Libertine: On the Prowl

Vidi, vici, veni -- I saw, I conquered, I came. _______________________________________________________________

Book Review: The Lost Life of Eva Braun

10:58, 2008-Feb-25 .. Posted in reviews .. 6 comments .. Link

The Lost Life of Eva Braun
by Angela Lambert

Few biographies have been written about the mistress of Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler. Many students of World War II wonder how any woman could have loved Hitler or dismiss her as a shallow bimbo who was just as evil as he was.

This book explores these questions and portrays Braun as an average, unremarkable German woman of her times who was no more evil than the average person.

The author covers Braun's childhood experiences, focusing on the typical cultural attitudes of the time and her father's strict parenting style in particular. These experiences molded her into an impressionable 17 year old who was easily susceptible to the charisma of an older man who had the aura of power about him (his election as Chancellor was four years in the future when they met).

Several chapters deal with how their relationship grew and developed, including their sexual relationship, which was perfectly normal, despite urban legends claiming that Hitler was gay, impotent, or into odd fetishes.

One chapter speculates on what, if anything, Braun knew about the Holocaust, with a follow-up chapter asking what could she have done, even if she'd known. Related to these questions is coverage concerns Hitler's misogyny; how he generally disapproved of women being involved in politics and how political topics were never discussed in mixed gatherings; that most high-ranking Nazi women were deliberately left in the dark about the grisly details about the Holocaust and conduct of the war in general.

The book also explores how she willingly chose to share Hitler's fate, despite those around her, including Hitler, urging her to save herself.

In essence, the book shows her life as representing that of many Germans of the time -- of how millions of average, unremarkable, otherwise moral people could be taken in by someone like Hitler, and continue to do so, living in denial, even after it was obvious he was leading Germany down an evil path.

The author relies heavily on the accounts of those who knew her personally, including one still-living cousin who visited her at Hitler's private home, the Berghof.

Overall, I liked this book, with one quibble: The author includes several short segments comparing Braun's life with that of her mother, a German woman of roughly the same age and background. I understood that the author's purpose was to underline Braun's utter ordinariness of how evil is capable of seducing good people, but these digressions are distracting and the author would have been able to make this point sufficiently without these segments.

I give this book four out of five stars.

Nanny State: Book Review

12:32, 2007-Nov-17 .. Posted in reviews .. 6 comments .. Link

Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children
by David Harsanyi

"The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool...but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog"
--G.K. Chesterton

This quote, at the beginning of David Harsanyi's "Nanny State", succinctly sums up exactly what is wrong with the explosion of "nanny laws" in western society.

"Nanny state" actions are policies such as bans on smoking in public places, high taxes on junk food, bans on recreational drug use, gun control, a legal drinking age or legal smoking age that is higher than the age of majority, political correctness, censorship, certain types of regulations concerning consensual sex between adults, zero tolerance policies, and content regulation. Such actions result from the belief that the state or the local government has a duty to protect citizens from their own harmful behaviors, and that the state knows best what constitutes harmful behavior. The author defines the nanny state as, "a place where government takes a hyper-interest in micromanaging the welfare of its citizens, shielding us from our own injurious and irrational behavior."

Harsanyi believes that government acting as in loco parentis is dangerous because, "the more government feels comfortable subverting our right to live as we wish -- while not hurting others -- simply to create a more agreeable society, the state will feel increasingly comfortable sabotaging our rights on all fronts." In other words, "nanny laws" are a dangerous slippery slope.

He also believes that a nannyistic government goes against the intentions that the Founding Fathers had for our government. Harsanyi points out that it specifically subverts the notion of the "pursuit of happiness". He explains that the pursuit of happiness should be "tethered to the pillars of liberty and responsibility"; which gives us the right to be "wrong, dumb, and irresponsible".

Both conservatives and liberals are concerned about "nannyism", though they define what constitutes inappropriate government intrusion differently. Harsanyi, a libertarian, takes a balanced view in that he tars both conservatives and liberals equally with the "nanny" brush.

Harsanyi notes that there has been little protest against the proliferation in the last twenty years ago of such laws and policies and asks the question, "When exactly did you lost your right to be unhealthy, unsafe, immoral, and politically incorrect? What if I want to be fat, drunk, immoral, and intolerably foolish?"

The author states: "The Nanny State will argue that there is no excuse for government to protect a mentally stable citizen from making his or her own choices and that words and ideas like 'freedom' and 'responsibility' must again be injected into any conversation or debate about laws that affect personal behavior."

In the book, Harsanyi devotes chapters to different types of nanny policies: food/obesity policies aka "The Twinkie Fascists", anti-alcohol policies, anti-smoking policies, zero tolerance policies and other school-related nannyism, "family values" nannyism; i.e. those who attempt to legislate personal morality, anti-porn censorship and other anti-sex policies, policies that hamper those who wish to start small businesses, anti-gambling laws, among others. The last chapter deals with how society pays; what the negative fallout results from such paternalism.

I found myself in agreement with nearly all the author had to say, with the exception of his views of laws designed to protect the welfare of animals. I believe that laws are necessary to protect pets and other animals, as they cannot protect themselves from cruel and/or irresponsible humans. Otherwise, this book is a real breath of fresh air in our increasingly busybody, politically correct, and self-righteous society.

I recommend this book to anyone to cares about personal liberty and the rights of competent adults to live however they wish as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others to live differently.

Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking the Declaration of Independence: Book Review

11:16, 2007-Nov-3 .. Posted in reviews .. 4 comments .. Link

I recently finished an interesting book: "Blasphemy:How the Religious Right is Hijacking Our Declaration of Independence" by Alan Dershowitz. That is, he refutes, point by point, attempts by Christian fundamentalists to rewrite the history of our nation's founding by claiming that the Founding Fathers were all orthodox Christians who never intended the separation of church and state, but rather founded the USA as a "Christian Nation".

This short book contains three long chapters. The first chapter examines the beliefs of the Founding Fathers, focusing on the decidedly not Christian Thomas Jefferson, quoting extensively from his writings. The views of John Adams, George Washington, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, and others are also covered in lesser detail.

The first chapter also looks at the God-language that was used by the Founders though the lens of Deism, which many of the Founding Fathers, including Jefferson, believed in. Dershowitz shows that the "Nature's God" that is referred to is not the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible, but rather, a "Blind Watchmaker" Creator, who created the universe then stepped back and let nature take its course. He goes into more detail as to how Deism and Universalism differs from today's conservative evangelical Christianity.

The second chapter covers the Religious Right's strategy for making the Founding Fathers over in their image and their plans to turn the US into a theocracy. He asserts that their plan is essentially two-fold. The first step would be a Trojan horse: to lower the wall of separation between church and state enough to allow non-threatening "generic" religion -- God, nonsectarian prayer, multiple religious images into the government sphere. The next step would be to then insist that Christianity is America's only "true" religion, as our nation was, in their view, founded by Christian on Christian principles. This would effectively make adherents of other religions be second class citizens, with atheists and agnostics being officially condemned as immoral, and would no doubt bring back the legality of having religious tests in order to hold elected office.

The third chapter, "What Are the 'Laws of Nature' and 'Nature's God'?", is the most fascinating in the book, in my opinion. In this chapter, Dershowitz compares the concept of "natural laws" vs positive legal enactments. He shows the logical fallacies in the notion of natural law, yet concedes that it is a useful legal fiction that give the legal basis on which to oppose or resist unjust laws that have been properly enacted.

Dershowitz shows that human knowledge, from which laws flow, comes from three main sources: discovery, invention, and revelation. Positive law is based on invention, which is an imperfect thing and is subject to amendment and improvement as times and circumstances change. Natural law, on the other hand is based on discovery and/or divine revelation. It is fully developed and flawless and is just waiting for humans to discover/discern it, then to live from thence forward by its unchanging principles.

But the sticking point in "natural law" is the fact that nature itself is morally neutral. Dershowitz quotes Robert Ingersoll: "In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are only consequences." Anatole France concurred: "Nature, in its indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil".

Dershowitz asserts: "Morality evolves with experience, and nature is part of that experience, but not the only part. In constructing a moral code, one should not ignore the varieties of human nature, but the diverse components of nature cannot be translated directly into morality. The complex relationship between the is of nature and the ought of morality must be mediated by human experience".

Rather than the laws of nature or God's revealed word, Dershowitz believes that source of higher morality is human experience -- trial and error. "We are at our best when we recognize our past mistakes and try build a better system of morality to avoid repetition of those mistakes. Rights come from wrongs!" He goes on to say, "Our present system of rights is not based on Nature or God, but rather on a recognition of our past wrongs and a desire not to repeat them -- or do worse".

I give this one five stars and it has earned a permanent place in my library

.