BOOK REVIEWS FOR DOJ MEMBERS +

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our Daughters 

Abigail Shrier

What it's about?

A deeply compassionate and utterly sobering account of an unprecedented and reckless social experiment whose test subjects are the bodies and psyches of the most emotionally vulnerable among us. If you thought that LGBT was a crazy idea, wait till you read this! Some of you may already be aware of this in English-speaking countries, mainly USA, Canada and the UK (although there was a recent a minor legal setback for 'transitioning' of minors recently in the UK). Teachers and counsellors have been transforming adolescent girls beginning with new language rules to describe gender, then hormone treatment, surgical breast removal and penis construction, etc. Abigail Shrier dares to tell the truth about a monstrous ideological fad that has already ruined countless children’s lives. History will look kindly on her courage.

This is not a Christian book, but it contains crucial un-hyped information which will be a concern to parents/grandparents of school-going teens or preteens.

LINKS

NHS gender clinic 'should have challenged me more' over transition - BBC News

NHS Tavistock child gender clinic rated 'inadequate' - BBC News

Review: ‘Irreversible Damage’ by Abigail Shrier (thegospelcoalition.org)

PURCHASE FROM AMAZON: https://bit.ly/3rYF5P6

“CONFLICTING DOCTRINES SHARE THE TRUTH BETWEEN THEM”

CONFLICTING DOCTRINES SHARE THE TRUTH BETWEEN THEM - - JOHN STUART MILL

It still remains to speak of one of the principal causes which make diversity of opinion advantageous, and will continue to do so until mankind shall have entered a stage of intellectual advancement which at present seems at an incalculable distance.

We have hitherto considered only two possibilities: that the received opinion may be false, and some other opinion, consequently, true; or that, the received opinion being true, a conflict with the opposite error is essential to a clear apprehension and deep feeling of its truth. But there is a commoner case than either of these; when the conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the truth between them; and the nonconforming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the truth, of which the received doctrine embodies only a part.

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. They are a part of the truth; sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller part, but exaggerated, distorted, and disjoined from the truths by which they ought to be accompanied and limited. Heretical opinions, on the other hand, are generally some of these suppressed and neglected truths, bursting the bonds which kept them down, and either seeking reconciliation with the truth contained in the common opinion, or fronting it as enemies, and setting themselves up, with similar exclusiveness, as the whole truth. The latter case is hitherto the most frequent, as, in the human mind, one-sidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises.

Even progress, which ought to superadd, for the most part only substitutes, one partial and incomplete truth for another; improvement consisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of truth is more wanted, more adapted to the needs of the time, than that which it displaces. Such being the partial character of prevailing opinions, even when resting on a true foundation.

EVERY OPINION WHICH EMBODIES SOMEWHAT OF THE PORTION OF TRUTH

WHICH THE COMMON OPINION OMITS, OUGHT TO BE CONSIDERED PRECIOUS, WITH WHATEVER AMOUNT OF ERROR AND CONFUSION THAT TRUTH MAY BE BLENDED.

John Stuart Mill 

MISOPONOS

 

We both work on college campuses; in recent years, we had heard repeated references to the wisdom of Misoponos, a modern-day oracle who lives in a cave on the north slope of Mount Olympus, where he continues the ancient rites of the cult of Koalemos.

     We flew to Athens and took a five-hour train ride to Litochoro, a town at the foot of the mountain. At sunrise the next day, we set off on a trail that Greeks have used for thousands of years to seek communion with their gods. We hiked for six hours up a steep and winding path. At noon we came to a fork in the path where a sign said MISOPONOS, with an arrow pointing to the right. The main path, off to the left, looked forbidding: it went straight up a narrow ravine, with an ever-present danger of rockslides.

     The path to Misoponos, in contrast, was smooth, level, and easy—a welcome change. It took us through a pleasant grove of pine and fir trees, across a strong wooden pedestrian bridge over a deep ravine, and right to the mouth of a large cave.

     Inside the cave we saw a strange scene. Misoponos and his assistants had installed one of those take-a-number systems that you sometimes find in sandwich shops, and there was a line of other seekers ahead of us. We took a number, paid the 100 euro fee to have a private audience with the great man, performed the mandatory rituals of purification, and waited.

     When our turn came, we were ushered into a dimly lit chamber at the back of the cave, where a small spring of water bubbled out from a rock wall and splashed down into a large white marble bowl somewhat reminiscent of a birdbath. Next to the bowl, Misoponos sat in a comfortable chair that appeared to be a Barcalounger recliner from the 1970s. We had heard that he spoke English, but we were taken aback when he greeted us in perfect American English with a hint of Long Island: “Come on in, guys. Tell me what you seek.”

     Jon spoke first: “O Wise Oracle, we have come seeking wisdom. What are the deepest and greatest of truths?”

     Greg thought we should be more specific, so he added, “Actually, we’re writing a book about wisdom for teenagers, young adults, parents, and educators, and we were kind of hoping that you could boil down your insights into some pithy axioms, ideally three of them, which, if followed, would lead young people to develop wisdom over the course of their lives.”

     Misoponos sat silently with his eyes closed for about two minutes. Finally, he opened his eyes and spoke.

     “This fountain is the Spring of Koalemos. Koalemos was a Greek god of wisdom who is not as well-known today as Athena, who gets far too much press, in my opinion. But Koalemos has some really good stuff, too, if you ask me. Which you just did. So let me tell you. I will give you three cups of wisdom.”

     He filled a small alabaster cup from the water bowl and handed it to us. We both drank from it and handed it back.

     “This is the first truth,” he said: “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. So avoid pain, avoid discomfort, avoid all potentially bad experiences.”

     Jon was surprised. He had written a book called The Happiness Hypothesis, which examined ancient wisdom in light of modern psychology. The book devoted an entire chapter to testing the opposite of the oracle’s claim, which was most famously stated by Friedrich Nietzsche: “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”1 Jon thought there must be some mistake. “Excuse me, Your Holiness,” he said, “but did you really mean to say ‘weaker’? Because I’ve got quotes from many wisdom traditions saying that pain, setbacks, and even traumatic experiences can make people stronger.”

     “Did I say ‘weaker’?” asked Misoponos. “Wait a minute . . . is it weaker or stronger?” He squeezed his eyes shut as he thought about it, and then opened his eyes and said, “Yes, I’m right, weaker is what I meant. Bad experiences are terrible, who would want one? Did you travel all this way to have a bad experience? Of course not. And pain? So many oracles in these mountains sit on the ground twelve hours a day, and what does it get them? Circulation problems and lower-back pain. How much wisdom can you dispense when you’re thinking about your aches and pains all the time? That’s why I got this chair twenty years ago. Why shouldn’t I be comfortable?” With clear irritation in his voice, he added, “Can I finish?”

     “I’m sorry,” said Jon meekly.

     Misoponos filled the cup again. We drank it. “Second,” he continued: “Always trust your feelings. Never question them.”

     Now it was Greg’s turn to recoil. He had spent years practicing cognitive behavioral therapy, which is based on exactly the opposite advice: feelings so often mislead us that you can’t achieve mental health until you learn to question them and free yourself from some common distortions of reality. But having learned to control his immediate negative reactions, he bit his tongue and said nothing.

     Misoponos refilled the cup, and we drank again. “Third: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.”

     We looked at each other in disbelief. Greg could no longer keep quiet: “O Great Oracle of Koalemos,” he began, haltingly, “can you explain that one to us?”

     “Some people are good,” Misoponos said slowly and loudly, as if he thought we hadn’t heard him, “and some people are bad.” He looked at us pointedly and took a breath. “There is so much evil in the world. Where does it come from?” He paused as if expecting us to answer. We were speechless. “From evil people!” he said, clearly exasperated. “It is up to you and the rest of the good people in the world to fight them. You must be warriors for virtue and goodness. You can see how bad and wrong some people are. You must call them out! Assemble a coalition of the righteous, and shame the evil ones until they change their ways.”

     Jon asked, “But don’t they think the same about us? How can we know that it is we who are right and they who are wrong?”

     Misoponos responded tartly, “Have you learned nothing from me today? Trust your feelings. Do you feel that you are right? Or do you feel that you are wrong? I feel that this interview is over. Get out.”

 • • • • •

     There is no Misoponos,2 and we didn’t really travel to Greece to discover these three terrible ideas. We didn’t have to. You can find them on college campuses, in high schools, and in many homes. These untruths are rarely taught explicitly; rather, they are conveyed to young people by the rules, practices, and norms that are imposed on them, often with the best of intentions.

     This is a book about three Great Untruths that seem to have spread widely in recent years:

     The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. 

     The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings. 

     The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people. 

Excerpted from The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianof and Jonathan Haidt 2018

BOOK REVIEWS FOR DOJ MEMBERS

 

United States of Socialism

Who's Behind It. Why It's Evil. How to Stop It.

By Dinesh D'Souza · 2020

What it's about: 

Very recent book, written before the 2020 Election result. Gives some good insights into the US left wing, it's history and current aims, strategies and goals. It has a strong conservative slant. I kind of entered into a dialogue or conversation with the book as I read it.

Why should I read it?

Even if you don't have a strong conservative bent, this book is very informative and offers good reasoning and is well informed. Some of the author's presentation amounts to polemic, but overall very useful and informative. Even if you oppose Dsouza's ideas, they are well articulated and you can better know what it is you don't agree with. Dinesh Dsouza was born in India, he is Roman Catholic. The first book I read of his was, 'What's So Great About Christianity' which is a very worthwhile read.

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Don't Burn This Book

Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

By Dave Rubin · 2020

What it's about: 

Another conservative book. (Don't worry, be patient, they're not all like this) It's an expose of the 'woke' agenda. I almost quit this book in the first chapter because Rubin's gay lifestyle sickened me. Anyway, I perservered and eventually, the book is very worthwhile.

Why should I read it?

Grey Town

We were now so high that all below us had become featureless. But fields, rivers, or mountains I did not see, and I got the impression that the grey town still filled the whole field of vision.

"It seems the deuce of a town," I volunteered, "and that's what I can't understand. The parts of it that I saw were so empty. Was there once a much larger population?"

"Not at all," said my neighbour. "The trouble is that they're so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he's been there 24 hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he's quarrelled so badly that he decides to move. Very like he finds the next street empty because all the people there have quarrelled with their neighbours--and moved. So he settles in. If by any chance the street is full, he goes further. But even if he stays, it makes no odds. He's sure to have another quarrel pretty soon and then he'll move on again. Finally he'll move right out to the edge of the town and build a new house. You see, it's easy here. You've only got to think a house and there it is. That's how the town keeps on growing."

"Leaving more and more empty streets?"

"That's right. And time's sort of odd here. That place where we caught the bus is thousands of miles from the Civic Centre where all the newcomers arrive from earth. All the people you've met were living near the bus stop: but they'd taken centuries--of our time--to get there, by gradual removals."

"And what about the earlier arrivals? I mean--there must be people who came from earth to your town even longer ago."

"That's right. There are. They've been moving on and on. Getting further apart. They're so far off by now that they could never think of coming to the bus stop at all. Astronomical distances. There's a bit of rising ground near where I live and a chap has a telescope. You can see the lights of the inhabited houses, where those old ones live, millions of miles away. Millions of miles from us and from one another. Every now and then they move further still. That's one of the disappointments. I thought you'd meet interesting historical characters. But you don't: they're too far away."

C S Lewis, The Great Divorce

 

MERE REPENTANCE

This is C S Lewis explaining in a BBC radio broadcast during the Second World War what it means to repent. Remember, this broadcast was for the general British public. He set out to explain Christianity. All these radio broadcasts were later transcribed, redacted and made into the book, Mere Christianity.
This is only part of what he said. I heartily recommend reading the whole book if you have never done so.

"Now what was the sort of 'hole' man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track & getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor—that is the only way out of our 'hole'. This process of surrender—this movement full speed astern—is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit & self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent.

C S Lewis

Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation & a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back & which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers & that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us & that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love & reason because God loves & reasons & holds our hand while we do it. "

Hanging him is probably not going to do anybody much good

 THIS WAS A GREAT AUTHENTIC SERIES. 

FOYLE'S WAR

Samantha Stewart: Can I ask you something? Were you tempted to let him go? I mean, even for a moment.

Foyle: Yes, I was. Yeah. I mean, hanging him is probably not going to do anybody much good, and I suppose he had a point.

Samantha Stewart: But...?

Foyle: I'm a policeman, I'm here to do a job, it's as simple as that. If I start bending the rules, I might as well pack it in.

Samantha Stewart: Yes, but... she was a German.

Foyle: Well, that doesn't make any difference at all. She's a human being, and she was murdered. Murder is murder. You stop believing that, and we might as well not be fighting the war... because you end up like the Nazis.