rise up Rochester

Today I purchased four books to read for this summer. I feel they are critical reads for every American and I would like to read them so that I can better educate myself about the world and warn my friends and family about the troubling times ahead. Two of the books are fiction and two are non-fiction, but I feel that they are all equally important for understanding the course of our country right now.

The first among them is 1984 by George Orwell. I would like to read this book first because it is the most commonly referenced piece of literature in regards to the rising Police State in the US and around the world. I intend to draw comparisons between Orwell’s fictional story and the real-world events occurring all around us right now. I have been told by some that Orwell’s vision was shockingly real, yet our society is going even further off the deep end. The following is a preview from Amazon.com:

“Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere.”

The year is 1984; the scene is London, largest population center of Airstrip One.

Airstrip One is part of the vast political entity Oceania, which is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant “correction” of such records. “‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”

In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party’s official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.

Newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime–in 1984, George Orwell created a whole vocabulary of words concerning totalitarian control that have since passed into our common vocabulary. More importantly, he has portrayed a chillingly credible dystopia. In our deeply anxious world, the seeds of unthinking conformity are everywhere in evidence; and Big Brother is always looking for his chance. –Daniel Hintzsche

The next book that I would like to read is also fiction, but was written many years before and I have been told is even more accurate in some ways to what is happening than even George Orwell’s vision. The book is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I anxiously await reading this vision of the future and comparing it both to 1894 and to what is happening today. From Amazon.com:

“Community, Identity, Stability” is the motto of Aldous Huxley’s utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a “Feelie,” a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses his relationship with a young women has the potential to be much more than the confines of their existence allow. Huxley foreshadowed many of the practices and gadgets we take for granted today–let’s hope the sterility and absence of individuality he predicted aren’t yet to come.

Next comes an interesting book that I heard about through public television. A university professor interviewed Cullen Murphy on his new book Are We Rome? and his consensus is that we are dangerously near a collapse of the American Empire that is similar in many ways to the collapse of the Roman Empire. He draws parallels between our society today and what existed in Ancient Rome during the years before the fall of the empire. This looks like it will be a fascinating read as well as an exciting look at the scary possibility of a world with out the United States. Below is from The New Yorker

Murphy writes that “Americans have been casting eyes back to ancient Rome since before the Revolution,” and goes on to interrogate the comparisons drawn both by “triumphalists,” who see the world’s only superpower in terms of the Roman Empire at its height, and by “declinists,” who see America as “dangerously overcommitted abroad and rusted out at home,” like Rome before its fall. Murphy makes telling points about the solipsism of political élites and the impact of corruption and cronyism on civil society, but he stops short of predicting America’s fall. (Indeed, he argues that it is simplistic to say that Rome fell.) Instead, he points to a malaise exemplified by the debasement of the term “franchise,” once associated with freedom to vote, and now with commerce: “Here, in miniature, is the political history of America.” Murphy prescribes antidotes, and finds grounds for cautious optimism in the words of Livy: “An empire remains powerful so long as its subjects rejoice in it.”
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The final book that I hope to read this summer is Ron Paul’s The Revolution, a Manifesto, but the thought of reading it excites me so much that I might actually read it first instead of last. Ron Paul is truly my hero in American politics today and I am so glad that I was turned on to his ideas in time to vote for him during the New York State Republican Primary. People think his ideas are radical, but is the desire for freedom and small government really that far fetched? I intend to pass this book around my family to see if I can win some hearts and minds before the general election. From Amazon.com and the book jacket:

This Much Is True: You Have Been Lied To.

• The government is expanding.
• Taxes are increasing.
• More senseless wars are being planned.
• Inflation is ballooning.
• Our basic freedoms are disappearing.

The Founding Fathers didn’t want any of this. In fact, they said so quite clearly in the Constitution of the United States of America. Unfortunately, that beautiful, ingenious, and revolutionary document is being ignored more and more in Washington. If we are to enjoy peace, freedom, and prosperity once again, we absolutely must return to the principles upon which America was founded. But finally, there is hope . . .

In THE REVOLUTION,Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has exposed the core truths behind everything threatening America, from the real reasons behind the collapse of the dollar and the looming financial crisis, to terrorism and the loss of our precious civil liberties. In this book, Ron Paul provides answers to questions that few even dare to ask.

Despite a media blackout, this septuagenarian physician-turned-congressman sparked a movement that has attracted a legion of young, dedicated, enthusiastic supporters . . . a phenomenon that has amazed veteran political observers and made more than one political rival envious. Candidates across America are already running as “Ron Paul Republicans.”

“Dr. Paul cured my apathy,” says a popular campaign sign. THE REVOLUTION may cure yours as well.

About the Author
Ron Paul, a ten-term congressman from Texas, is the leading advocate of freedom in our nation’s capital. He has devoted his political career to the defense of individual liberty, sound money, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. Judge Andrew Napolitano calls him “the Thomas Jefferson of our day.”

After serving as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s, Dr. Paul moved to Texas to begin a civilian medical practice, delivering over four thousand babies in his career as an obstetrician. He served in Congress from 1976 to 1984, and again from 1996 to the present. He and Carol Paul, his wife of fifty-one years, have five children, eighteen grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Ron Paul, the New York Post once wrote, is a politician who “cannot be bought by special interests.”

“There are few people in public life who, through thick and thin, rain or shine, stick to their principles,” added a congressional colleague. “Ron Paul is one of those few.”

Have any of you read these books? Perhaps you intend to? Let me know your thoughts and perhaps you can recommend other books that might interest me.