Thursday, March 23, 2006

A Book You Need to Read

With the month-long break I have been enjoying, I have been able to fit in a good deal of pleasure reading. I read the book Freakonomics by Steven Levitt - very interesting. I also finally got around to reading Michael Savage's latest tome, Liberalism is a Mental Disorder - a good and solid effort. I didn't really learn anything new from it, but it helped me to gel a lot of prior information into my long-term memory for future reference. Then there was the coup de grace; the book that kept me absolutely captivated: Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, by Peter Schwiezer. This book blew my hair back. Never did I imagine some of the shenanigans that these pious and posturing leftists get away with.

The people profiled in this book included:
  • Noam Chomsky, the capitalism and military-hating socialist who owns two, million-dollar homes and charges people to download speeches off his website, and grew rich off grant money given to him by the Pentagon;
  • Michael Moore, who owns stock in the hated Halliburton corporation, even though he says he doesn't own any stock;
  • Hillary Clinton, who thinks teenage girls should be able to get an abortion without any parent knowledge or permission, yet wouldn't let her own teenage daughter get her ears pierced;
  • Al Franken, who refers to people who don't believe in affirmative action as racist, yet of the 112 senior people he hired to produced his books, movies, and t.v. shows, only 3 were black;
  • Ralph Nader, who "stands up" for the little guy, yet made his own employees work 80 hour weeks for low pay and wouldn't let them unionize;
  • Teddy Kennedy, who is a big-time environmentalist, yet gets fat oil checks from his family fortune, and continues to oppose a wind farm that would affect his sailing routes near his Massachusetts home;
  • Nancy Pelosi, who also "stands up" for the little guy, yet won't let her employees unionize either;
  • Gloria Steinem, who told a generation of young women that they "need a man like a fish needs a bicycle", yet she did date men and they were always more powerful and successful than she, and she got married after years of saying she never would and telling women that they shouldn't marry either.
  • Barbra Streisand, who also "stands up" for the little guy, yet requires that hotel staff not look at her as she passes in the halls and "stands up" for the environment as she uses $20,000 worth of water for her lawn every month and runs her air conditioner all day even when she told other people they should turn off theirs; and finally
  • Cornel West, the unstable Harvard/Princeton Marxist professor who tells his fellow blacks that they should not be successful or leave other blacks behind, even as he pulls in his $300,000 annual salary and lives in swanky neighborhoods where only 2-5% of the population is black.
The examples I gave don't even scratch the surface of all the hypocritical behavior that is detailed in this book. I encourage you all to read it; you will not be disappointed.

One of the best points that Schweizer brought up was when he was addressing the inevitable criticism that he knew he would receive regarding the fact that conservatives also commit hypocrisy. Two big recent examples were Rush Limbaugh and his OxyContin addiction, and paragon of virtue Bill Bennett and his gambling addiction. The important point that Schweizer made was that when a conservative does not live up to his ideals, he often ends up hurting himself and his family, such as with Limbaugh's drug addiction and subsequent hearing loss. But when liberals don't live up to their ideals, they improve their lives. Look at Noam Chomsky- he believes that all wealth should be shared and no one should own private property. If he lived up to that ideal, then he wouldn't copyright his books (which he does), and charge people for his speeches (which he does), or own a $1.2 million vacation home (which he does). Not following your own advice can be very lucrative if you are a leftist. Read the book!

Good Day to You, Sir

1 comment:

Darren said...

Two of my students (sisters) gave me Do As I Say for a Christmas present. I was enthralled.