A friend asked me...

A friend asked me about politics and said he was meeting another conservative friend and would return loaded for bear

By now I’ve had a lot of experience talking with people who have other opinions (gasp). These talks have not, for the most part, gone well. They all tend to unravel into each person talking over the other or into agreements to disagree. Nothing seems to get resolved.

I myself try to apply critical thinking to politicians, especially presidential ones. This means that I do research on them whether I like them or don’t. When I’ve finished I usually have a good idea of what they really stand for and who they really are, at least sufficient knowledge for me to support or reject them.

My criteria are:

Is this person out for power or for service?

Do they understand the importance of the Rule of Law?

Have they read and understood the Constitution and it’s time and context?

Do they understand justice and compassion?

There are more of course but these are a start.

If I don’t want to get into arguments about bullet lists, what do I want?

I want to say to people: Here these are some of the books I read and some of the people I spent time with, trying to figure things out. I had to absorb this knowledge to get to a place where I could place things in their proper perspective, identify the real players and understand their agendas. These are the tools you need to get real about things.

It took me thirty years to get to this point so don’t despair. I also don’t expect everyone to have these experiences – frankly – if you just read all of Shakespeare you could throw about 95% of this stuff out. In fact you’ll learn more about human nature than all of the other books combined.

Economics

Adam Smith

Frederic von Hayak

Milton Friedman

Joseph Steiglitz

John Galbraith (Older and younger)

Paul Krugman

Karl Marx

Thomas Piketty

Politics

Sun Tzu – Art of War

Musashi – A Book of Five Rings

Von Clausewitz

Julius Ceasar – The conquest of Gaul

Marcus Aurelius – Meditations

Thucydides

Modern Times

William Schreiber – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Bruce Catton – The Civil War

The Federalist Papers

The Anti-Federalist Papers

People Whose Work You Should Know About

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Roger Taney

Benjamin Cardozo

Thurgood Marshall

William O. Douglas

Howard Zinn

People and Organizations You Should Know About So You Can Run From them in Terror

Charles Koch

Davis Koch

Fred Koch – yes, their father and the founder of the John Birch Society

Peter G. Peterson

James M. Buchanan (not the president, the economist)

The Heritage Foundation

The Cato Institute

The Fellowship – Doug Coe

The Ku Klux Klan – doing quite well thank you very much

David Duke

Jeff Sessions – remember him? He’s now US AG

A.L.E.C. – look it up

Alex Jones

Michael Savage

Rush Limbaugh (still)

Know your enemy. All war is a crime.