I got the following email from a friend. Can you help with suggestions?
My daughter started school today as a high school senior.
Over the summer, for her first class in Politics and Government in the U.S. and the World, she had to read What’s the Matter with Kansas. My daughter is not much of a political person. She found the Kansas book boring.
I was upset that the teacher assigned this book. Some of my daughter’s more conservative classmates felt the same way. I told my daughter that the teacher should assign a conservative book for “equal time,” and my daughter passed this message along.
The teacher, who is apparently a very nice guy, said that I am welcome to suggest a conservative book for the class to read. He has had trouble finding a suitable book. He wants the book to show the conservative emphasis on religion and values.
Since you seem to have read almost everything, can I ask for your thoughts on what might be a good conservative read for these high school seniors?
My correspondent though that the David Horowitz or Michael Medved autobiographies might be good ideas. I’ve read Horowitz’s, which I thought was excellent, but have not yet read Medved’s. What makes Horowitz’s book so good is that he was not merely an observer, but a participant. It was his ability to good up close to and personal with the Black Panthers that made him see the huge chasm between Leftist ideology and the way it worked on the ground.
For some reason, although I read prodigiously, I’m simply drawing a blank on books that would be good for 16 year olds who need a positive introduction to conservative religion and values.
UPDATE: I’m blushing here. After writing snidely that my child’s teacher sent home a message with a glaring grammatical error, I titled this post “curriculum advise” instead of “curriculum advice.” I’ve since corrected it, and am breathing a sigh of relief that I’m not a teacher, just a harried blogger.
Filed under: Education
Bookworm, with the upcoming Congressional elections, and the current poor state of civic and historical education in America, let me vote (again) for a book emphasizing why we are American: “1776.”
Civic education is our downfall.
Bluntly speaking, most students could read about America and Americans IN EVERY CLASS, and still know less than they should.
This book reads splendidly, more narrative than weighty history, and more literature than mere story.
There is an emphasis on POLITICAL maneuvering, as true THEN as today.
McCullough has the ability to pin the reader into time and place: as if we, too, were participating in events and so unsure, VERY unsure, of the outcome.
The slim volume is definitely entertaining. (“1776″ is 284 narrative pages according to one review; I remember it as being TOO short.) It will kindle your interest for more.
A student Amazon commenter notes that McCullough was easy to read and–a real compliment– that what he wrote ’stayed in your mind.’ He is a poet painting a panaroma in clear, lyric tones, letting us see men and events, and their conclusion, in a year when belief (our term ‘values’) was THE deciding factor.
From Amazon. com.’s editorial review:
“..(Washington) realized how fortunate they were to merely survive the year, and he willingly lays the responsibility for their good fortune in the hands of God rather than his own. Enthralling and superbly written, 1776 is the work of a master historian.”
This is a thrilling (introductory)Re-look at the miracle of our nation’s birth.
See the full reviews at Amazon (link below).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743226712?v=glance
I have just the book for that person. This book is a fairly short read. It never made it to the top 10 list of the New York times, but it outlines conservative thinking (with an emphasis on conservative values) brilliantly. It was authored by a group of well respected individuals who, at the time, were at the top of their field. In fact, if it were up to me it would be mandatory reading in all political science courses. It is called “Constitution of the United States” [Adopted by convention of States, September 17, 1787; Ratification completed, June 21, 1788].
P.S.
An easier read, yet right on target is Dennis Prager’s: Happiness is a serious problem
Heh. I made the exact same error (advise/advice) earlier today, in a post for help on a technical site, so don’t feel badly!
On the subject of books, I second your nomination of Horowitz’ autobiography.
Anything by Thomas Sowell.
For the more academically advanced students, Paul Johnson’s, The Intellectuals. Traces our journey from socialism’s founding father, Rousseau, to present day leftist thinking. Knowing how we got here is the first step to correcting the situation.
Kudos to this teacher. Let us know how his decision is received by his colleagues.
“A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Coinservative Democrat” by Zell Miller
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0974537616?v=glance
Not only does it offer a conservative viewpoint but it’s given by a disenchanted Democrat! This would also have the added benefit of teaching the children why the Democratic Party (as it currently stands) should be avoided like the plague.
I thought perhaps Thomas Sowell’s “The Vision of the Anointed,” or E.F. Schumacher’s “A Guide for the Perplexed.” Could also recommend “Christianity on Trial: Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry,” by Vincent Carroll and Dave Shiflett.
Animal Farm by Orwell. Probably because they haven’t read it and it won’t bore a sixteen year old to tears.
My second choice would be George Gilder’s Wealth and Poverty.
http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Poverty-Ics-in-Self-Governance/dp/1558152407/sr=8-2/qid=1157564921/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-6209664-2734544?ie=UTF8&s=books
I read it at 16 but I was a precocious child.
My son and I are reading 1776. It’s probably a bit long for 16 year olds.
My other son and I read Animal Farm. He loved it. I’m not sure it’s really the right book for the class, though.
Unfortunately, I am now in the position of being the naysayer without a positive recommendation. But I haven’t read the others recommended here. So maybe they should go on my reading list.
Animal Farm was part of my curriculum in high school, but I think it should be noted that Orwell was a communist, through and through. He just didn’t like the tactics of the Soviets.
Suzi, thanks for your comments.
I note that the young lady Bookworm cites is a rising high school senior.
If she is college bound, next year she will be required to master a lot of texts, and do a lot of reading (at a good, traditional school). So the length of a work (as McCullough’s “1776″) ought not to be a factor. She should be ready for Henry James, Tolstoy, and George Eliot, to name a few of the more verbose literary names in her future. The other university disciplines will offer similar big works for her to digest. (As an outdated suggestion, I found speedreading assisted me!)
It was his ability to good up close to and personal with the Black Panthers that made him see the huge chasm between Leftist ideology and the way it worked on the ground.
What did he find their fanaticism a bit too much over the top for some reason? All you have to do is watch their spokesmen talk with O’Reilly to get that message.
Orwell was a socialist, defined by the select few that believed democracy could blend in with socialism. And no, he wasn’t a socialist in communist fur, although there is plenty of argument over the subject. The Democrats don’t care to mention Orwell in any fashion, because his notable book 1984 is one of the master leading texts in terms of propagating language reformation as a way of mental control. In other ways, propaganda by other means. Most conservatives don’t go into the techniques of language assassination, propaganda, or mental control through illusion. Orwell got stuck where he knew the methods but never liked anyone using them. An example of the use of neutrality.
I haven’t read any conservative or liberal political texts. I mostly focus on history and war, through primary documents or testimonials. All the political stuff has to be derived from the socio-economic status that I know exists.
We all gotta start somewhere. The Revolution, equal parts social reform, political maneuvering, war making, and international diplomacy, is a good start. Perhaps the best. It gives you one of the best examples in what is known as “rulership”. And it also shows rather interesting examples of when people do things one way, only ending up losing their gamble. The Native American tribes sided with Britain in the Revolutionary War, did they think they would get perpetual peace once America won? Rarely, if ever, do opposing sides of one previous war, make peace onto the next generation. Not in those days, and not in current events either.
There are consequences to actions, to revolutions, to social reform, and to political maneuvering. Knowing those consequences and deciding which is most beneficial, is a skill that cannot be taught. Once a student knows how to think about these subjects in the correct manner, he should have no trouble figuring out what is going on in today’s world.
Think A Second Time
by Dennis Prager. Short essays will engage a teenager and lead to some lively discussions.
Why not give him a selection from which to choose?
“1776″ IS an excellent book, pertinent, dramatic, and easy to read. Michael Medved’s autobiography, “Right Turns” is great too, and I remember after finishing it thinking that Medved’s book should be assigned to high school students as an alternative text to all the leftist novels and screeds they have to study. Medved describes how he slowly gets over the pervasive cultural leftism by making a series of conscious decisions based on his experiences (including an older relative who warned him to watch out for the subterfuges of the “Red plague”).
Thomas Sowell has written so many great books, including “Ethnic America: A History” and the tremendous series, “Conquest and Cultures: An International History” (the teacher could just assign individual chapters from any of these books). Sowell’s “Inside American Education” might open their eyes and prepare them for college! And “Applied Economics” is a good intro to the idea that good “progressive” intentions enacted in ignorance of economics aren’t enough to bring about good results. Better yet, Sowell’s own autobiography, “A Personal Odyssey,” is similar to Medved’s, as it is easy to read and describes Sowell’s life journey from being a young Marxist struggling against poverty and racism (but not the scourge of today’s “victimization culture”) to become what he is today, a firm proponent of free minds and free markets, truth, proof, and data in academic research, and a hater of affirmative action quotas as being harmful to the people they purport to help. I think this would be a tremendous book for the high school students to read.
Then there is “What’s So Great About America” by Dinesh DiSouza, an easy read.
I found Zell Miller’s book an okay read, but mostly a polemic reacting to a lot of current political events, so perhaps this book would be a little too arcane and limited for the students; I think it would be easy to ignore, dismiss, or argue against. Dennis Prager’s “Happiness is a Serious Problem” is also a wonderfully instructive, thought-provoking, and terribly important book I would recommend to anyone, especially young people, but I am not sure it is the best fit for a class on “Politics and Government in the U.S. and the World.”
How about Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” or “Free to Choose”? Or F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Surfdom”?
How about Mona Charen’s “Useful Idiots – How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America”? Despite the incendiary title, it is a good, serious yet easily readable historical survey of the Soviet Union’s world propaganda campaign since WWII and how liberal intellectuals and apologists in the free world helped them along, only to be proven wrong when the regime finally collapsed (not that they bothered to notice or admit it).
Or make the parents really yell: assign Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”! It teaches a lot about politics and government, but it’d never get past the ideological censorship of the educational board. Put it on the recommended list just to hear the teacher’s response!
I find it very odd that the teacher would lump religion into the study of the conservative viewpoint. What a stereotype. As if liberals do not also touch on religion and religious values, but not always and not necessarily. Most of the conservative books I’ve listed above do not need to bring religious values into the discussion, but sometimes do (especially the autobiographies).
Good luck and let us know how it works out! (P.S. Thanks for the good wishes–I’m feeling better already, and will continue to improve if I will now STOP TYPING!).
Oh, please, not Ayn Rand. Rand’s books are poorly written and her characters are nothing but stick figures. I’d have become a conservative a lot sooner if I hadn’t read her stuff.
I second the Sowell recommendations – he’s a genius!
I have my own suggestion — Architects of Victory: Six Heroes of the Cold War. (http://www.amazon.com/Architects-Victory-Heroes-Cold-War/dp/0891950842/sr=8-1/qid=1157661303/ref=sr_1_1/103-2087520-8818225?ie=UTF8&s=books)
A wonderful read, although I don’t know if it does what your friend has in mind. But, it’s good history, good writing, and it contrasts the conservative position with the liberal mainly by telling the story, rather than by arguing about it.
Read it and then decide.
And “Atlas Shrugged” is too long to assign to a class. But maybe all of our recommendations could be offered as a “Recommended reading to find out more” list that the teacher could hand out to the students (or read later on his own).
I’m still puzzled about his wanting to deal with conservatism’s emphasis on religion. I wonder what he thinks the connection is. Which religion would that be in the U.S.? The Deism of some of the Founders? Hindu? Judaism?
Anyway, I’m glad he is open to suggestions, as it seems he is willing to learn something.
Deism goes great with Revolutionary War, btw.
Deism?
There was only one Deist in the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin. Some people also think that Thomas Jefferson was a Deist, but that was largely because he never made his beliefs clear.
The rest of the founding fathers were Christians. Some people will tell you that others, such as John Adams, were Deists because they did not believe in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, but this is not the case. Adams was a Unitarian, as were others like him, and this is a Christian denomination.
In a letter to Adams, Jefferson says baldly, “Don’t let anyone tell you that you are not a Christian.”
And that seems to say something about Jefferson’s beliefs, also.
There’s a lot of arguments on both sides, for this and against that.
You can see some of those arguments here and at other websites.
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5243
However, starting from base principles, we get this definition of Deism, from wikipedia.
Deism is a religious movement that originated in 17th and 18th century Europe and North America and continues in a mostly similar form today. Deism is a religious philosophy and methodology that asserts the existence of a God/Higher Power. It holds that the proper source of religion comes from the exercise of human reason, the observation of the natural world (existence) and the utilization of personal experience with emphasis on individual freedom of thought. As such, Deists reject divine revelation and holy books, which in turn leads to the rejection of revealed religion.
Classical Deism held that a human’s relationship with God was impersonal: God created the world by setting it into motion, but does not actively intervene in it by creating miracles, governing instead through Divine Providence. Modern Deism has expanded this classical view to state that humanity’s relationship with God is transpersonal, and that any actions he might take to intervene are subtle and beyond human understanding.
Sure, you can call into question the spoken words and descriptions by the Founding Fathers and interpret it was either Christian, Christian influenced, or Deistic. But that doesn’t get anywhere. You will always find some other conflicting quote from the same person, that says apparently the complete opposite.
That’s simply because you have to find a primary source that actually discussed the differences, from a Founding Father perspective, between Deism and Christianity. It seemed apparent that at the time, people understood intuitively what was faith and religion, and what was anything else. This is not that time.
Thomas Paine
This freethinker and author of several books, influenced more early Americans than any other writer. Although he held Deist beliefs, he wrote in his famous The Age of Reason:
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church. ”
“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. ”
Benjamin Franklin
Although Franklin received religious training, his nature forced him to rebel against the irrational tenets of his parents Christianity. His Autobiography revels his skepticism, “My parents had given me betimes religions impressions, and I received from my infancy a pious education in the principles of Calvinism. But scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.
“. . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a through Deist.”
In an essay on “Toleration,” Franklin wrote:
“If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here [England] and in New England.”
Dr. Priestley, an intimate friend of Franklin, wrote of him:
“It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin’s general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers” (Priestley’s Autobiography)
then you have people who said Franklin went back when he got old, and on we go.
James Madison
Called the father of the Constitution, Madison had no conventional sense of Christianity. In 1785, Madison wrote in his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments:
“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”
“What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.”
The Founding Fathers, the most notable ones, were natural philosophers. While of a certain faith, at least on the surface, they are best described by the definition of Deism than any religious affiliation. They took the best parts of every thing, including the Roman Senate, regardless of the source. They didn’t care, because they focused on what worked, not on spiritual divination or derivation.
As I view it, this rift of argument is really about people of faith vs the secular atheists. It is not so much about who or what the Founding fathers were, or in whom they believed in, but rather on the typical current day conflicts and biases. You won’t find much documentation that describes how to solve the rift in the past, because in the past there was no argument over whether a person should be a Deist or a Christian, because notably it seemed they were both. They acted like a Deist and called themselves Christians.
Meaning, they could believe the bible not because they thought it was the Word of God, but because they saw historical evidence. Or maybe it just made sense to their reasoning faculties. That is a Deistic deduction, rather than divine inspiration. Because Deism believes in a God, it demands that things of the spirit must exist for there to be morality and righteous conduct. Given that without an ultimate higher judgement, anyone can do anything so long as they get away with it.
Zabrina’s point was my first thought when I read this- what a strangely stereotypical criteria he has for a book on the conservative viewpoint. Not all conservatives have an emphasis on religion, not by a longshot. It seems he is unaware of that, or unwilling to acknowledge it.
I would add my recommendation of anything by Thomas Sowell, especially Barbarians in the Gate or The Vision of the Annointed. F.A. Hayek is excellent. I would not recommend anything by Ayn Rand.
Two other excellent books would be:
1. Arguing About Slavery by William Miller. It’s an incredibly engaging read about the Senate debates on slavery in the 1800s, about thirty years before the Civil War. Miller does make clear the religious motivations of those who sought freedom for their fellow man, and it’s practically a biography of John Quincy Adams, as well as a treatise on that little understood or valued Constitutional right, the right to petition the government.
2. Witness, by Whittaker Chambers.
I completely agree with Trish, too- the Founding Fathers were largely NOT deists, though the case could be made for Jefferson, IMO, and for Benjamin Franklin (only if one ignores his personal writings in later life and his call for supplicatory prayer in the Constitutional Convention because, he said, he knew God moved in the lives of men and responded to prayers). Their own journals and letters make it quite clear that they were not deists.