The Great Reset

[We w]ill at once walk out from a session, meeting, lecture, play,

or film as soon as [we hear] the speaker utter a lie, ideological

drivel, or shameless propaganda.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There was once a guy in a small southern Utah town who made the news all over the place because he put up a sign in his front yard that declared his property a UN-free zone.  Lots of people made fun of him, wondering what impact the UN could possibly have on a guy with a few acres of land in the sticks in southern Utah.  Given that the UN operates some programs that provide medical aid and food to those in need or preserve cultural heritage sights, albeit in a bureaucratic and inefficient way, alongside some of truly inefficient things they do in the general assembly, at the time, I had no real opinion either way, but always felt the guy probably understood things better than I did.  A decade or so later, with the international community firmly entrenched in the big-government control movement and its many tentacles creeping farther and farther into our everyday lives, it seems the guy who wanted to keep the UN (and other global elites) out of his back yard was on to something.

The Great Reset: Joe Biden and the Rise of 21st-century Fascism by Glenn Beck with Justin Haskins (ISBN:  978-1-63763-059-4) provides an overview of just what the Great Reset is.  Beck and Haskins view it as an attempt by elites on the global stage to take over and subsequently control people politically and economically.  They note that this is a plan that has been in the works for much longer than just since the coronavirus happened in 2020, although that served as a crisis that could be used to further many of the goals of those pushing for the Great Reset (Leftists around the world, not just Joe Biden as the title might lead one to believe).  Other things that have served as a way for Klaus Schwab, George Soros, and others to further their agenda include environmentalism and the rise of national debts and inflation, which many Leftists want to combat by employing something called “modern monetary theory,” which states that national debt doesn’t really matter, only inflation does, since governments have the ability print the money they need (taxation is used to control (read: punish) people or organizations, not necessarily to raise revenue).  Another economic tool of those pushing the Great Reset, which is a politically loaded term these days, although one that the book includes in direct quotations from the horses’ mouths, is environmental, social, governance (ESG), a system that the elite wants to use to evaluate business and individuals the way in essentially the same way credit scores are used, just without so much worry about credit and more worry about those more political factors.  The system was designed to counteract the Right’s call for business to self-regulate and not have the government involved.  With ESG involved, big investment firms can buy shares in a company and then demand that the company adhere to ESG standards, thereby causing, ostensibly, business to drive the ESG agenda and not government.  Beck and Haskins finish the book with some policy prescriptions, almost all of which are calls to action on a local level in most cases: support small businesses, be politically active on the local level, don’t live lies in our personal lives.

The book was an interesting read.  It was written a in 2022, but is especially relevant given the rise of ESG and organizations like the World Economic Forum (WEF), which push the Great Reset.  The history of the Great Reset, relevant quotations from those pushing it, not just spouting off about it (all extensively noted in endnotes), and solid explanations of just what these terms refer to and how they apply to the common man, make the book worth a read.  I am not a huge fan of the book’s subtitle, although I understand it given that many of the Great Reset players have ties to Biden.  Beck does note that the Great Reset is not necessarily a partisan issue as there are culprits normally associated with the American Right, too.  However, he focuses on those tied in some way to Joe Biden and the U.S. Democratic machine.  I think that section could’ve been a little better.  Some readers may not appreciate some of the humor in some of the sections.  I was kind of on the fence about some of it — it was all appropriate; I just usually appreciate a more serious tone, but I think regular Beck listeners will get it and appreciate it.  In the end, I thought the actions the authors suggested we take were all very solid.  They were all things that people can do.  I found the extensive quotations from Russian dissident Solzhenitsyn to be powerful, especially the one asking us to not live a lie.

 

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Next Stop Execution

If one spends very much time doing anything connected to Russia, the topic of spies will undoubtedly come up.  As one who was born before the Cold War had ended and as one who served a church mission in Russia, Russian spies are something I’ve often heard about.  On my mission, I served in the mission office for a while.  Missionaries who were serving in the city of Kaliningrad (I, sadly, have never been able to visit that intriguing place) once sent the office a copy of an editorial cartoon published in a local newspaper that depicted missionaries for our church asking local Russians about missiles.  Thanks to the Cold War, all Americans knew there was a vast intelligence complex in Russia, bent on suppressing dissent in Russia and recruiting spies abroad.  It seems that the American news has often dealt with the topic, too, thanks to traitors like Robert Hannsen and Edward Snowden or people that catch the media’s attention like Anna Chapman.  There have been a few Russians willing to help the West, though, even if we seem to not hear as much about them.

Next Stop Execution by Oleg Gordievsky is the account of one of those Russians.  The book is an autobiography or memoir, and takes the reader through Gordievsky’s life from his early childhood to his post-defection life in England.  He seemed to have a fairly normal childhood, although his father was somewhat enigmatic since his father worked for Stalin’s intelligence organ, the NKVD.  Gordievsky did well in school and happily joined up when the intelligence services came calling.  He enjoyed being pushed by his training and quickly assimilated to the system, including bureaucratic idiosyncrasies.  He had a talent for languages, and ended up being posted abroad, where he enjoyed life and started to get a taste for Western democracy.  Gordievsky chronicles his home life, including an unsatisfying first marriage and then a second marriage.  He explains how he had suspicions about inefficiencies in the Soviet system and outright lies about Communist doctrine early in his training since he had access to Western publications.  Those doubts didn’t lead to much until he saw the Berlin Wall go up and Czechoslovakia invaded.  After that, he decided to take action and responded positively to overtures from the British and Danish intelligence services.  Eventually, he would go on to spy for quite a while for the UK, before being outed.  He says he figured out on his own that something was about to go down since he was unexpectedly called back to Moscow from London, where he had been posted.  Gordievsky made the decision to get out of Russia then and there.  He left his wife and kids, surviving extended family, and homeland with the help of the UK via a harrowing ride to Finland.  That story includes all the stuff of movies, including being smuggled across borders in the trunk of a car.  Gordievsky’s life in the UK, he says, has been interesting, presenting information to many Western governments, but not without some sadness since his longtime separation from his second wife resulted in them splitting up.

The book was interesting and a good read.  I enjoyed reading about his childhood and schooling and probably could’ve handled more information about everyday life in the post-WWII Soviet Union.  Having lived in Russia as a missionary and having experienced everyday Russia, information expanding my views on that is always nice to have.  I enjoyed reading about some of his disdain for the processes his agencies made their employees go through.  As an American, I often participate in the time-honored tradition of complaining about bureaucracy, and it was good to see that Russians do the same.  The middle part of the book, about his work and home life, was maybe a little less interesting, and I thought a little on the egotistical side.  His philosophical evolution was interesting to read about, especially from the standpoint of current international relations.  He was intrigued by the West because of democracy and economic opportunity.  It is worth asking is we are doing all we can today to preserve those two ideals.  The final section of Gordievsky’s book, about being hunted by his own employer and his escape to freedom, was riveting, although, as mentioned above, a bit sad because of the need to leave his family behind.  That, too, though, is a lesson, not unique to this book, about the value of liberty and the need to sacrifice in order to have liberty.

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“ . . . liberty is more valuable than life.”

An unfortunate part of American history is that of slavery.  I’ve always been inspired by Founders who set up a system with an eye toward slavery’s elimination and then a president in Abraham Lincoln who was willing to stake both himself and the country on slavery’s elimination.  Every since I saw the movie Glory in junior high (they released an edited version especially for showing in schools), I’ve appreciated the blacks who risked it all and more to fight against slavery, both as soldiers and as abolitionists or runaways or simply doing what they could to sabotage the system, much as those in occupied territory might do in a war when there weren’t other options available to them.  There are many inspiring stories.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, whose pen name was Linda Brent (available for free from Google Books) is an autobiographical account of Jacobs’ life from her time as a little girl to later in life when she is an adult with adult children of her own.  She describes her life and the life of those around her, like her parents, grandmother, and siblings.  The reader also learns about the immediate household of her owner.  As she works in the house, the reader does not learn much about the lives of slaves who worked in the fields on plantations.  While Jacobs herself undergoes very little physical abuse, she describes plenty that happened to family members and acquaintances.  She did, unfortunately, receive a lot of unwanted sexual advances from her master, which she notes was a very real experience for many, if not most, female slaves.  While it seems she avoided being raped, many others were not as fortunate.  Eventually, Jacobs has children by her own choice by another white man.  That causes some awkwardness, but what it really does is cement her desire to not be a slave anymore.  She realizes that, as slaves, her children have very little to look forward to.  With this in mind, she forms and executes a plan to run away.  She does this with a little help along the way by various friends and family and by avoiding capture by hiding in swamps, on boats, and, eventually, in the attic of her grandmother’s house.  She stays there, rarely coming out, for the next seven years.  This allowed her to see her children, who lived with her grandmother.  It also made for some close calls since her master was always hoping to re-capture her.  Eventually, she secured a way to the North and lived the rest of her life there, eventually being reunited with her two children.  Nothing was simple, though, and even getting her kids with her was difficult.  Life was made more difficult by the fugitive slave law, but Jacobs had a few extremely kind and understanding people in her life that helped her along at many dangerous turns.

The book was really interesting.  I thought it presented a lot of information about the life of slaves that maybe not everyone thinks about.  Jacobs talked a lot about how slave families were ripped apart.  She talked about the sexual abuse and harassment that was widespread in the South, yet often swept under the rug by what was considered to be polite society.  She talked about the role of religion in slaves’ lives; most were religious in spite of the gross hypocrisy displayed by the whites around them.  Like so many similar stories, Jacobs displayed an incredible resiliency and deep will to fight for what was right.  She and others risked their lives for freedom.  Her story is one that is well worth remembering because it so well demonstrates the value of freedom and how we need to protect it.

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A River in Darkness

Asia is not usually high on my list of interests.  I have always wanted to visit Japan (likely linked to my dad’s serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there) and I’ve always wanted to visit the famous sights in China.  I once had the opportunity to visit Bangkok, and while I enjoyed it, it was very different from anything I had ever experienced before.  I don’t know a lot about the region in general, but have never been a big fan of North Korea.  Once European Communism fell in the late ’80s and early ’90s, places like Cuba and North Korea have seemed like time warps, holding out unnecessarily while continuing to oppress people.  When people make the decision to try to leave those places, I always find it to be one I can sympathize with.

A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa (ISBN: 978-1-5420-4719-7) is just such a tale, although it does have an interesting twist.  The author was not born in North Korea; in fact, he was born in Japan and was ethnically half Japanese.  His dad, who was not native to Japan, moved his family to North Korea under pressure from ethnic compatriots and the pressure of being an ethnic minority in re-building, post-war Japan, where such minorities weren’t always welcome.  The promises of the Communist utopia were very quickly discovered to be a total sham by the author and his family.  However, there was no real opportunity to get out.  The author's family had nothing to offer the Communist Party, so they lived as peasants, eventually finding that living under the radar of the authorities was easier than trying to conform to the system in North Korea.  Eventually, Ishikawa tires of the poverty, starvation, racism, hypocritical inequality, and lack of freedom.  He heads toward the border with China, fearful, but determined to make a break for it since, although that would mean an uncertain future, it was better than the future he could easily predict inside North Korea.  He made it to China, eventually linking up with the Japanese embassy there, which, with great difficulty, helped exfiltrate him to Japan.  Once back, Japan had jumped forward forty or so years, while North Korea had steadily gone backward.  Ishikawa struggled to adjust and felt abandoned by Japan.

The book was interesting, but disheartening.  Ishikawa's childhood is not an easy one, with alcohol abuse and physical abuse having large roles.  The move to North Korea is understandable only from his father's point of view.  Once there, even his father grows disillusioned with their new country, but like so many people in totalitarian, socialist regimes, he never felt empowered or free enough to do anything about his situation.  North Korea is bleak from the family's arrival to the very last page of the book.  The descriptions of life there are simple, yet vivid and powerful.  Readers are drawn in to the dark, gloomy, depressing lives of the underclass in North Korea.  In a way, it like reading Dostoevsky, but it was real.  The story of the escape was a breath of fresh air and involved some risks, risk-takers, and genuinely good people.  Movement between Japanese diplomatic facilities and the flight to Japan have a spy story quality to them.  Ishikawa's return to Japan and struggle to fit in again returns the reader to the more depressing side of the book.  What is clear by the end of the book is that North Korea is an anachronism and deserved its place on George Bush's “axis of evil.”  The book, like other, similar memoirs, serves as a warning against the lack of freedoms engendered by socialist governments everywhere and the positive, although imperfect, results of the free market and capitalism.

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Dachau and the Nazi Terror

. . . humanity — that is, resistance against [a] system forced upon the people . . .
 — Hermann Langbein

I was ashamed of my passivity and ignorance.

This was where the path of an unpolitical person living in seclusion led.

Helpless and lost, one is dragged along by the raging torrent.
 — Ladislaus Ervin-Deutsch

When I was a kid, World War II held a certain fascination for me, but it wasn’t really the war that was interesting, but the machines and planes that were used throughout the war.  I really liked to draw, and the large bombers, small fighters, and intriguing, unique vehicles like half-tracks, captured my young imagination and were some of the most common subjects of my early attempts at artwork.  As I got older, I came to better understand the horrors associated with World War II, including the Holocaust and the atrocities committed by the Empire of Japan.  There were also all the battles throughout the world that caused so many deaths and so much destruction.  I got a better understanding of the scale of that destruction while visiting Germany at the end of my mission to Russia.  I was also able to visit Dachau and get a small idea of the scale of the horror of the Holocaust.

Dachau and the Nazi Terror: 1933–1945: Testimonies and Memoirs edited by Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (ISBN: 3-9808587-0-7) is a collection of memoirs written up by a variety of people who, in some way, experienced the Nazi concentration camps.  The volume contains thoughts from a couple different German Jews, a member of the French resistance, American liberators, Jews from other parts of Europe, including Poland, what was then Czechoslovakia, and even the further-away Latvia.  It was interesting to read the variety of experiences.  The common denominators were that everyone, sooner or later, experienced the terror of the concentration camps and that the vast majority of those interred were there because of their ethnicity or because of their political beliefs.  Other than the two short testimonies provided by American liberators, each of the former prisoners discussed the drudgery of prison life, the daily struggle for life that got harder and harder the longer the war dragged on, and extreme contrast between the brutality of so many and the kindness of a few soldiers and citizens who rose above the prevailing patterns of thought and behavior.  It was interesting to read about the various commentators’ lives before and during the war, their varying degrees of commitment to their religious or political ideals, and their varied responses to life in the concentration camps.

The book is, obviously, likely to be tough reading for some.  It is, nevertheless, extremely interesting and full, I found, of lessons.  I was impressed with the strength of all those who wrote.  Writing or speaking about such experiences is not often easy, but it is important, and I am glad these people made it happen.  Without their voices, the lessons of time are lost and forgotten.  It is said that if a people does not learn from history, it is bound to repeat history’s mistakes.  That thought did not leave me for one second as I read this book.  Entire peoples were slated for extermination simply because of their ethnicity.  An official policy of discrimination and hate was enacted by a government simply because someone looked different or had a different ethnic background.  In addition to the ethnic hatred, there was political intolerance and hatred.  People who thought differently than the official line were first ostracized, then imprisoned, and then killed.  The Nazis, socialists, had no love for the communists.  I, too, don’t agree with the tenets of communism, but as I read, I found it horrible that the marketplace of ideas wasn’t allowed to let people say their piece and have others make their own choices on accepting or rejecting those ideas.  Especially troubling was the experience of one prisoner who went from the Nazi concentration camps to the Russian gulag.  Both of the intolerant positions described above have similarities to what we see in politics today.  Another lesson to be learned from the memoirists is that political involvement is key.  One writer mournfully noted that he had always been apolitical, the same as so many of the people he knew.  That lack of involvement, he figured, had allowed the minority to take control and take things in such a negative direction.  A third lesson worth mentioning (although there are more) is that the writers did not display any hatred.  One told of coming across one of his former guards after being liberated.  While some of the prisoners did act out violently toward this former guard, some of the Jews, including the writer, turned away from the scene and did not take their turn attacking the man even though they could have easily made the case that they were justified in doing so.  Many writers commented fondly on the guards that treated them humanely or the civilians who risked punishment, but, all the same, tried to help the prisoners.  The prisoners often looked for opportunities to see the good around them and to persevere even in the face of intense trial.  One noted that this was a characteristic present in many of those who survived.  That is a powerful lesson for us.

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Visions of Freedom

Growing up as a Mormon in Utah, especially back before the advent of what are often called in Mormon culture “small temples,” the Salt Lake Temple reigns supreme.  It is photographed endlessly.  It is the crown jewel of Temple Square even though most visitors cannot enter it.  It is the subject of both the state’s and the Church’s history and the stories that involve the Salt Lake Temple intertwine the two.  As a result of that situation, some of the state’s other temples are a bit lesser known to the general populace, myself included.  The fact that I always have to stop and think and remind myself that the St. George Temple was the Church’s third temple, not the Salt Lake Temple, proves that point.  I first heard, from my parents during a visit to Southern Utah as a kid, that the Founding Fathers appeared to President Wilford Woodruff in the St. George Temple.  The story was amazing and one I always remembered.

Visions of Freedom: Wilford Woodruff and the Signers of the Declaration of Independence by Michael de Groote and Ronald L. Fox (ISBN: 978-1-60861-227-7) is a book about Wilford Woodruff’s visions (he had two of them on this subject) and the men that appeared to him.  The first part of the book discusses the history behind modern vicarious ordinances in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (anciently, the Bible contains one passage discussing baptism for the dead, and scholarly literature discusses a few others).  The next major theme of the book is how Wilford Woodruff’s preaching about his visions and the work he did in the St. George Temple for the men who appeared to him, as well as for some other famous people throughout history, changed, to a significant degree, the Mormon outlook on work for the dead in the temple.  Before President Woodruff’s visions, the vast majority of temple work was done only for ancestors or very close friends.  What that meant was that once a person had traced his genealogy as far as he could, he didn’t have much of a reason to attend the temple.  President Woodruff’s work for the Founding Fathers and others taught that temple work was necessary for all who had ever lived, which also gave faithful saints a reason to come to the temple again and again.  The majority of the book, though, consists of short biographies of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.  Each signer gets at least one page, although most have more than that.  There are some appendices that discuss the actual temple work and various accounts of President Woodruff’s visions.

I am not normally attracted to reading about Church history.  The history of the United States fascinates me.  I’m sure this overlap helped this book be of interest, but I think it had more to do with the fact that the story was one that was of interest to me as a kid.  I found the discussion of baptisms for the dead in the early Church quite intriguing.  What I missed in the discussion of Wilford Woodruff’s dream was the actual sermons in which he talked about it.  I found them, later, in the appendices.  I thought that was an unnatural place for them.  They should’ve been front and center.  Finally, the biographies were interesting.  They were just snippets and, usually, not very long, providing highlights of government service and the thoughts of other Founding Fathers on the person in question.  I enjoyed learning about how they came to be involved in the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Many of them were what would be called “flip-floppers” in today’s toxic political environment (although maybe not necessarily since that term, at its purest, refers to those who change positions for political expediency, not because of any deeply held personal belief).  Many were British supporters until things just got too out of hand (it was almost always taxes that bothered them, but property rights and religion played a role, too).  The wide cross section of society was interesting, too.  Most of the signers were from the upper or upper middle class.  Not all, though.  There were guys who had worked their way up from being the apprentices of tradesmen to being judges.  There were merchants, clergymen, lawyers, and others.  What they had in common was a desire for themselves and their fellow countrymen to be free.  The book typically pointed out when one of the signers owned slaves or not.  This is a fascination that modern history has, but I thought it was dealt with admirably by the authors, who noted, at the end, that, unfortunately, many of our Founding Fathers were slave owners, but that was a burning issue then, and most of those who owned slaves struggled with it, later freeing some or all of their slaves or helping to write laws that hampered the slave trade in the U.S., but the important thing was that the founding documents (many signed not just the Declaration, but the Constitution as well) made it possible to later eliminate slavery in America.  Ultimately, that’s why they came to President Woodruff: they wanted to be free, free from spiritual prison in the afterlife.  It was an interesting historical and theological read that made me think about my amazing national heritage as well as my testimony in a loving God that has provided a way for all men to return to him and experience salvation.

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Conform: Exposing the Truth about Common Core and Public Education

I had a very mixed experience as far as school is concerned.  I experienced both home school and public school.  While much more common now than when I did it, I continued a somewhat unorthodox path through college, attending a private, religious school and doing things like testing out of classes and taking independent study classes.  Eventually I got a master’s degree online.  The odyssey started in third grade, when my mom took me out of public school because she thought there was only one teacher at the school that could properly help me.  I was an advanced student for my age and prone to misbehavior when bored.  After a couple years at home, I asked my parents to send me back since that’s where my friends were.  At the end of that year, I was more than happy to be back at home for sixth grade.  Junior high, which scars many a person for life, tried hard with me, too, especially since we moved between my seventh- and eighth-grade years.  In high school I had a steady diet of AP classes mixed with various gym classes.  I considered early college for my senior year, but had a couple good friends at school, so decided to stick it out.  The benefits were skipping class to play basketball and running on the track team, where lots of girls practiced in nothing but short shorts and sports bras.  Academics were beside the point, and I breezed through even my AP classes.  The point, of course, is that throughout my schooling, the standard one-size-fits-all approach did not serve me well.

In Conform: Exposing the Truth about Common Core and Public Education by Glenn Beck, Kyle Olson, and Kevin Balfe (ISBN: 978-1-4767-7388-9), the authors attack the federal government- and union-led approach to education in America.  The first half of the book is dedicated to debunking the typical arguments one hears about why public schools are the only way to go.  They also focus on the idea that the government should control schools, curricula, and even what students eat.  They present argument after argument showing that centrally-controlled education fails the vast majority of students outside the average and even a good many who are average.  They show that the current system encourages mediocrity, whether that be in students, teachers, or the school systems themselves.  Education policy is controlled by bureaucrats far removed from the process, unions who, despite what they say, care more about collecting money for their bosses than what teachers or students need, and administrators, legislators, teachers, and union officials who have an agenda to push.  The second part of the book talks about what us normal people can do to change.  We don’t have to conform to the system, the authors argue, but if we want to control our own or our kids’ education, we have to be involved in bringing about the change we want to see.  We have to participate in school boards, in meetings, on curriculum committees, and in elections, as voters, candidates, and campaign workers or volunteers.  They cite examples of places real change has taken place and note that more can happen should we choose to make it happen.

The book is a follow-on to Beck’s book about gun control and written in exactly the same manner and style.  This book does not live up to its predecessor.  I found the arguments to be weaker and not as convincing, although they were still all true.  The school question is a big one, and they touch on many different aspects.  I think the writing was a little scattered in places and could’ve used some focus.  I enjoyed the suggestions at the end of the book.  It is Beck’s style to encourage participation and responsibility instead of just complaining about a problem.  While he prophesies a lot of doom and gloom on his shows, I think his overall message is one of optimism, but only if we choose to get involved in the processes around us that affect our lives.  If we’re not involved, they’ll pass us by and we’ll really only get the messed up society we deserve.  The voice of the people usually gets it right, but all the people have to make their voices heard.  I like that message.

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Control: Exposing the Truth about Guns

The U.S. Constitution is an amazing document.  Worked out, written, and ratified by inspired men, it created a form of government that had never been tried before.  More importantly, it enshrined rights that men have not because some government deigns confer them, but because they are provided by God.  The Founding Fathers had very intimate experiences with governments that were tyrannical in nature and oppressed their subjects.  When they designed the Constitution and subsequently wrote the Bill of Rights, they did so knowing what could go wrong with governments.  They had also just recently experienced the Revolutionary War and knew what it took to cast off the shackles of persecution from a government that no longer serves the express purpose of government, to help its citizens “exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life” (D&C 134:2).  They very clearly understood that the overthrow of a government was a very serious act, but that in extreme circumstances, it was necessary.  In fact, in the Declaration of Independence, they wrote, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”  An unarmed populace was extremely unlikely to be able to carry out its right to a government that ensured liberty: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”  They therefore wrote the second amendment to the Constitution, ensuring our right to the arms necessary to protect our rights.

The Revolutionary War and an oppressive monarchist government are ancient history in the average American’s mind.  That’s kind of too bad, though, because it has warped people’s minds as to why the Founding Fathers thought it so important to bear arms.  In Control: Exposing the Truth about Guns by Glenn Beck (ISBN: 978-1-4767-3987-8), the arguments typically trotted out by those who oppose guns (they would say they just support so-called gun control, but that’s just putting a fancy name on one thing so people think one is going on about something else) are dealt with one by one with logic and facts.  In fairness, the anti-gun crowd claims to be using logic and facts, too, but the book’s careful look at various studies puts most of the anti-gun arguments to shame.  The gun massacres that make headlines are shown to be the anomalies that they truly are, for example, especially since Beck gives page after page of example debunking the idea that gun massacres are an American phenomenon and that they’ve never been stopped by a level-headed gun owner.  Beck also talks a lot about our culture of violence and debunks a lot of the patently false and simply misinformed ideas regarding violence in video games.  In the end, though, he focuses on the real point of it all.  The examples, studies, facts, statistics, and even a few opinions all point to the idea that the Founders were men who loved liberty.  They regarded liberty with such high respect that they were willing to die for it.  They knew that only liberty provided the basis for the pursuit of happiness.  When we allow the state to control the choices we make, including choices about firearms, we are surrendering our liberty, making it harder for us to enjoy the blessings of liberty.

I am usually somewhat leery of these types of books because they’re written by big-name conservatives writing for a conservative audience.  They are sometimes peppered with references to the mental shortcomings of liberals or other knocks that make little sense (as a self-described conservative, I think the leaders of the liberal movement are anything but dumb).  This book had blessedly few of those, although there were a couple times I was exasperated by an inappropriate jab at the Left.  I was very impressed with the research and sound analysis presented in the book based on study after peer-reviewed study on everything having to do with the gun debate.  I especially liked how Beck examined the very studies often cited by gun-control advocates because Beck didn’t take them out of context or go for the soundbite quote.  That is probably considered boring by some and is why it doesn’t make the talking head shows or YouTube, but it’s informative and allows the reader to make a more well-informed decision.  There was only one section in the book out of at least a score that had me scratching my head at the end.  All in all, the argumentation was strong, and that’s good because the writing suffered from an attempt to keep it from being too dry.  I say be dry and make a stronger point based purely on logic and not at all on wit, which really isn’t an argument at all, although it, sadly, works all to well.  If you want to be well informed regarding what gun control really does and does not do and why it is so unhealthy for our nation (and, really, for people anywhere in this world), this book is probably worth your time.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

The Long Walk

In eighth grade at Kaysville Junior High, a rather unpopular teacher named Mr. Rice showed us Escape from Sobibor, a movie that tells the story of an uprising in a German concentration camp.  I remember sleeping through some of it, but I also remember being intrigued by it, having learned much earlier about Anne Frank and the underground activity she and her family were involved in.  Later, I learned about the Soviet prison camps, the Gulag.  As with the story behind the movie I saw in junior high, the idea of escape from a vast system, stereotypically cruel and secure in most people's minds, has always been intriguing.  (To be completely honest, escapes from modern-day prisons are pretty intriguing.)  There is something redeeming and inspiring in hearing of people who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the chance — not necessarily freedom itself — just the chance of freedom.

In The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom (ISBN: 978-1-59921-975-2) by Sławomir Rawicz, one can read about just such an escape and one that combines World War II history, the Gulag, and adventure travel into one.  Billed as a true story, the reader follows Rawicz, a Polish cavalry officer, from Moscow's notorious Lubyanka to the a small outpost of a prison camp in northern Siberia, and then about 4,000 miles south, to India, after his escape.  The escape itself is one of the few truly exciting scenes in the book, as the rest reads much like a travelogue, but it is all adventure after adventure as the small party of fugitives walks through Russia and then the wastelands of Mongolia and China.  They pick up a fellow escapee near Lake Baikal and experience Oriental hospitality over and over again in their travels through the deserts and mountains of western East Asia.  These usually touching, sometimes comical, visits are a major reason the travelers made it to India alive.  As is to be expected, they lose a few of the party along the way to starvation and exhaustion.  In the end, though, their desire to be free is triumphant, as they walk out of the hills and into the arms of a British Indian patrol.

I enjoyed the book, which reads like a novel.  The story was exciting, intriguing, and exhilarating.  It was interesting to read the story of torture at the hands of the Russians, the hardships experienced by the prisoners during the prisoner transfer operation across the vast expanses of Russia, and the way the labor camp was organized.  The escape and the adventures that laid therein were also fun to read about and did give off the sense of the indomitable human spirit.  The only thing that may be a bit of a negative about the book (aside from some mild strong language typical of Englishmen (Rawicz settled in England after the war)) is that it likely doesn't live up to its billing as being a true story.  The epic adventure has gone under the microscope of investigators and researchers a few different times.  Since the author lived in England, the BBC did a bit of research, as well as an American woman who wrote a book about her efforts and her inconclusive results.  The one thing that has been established is that Rawicz likely did not make the trek.  After that, one is left to make one's own conclusions including a number of possibilities ranging from him doing part of it to others completing the year-long hike and from the story being a compilation of others' adventures to it simply being a prisoners' tale that became, thanks to the horrors of war and the Gulag, impressed so strongly in people's minds that they genuinely believed the story was theirs or their acquaintances'.  I am personally partial to the latter two ideas, but think that the book was a great story regardless of veracity and even though I went into my reading of the book knowing about the controversy, and therefore approaching it as fiction, it does cause one to think about freedom, liberty, and the indomitable human spirit.

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1776: The Illustrated Edition

I always enjoyed learning about the Revolutionary War.  The bravery of the American rebels was admirable to me, even as a little kid.  I never tired of the stories of Paul Revere, the Boston Tea Party, and the important battles.  Men of incredible intellect such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams impressed me because of their brilliant writings and inspired philosophy.  Men of action, those leaders and infantrymen in the Continental Army who far and away exceeded expectations, and General George Washington, in particular, had story after story worth telling.  I was also probably influenced by epic artwork such as Arnold Friberg's The Prayer at Valley Forge, which portrayed the deep faith that many of our Founding Fathers displayed and was worthy emulating.

In 1776: The Illustrated Edition (ISBN: 978-1-4165-4210-0) by David McCullough, the award-winning writer and historian added a little bit of a twist to his seminal 1776: paintings, maps, copies of original documents, and other visual aids that help bring the drama America's first year as an independent nation to life.  The book chronicles the activities of the colonists and the British throughout the year.  Since the Revolutionary War lasted another six years, there is actually not a whole lot of Revolutionary War coverage in the book, but the set-up is there, and the key battles of the year, such as Washington's crossing of the Delaware to defeat formidable and intimidating Hessian forces, are there in great detail.  McCullough explains the significance of the actions of Congress, Parliament, and the two belligerent armies.  As the year comes to a close, the stage is set for the next few years of war, but one could easily predict the eventual outcome given the improbable patriot successes and the momentum they, regarded as simple "rabble" by the elite British forces, had gained in such a short time.

The book was an enjoyable read, and its coffee table-style format was neat.  Every twenty pages or so, there was a sleeve with reproductions of letters, documents, and maps.  Almost every page had an illustration, painting, or other visual.  It did help bring it alive.  The illustrated edition, of course, does not contain all of the text of McCullough's original work, but there is enough to follow the stories, get details, and be amazed and inspired.  In the end, the book served as a very visual reminder of how amazing and miraculous the foundation of America was.  We are sometimes not as appreciative of what the Founding Fathers sacrificed everything for as we should be, and it's always good to be reminded.  It's even better to not just express our gratitude, but to do something about it.  Like those who sacrificed so much during 1776, our liberties are also not free.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.

Blue Planet in Green Shackles

When I was a kid I had a book titled something like 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth. At the time, the ozone hole over Antarctica and the impending ice age were all the rage. I remember how there were TV specials on PBS about the ozone hole. We read articles in those little newspapers from Weekly Reader or whatever at school telling us about what could happen to the earth should there be another ice age. The book was one I read through and actually thought some of the ideas were good ones. I think it influenced my life to a certain degree in what I admit is a positive way. I am inclined to recycle things (back when I was a kid there was only one word — recycle — not like the EPA slogan of today: "Reuse. Reduce. Recycle.") and reuse things like garbage sacks, lunch bags, and paper. At the time, the concept of environmentalism wasn’t in vouge, and most people who were trying to recycle or were into protecting endangered species were self-identifying as conservationists, probably because until the 1960s, relatively little in the movement had changed since the days of President Theodore Roosevelt, arguably the highest-profile conservationist in American history. I, too, thought of myself as a 10-year-old conservationist. While the movement has largely morphed into what is now known as environmentalism, a movement driven by much more leftist and radical principles, I still think of myself as a conservationist. There is, however, a large gap between conservation and environmentalism.

In his book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? (ISBN: 978-1-889865-09-6), Czech president Václav Klaus presents his reasons for why environmentalism and its liberal, leftist, and radical tendencies is dangerous not only for the planet, but for people who cherish their liberty. The book is largely written from an economic point of view (Klaus is an economist by training), but also includes a chapter on the many scientific fallacies present in various environmentalist arguments for global warming (or, now that global warming has largely been discredited, the environmentalists have changed the label once again, and we have "climate change" to be all freaked out about). The economics-heavy chapters explain why environmentalist policies are bad for the economy and why they also tend to be bad for the planet. There is also a section on how environmentalist policy limits economic and personal liberty. Finally, Klaus gives the reader a policy recommendation regarding so-called climate change: do nothing. Based on his analysis of real numbers (in contrast to environmentalists, who have brought us endless fake numbers, including the famous so-called statistics of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and those rain forest destruction statistics, that if true, would’ve resulted in the complete extermination of rain forests decades ago), Klaus convincingly points out that slow and measured responses to problems are much more effective at preserving solid economic conditions as well as personal liberty. When we look at everything as a crisis, we (or, at the very least, politicians) make knee-jerk reactions that almost universally compound the original problem. When you are facing a problem like global warming, which is far from having a scientific consensus, let alone from being fact, a reaction causes not a worse problem, but new problems.

I enjoyed the book, although I admit I had to spend extra time in the middle chapters where Klaus delved into economic theory. It can be tough to get through, but if one spends the time necessary to think it through and analyze what he’s saying, it makes sense. The book, which is only 91 pages, is put together well, and the argument is laid out well. I also think that it will be unlikely to sway the true believers in global warming, but it should make them think about their position. It most definitely shores up the position of those who just can’t figure out the environmentalist movement. Finally, it really is a great work because the main idea is not necessarily that global warming or climate change doesn’t exist (like all true skeptics, Klaus is simply waiting for proof, not denying any and all possibilities) or that such-and-such economic policy is the one and only, but that without personal liberty, we cannot expect to live the life we want to live. We most definitely won’t have the economic blessings that we currently enjoy, and as poorly conceived policy continues to encroach on our lives, our basic freedoms and rights will also start to be taken away (remember that one of environmentalism’s closest relatives is the overpopulation of the earth and that those who express doubt concerning environmentalism or environmentalist policy are marginalized by the leftists). Given free rein, environmentalist policy has the potential to impact negatively everything from individuals’ decisions about their own families to global financial markets to essential freedoms of expression. This book serves as a solid warning and should be a call to arms for those who prefer to make decisions for themselves.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.