Negative Space: civil rights
- The Abolitionists
- This is a fascinating look at how a tiny minority came to affect the course of a nation. The abolitionist movement was vocal, idealistic, principled, and their arguments irrefutable. But ultimately, nobody cared.
- Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do
- Peter McWilliams died in defense of freedom: this book, an incredibly well-written and well-researched book about “the absurdity of consensual crimes in a free society” was probably his death warrant.
- Always Trust a Criminal
- Franklin said that those who give up freedom for a bit of temporary safety will lose both. But we now know that restoring freedom can give us true safety.
- Animal Farm
- Animal Farm is billed as “a provocative novel”, but that just underestimates our ability to be completely blind when faced with uncomfortable ideas.
- Brainwashing 101
- Except for a few high points, this documentary is disappointing, and especially so whenever the director appears on-screen. It takes an important issue and trivializes the political causes and implications.
- Civil rights vs. showboat killers
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If we want to take away people’s civil rights to stop the showboat killers that seem to have proliferated since Columbine, is it worth it?
- Fahrenheit 451
- A very good adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s science fiction novel of the same name. “Firemen” have evolved from people who put out fires to people who create them—in order to burn books. Fireman Montag begins to question this existence after a run-in with a young girl on a train.
- Hitler’s Last Courier
- Lehmann’s account of the last days of Hitler’s Germany, from the standpoint of a sixteen-year-old, is fascinating, but just as fascinating is his account of the ten years leading up to that end.
- Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
- Hidden beneath the Rocky Mountains, a long-lost civilization worthy of anything from Edgar Rice Burroughs toils in its paranoid mission to fight the communist anti-building.
- Necessary to the Security of a Free State
- We cannot have a free state when citizens are not encouraged to be responsible for their own defense.
- The presumption of innocence and prisoners of war
- Fairness means raising the standards of others, not lowering our own.
- The Second Sex
- According to Simone de Beauvoir, woman is the “other” not only to men but also often to herself, an alien thing that is not quite human and is never sure what it is or what its place is.
- Shopping around for lesser civil rights
- The two reasons for “rendition” are that we don’t have evidence against a suspect, or that we want to keep it secret. When are those reasons valid?
- The Siege of Harlem
- This is a strange artifact of the sixties. Written in 1964, published in 1965, it tells the story of when Harlem seceded from the Union and built its own government. The cover blurb says “Beneath the hilarity is a clear warning: ‘Laugh at your peril. It could happen.’”
- This Is Not An Assault
- Liberals who fear a police state will have their fears confirmed, and Conservatives who believe in strong law enforcement should receive a wake up call from “This Is Not An Assault”.
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- I don’t think you can fully enjoy any Southern civil rights work without having read “To Kill a Mockingbird.” All such works are written in the shadow of Harper Lee.
More Information
- The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party
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“Did you know that the Democratic Party defended slavery, started the Civil War, founded the KKK, and fought against every major civil rights act in U.S. history? Watch as Carol Swain, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, shares the inconvenient history of the Democratic Party.”
