Travels With Susan

by Robert Spencer

This is another book which will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.  It is a not so friendly biography of Muhammad based entirely on Islamic sources. Probably, if  you get a chance to meet Mr. Spencer you should keep a careful eye out for Islamic nut cases nearby because he must certainly be a target after writing this book. 

He doesn't comment much on what he relays from the Islamic sources about Muhammad's life other than to note from time to time that incidents he is reporting in the Prophet's life have recently (as in 2006) been quoted by various Islamists determined to blow us all up as the justification for doing so.  But that isn't really what makes your neck hairs bristle and the cold chill run down your back.

Mr. Spencer recounts the many occasions on which the Prophet made peace treaties and used them as a cover for rebuilding his forces and then broke the treaty upon supposed commands from Allah.  Over and over again.  He recounts the multiple times Christians and Jews and polytheists tried to buy their peace from Muhammad only to be subjugated and then slaughtered.

This is probably all part of a clever scheme by Mr. Spencer to sell lots of books because upon reading all of this, one's inclination is to underline the most pertinent parts in dark black ink and send a copy thus marked to one's congressperson.  PLEASE PAY ATTENTION, the cover letter would read.    

Mr. Baker, Mr. Hamilton, all of you.  PLEASE PAY ATTENTION.  The request from Ahminidenijad for us to talk-- it's right out of the Muslim playbook ( i. e. the Koran and the Haditha)  He'll use the time to develop his bomb and drop it anyway.  IT'S RIGHT IN THE BOOK.  That's kind of what you want to say except you know that they ( all the so -called smart guys in Washington) won't pay attention because they think they are smarter than we are.  And when their heads are rolling on some dust-covered floor like Daniel Pearl's we can cower in the corner knowing that ours are next.  

Read this book.  Be well-armed.  Islam is not a religion of peace.  Muhammad ordered many heads to be chopped off and yours may be next. Note-- although the link above is to Amazon, as of this date (11-16-2006)it is not available from there.  I bought my copy from Barnes and Noble.

by Mark Steyn

If you are feeling even vaguely suicidal, don't read this book because it might make you decide to just slit your wrists and get it over with.   Mark Steyn sets forth in detail the fact that the Muslims are winning the demographic war.  Demographics? you say.  Yes, it seems that nobody figured out that the people who have the most children win in the long run.  While we were busy aiming for zero population growth, the Muslim nations of the world have been busy emigrating to Europe and having 4 or 5 children each.  The result, as Mark Steyn notes, is that Europe will be at least twenty percent Muslim in about 10 years.  As Mark Steyn points out, absent massive non-Muslim immigration to Europe, this prediction is based on actual numbers in existence.  That is  you can pretty accurately predict the ethnic composition of the population of 20 year old 18 years from now because the people  who will be 20 years old 18 year from now have already been born and are two years old today.  And looking at that population that has already been born, he predicts a massive shift toward Islam. You can also reasonably predict that a very high percentage of those who are over 80 today will no longer be around in 18 years, and, if they  are, will not be working.  He goes into detail as to what this will mean to the culture and politics of Europe and to the countries of Asia. Japan already has a declining birthrate.  The birthrates in Europe are well below replacement level and most of the immigration is from Muslim countries. 

Of course, he manages to be witty and funny in the process.    And very pointed.  Winning is not a matter of strategy or tactics, he says, but the will to win, the understanding that our culture, meaning western culture , IS better.

Quoting Mark Steyn quoting Sir Charles Napier""   on the issue of the old Indian practice of suttee-- " You say that it is your custom to burn widows.  Very Well.  We also have a cutom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them.  Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows.  You may follow your custom.  And then we will follow ours."

We need that kind of assertiveness with regard to our values and our customs.   We need to evaluate cultures by the "judge them by their fruits" rule.  This is biblically based common sense. Jesus warned of false prophets thusly"

15 "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

Liberal ideas produce aging, non productive, narcissists.  Conservative ideas produce large families that are productive, optimistic and willing to serve others.  Muslim ideas produce servered heads, pregnant women condemned to death for adultery and warfare around the world. 

The same can be said about systems of government-- As Mark Steyn points out.  All four of the top four nations (with populations more than 20 million) in gross domestic product per person are part of the Anglosphere.  Canada, the United states,  Australia and, of course, the United Kingdom.

Another money quote:  "Multiculturalism was conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own; it is, thus, the real suicide bomb." 

by Temple Grandin with a foreword by Oliver Sacks

Temple Grandin is one of the autistic adults Oliver Sacks wrote about in "An Anthropologist on Mars".  In fact, those words, acknowledged by Sacks, are hers not his.  Thinking in Pictures is a description by a gifted and highly autistic woman of what it is like to be autistic.  I have been interested in autism for some time and have an autistic nephew.  I have learned more about autism from this book than from all the other books combined.  Temple Grandin describes in literal and easily understood (by me anyway) descriptive terms what it is like to be autistic.  She is a woman who has been successful in her own terms, designing and building cattle and livestock handling systems for feedlots, farmers, ranchers and, yes, slaughterhouses.  Part of her strengths in that, her chosen profession, is her ability to think like a cow.  If you have never read anything by Temple Grandin before I am 95% sure that this book will change your idea of what it is to be autistic.

One of the revealing ideas, for example, is her description of the inability of autistic people to understand how other people see the world.  She tells us that if you show an audience comprised of autistic people and normal people a short movie in which person a puts an orange in a box while person b watches, following which person b leaves the room.  While person b is gone from the room, person a removes the orange from the box and puts a candy bar in the box and hides the orange.  Then person b returns to the room.  The audience is queried-- what does person b believe is in the box?  The autistic people in the audience are far more likely to believe that person b will believe that a candy bar is in the box.  She gives this completely unemotional example of what she means by autistic people are unable to see the world from another person's point of view-- a statement that to most of us means that the person so disabled is selfish, narcissitic and uncaring of others.  No, Temple tells us, in effect, that person's cognitive abilities are not sufficiently developed to allow that person to understand that person b cannot know about a change that he did not see-- a knowledge most of us acquire without having to be told it.  

This is a fascinating book containing a wealth of good advice and good understanding not only about autistic persons but about the human condition.  I highly recommend this book. 

by Hernando De Soto.

I have two copies of this book.  That fact generally, in my library, means I was reading it, I misplaced it and I went and bought another copy.  Which means that I really liked and wanted to finish the book.  Now I'm re-reading it.  It is better on re-reading than the first time.  Perhaps, as a lawyer, I have more appreciation for the legal network in western countries that creates and supports the capitalist system.  One of the features of our American system, for example, is the ease and security with which title to property can be transferred.  All of these features-- and there are others  that De Soto talks about-- turn property ownership into an engine of prosperity.  Many of them are lacking in poor countries. And, De Soto tells us a true fact often ignored by social critics-- a system of laws regarding private ownership of property that is equally and expeditiously enforced-- protects the poor more than it protects the rich.  The rich will almost always get what they want under any system because they are powerful, but, as the Supreme Court's unfortunate decision in Kelo v. City of New London showed us-- it is the poor who suffer the loss of their property when property rights are treated as so much red tape to be cut through by a vigorous and greedy City Council.  If you really care about economic reform, read this book.

I was so impressed with Prayers for the Assassin, that I decided to give other Ferrigno books a try-- Horse Latitudes is Ferrigno's first book.  It is a sleazy sun drenched book set in the drug sub-culture of Orange County, California.  For people like me, who grew up in Los Angeles and always regarded Orange County as the home of the ultra right wing John Birch society, it is a side of that culture we never saw.  Ferrigno writes so extraordinarily well  that you can see the beach at midnight with the moon in the sky as he writes about it.  He paints a kind of underworld that grows in the California easy sunlit life.  It is a sub-culture of ambition and self-indulgence in which morality has disappeared or been transmuted by the obssesive narcissim which often draws people to California.  The story starts with the disappearance of Lauren, a popular TV psychologist once married to Danny, a former drug dealer.  Danny's search for Lauren sucks him into a strange investigation and search in which the characters are each exaggerated  examples of what can become of people who are too rich and have too many resources available to indulge their desires to become perfect.  The title has reference to the area of the sea where, when becalmed, the sailor would have to throw the cargo overboard in order to move the ship, eventually having to even get rid of their most precious cargo-- the horses.    It is an interesting and disturbing read.