydides. Homer is a badass, but I place him more in the historical fiction category than historical insights. 1984 is scarily accurate though, which makes the paranoia all the more slippery: there’s a lot of that book happening in various flavors. Second your comment on Orwell’s prose.
Have not read “Politics adn the English Language”. Looks like that’s now on my list as well![/quote]
Definitely read it. It’s all over the internet. Probably the most important thing ever written on the subject of language and its consequences.
[quote]Waittz wrote:
Atlas Shrugged and if there is a liberal equivelant for fiction. [/quote]
You forgot rule #3. Why?
I started Atlas Shrugged but ultimately put it down. I kept having to remind myself it was written in the 50’s as it just felt too over the top when you compare the mindset of the characters to the mindset of today’s politicians. I realize this is unfair to Ayn Rand.
In the end I simply wasn’t that interested in the book and it was feeling like a chore to read it. I have a hard time getting into much fiction any more.
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
1984 - Orwell - Very good social commentary as it pertains to blind political allegiance. Every time I see some wingnut on facebook or the news talking about jailing political opponents of theirs I cannot help but think of this book
[/quote]
Pretty sure this was read as a “how to” guide by the current admin.
[/quote]
1984 is about the control of information and manipulation of the language to create truths since things are defined by what they are called. GWB did this before Obama was in office and GWB was far from the first to do it.
An invasion and occupation is named: Operation Iraqi FREEDOM.
Enemy soldiers have certain rights. Terrorists, who are criminals, have certain rights. A new term was created (or an old term redefined), enemy combatant, to circumvent those rights.
A law that gives the govt greater powers at the expense of private citizens’ rights is called the PATRIOT Act.
Then you have the WMD fiasco and something that could have been pulled right from the pages of 1984, “Mission Accomplished.”
Neither Obama nor GWB invented Newspeak. Don’t let your bias control your perception. That’s how you end up manipulated by political rhetoric. [/quote]
Affordable Care Act[/quote]
Israeli Settlements. [/quote]
True, it’s stupid to call a suburb of a Jewish town in a Jewish country a “settlement.”
I guess the Bronx is a a NYC Settlement.[/quote]
That isn’t the point. The point is that what something is, is not defined by what it is, but what it is named.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Homer is a badass, but I place him more in the historical fiction category than historical insights. [/quote]
Indeed, there are no more than a few shreds of actual “fact” to be found in Homer.
However, there is so much to take away from it about politics and people, particularly the fact that little of consequence has changed in man since the days of Achilles, that I include it here.
The first word of The Iliad–one of the first words in the history of the West–is “rage.” That alone is well worth understanding.
1984 was not about the future. It was set in the future but it wasn’t a warning about the future. Proper (as in good) fiction, for the most part, whether the setting is the past or future, is a commentary on the present (in this case 1948). So when 1984 actually came and went you had people saying that Orwell was wrong with his “predictions” when the fact is that he based his novel on what was already going on and had been going on throughout human history. Orwell had the “unperson.” The Romans had “Damnatio memoriae.”
[quote]tedro wrote:
[quote]Waittz wrote:
Atlas Shrugged and if there is a liberal equivelant for fiction. [/quote]
You forgot rule #3. Why?
I started Atlas Shrugged but ultimately put it down. I kept having to remind myself it was written in the 50’s as it just felt too over the top when you compare the mindset of the characters to the mindset of today’s politicians. I realize this is unfair to Ayn Rand.
In the end I simply wasn’t that interested in the book and it was feeling like a chore to read it. I have a hard time getting into much fiction any more.
[/quote]
Rand’s view was that of an extremist for free market capitalism. Atlas shrugged is a work of fiction that depicts the consequences of extreme actions against capitalism and free market and the dangerous outcomes that can occur by reminding people the power large companies have over the world. Serves as a warning, reminder and propaganda at the same time. It makes an interesting read that causes you to think, question and ultimately form your own opinion on regulations.
I do not know of the liberal equivilent but said it should be with it for obvious reasons. A counterpoint to the debate.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Hey JB, I found Emanuel’s 20th edition available for purchase. Would it differ significantly from the 31st edition you recommended?[/quote]
It’s 11 years old, so I think you’d miss the more recent rulings on the 2nd Amendment being an individual (not collective) right and then various shades on the abortion issues.
Also, Obamacare.
Otherwise, not a huge amount would have been changed, off the top of my head.
Here’s 2 others, one of which I am surprised that nobody has yet mentioned.
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The Prince. Absolutely still valuable today as it was in it’s own day. Provides perspective that is more ruthless and no less practical (in certain ways) for being ruthless. Also plays counterpoint in terms of principles of governance to the more modern “2nd Treatise” and Founder’s opinions.
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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Not only a classic of history and non-fiction literature in general, but Gibbon’s writings serve up alarmingly accurate portraits of modern culture in a number of aspects, specifically the USA and Britain.