What's Wrong With Self-Help Books? - The Daily Beast

Megan McArdle has some interesting observations in What's Wrong With Self-Help Books? - The Daily Beast. If I can fairly summarize her thesis this attitude towards self-help books stems from intellectuals’ elitism: they are so intelligent and above it all that they don’t need to heed the pedestrian advice offered in these books. She could be right.

I also think there is a strain of anti-individualism and determinism behind this sentiment too. If I could put this attitude in words it would be: How dare you think that you can help yourself in this crazy, complicated world? It’s too complicated for you to grasp and you’re fighting a futile battle against over-powering forces. You need the advice of your superior intellectual elite and the solace of the collective. It takes a village to raise a child, doesn’t it? I believe we can affect the wisdom of the decisions we make and the path we chart by reading the advice of some authors then making our own well-informed choices. My goal isn’t to defend that position here. It would take a book (or books) to do that.

Do some (or many) self-help books over simplify? Sure! Are some based on anecdotal as opposed to scientific studies? Yep. Are some just plain wrong? Of course. I’m not saying you blindly accept anyone who manages to get published. There are good self-help and bad self-help books, just as there are good or bad books in philosophy, history, politics, economics, and so on. And we naturally tend to pick authors who share our basic beliefs. A Christian will tend to read books written by a Christian self-help author and avoid an atheist’s screed. And vice versa.

I’d love to be able to spell out criteria for choosing the wheat out of the chaff but I’d say if it can be done it’s a job for someone far smarter than me. Maybe it’s a job for one of our intellectual elite! Just kidding. My goal is here is to simply note this bias against self-help books and offer an observation on the reason behind it.

The Anti-American President? by Robert James Bidinotto

Good friend Robert Bidinotto penned The Anti-American President?. Well worth reading!

Here is a sample.

Indeed. With the possible exception of Woodrow Wilson, Barack Obama is the only American president to truly despise, at the deepest philosophical level, what America uniquely stands for—which is why he stresses that he aims to be a “transformational president.” He has complained that the Framers of the Constitution failed to allow for “redistributive change.” Andrew C. McCarthy summarized Obama’s frustration with constitutional limits on government power:

Watchmen: A Fine Mess (With spoilers)

I’ll have to admit to being excited about the Watchmen release because the previews looked so promising. Having seen the movie this Wednesday I’d call it a fine mess. Why? The movie features distinctive characters, stunning visual effects, and an innovative narrative flow. And it was based on an interesting idea: what if Richard Nixon had been re-elected five times and still was President in 1985? In this alternate history line a group of heroes called the Watchmen help the government maintain order and even with its military activities. I haven’t read the graphic novel upon which the movie is based but I gather that the movie closely follows the novel.

Without going into the details of the plot my biggest problem with Watchmen is it's philosophical premise. Basically it's "sacrifice a few to save many." In other words, utilitarianism. In the movie two of the "heroes" are sacrificed. In addition several large US cities are blown up in order to scare the US and USSR into pursuing peace. (The movie was set in an alternate 1985 in which Nixon is still President.) So millions are sacrificed to save billions. I guess this is what passes for “deep” thinking these days: how many people will be sacrificed to preserve the peace, not what it takes to ensure the freedom of individuals.

This approach is typical for collectivists. They talk a lot about saving humanity but little about individual humans. It also inverts conceptual relationships. In the movie peace becomes and end in itself and trumps the freedom (and lives) of individuals. People are used as cannon fodder in search of a “greater good.” As a result people are freely sacrificed to achieve this end. A philosophy that centers on the individual instead will put peace second if achieving this peace means threatening the freedom of citizens.

In addition to using an alternate history to set up the plot it seems the writer buys the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) theory posed by former Secretary of the Defense Robert McNamara. The problem is that the Soviets never bought into MAD. They thought they could win and survive a nuclear war. And, their goal wasn't peace but to eradicate "evil" capitalism. This reveals another flaw in the premise behind MAD and the movie. Searching for a truly peaceful solution assumes both sides share common values. What common values did we share with the Soviet Union? Our system, for all its faults, is based on the premise that the function of government is to protect the interests of the individuals. Communism on the other hand forces individuals to serve the government or the “greater good.” (By the way, exactly who defines what this greater good consists of?) The record for collectivist governments in the 20^th century shows the futility of this approach: tens of millions of people died or were murdered yet the lives of the survivors were incredibly impoverished when compared to those living in freer countries.

This just goes to show that we all have to be “watchmen” against bad premises.