A Year of Living Prayerfully

A Year of Living Prayerfully
© 2015 Jared Brock
352 pages

Emotionally weary from his fight against human trafficking, Jared Brock and his wife sought refreshment in prayer. A yearlong traveling retreat would immerse them in the prayer traditions of Orthodox Judaism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Protestant sects. Although a passionate Christian for most of his life, Brock's status as a thoroughly modern evangelical allows him to discover these traditions for the first time, and take lessons from them even as he retains his own convictions. Alternately reverent and cheeky, Brock is a comic but earnest guide to man's intense desire to touch the divine.  For the devout Christian, his thoughtful analysis of what he gleans from this yearlong study will no doubt be fruitful;  for instance, the importance of "kingdom-minded prayer" in which the seeker prays not for God to simply rescue him or do something for him, but attempts to surrender himself before the will of God in his own life, to abide in the presence of God and act not for reasons of self-will, but out of genuine love for one another. There are some dodgy moments, though -- Brock's wife jumping into a cold pond au naturale after saying various Jewish prayers, because they wanted to experience the ritual baptism and surprisingly no Orthodox Jews were open to having some evangelical woman "playing temple".  Brock purposely seeks out the bizarre -- the Westboro cult, Christian nudists, people walks on coals --  and these are included more for entertainment value than anything else. The early parts of the book, however, in  which Brock visits Israel and walks a pilgrimage route in Spain, even meeting Pope Francis, offer far more substance, like Brock's thoughtful dismay at the crass commercialization of Jerusalem.  The bizaare aspects make the work somewhat attractive to secular audiences, however.

Related:
And then There Were Nuns, Jane Christmas. One woman's exploration of the contemplative life.
A Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs, of which this is a fairly transparent imitation

American Cicero

American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll
© 2010 Bradley Birzer
230 pages

When Charles Carroll of Carrollton signed the Declaration of Independence, he was risking the biggest fortune on the American mainland.  But Carroll had yearned for independence for more than a decade before he put pen to paper, before strife ever disrupted the happy relationship between British America and Parliament.  Whatever the risk, if the cause was right Carroll could have taken no other course;  more than any other founder, he was steeped in the classical tradition and its traditions of civic virtue. When he died in 1832,  having outlived all the other founders, he was hailed as the Last of the Romans.   In  American Cicero, Bradley Birzer presents a study of his life, the tale of a Roman in a nation of would-be Jacobins.

 Many of the founding generations were besotted with the classical world;   they studied the classics not as segregated and dusty literature to be discussed in clubs with other eccentrics, but as the fount of worldly knowledge. Metaphysics, politics, natural philosophy, and even farming wisdom were the gift of Greece and Rome to the American frontier, and a study of classical political constitutions would later inform the creation of the American bedrock.   Educated for fourteen years in England and France, Carroll was even more formed by the classics than his contemporaries, who all adopted Latin pen names whenever they wrote in public forums. He considered the ancients to be not only teachers, but friends – especially Cicero, whose Stoicism would undergird Carroll’s political philosophy.

 Though he is little remembered today, Carroll’s early career was accomplished; after creating a reputation as a champion-patriot in  furious exchange of letters, he served as an emissary to Canada; later he attended the Second Constitutional Convention and signed both it and the Articles of Confederation; still later, when the Constitution supplanted the Articles, he was elected Maryland’s first Senator.  This was, Birzer writes, utterly appropriate given how much ink Carroll had spilled in the service of creating a genuine Republic, especially concerned with the role that  a Senate would play in maintaining an even keel amid populist furor.  If he is forgotten today,  it may owe to his  well-deserved reputation as a critic of mass democracy: like John Adams, he regarded pure democracy as dangerously unstable, a threat to the liberty of minorities and the right of property.

 Carroll was especially conscious of the threat of mobs given his status as a Catholic in a predominately Protestant world.  In a list of the signers of the Declaration, Carroll is alone in his Roman devotion.  Despite Maryland’s birth as a safe haven for Catholics fleeing the persecution of the Reformation, the state was heavily settled by Protestants and actually became one of the most hostile to Catholicism. In this age, hostility toward a man’s religion didn’t mean calling him names. Seizing his land and setting him on fire were more likely. The despoiling of Catholics had happened in England, and could very well happen in America were the Rule of Law not enthroned.

 Carroll feared the rage of a mob, and he had a great deal of property to lose – but he was a man who lived in hope.  His faith was more cosmopolitan than most, as he believed all those followed the moral laws of Jesus would see his face regardless of their doctrinal differences with the Church.   This universal stance was not sheer pragmatism on Carroll’s part, though he could not expect to live in peace with his neighbors, let alone play a part in the public sphere, were he antagonistic toward his Protestant brethren.   The Stoicism of Cicero also deeply informed Carroll’s beliefs, especially the belief that each man was imbued with a divine spark, a piece of the Cosmic logos,  and that this made every man and woman kin in a fundamental way, and opened the possibility of a universal republic.

 A genuine Republic was possible only if people conducted themselves with virtue, however, obeying the laws of Nature and its God;   let passion reign, and the fruits of civilization will be felled under a barbarian storm.  Carroll’s staunch belief in the need for virtue predisposed him to favor administration by a relatively small group of men, chosen for the strength of their character and themselves limited by government that kept the inherent abuses of government to a minimum. (The choosing of an American president by Congressionally-appointed Electors reflected the value other founders saw in a moderated  national democracy.) He believed in genuine aristocracy, but not the arbitrary sort.    Men’s characters were to be judged by their submission  to law, both divine and civic. Before the law that bound the cosmos and the republic together, no man could stand superior.

 Like Marcus Aurelius, Carroll is an easier man to admire from afar than to enjoy having supper with. John Adams thought him a marvelous specimen of humanity, but Mr. Adams had a moral severity of his own. Contemporaries marveled at his intelligence and devotion to the Patriot cause, arguing as he did against the abuses of the king and Parliament with respect to the common law, but his long education and affluent upbringing seemed to deny him that charismatic common touch that so endeared the public to men like Jefferson, or later Lincoln. He was highly esteemed by his peers, and sometimes admired by the people, but when he passed away he was mostly remembered as a historical curiosity, the last living signer of the declaration. Like Dickinson, he helped to shape popular rage against taxes and government meddling into a respectable cause,  and is thus worth considering even if the cause took on a more incautious nature than either man cared for. 

Recarving Rushmore

Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty
© 2009 Ivan Eland
527 pages

Presidential rankings tend to favor  those who were most active, reigning during a crisis or creating expansive new programs that alter the nation’s fortunes.  What of the peaceful administrators, however, those men who fulfilled their oaths expertly and restrained themselves from intervening unnecessarily in the lives of the people, or in the affairs of other countries? Recarving Rushmore ranks the presidents based on their performance in peace, prosperity, and liberty, and the results challenge conventional judgments and topple legends.  Here the forgotten men of presidential history are honored, and the mighty, humbled..

Eland’s standards view the accomplishments of most presidents as liabilities. Intervention in foreign affairs, for instance, not only costs American lives and destroys the nation’s resources, but typically leads to further interventions as the area is destabilized at greater risk to now-present American forces.  To add insult to injury, the wars often profit an elite who lobbied for intervention in the first place.  Collusion between the government and economic powers drives, in part, Eland’s continual disapproval of any meddling in the economy, whether it come in the form of denaturing the currency with silver,  forcing wage and price controls, or offering subsidies. The economic downturns of the 19th century, when no attempt was made by the government to  ‘correct’ them, always proved shorter and less intense than the depressions of the 20th century. Eeland sharply condemns not only abuses of power – forced Indian migrations,  civil liberties violations,  uses of the military in a civilian context – but failures to protect and fulfill the rights of minorities, chiefly blacks.   Eland's perspective is consistently libertarian, but errs on the side of federalism in regards to the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement, viewing secession as suspect and offering rare praise to Johnson for his support of civil rights.   The author thus avoids the distracting public-relations pitfall of state's rights.

Eland’s measure favors the unknown and scrutinizes the well-publicized, as expected. There are surprises to be found here, however, as he maintains that some presidents are overrated even  by conventional standards. Teddy Roosevelt may have had a reputation as a  jingoistic trust-buster, but the real work of beginning American Empire was inaugurated by his predecessor, William McKinley.  Given the classically liberal stance, one might expect FDR and his New Deal to be utterly damned.  His gentle thirteen-year reign takes fire, but FDR was only building on inroads carved out by predecessors. Hoover had meddled in the economy,  and it was Wilson who made the presidency an object of fixation and began turning every home into an outpost of the Civil Service. (Wilson holds the inglorious dead-last rank, for the Income Tax, the Federal Reserve, the Great War,  his deliberate segregation of the Armed Forces, his abusive crackdown on those who questioned dissent, and more. Wilson commits practically every presidential sin possible in this book,  the exception being that he never broke an Indian treaty.)   Other presidents who are not unknown, but regarded poorly, actually perform quite well here: Jimmy Carter is designated the best president of the modern era, for instance,  for his almost-consistent avoidance of international entanglement,  and his deregulation of some major industries.  He was also fiscally conservative in a way not rivaled until another Democrat, Bill Clinton, arrived on the scene. (Bill is, surprisingly, "Average".)

Eland has some curiosities as a writer; he refers to Nixon as the last liberal president, for reasons which are never explained. If we are to take liberal in the classical sense, his wage-and-price controls and gold-standard departure would seem to severe him from any claim to that label, and  the welfare/warfare model that marks modern liberals was practiced by virtually every president to follow.  He repeats the tired old canard that JFK referred to himself as a jelly donut (as silly a claim as Taft being remembered for getting stuck inside a bath tub), and describes Selma as the most violent town in the South, which is based on nothing but the March 1965 assault  (The town had no reputation for racial violence before that, and even the Klan was kept away by the city fathers.)   On the whole, however, the facts presented are consistent with conventional histories; only the author's judgement differs.

These marks aside, Recarving Rushmore is a most fascinating book, one that turns appraisals of the executives on their head. Even if one disagrees with Eland’s standards for measurement,  if nothing else they.   This is a text that evaluates its subjects not based on their ability to seduce a crowd, charm the cameras, or ‘inspire’, but on their performance as public administrators. Did they keep the fiscal house in order,  ensure the peace and stability that lead to prosperity, and safeguard the rights of the people?  If so, they are the model of a Constitutional president, one who allows the American people to be the primary actors in their own lives, the creators of their own destiny -- not simply the tools  to be used in some great vision.

Summer vacation -- bring on the light and fluffy!

Dear readers:

My reading of late has been emotionally intense, and after the recent racial violence in Charleston, doubly depressing and disturbing. I haven't felt this drained since surviving Chris Hedges' Empire of Illusion, and I stand in need of some encouraging, or at least fun, reads. I've mentioned in a comment that once through with the American Revolution series, I plan on taking a summer break of sorts,  keeping my reading lighter and varied. Old favorites like science, Star Trek, trains, philosophy and such will get some much-needed attention.  I had planned on playing with the revolution and politics throughout July, but I can't take it.  As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory, which I read recently seeking relief from all this gloominess:

A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion; to ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for one as for the other. But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind—if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else—then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease. 

So, I'll be mixing in other material with the American revolution series, and then keeping things mixed for a while before I do anymore big themes. I've just purchased a batch of books that includes some titles I've wanted to read for at least a year, including Philosophy for Life and Other Situations. Another book, not included in this set but to be pursued later, will be Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City.

So, happy summer, and may my future reading be far more hopeful.

The Cost of Liberty

The Cost of Liberty: The Life of John Dickinson
© 2013 William Murchinson
257 pages

"Experience must be our only guide; reason may mislead us."

Can you claim to be a Founding Father if you didn't sign the Declaration of Independence?  What if not signing it is your crowning moment of infamy?  This biography of John Dickinson is part of a series on the lives of forgotten founding fathers, but his name may ring a bell moreso than the rest .Who beyond revolutionary historians has any idea who Luther Martin is, for instance?  But Dickinson was the antagonist of both 1776 and an episode or two of John Adams, where he opposes the titular solon's argument that independence is the only route  left to the American people.  In 1776, he is cast as a sneering and  aloof aristocrat,  more concerned with protecting his money than with  rights and liberties. In the other, he is a sniveling knave, horrified at the prospect of having to take a stand against the Mother Country. The Cost of Liberty gives the lie to both accounts, delivering an portrait of a man who knew how to fight for his principles, and would – before his peers at the bar and in Congress, or on the field of battle. John Dickinson made his name infamous by resisting the Declaration of Independence, but he was a leader of the Revolution even so , putting pen to paper to cry “Injustice” against Parliament long before Congress was ever assembled.   Though after 1776 he never achieved any national greatness, he had already made himself a champion in the eyes of his contemporaries.

While he never signed the Declaration of Independence, nor would he play a part in the national government, Dickinson was nonetheless a leader in the revolution. For Dickinson, of course, it was less a revolution than a restoration.   Brought up in a well-placed Quaker family, he  sought advancement in the law, studying at the Inns of Court in London.  His upbringing and this experience on the home isle gave him a keen appreciation for deep English roots; though he and Thomas Jefferson would eventually become friends, even collaborating on the Virginian’s Necessity for Taking Up Arms, they approached human liberty from different perspectives. Whereas Jefferson believed in natural rights,  Dickinson had a  less idealistic conviction. They might be instilled in us by the Creator, but they were guaranteed only through law and force. Hundreds of years of excellent strife had given the colonists their rights as Englishmen, and it was for that dignity Dickinson would fight.  He was a constitutionally prudent man; when the people of Pennsylvania asked the king to assume direct control over their colony, overriding the Penn family which 'owned' it in a propriety charter, Dickinson resisted:  Pennsylvanians had lived and contended with the Penns for decades, and had earned a status as the freest colony on the seaboard. Were the king to assume direct control,   all those accomplishments could be cast to the wind; even if the king were the noblest of fellows, his governors might not be, and Pennsylvanians could find themselves set back to square one, having to fight for their freedoms all over again, and this time against a far stronger authority. The resistance Dickinson would later display against the Declaration of Independence did not stem from any special loyalty to the king, but more to an acute sense that great changes have unpredictable results. 

William Murchinson takes readers through the pivotal early years of the Revolution, where Dickinson takes the lead.  His Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania not only gave strength to resistance against the Tea and Coercive acts at home, but generated popular support in England. Dickinson was never one for rabble-rousing, urging mobs to commit violence against the authorities, but he did argue passionately for civil resistance.   Dickinson's fall from grace came in 1776 when the American temper was so aroused against Britain that war had already erupted.  Dickinson continued to hope that changes might be effected cautiously, still in connection to England, but the blood shed at Lexington and Concord lit a fire under the king, as well. The rebels would pay for their defiance, and so the path of reconciliation was ignored by both the patriots and the king, to the dismay of men like Dickinson in America and Edmund Burke in Britain.

After the war, Dickinson would continue to lead at the local level in both Pennsylvania and Delaware, but he would not assume great office and his name has faded with the ages.  Murchison's reappraisal of this man of peace, prudence, and principled resistance is a welcome balm.

In the words of his friend, Thomas Jefferson...

"A more estimable man, or truer patriot, could not have left us. Among the first of the advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain, he continued to the last the orthodox advocate of the true principles of our new government and his name will be consecrated in history as one of the great worthies of the revolution."

Behind the Mask of Chivalry

Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Klan
© 1995 Nancy MacLean
336 pages

           

I'm a faithful follower of Brother John Birch,

and I belong to the Antioch Baptist Church 

 -- and I ain't even got a garage, you can call home and ask my wife!

("Uneasy Rider", Charlie Daniels*)

Nancy MacLean’ Behind the Mask of Chivalry examines the Ku Klux Klan at its most insidious: the opening of the 1920s. Using its activity in Athens, Georgia, as a case study, she probes its tactics, its composition,  its worldview, and its impact.   She demonstrates that the Klan’s lingering horror stems not from its penchant for burning homes and whipping people, but that the most respectable castes of society could hide behind its robes. Viewing the Klan essentially as a reactionary, populist socio-political movement, she offers an intriguing comparison between it and the fascist movements in Italy and Germany, which were on the rise as well. Though not a serious rival to The Fiery Cross as far as Klan history goes,   for the reader only interested in the Klan at its modern height, it should serve fairly well.  It has limits, however, in that the author uses the history to scratch an itch against male privilege. This is essentially a feminist history of the Klan that sees a war between the sexes at every turn.

Despite the Klan’s association with ‘white trash’,  more than half of the members of the Athens group were independent business owners, managers, or small freeholders. They were the very stock of citizenry, in fact, including in their ranks mayors and pastors.  While there were a few unskilled workers in the Athens organization, the majority were men of some accomplishment – if nothing else, then masters  at a trade. They were diverse and largely successful, far from being the bitter and dispossessed ex-soldiers of the 1870s who sought revenge against their imagined enemies in the form of "northerners and Negroes".   Their concerns and fears were diverse, but the Klan would unite them in one simple message:  old-fashioned America was in peril. Its menaces were both economic and social, both real and imagined.  The United States had only entered the Great War for a year, but it would be enough to radically alter the nation: the wartime agricultural boom led to failing farms after Europe began to recover, for instance. Other social consequences of the war were a renewed sense of resistance from black soldiers who discovered there was more to the world than institutional racism, and increasing control by the government of every aspect of life.  This was an age of industrial concentration, of department stores like A&P out-competing smaller firms. Fear of business conspiracies abounded;   with so much capital being controlled by so few hands, takeovers by a corporate elite were a common object of dread. The transformation of society by science, government, and capital had completely outpaced the moderating hand of tradition, leading to drastic changes in social customs.  A family's move from an agricultural homestead to wage-warning in the city, for instance, disrupted some of the ties that bound children to the care of their parents. Instead of working around the family farm, young people were paid pages that they felt a sense of individual ownership over. Emboldened by this, they explored the new world of the growing city, and all of its temptations -- like dance halls and pool clubs.
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In answer to all this stress and fear came the Klan, assuring parents and citizens that their fears were justified,  that true Americanism was under attack and needed defenders.  This was an age of civic and fraternal organizations, far more active than they are today. The Klan had all of their attractions, plus the costumes and rituals of older societies, and it promised to do something about the problems faced by concerned traditionalists.   Racism is the Klan's home territory, but MacLean's research indicates how broadly the Klan's sheets billowed: over half of the recorded violence done by the Athens klan, for instance, had white targets, and this was from an area  bound to be more racial than most.  The Klan attacked blacks who questioned their subordination under an elite, yes,  but they also attacked men accused of not supporting their wives. They were footsoldiers of Prohibition, leading the fight against  purported moral decay even though their leaders were known to knock a few jugs back. (Hypocrisy seems to be endemic to the human condition.)   The klan functioned on many levels: first, it offered a forum for concerns to be voiced and encouraged;   it knit members together with socials and consumer-based activism, in which Klansmen only patronized the stores of other Klansmen; and, when it occasioned, offered a sanctified use of force to take down those deemed malefactors.   The klan was more than a criminal gang: it was a tribal-civic religion, combining Christianity with racial purity -- a rebirth of paganism, almost, with a binary focus on the Tribe and its god, both supported by willing warriors.

 The religious aspects of the Klan combined with its embrace of violence invites comparison to the Fascist movements in Europe, which also not only defended tradition against modernity, but combined it with an absolute worship of the Nation and its symbols. MacClean points to the Nazi's party's success during periods of economic depression, and and the Klan's own decline after America recovered from the postwar bust, to suggest that both were  born of and sustained by severe socio-economic stress.   Had the United States endured as long a downturn as Weimar Germany, she muses, the Klan might have well brought fascism to the United States, wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.  Given their success in the midwest (practically taking over Indiana), that may have been a possibility, but as MacClean notes most Klansmen had a serious ideological animus against dictatorship. Their hatred for the Catholic church, for instance,  fixated on the notion of papal authority.

As useful as MacLean's work into the Klan's demographics is, indicating how popular it became by masquerading as a civically-minded fraternal organization,  MacLean's sexual hangup presents serious baggage.  Not only does she dismiss the entire concept  of honor as one of male ownership over women, but she reduces male bonding rituals to suppressed homosexuality.  Seeing sexual undertones in every relationship is one of the more tiresome aspects of the modern mind, and does not serve this history well. MacLean also seems to place blame on the subjects' concerns, rather than than their actions:  how dare parents be concerned about their children risking their health and futures in premature sexuality? Bring on the STDs and abortion, baby, it's time for liberation. She also uniquely targets white men as being the reactionaries, as if their wives (enlisted in a Women of the KKK) or black men didn't share those concerns about their children's futures.  Granted, the villains here are white men, but MacLean singles out the concern, the very act of judgement. Moderns don't like to be judged, but  evaluating events as good or ill or some balance of the two, is how humans exist.

Behind the Mask of Chivalry is serviceable if limited. Its foray into the demographics of the second klan is more extensive than The Fiery Cross, but that work held its own in that respect and offered reams more substance with less editorializing. 


* "Uneasy Rider" is a highly entertaining song about a long-haired peacenik wandering into a redneck bar and escaping from a fight by accusing one of his antagonists of being a long-haired hippie, guilty of voting for McGovern and hired by the FBI to infiltrate  the KKK.  

The Terrorist Next Door

The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right

© 2004 Daniel Levitas
544 pages

How does the grandson of Jewish immigrants become a leading voice in anti-Semitic movements? The Terrorist Next Door reviews domestic militancy in the United States,  as viewed through the life of Bill Gale, founder of the Posse Comitatus.   Taking its name from an act meant to prevent Federal troops from interfering in civil affairs, the group’s abiding faith was animosity towards a government viewed as corrupt at best, and taken over by alien forces at worst. (“Alien” in this case referring to the Illuminati, Freemasons, Jews, or agents of the One World Government. No one here fears the sneaky Reptilian menace.)  Covering essentially the same kind of reactionary violence as Harvest of Rage, but  with less grace, it doesn't avail much other than to build on biases. Unfortunately, the use of one monstrous man as a lens to view related movements casts an evil light on even the comparatively innocent.

The Posse Comitatus is a fairly vile bunch, a Klan without robes and with less concern with decency.   Gale himself took to the racist politics of the Christian Identity movement – which sees Anglo-Saxons as the true children of Israel, and contemporary Jews as Russian pretenders – fairly early on, but the popular support he built was based on a kind of localism on steroids. The basic government unit of every American state, he maintained, was the county, and its only constitutionally-sanctioned officer the Sheriff.  The sheriff could summon the men of the county as a posse to deal with serious threats to law and order.  Gale’s posse considered itself a self-organizing and constitutionally-sanctioned force in service of the same. Their enemies varied, as Gale was able to build a following beyond his initial band of white supremacists, appealing first to farmers on the road to ruin and then later the burgeoning tax resistance movement. Later still, during the Clinton administration, the comitatus would inspire dozens of self-organized militia movements, all of which viewed the federal government as its chief object of contempt, dread, and hostility. 

Gale’s posse wasn’t merely a right-wing crank group that gathered together to swap bits of foreboding news and complain about what the government was up to;   they were a force in the true sense of the word, applying violence to 'solve' problems. One man with a claim on a farm, for instance, called the group to come to his aid: they  took possession of the place, running off the owner and blockading  the only access road. They also vigorously defended themselves, shooting Federal agents who attempted to subdue them.  Civilian casualties in Federal encounters gone wrong only inflamed passions and spurred on greater activity: after the ideologically-linked Oklahoma City bombing, for instance, militia involvement grew. The same was true after President Clinton introduced the Brady Bill, viewed as  an attempt by the government to disarm the populace.   

Like Harvest of Rage,  The Terrorist Next Door is written as a warning, but whereas Harvest seeks to understand its subjects, Terrorist is content to condemn them and anyone it can connect ever so tangentially to their cause.  Under Levitas' pen, anyone who resists the government, who cries overreach -- especially if they do so from a Christian perspective -- is a racist with a lynching rope in the closet.  The problem with this is that the people covered in this book aren't part of a uniform organization, or ones even like the Comitatus.  For instance, Alabama's chief justice, Roy Moore takes heat here for installing a monument to the ten commandments within his courthouse. As problematic as that is from a constitutional perspective, to smear him as connected to the Christian Identity clan is contemptible.  Even those with actual connections to Gale's group weren't under his violent command:   they had their own motivations and ideas for taking action, like attempting to pay tax bills with fraudulent checks and filing false liens in their courthouses. Criminal, yes, but 'terrorist'?    Tarring any reaction against the growth and abuses of the state as violently racist makes as much sense as declaring at the Federal Reserve is a Zionist conspiracy to take over the world, or regarding every man on a motorcycle as a card-carrying member of the Mongols.

My interest in this book came from the hopes of gaining some insight into the militia mentality, but Levitas is more concerned with declaring that they exist, they're everywhere, and something oughta be done about `em.  Sure,  have the Federal government go after them -- that's worked so well so far. Levitas himself documents how militancy and paranoia flourished amid real or perceived persecution, spiking after Waco, Oklahoma City, and the Brady Bill. Obviously, going after armed people who already think the government is against them is a really swell idea that will lead to happy times for everyone.  At least the author of Harvest of Rage knew, as nutty as his subjects could be, at the root of their paranoia lay real despair and genuine concerns -- about their status as economic losers in a globalized world, or  the collusion of big agriculture, big banks, and big government. Their pain and fear was twisted by the Bill Gales of this world, but for Levitas anyone remotely connected to Gale is as bad as him.  This is an alarmist and dismissive account that will make those already predisposed to view grassroots reaction as ignorant, racist, and violent feel justified, but has little purpose beyond that  Its focus on the Comitatus has its uses, but as far as understanding right-wing militancy goes,  this is far inferior to Harvest of Rage.

Related:
Harvest of Rage, Joel Dyer