Outsight Book Reader Diary: November 2022

Thursday, November 24, 2022

Review: Crossroads - Destiny: Escape From Beyond The Iron Curtain - A True Story

Crossroads - Destiny: Escape From Beyond The Iron Curtain - A True Story by Peter Vancea
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Review: The Russia Conundrum: How the West Fell for Putin's Power Gambit - and How to Fix It

The Russia Conundrum: How the West Fell for Putin's Power Gambit - and How to Fix It by Mikhail Khodorkovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Sunday, November 20, 2022

Review: Cyberselfish

Cyberselfish by Paulina Borsook
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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Saturday, November 19, 2022

Review: The Atlas of Middle-Earth

The Atlas of Middle-Earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Friday, November 18, 2022

Review: The Road to Serfdom: The Definitive Edition

The Road to Serfdom: The Definitive Edition by Friedrich A. Hayek
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

The Road to Serfdom is an intellectual attack on socialism. Hayek's main message was that central planning and public ownership would lead slowly but inevitably to totalitarianism. Written in the midst of a titanic struggle against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the book offended many because it suggested that the intellectual influences in Germany were also present in Britain and the United States, and if unchecked would lead to totalitarian societies in those countries as well.

- Reviewed by Richard N. Cooper in the September/October 1997 issue of Foreign Affairs

introductions Supporting international free trade
From Facebook "a right-wing classic,"
Glenn Beck:

America has always been about private land ownership. It has been a staple principle since the inception of America. So how do you convince a country like ours to be okay with the concept of owning nothing... and being happy? And if we don't own it, who will? At some point, we turned around on America's road to freedom and started heading down the road to serfdom.

"The Trump Republicans":

Let's Get Ready To Rumble. Biden & The Great Reset: The Road To Serfdom.

Ron Paul :

NATO has been obsolete for a long time. It should have been dissolved when the Cold War ended. After all, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, and thank goodness for that. It would be quite unnerving were the Warsaw Pact still around and gobbling up countries that border the United States. Americans would rightfully be concerned about the motivations behind such actions.
NATO's secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg is out telling Donald Trump that: “Going it alone is not an option". In other words, America can't just defend itself.

We're yet to see which way President Trump decides to go. Will he continue us on the current road to serfdom, or will he heed the words of Jefferson who said: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none."

"Of all checks on democracy, federation has been the most efficacious...."
"Far from its being true that, as is now widely believed, we need an international economic authority while the states can at the same time retain their unrestricted political sovereignty, almost exactly the opposite is true. What we need and can hope to achieve is not more power in the hands of irresponsible international economic authorities, but, on the contrary, a superior political power which can hold the economic interests in check, and in the conflict between them can truly hold the scales, because it is itself not mixed up in the economic game. The need is for an international political authority which, without power to direct the different people what they must do, must be able to restrain them from action which will damage others."
Federal Democracy,
Federalism

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Friday, November 11, 2022

Review: Truman

Truman by David McCullough
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

He asked for national compulsory health insurance to be funded by payroll deductions. Under the system, all citizens would receive medical and hospital service irrespective of their ability to pay. And with the cry for demobilization at a peak, he went before a joint session to call for universal military training, an idea that stood no chance, but that he believed in fervently. "We must face the fact that peace must be built upon power, as well as upon good will and good deeds." Never again could the country count on the luxury of time to arm itself. He wanted mandatory training for one year for all young men between eighteen and twenty, not as members of the armed services, but as citizens who would comprise a trained reserve, ready in case of emergency.

In an 8,000-word message from the Moscow Embassy that was to be come known soon as "the long telegram," George Kennan, the scholarly chargé d' affaires, had tried to dash any hopes the administration might have of reasonable dealings with the Stalin regime. The Kremlin, wrote Kennan, had a neurotic view of the world, at the heart of which was an age-old Russian sense of insecurity. For this reason, the Soviet regime was "committed fanatically" to the idea that in the long run there could be no "peaceful coexistence" with the United States, and further that "it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life destroyed, the international authority of our state broken...." Stripped of the "fig leaf'' of Marxism, Kennan said, the Soviets would stand before history "as only the last of a long session of cruel and wasteful Russian rulers who have relentlessly forced their country on to ever new heights of military power in order to guarantee external security for their internally weak regimes.

Proto-Cold War formulation of The Truman Doctrine that pledged American support for democracies against authoritarian threats:

"It is the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures," the line read in its original state. Acheson changed it to, "I believe it must be the policy of the United States..

To Clifford, it was time to take a stand against the Soviets, time for "the opening gun" in a campaign to awaken the American people. As he had urged the President to stand fast...

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