Book Review: New Zealand (Culture Smart!)

New Zealand (Culture Smart!): The Essential Guide To Customs & Culture, by Lyn Mcnamee

Although this book is written by a native kiwi, and is clearly written with the goal of informing other people about the customs and culture of the country, there is just something about the way that this book is written that really rubs me the wrong way. This is not something that is unique to this book, it must be admitted, but it is probably, as I think about it, related both to the way that this book is part of a series that is labeled as (Culture Smart) but also written with what appears like an insufferably politically correct mindset. There is certainly a lot of interest in this book as far as getting to know how it is that people from New Zealand see the world, but there is something about it at the same time that comes off as abrasive and unpleasant. For example, the author seems to think it is right and appropriate (rather than a negative) that local NZ stations will not receive or acknowledge complaints about using unfamiliar Maori terms on television, which sounds like something that people should be concerned about given the plague of political correctness than exists in this world.

In general, it may be said that this author contributes mightily to this plague by her approach to Maori customs, in the way that she (wrongly) things of them as being more foundational to life in New Zealand than the English customs brought over by the settlers whose ancestors make up a majority of the population and who have shaped the nation for those who have come after them as well as those who lived there before. Strangely, while the author seems to minimize the importance of English customs and ways, she frequently mentions the rivalry that exists between New Zealand and Australia as being similar to that between Canada and the United States. As I have noted elsewhere, one of the few unifying aspects of Canadian identity is a determination not to be American, a similar dynamic of which appears in New Zealand. Perhaps playing up the Maori influence beyond its true degree is a way of providing differentiation between New Zealand and Australia given that Australia does not have a particularly strong Polynesian influence at all given the different nature of its own aboriginal population. Engaging in this sort of attempt to understand the insecurities of the Progressive kiwi is exhausting and unrewarding, though, and it would be nicer if this sort of book was written by a non-neurotic person who did not feel it necessary to apologize for being a settler colonist. There is, after all, nothing that needs to be apologized for.

In terms of its contents, this book is about 200 pages in length and is divided into 9 chapters. The book begins with a map of New Zealand, an introduction, and then some key facts. The first chapter of the book then discusses the land and people of New Zealand, from a comment on geography and climate and culture to history and the economy, government and politics, and major cities and areas of interest. The second chapter of the book then discusses values and attitudes, including a strong egalitarian strain that encourages humble heroes and a tendency to cut people down who are too talented or distinctive. This is followed by a chapter on customs and traditions that overly privileges Maori traditions (3). This is followed by a chapter on making friends (4), which includes going out as well as hospitality and dating. A chapter discusses the kiwi at home, looking at housing and education as well as daily life and media (5). This is followed by a chapter on social activities in New Zealand, including eating out, drinking, shopping, sports, as well as festivals and events (6). The author spends a chapter examining travel, health, and safety (7), as well as a chapter discussing work life in New Zealand (8). The last chapter then discusses communicating (9), after which the book ends with suggestions for further reading, useful apps, and an index.

Pedophilia, Populism, And Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us”

In the summer of 2022 my mother and I took a trip to the Virgin Islands. While on the ferry between St. Thomas (where we stayed) and St. John (where we spent a day), we passed close by the island where Jeffrey Epstein had long engaged in what are viewed to be monstrous and perverse activities with young children and other political and cultural elites from the United States and European countries (at least so far as we know). When we were visiting St. John, the people of the island were unwilling to speak ill of the dead, even if he was viewed as a monster for his activities by most who knew anything about the situation. Yet these same people were effusive in their praise of Kenny Chesney, a famous and well-off country singer who was in the process of building an upgraded home on the island and who was regularly known for his involvement in the local community, his philanthropy, as well as his fondness for doing well by his neighbors on the island of St. John. On the one hand, we have a notorious pedophile who was suicided before those who frequented his island could be properly exposed and brought to justice for their evil deeds done under heaven, and on the other hand we have a well-regarded populist who did well by his neighbors.

Recently, noted rapper Kendrick Lamar dropped the single “Not Like Us,” which promptly shot to #1, bringing salacious accusations that Drake and his OVO label cohorts are a bunch of pedophiles to a DJ Mustard dance beat that could be among the top songs of the summer. Given the harrowing content that had been discussed in songs like “Meet The Grahams” in particular, the accusations made on the song are not at all surprising, but what was a bit surprising to me was the populist appeal that Kendrick Lamar made. The basic thesis of the song is that Drake and those like him are decadent and corrupt evildoers who delight in taking advantage of others, especially children, and are monsters of evil who are not like the rest of humanity. It is telling that K. Dot seeks to align himself with the implied audience of the song, the great mass of people who have no particular power and a righteous horror at the sort of abuses of the vulnerable that are committed by the wealthy and powerful on a regular basis. There is a deep divide in the United States between corrupt elites and ordinary people who feel that those in charge are not like them and are not acting in their best interests but instead only for the corrupt gain of those in power and their relatives and cronies. “Not Like Us” plays into this growing divide between the elites and the ordinary population of people who not only find elites threatening because of their financial and cultural and political power but also evil in their corrupt doings.

This is a problem that does not receive sufficient attention among the commentariat, namely those people who feel it their job or avocation to comment on the culture at large. It is more than mere envy that divides the haves from the have nots. There is a real sense among many people, and a sense that is not sufficiently recognized or understood, that the wealthy and powerful do not view themselves as being on the same level of humanity, and this feeling is returned with interest. It is striking that Kendrick Lamar, himself someone who grew up in Compton, a noted center of rap culture going back into the 1980s at least, identifies himself as a counter-elite, who, despite considerable popular and critical success in the rap game, sees himself against Drake and others like him who sought to use their popularity and wealth to engage in corrupt activities that shielded themselves from suffering as a result of the justice system of Canada and the United States that one would expect would operate to protect vulnerable people from the actions of a corrupt and abusive elite.

Yet even though Drake, by all the evidence that can be found about his house parties, his unsavory associates, and his own behavior, certainly looks guilty, there is enough evidence to suggest that he is sinned again as well as sinning. One of the more unsavory aspects of contemporary culture is that those who wish to rise to popularity through artistic fields often find themselves victimized by the gatekeepers of art. Whether this is in the trading of sex for movie parts on casting couches or the sort of corrupt house parties and boat parties that demonstrate that lower-tier or up-and-coming artists are available for sexual favors to those with enough money or enough cultural prestige to take advantage of it, or the fact that writers notoriously often have to serve as ghostwriters for those who are more successful than they are who become the face of art rather than the writers themselves, there is a lot of exploitation to go around, and only some of those who are so exploited manage to find fame for themselves. Even when they do, they are often compromised, corrupted, and traumatized by the abuse that they had to suffer to gain popularity themselves, and frequently find themselves doing unto others that others did unto them. This does not make it right, but it does make it easier to understand, at least.

Most people are entirely outside of this world. Most people do not aspire to be powerful or famous and so they are not aware that, for thousands of years at least, those who have sought power have often had to rise through corrupt systems where those in power groomed (in more ways than one) their successors among the younger members of the elite classes. At its least exploitative, it involved paying dues and working one’s way up from the bottom while being mentored by those on top until one had acquired the habits of mind and behavior to follow in the example of those who came before. At its most exploitative, the young were traumatized and abused by those with power and then raised to view power as the means by which all of ones desires, no matter how corrupt, could be attained and gratified, and to spread the suffering that they had experienced to others in turn, to pass along trauma and exploitation as a generational curse among elite aspirants.

It is the painful reality that those who have power do what they wish and those without power must suffer and endure what they must that makes politics such a contentious matter. To what extent can we trust people with power over us? Will the people we support, whether with our votes or with our dollars or with our encouragement, defend our best interests and serve as worthy agents in the larger culture, or will they simply take advantage of us and exploit us for their own selfish gratification? Populism is a sign that elites have failed in their social contract to act in the best interests of ordinary people as a consequence of being given elite status, and an open invitation to counterelites to perform that duty and obligation instead. Yet the problem of trust remains. Who can be trusted with power? Who can restrain themselves from evil when they could gratify themselves or take advantage of others if they really wanted to? It is by no means obvious who is fit to lead us, fit to serve us, and would not simply turn on us the moment they are given the power that they seek.

Book Review: New Zealand (Countries Of The World)

New Zealand (Countries Of The World), by Rebecca Hirsch

While I would not say that this is a perfect book, it is certainly a very good one, and one of the notable aspects of that begins with the fact that this book is up front about its author. Unlike a great many books of its kind, which tend to be focused at children and make it incredibly difficult to find out who is doing the writing, this book is open and honest about being written by a particular author, while keeping the other people to praise who happen to work with the publisher at a minimum. It may seem a bit strange to have a pet peeve when it comes to children’s novels being too quick to honor everyone except for the author of the book itself, but as a writer I have a particular sensitivity to that particular sort of thing. This book gets another thing right and that is having a great deal of very enjoyable photos, which have their own photo credit section. Gorgeous views abound in this glossy book, and if you (like me) have a fondness for nature photography as well as beautiful buildings, this book succeeds wonderfully on that level and is a real joy to behold, which is a big part on helping this book to be an enjoyable one to read, coming in at much longer than most books written for children.

The approach of the book is also worth considering. The author, despite focusing a lot of attention on maps and photographs (which I happen to enjoy), also has particular interests when it comes to texts. For one, the author is keen to note that life in New Zealand for both people as well as plants and animals, has been shaped deeply by isolation. Likewise, the author is keen to note that the immense diversity of the people of New Zealand has moved beyond the bi-cultural British settler colonist-Maori survivor that tends to be focused on the most, but now includes a large number of immigrants from East Asia as well as other Pacific Islands. I myself happen to know a couple of Americans in New Zealand as well as a young woman whose family comes from one of the Pacific Islands, which certainly reflects some of the diversity of the people who have found themselves living in New Zealand. If reading about diversity is not necessarily my favorite way to pass the time, it is certainly relevant to the New Zealand experience (as my reading in general is showing me), and this author handles the subject far better than most that I have read so far, so that certainly deserves to be mentioned.

In terms of its contents, this book is nearly 150 pages in length (144 pages being on the large size for books for young readers of this kind), and it is divided into nine chapters. The book begins with a discussion of a visit to New Zealand, a map of political boundaries of the country, and a snapshot of the country (1). This is followed by a discussion of geography, which shows maps of the varied terrain as well as climate of New Zealand (2). After this comes a discussion of the plants and animals whose existence has been shaped by isolation far from other islands (3). This is followed by a discussion of the complicated history of New Zealand, including initial Polynesian settlement, European exploration and settlement, and the development of the kiwi identity as an independent nation (4). This is followed by a discussion of the diversity of the people of New Zealand (5) as well as the development of culture along with the effect of recent immigration (6) to the existing European-Maori situation. After this the author spends a chapter discussing New Zealand as a parliamentary democracy (7), another chapter discussing the economics of New Zealand including a map of its natural resources (8), before devoting the last chapter of the book to New Zealand today (9). The book then closes with a timeline, facts, glossary, additional resources, source notes, index, and photo credits.

Book Review: The Case Against Socialism

The Case Against Socialism, by Rand Paul

As someone who has long been fond of the writings of Bastiat and long been familiar with the writings of many of the economists of the Austrian school and their associates, I am certainly familiar with and generally favorable to the body of works that has been highly critical of socialism in all of its flavors. It should come as little surprise that I am fond of this book as well, for although the book in some ways travels very familiar ground in terms of its discussions of the many and fatal flaws of socialism in terms of its assumptions, its demands, and its performance as a structuring aspect of society, the book is also full of what appears to be a certain personal spirit of the author himself, who I am less familiar with than I should be, perhaps. The author weaves a great deal of his own personal background and context as well as those people he knows and their own stories about socialism into his book, and that gives the work a human touch that might be unexpected for such a weighty political treatise. Those readers who are able to accept where the author is coming from and take a long, hard look at the failed record of socialism around the world and the ways in which the socialism we already experience (the crony capitalism and the privileged position of often unaccountable political elites) will understand that socialism cannot work because it does not accept the reality of human nature and the human experience. The denial of reality that socialism requires to be appealing is what prevents it from being either effective or beneficial.

One of the ways this book particularly shines light in an area of contemporary interest is in pointing out that whatever pretensions some politicians may make to being Democratic socialists, the gulag can never be absent in any socialist regimes because of the utopian natures of socialist goals and the obvious nature of the resistance to these goals. Those who desire to enforce a state of equality for others can only create an equality of misery that the leaders of such regimes will desire to escape themselves, which invalidates them as being fit to the angels to direct society according to their aims. Socialism forces a state and its (very human) leaders to attempt the impossible and sets up consistent areas of failure for such regimes. This author just manages to point it out, often in humorous ways. The chapter titles of this book are particularly humorous and invite the reader to subject socialism to ridicule and scorn, which is precisely what socialism deserves.

This book is sizable but not huge at just over 300 pages, and is divided into six parts which cover about 40 chapters or so, give or take. The book begins with a short introduction before part one examines how socialism creates poverty with chapters that discuss the destruction of Venezuela (1), corruption (2), the inevitable response of interfering with markets (3), the morality of capitalism (4), the benefits of capitalism to the middle class (5), the lack of problems of inequality (6), the changing nature of the 1% (7), and how the poor are better off under capitalism (8). The second part of the book contains eight chapters that discuss how it is that capitalism and not socialism is what makes Scandinavia great (II), including some pointed digs at the way that Denmark runs away from being considered socialist in the way that people like Bernie Sanders claim. The third part of the book contains eight chapters that connect socialism inevitably to authoritarianism and the denial of basic human rights, including the fact that Hitler’s regime, far from being capitalist or conservative, was itself socialist. The fourth part of the book then contains six chapters that show how socialism does not create equality at all, especially because socialist leaders exempt themselves from the misery that is enforced on everyone else, as seen time and time again in history. The fifth part of the book then subjects the philosophy of socialism to scorn by pointing out that the angels needed to run it, the supermen of virtue, simply do not exist. The sixth part of the book then closes the discussion by showing how it is that socialism is connected to alarmism, especially that of supposed anthropogenic climate change, and how socialists refuse to let any crisis go to waste in their attempts to ruin life for mankind. The book ends with an afterword that shows the author’s goal of finding common ground in Congress, followed by acknowledgments, notes, and an index.

Book Review: New Zealand (Country Profiles)

New Zealand (Country Profiles), by Alicia Klepeis

While this is not the sort of book that is difficult to read–it is made for those between Grades 1 and 3 as an introduction to the countries of the world, after all–it is the sort of book that can help people figure out what they view as most important about nations. When we encourage others to be knowledgeable of and interested in the rest of the world, it can be worth seeing what other people think of as the most important qualities of a nation to share with new readers. And though there can be a lot of options to focus on that are less than immensely important, and sometimes even areas that are deeply troublesome to focus on, I think this book in general does a good job at showing useful areas of life in New Zealand to show to young readers. Those readers who want to learn more will be able to read more detailed books later on, if they wish. A book for young readers should reach them where they are and then give them accurate but an age-appropriate understanding of the area that will hopefully encourage more reading and more study later on.

How does this book succeed by that standard? I think, personally, that it succeeds very well. Unlike some books on the subject that I have read, the authors do not focus on the glorification of heathen religious standards or double standards in general that seem to attack the legitimacy of the perspective that readers will bring from their own personal and family backgrounds. Instead, the book focuses on areas that are broadly of interest to young readers in such a way that they can gain real understanding and also a framework of aspects of life that are worth knowing in general about other countries. That this sort of approach is not more common is a bit to be regretted, as there is a real need for books like this which can introduce the reader into a better understanding of the world without at the same time trying to indoctrinate them into a certain perspective of the world that would make them an insufferable young Progressive in the way that so many contemporary books seek to do. This is a book, therefore, that I can recommend, and one that is enjoyable to read even outside of one’s youth in the sense of how it can help present profiles of a somewhat obscure and isolated country that can give useful basic knowledge, leaving the political discussion to those of age to engage in such matters.

In terms of its contents, this book is 32 pages (a pretty common length for children’s books for young readers), and the unnumbered chapters of this book deal with the following subjects: Rotorua, the location of New Zealand, landscape and climate, wildlife, people, communities, customs, school and work, play, food, and celebrations. There is a timeline that helps ground the book in the chronology of New Zealand’s existence, which is fairly short as far as people are concerned. The book also provides facts about New Zealand, a glossary, sources where the interested reader can learn more, and an index of materials. The book contains numerous well-labeled photos that certainly would encourage many readers to want to take a trip to New Zealand, and to push their parents to do so, which is a reflection of the natural beauty of the country, it must be admitted.

Book Review: The Penguin State Of The World Atlas

The Penguin State Of The World Atlas, by Dan Smith

Now, I happen to like Penguin as a publisher, mainly because they do a good job making inexpensive and easily accessible books from works in the public domain that I have enjoyed reading for decades now, at least since I was a broke university student. That said, calling this book an atlas is a considerable stretch of the term. If one has certain expectations of an atlas, it is that it has helpful and useful maps that help to better explain and understand the world. Geography has many forms, but all of those forms involve spatial connections of some kind. This book is, at best, a lot of tedious lectures about the state of the world from people whose perspectives are not particularly trustworthy (given their leftist perspectives and general whining, Progressive, tone). Most of the issues discussed in this book are not the sort that are well-suited to a broad-brush and nearly contextless discussion, as is provided here, and without sufficient context what few maps are provided are not as helpful as they could have been. For example, Japan is shown as being a heavily indebted nation, but its debt is mainly to its own citizens whose savings accounts fund the bonds that keep Japan running, which is in stark contrast to those nations whose sovereign debt is held by outsiders. Yet this context is not shown. Similarly, the authors of this book seem to think that the death penalty is a bad thing, and this assumption is worded into the language used to discuss those nations that have it.

In general, this book comes awfully close if it does not entirely cross into the line of lying by statistics. For example, the book cites (42) an alternative view of quality of life that was released by noted happy nation North Korea that demonstrated the biased nature of a great many of the rankings that are used by the book, without apparent self-knowledge. Even where the data included is not badly in need of explanations that are not provided, a lot of the book’s space is wasted by ugly graphics, including a citation of relative human development that shows green, orange, red, and yellow colored lines connecting nations in a way that does not even look complete, and certainly is a waste of space, especially when the map next to it shows the same information in a much more appealing fashion. Perhaps the author of this book and those who came up with the graphics of the book want to be praised for trying to convey data in novel forms, but as much of the data is of dubious quality (the map for assigning the share of carbon dioxide goes all the way back to 1950 and as a result grossly underestimates the share of current emissions from China and India, for example), and where the book is filled with text, the text is often misleading and of a hectoring quality, which does not make this book as good as it could have been. To be sure, no state of the world would have looked like a good one, but this one is dire for the wrong reasons.

This book is less than 150 pages long and is divided into seven parts. After information about the author, an introduction, a discussion of the problems with maps, and acknowledgements, the first part are maps that discuss who we are–looking at the nations of the world, population, life expectancy, ethnicity and diversity, religious beliefs, literacy and education, urbanization, and the diversity of cities. The second part of the book examines wealth and poverty through a look at income, inequality, the supposed quality of life, transnationals, banks, corruption, debt, tourism, and goals for development. The third part of the book examines war and peace by viewing wars in the 21st century, warlords, ganglords, and militas, military muscle, the new front line of cyberspace, casualties of war, refugees, peacekpeeping, and global peacefulness. The fourth part of the book deals with rights and respect through looking at political systems, religious rights, human rights, children’s rights, women’s rights, and gay rights. The heath of the people is the subject of part five, which examines malnutrition, obesity, smoking, cancer, HIV/AIDS, mental health, and living with disease. The health of the planet forms the subject of the sixth part of the book through looking at warning signs, biodiversity, water resources, waste, energy use, climate change, and planetary boundaries–rather vaguely defined neo-malthusian ideas, it must be admitted. The seventh and last part of the book gives tables of supposedly vital statistics, after which the book ends with notes and sources and an index.

Book Review: The Maori

The Maori (Early Peoples), by Geoffrey M. Horn

There are a great many readers who consider books written for young people to be beneath criticism, not even worth reading, much less commenting about. One of the more striking things about children’s literature is that it can be remarkably difficult to determine the author of such books, as no author is listed on the title, and the writer’s name occurs in small text in the midst of dozens of staff people involved at the publisher (World Book), almost an afterthought. To be sure, in children’s literature, it is not so much the nature of the author but the nature of what the author writes about that is of greatest interests. To a great degree, writing directed to children is often highly propagandistic in nature, with heavy-handed and clear pedagogical aims, and that is certainly the case here. Though at some points this can be entertaining, the specific nature of this book indicates the troubling nature of a great deal of writings about peoples that occurs in the present world.

This is not to say that this book is bad. Graded on the curve, at least, this book is a fairly average and typical sort of book that is directed at children. This standard is by no means a great one, as the book focuses on aspects of Maori culture that educators want to promote rather than those which the child might be more interested in and more properly focused on. It is revealing, for example, to compare a book like this one with what one might read about the Confederate States of America on subjects where the two intersect (namely their relationship with national governments as well as slavery and law and order, to name a few areas). One can see the author straining to justify the Moari religious worldview in a way that would be unthinkable for an author to respect the biblical worldview, to argue that Maori slaves were viewed like members of the family when such arguments are considered completely unacceptable with regards to slavery in the antebellum South, and to view the paranoid security-minded nature of Maori society with sympathy in a way that is not granted to other societies under similar conditions. We can see the double standard that favors non-Western cultures in full force here, and in this the book is typical of our times.

In terms of its contents, this book is a classic 64 page children’s book that manages to pack a lot of content into those pages. The book begins with a discussion of the identity of the Maori and their origins, their skill in navigation, and how we know about their history. This is followed by a detailed discussion of Maori society, the power of chiefs, warriors, tactics and weapons, as well as gender roles and those with special skills and jobs, as well as a discussion of prisoners and slaves as well as law and order within indigenous society. The author spends a lot of time dwelling on religious beliefs, creation stories, rituals of life and death, arts and crafts, tattoos, the open communal spaces known as marae. Other chapters deal with family life, settlements (often fortified), hunting, fishing and farming as the basis of the economy, education and language, sports and games, and music and dance. Towards the end of the book the author deals with the nature of contact with Europeans (called Pakeha), the treaty of Waitangi that established British settler colony status, the decline and revival of the Maori population, and the combination of tradition and change in contemporary Maori society. The book ends with a glossary, additional resources, and index.

Book Review: The Story Of American Freedom

The Story Of American Freedom, by Eric Foner

Sometimes grammar can make a big difference in how one is to view a book. This book would have been considerably easier to praise had it (accurately) labeled itself as “A Story of American Freedom,” thus emphasizing the author’s perspective and not presuming to privilege it. Using the definite article, invites the reader to test the author’s sincerity to balance, and the author not surprisingly comes up wanting. A useful test of a book like this one is to see how the author addresses the subject of FDR’s Four Freedoms, and this author fails terribly by viewing it as the official war aims of the United States of America during World War II as well as viewing America as having an obligation to provide to blacks (and other oppressed groups) freedom from want and freedom from fear. This is, of course, patently ridiculous and entirely impossible. Similarly, the author’s chapter on Conservative freedom completely fails to understand the nature of conservatism in America and demonstrates the author’s inability to deal with contemporary politics with any sort of balance. Fortunately, not all of the author’s varied takes on freedom throughout American history are equally braindead, but these set the tone and indicate that the author is perhaps not as competent to talk decisively about freedom as he thinks he is.

One of the more interesting and revealing aspects of this book is that the author does not really attempt directly to give a definitive meaning of freedom (which also undercuts the title of the book because of its strident postmodernism). Instead, this book treats us to fragmentary pictures of freedom that are generally divided by time but also by mindset. The author notes, as just about every commentator of freedom with brain cells has noted, that freedom has always been highly contentious and highly contradictory in its meaning. By freedom many people seek to oppress others. In the name of economic freedom, for example, paternalistic government acts just as oppressively as a plantation owner towards those it considers its property. There is in the raw material of this book the space for a fascinating story of different conceptions of freedom and how it is that the freedom promised by slavery and the freedom promised by socialism and Progressive American ideals are, in fact, not very different, and that the desire to escape from responsibility complicates moral freedoms or even a just appreciation at individuals of high moral fiber. Freedom is complicated by what it is that we want to be free from, and the author is right to note that we cannot be free from our history, though typically he mangles it to argue for something like the 1619 project rather than a more broad-based understanding of the history of freedom that we cannot escape.

This book is more than 300 pages long in terms of its contents and it is divided chronologically and thematically into thirteen chapters. The book begins with an introduction. After this, an opening chapter engages the birth of American freedom with a look at the context of the freedom that colonial Americans found and sought (1). This is followed by a chapter of the early American republic and the struggles over various visions of freedom that co-existed with slavery (2). This is followed by a discussion of the empire of liberty in the early American republic that discussed democracy in America as well as labor ideology (3). After this comes a discussion of the boundaries of American freedom, including a conception of the political community (4). A chapter on the Civil War as a new birth of freedom then follows (5), along with a chapter on the liberty of contract in the Reconstruction and Gilded Age periods and those who were not happy with it (6). The author then tackles Progressive freedom (a suitable candidate for official oxymorons) (7) as well as the birth of civil liberties in World War I (8). This is followed by the New Deal and the corruption of freedom it involved (9) as well as the author’s views of the freedoms for which America fought World War II (10). This is followed by discussions of Cold War freedom (11) and its limitations, the anarchical and decadent nature of sixties freedom (12), and the laudable but incomplete conservative freedom that followed (13). The book ends with notes, acknowledgements, and an index.

What’s So Bad About Being A Colonizer?

We live in a day and age where that which is seen as native and indigenous is celebrated and that which is seen as a settler or colonizer is disparaged. This ingrained bias is so intense and widespread that it even influences the world of rap beefs (perhaps a surprising interest of mine), where in a recent diss track Kendrick Lamar took Canadian pop-rapper Drake to task for being “not a colleague, but a colonizer,” as if that was a bad thing. Being a colonizer is, at least in the corrupt world of Academia and those worlds influenced by its social prestige, as being a sort of original sin that cannot be washed clean except through paying ransom and blackmail to supposedly oppressed subaltern colonized peoples, but is this just? Today I propose to address and at least outline the answer to the question of whether or not it is a bad thing to be a colonizer. I propose that it is not only not a bad thing, but it is inevitable, and that moreover everything that is viewed as native was originally a colonizer of some kind.

Let me say that again, because it bears repeating. Everything that we view as a native eventually, if we look at it long enough, came from something and somewhere else. Nothing is sui generis, nothing is autochronous. Everything that is happens to be a colonist, a colonizer, and a settler. This is true no matter what contemporary worldview we adopt. For though the founding myths of many peoples view themselves as springing directly from the soil, whether we look into the picture of faith, which tells us that everything was formed by the ultimate outsider (namely God) and spread–sometimes not by choice–to where it now resides, sometimes subject to exile as a judgment, or whether we look at DNA evidence which shows the evidence of migration of peoples through their genes, or whether people hold to an evolutionary perspective by which everything that exists comes from some previous life form that existed, whatever base we start with involves the admission that we all came from something else and somewhere else. We all have a history. If we have survived, we have moved beyond what we once were in some fashion and become something else. To remain stagnant in a world subject to change is to become extinct. Some level of adaptability is required to survive, and that adaptability involves colonizing something, spreading beyond what is comfortable and familiar to develop new ranges, new capabilities, and new perspectives. Growth and death are the only options we have, and to grow is to colonize.

That this is true on a cultural level is so obvious that it scarcely needs to be defended. A colony is but a mobile part of an existing culture that travels in search of a less crowded and hospitable home, whether it comes from a human civilization or a coral reef or any other group of living things. That this is true on a biological level is so trivially true that anyone who knows anything about natural history is aware of such phenomena as the spread of plants across the surface of the earth and the eventual colonization of earth’s land surface by successive animal kingdoms. The spread of human beings over the earth is similarly viewed as an article of faith whether one comes from a biblical perspective or an out-of-Africa perspective that views the Rift Valley of East Africa as the cradle of successive waves of colonizing and settling hominid species/groups. It seems cruel to point out that Africans were, in the view of evolutionists, the original colonizers, in spreading beyond Africa into first the Middle East, and then around the rest of the world, and that the colonization of Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas had disastrous effects for the megafauna in those places due to extinction or habitat destruction that left the people in those areas somewhat isolated and backwards when they met those who colonized them, namely my own ancestors from Western Europe.

There can be little serious debate, to anyone who looks at the spread of people or of anything else over time, that colonization is what brought all of us to where we are. Ultimately, no one is a native if you go back far enough. Moreover, there are similar patterns to colonization that are seen nowadays as a bad thing, to such an extent that many people who wish to privilege the place of those viewed as “natives” or “first people” or “indigenous peoples” often have to deny the unpleasant reality that their own arrival in their supposed “homelands” was marked by the destruction of the life that was there before (especially the largest animals) and often by an immense transformation of the local flora to support the preferred lifestyle of its settlers. Those who transformed an area have little cause to complain when other people come in from outside later on and transform it to their own tastes using their technology and expressing their own cultural values. What’s good for the first people is good for the more recent ones. If we are looking strictly at the justice of the deed, we all seek to recreate the world around us in our own image to make it less hostile and less alien and more familiar to us.

There is, of course, some difference between those who are viewed as natives and those who are most obviously not. The native has, over a long period of time and the development of a great deal of specific local knowledge and awareness, come to grips with the reality of the place where they have long resided. After having changed the original flora to suit their own background to create a blend between old and new and the destruction or at least near-eradication of those resources which were the easiest to obtain, a more intensive and sustainable use of the environment is required for such people to endure. It is this coming to terms with the constraints of one’s environment, with its particular qualities and patterns, is what it means to become a native of an area. The original exploitation of an area by outsiders who have discovered a land teeming with easily gathered resources changes with time into a careful stewardship of a land of limited resources whose ways and conditions are well-known and understood for the best interests of survival. We all come as colonizers, but just as we transform the land into our own image based on our own history and what we carry with us from where we come from, we are also transformed by the realities of where we go, so that we become something else with time, a blend between where we came from and what we found that represents a native synthesis, a mutual coming to terms with the realities of being planted from outside and the realities of where we have been planted.

This suggests that the antipathy towards those viewed as colonizers is merely a temporal bias that ignores the historical perspective. For a colonizer to survive, it must bring something from outside that allows it to prosper, be it new resources, social cohesion, an adaptability to fill unfilled niches, technology, proper attitudes and mindsets and superior cultural ways, and so forth. At first, colonizers tend to exaggerate the ease of life in the areas where they go, unaware of its patterns and limitations, but over time the difficulties of life in a given area lead the colonizer to better understand and appreciate the ways of their transformed land, and they learn how to adapt to its ways and preserve it so that not only may they enjoy it but that they may also pass down that enjoyment to generation after generation to follow. We have no choice but to begin as colonizers, and if we are to survive, we will have no choice but to become natives, or at least to survive and adapt enough so that our children or children’s children become natives after us, a task that occurs so easily that it takes hardly any time at all for people to feel that they have always belonged in a given place, and to deny that they were ever colonizers or settlers in the first place, but were always people who lived in harmony with the world around them. Perhaps if we can keep in mind that all people and indeed all things were once outsiders and strangers, we may be less hostile to those whom we think to be strangers and outsiders to us. To keep alive our own history of growth and change and colonizing gives us empathy to those who come after us, and will, God willing, become more like ourselves if given the time and space to do so.

Book Review: How Rights Went Wrong

How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession With Rights Is Tearing America Apart, by Jamal Greene

There is, on the left, a rising sense that rights have gone wrong and that they need to be curbed in some fashion. To a large extent, this comes because in the American tradition at least, rights are inherent to people and serve as a way of preventing government from doing certain things that people like the author want to do. There is also the sense that equal protection, in preventing some people from being more equal than others in terms of rights, make it impossible to engage in the types of social engineering without the consent of the governed that the left wants as well. Similarly, the authors of these sorts of books often opine that the wrong people are getting and claiming rights–people like myself, for instance, which I find deeply offensive. In addition to this, people like the author are not looking for rights that restrain obvious racism so much as the liberty to force people to behave as they want to in order to provide positive rights for people like blacks and the disabled because of supposed and imagined systemic bias against such people based on the sort of statistical reason that (rightly) has been consistently rejected by American courts as a reasonable argument. It is hard to be overly sympathetic to people who desire to browbeat or coerce courts to change their judicial philosophy to benefit a bunch of frustrated progressives whose behavior has long sought to tear America apart for their own selfish political gain.

So given that the author has a lot of whining and complaining about the current philosophy of judges regarding rights, what would the author recommend? What the author has in mind instead of red lines and absolute conceptions of rights is the sort of balancing of rights that allows governments and especially regulators–of the kind who as Progressives regularly tend to overshoot absolute rights to the detriment of those not politically in favor of them–to engage in behavior that has to be taken as at least partly legitimate because it is done by agents of the state, even if doing so harms the well-being of those whose claims of rights would, in the American sense, stop such government behavior in its tracks. The author uses as his centerpiece argument a specific interpretation of the abortion crisis as it was judicially solved in both Germany and the United States, urging the United States to adopt Germany’s model of justice (no, this is not a joke) in place of its own. While there is a great deal I could say against the author’s conception of rights, the decisive argument for me at least is that people like the author cannot be trusted to act with the best interests of Americans in heart, and the sort of government bureaucrats whose “rights” the author wants to include in the balance include those who promogulated and enforced biased restrictions against the assembly of people of faith during the overhyped Covid crisis, tax officials who selectively hassled conservative not-for-profit groups in abusing discretionary power, and “justice” officials who have regularly targeted right-of-center people on trumped up political charges. These people deserve jail, or death, or personal bankruptcy, not to have their decisions given the undeserved dignity of any kind of legitimacy in a legal dispute.

In terms of its contents, this book is about 250 pages or so, divided into three parts and nine chapters. After a foreword by Jill Lepore and an introduction, the first part of the book looks at how rights became trumps against the behavior of others (I), with chapters on the Bill of Rights (which the author, of course, does not get right) (1), the intersection of rights and race (2), and what the author labels as rightsism in an attempt to delegitimize it (3). The second part of the book finds the author opining that without justice (in his own biased eyes) there will be no peace (II), with chapters urging utopian justice (4), discussing what happens when rights collide (5), and looking at cases where rights divide (6). The last part finds the author trying to rehabilitate rights so that they are acceptable in his own eyes (III), with chapters on disability (7), affirmative action (8), and campus speech (9), where the author finds himself immensely hostile to the speech rights of right-of-center students and public figures, predictably enough. The book ends with a conclusion, acknowledgements, notes, and an index.