Book Reviews
Woken Promises episodes are not simply presentations of conjecture or exercises in flapping our gums. Instead, every single month and every episode we are busy reading a new work to contribute to our knowledge. The end product, after revision and review, is presented to you in a purified, distilled form. From there, you can judge if you want more! Scroll down and check out our book reviews from the last two years…
Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents
Woken Promises Rating: 4.75/5
RECOMMENDED
For various reasons, many people simply refuse to believe the Western world is collapsing. Some instead believe this claim is a “right wing conspiracy theory”, some are apathetic, and some may even be agent to said collapse.
For the rest of us, the time has come to act. While this relatively new predicament of Western collapse is its own animal, historic precedent has thankfully been established against the totalitarian regimes which seek to facilitate such destruction. This precedent was set by many victims, including Christians persecuted in the 20th Century.
In this compilation of stories from behind the Iron Curtain, author Rod Dreher provides a critical reminder of how Christians survived under Soviet persecution, and how this can be done in today’s increasingly anti-Christian environment.
Dreher’s “Live Not by Lies,” is in fact named for perhaps the most famous anti-communist dissident, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, who used the phrase “live not by lies” to warn his countrymen as he was exiled from Soviet Russia.
The book begins with a detailed comparison of historic totalitarianism to its modern equivalent. The newer, “soft” totalitarianism comes under the guise of social justice and Marxist-based teachings such as critical theory. The new totalitarianism promises to address inequalities that keep society from progressing. Dreher compares this benevolent facade with the way communism promised alleviation of the brutal Romanov autocracy in Russia, beginning over a century ago.
From there, Dreher moves to concrete examples of resistance during Soviet occupation in the wake of World War II. We meet dissident heroes like Father Kirill Kaleda, Maria Wittner, Alexander Ogordnikov, Vaclav and Kamila Benda, Silvester Krcmery, and many more.
The individual stories of heroism are small but integral parts of a resistance to totalitarian culture that allowed Christianity to persevere in the face of oppression. The message is one of courage inspired by faith - a faith that any Christian must be willing to share with those likewise persecuted.
Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents
Dreher, Rod
Sentinel Publishing, 2020
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 12: Totalitarian Kryptonite and Woken Promises: Episode 13: Good Intentions
From Democracy to Judicial Dictatorship: The Untold Story of the Charter of Rights
Woken Promises Rating: 4.5/5
RECOMMENDED
Every Canadian citizen should read this book. This is a behind-the-scenes account of the creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms from the viewpoint of a traditional conservative. This book suggests no other document in Canadian history has so terribly assaulted the rights of Canadians as the 1982 Charter, and the authors present substantial evidence of this. Using Hansard records to verify their own opinions, Landolt et al illuminate the murky process by which Pierre Elliot Trudeau and the federal Liberals rammed through the repatriation of the constitution. The authors show the tactics used to trick and cajole the Catholic church, the premiers, the federal Conservatives, and even some conservative Liberals into witless submission. The key battleground of the pro-life versus pro-abortion factions is put front-and-center so everyone can see that there were indeed people who realised the Charter would quickly lead to abortion-on-demand. At the time, only therapeutic abortion was legal. Their fears proved entirely justified as within five years of the Charter’s creation, the critical case R. v. Morgentaler (1988) legalized abortion-on-demand. Further to this critical failure, the book examines the rapid expansion of the power of the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) under the Charter. Many direct examples of judicial activism by the SCC are investigated, and some of the justices of the SCC are exposed. The result is that there are many more catastrophic destruction of rights recorded, and that abortion-on-demand was just the beginning.
From Democracy to Judicial Dictatorship: The Untold Story of the Charter of Rights
Landolt, Gwendolyn; Redmond, Patrick; Alderson, Douglas
The Interim Publishing Company, 2019
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 4: The Long and Bloody Revolution
Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military
Woken Promises Rating: 4.25/5
RECOMMENDED
Former Space Force Command Commander Matthew Lohmeier has risked his military career to bring us the truth in: “Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military”.
During the “crisis” stage of Marxist-Leninist subversion, the two possible outcomes listed by KGB-informant turned defector Yuri Bezmenov are invasion by a foreign power and civil war. It is useful to apply this Marxist-Leninist framework to Lohmeier’s book, as the Commander is unabashedly suggesting that such subversion is not only well underway, it has taken root among every rank of the American military.
The US’ inability to definitively identify and remove radical left domestic terrorist organizations such as Antifa are worrisome signs that civil war continues to be a very real possibility. The creation of an “autonomous zone” by Antifa and BLM in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood of Seattle is proof that such threats can indeed materialize. This ended up costing lives.
Lohmeier provides a window of insight into the rarely seen and even more rarely discussed world of the American military, and the news is not good. Beginning with the history of the American Revolution and the writing of the Declaration of Independence, Lohmeier lays down his view that the strength of America’s founding philosophy is being overwritten by forces which do not properly evaluate it. He points out that the Declaration of Independence was in fact a rejection of abuse of power over the masses by rejecting the historical ‘divine right of kings’ and even rejecting England’s later ‘parliamentary sovereignty’. The very beginning of the Declaration of Independence promises that before God and under the law “all men are created equal”. This does not match well with the lie being perpetrated throughout America today that everything is about uneven power relationships in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
To that founding document in 1776, Lohmeier contrasts a deep, concurrent journey through the history of Marxism. He aims well before Marx’s most influential writings. This focus appears esoteric, but what it does is provide the reader with the necessary context to understand the evolution of such corrupt thinking. Lohmeier touches on Marx’s “influencers,” including early communist thinker Philippe Buonarroti (1761 – 1837), doomsayer and demographer Thomas Robert Malthus (1766 – 1834), and of course Marx’s beloved ideologue, philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831).
After the historical comparison is complete, Lohmeier moves into concrete examples of Marxist subversion that exist today. This is the most powerful and memorable part of the book. Lohmeier demonstrates how Marxist subversion has permeated the ranks of the American military, relating stories from: the Pentagon Press Secretary, the Department of Defence, graduates of West Point Academy, the Air Force Football team, midshipmen of the Naval Academy, a lieutenant-colonel servicemember, servicemembers who post radical left comments online, and more. Everywhere he turns, he demonstrates that there is some component of the American military that has been subverted.
These anecdotes reflect what we have more recently witnessed at the highest level of the American government and military. In particular, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley displayed what can be interpreted as “confessor behaviour” at a June 2021 House Armed Services Committee hearing. In that instance, Milley defended the study of Critical Race Theory at West Point Academy and also said he wanted to understand “white rage”. In November 2021, US President Joe Biden tweeted a video suggesting that Kyle Rittenhouse was a white supremacist, even though there is no evidence whatsoever to back up such an insinuation.
Lohmeier’s window into the American military sure beats the tip of the iceberg we get to see. Especially for an organization that is necessarily to be apolitical. The American military machine – still assumed to be the deadliest in the world – is displaying significant evidence of ideological subversion which it was previously actively preventing. The question remains how deep and how effective such subversion has become. The answer may only arrive once it is too late, and America is in a full, unstoppable crisis. At that point, Bezmenov’s warning of either invasion or civil war might become a reality.
Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military
Lohmeier, Matthew
Self-Published, 2021
Covered in Woken Promises Episode 18: The Writing’s on the Wall
10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help
Woken Promises Rating: 4.0/5
RECOMMENDED
This is another must-read contribution to our list. To fully understand today’s radical left, it is necessary to understand the sinking sand upon which their ideologies are built. To that end, Dr. Benjamin Wiker, a Roman Catholic ethicist, examines in detail a total of 15 books that contributed to the radical left’s current ideological foundation. Among the most startling contributions is the inclusion of mathematician René Descartes, whose attempt to confirm the existence of God quickly descended into hubris. Descartes settled on the creation of god within the human mind with his “I think, therefore I am”. Following in the footsteps of Descartes, Marxist roots are greatly exposed within this book as well. Wiker’s book includes a review of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848) and another abomination in Lenin’s The State and Revolution (1917), where Vladimir Lenin added a vicious Machiavellian component to Marx’s initial descension. This set the stage for the mass murder of tens of millions during the next several decades under both himself and Stalin. The book reads easily and does not get bogged down by detail or conjecture. It’s a terrific way to begin your understanding of why the world is so screwed up today.
10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help
Wiker, Benjamin
Regenery Publishing, Inc., 2008
Not Covered in Woken Promises Episodes
The Trouble with Canada…Still!
Woken Promises Rating: 4.0/5
RECOMMENDED
At the beginning of this tome is a confession: Gairdner admits that he initially admired and even voted for former Canadian PM Pierre Elliot Trudeau. But once Trudeau’s failings started pulling Canada down, Gairdner quickly turned away from supporting him. Later, he became so convinced that Trudeau had hurt Canada that it drove him to write the book’s first edition in 1990. The current (2nd) edition was published in 2010 and includes some updates on Gairdner’s views as well as assessments of his previous predictions. Gairdner focuses on the fight against socialism, for both economic and social reasons. His economic reasoning focuses on a libertarian standpoint, while his feelings on social policy are linked to traditional conservative Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797). Gairdner does an excellent job of painting the battle for civil society - which Burke would probably approve of - by demonstrating that it is necessary to protect the rights of the autonomous individuals by supporting that civil society. Statism, he postulates, is a great evil that will see to it that all organizations that should exist within a civil society (such as churches, clubs, companies, etc.) are replaced by government-owned equivalents. These equivalents ensure there is no way to challenge the state’s power (which a civil society ensures can be done) and so the proliferation of such state equivalents is the death knell of individual rights. Gairdner delves into statistics which demonstrate the abject failure of Pierre Trudeau and his socialist policies in an effort to prove socialism is not just a one-trick killer pony. Gairdner’s style is not easy like Wiker’s or as light as Landolt because of his inclusion of statistical analysis, but this book is well worth the time spent.
The Trouble with Canada…Still!
Gairdner, William D.
Key Porter Books, 2010
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 3: Part I: Can Canada Learn from the USA?
Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy
Woken Promises Rating: 4.0/5
RECOMMENDED
In Andy Ngo’s expose “Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy,” we see the subversive, brutal truth of a domestic terrorist organization. This story has been brought about by some hair-raising journalism, as Andy has been lynched by an Antifa mob (more than once), he infiltrated the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ/CHOP) run by Antifa and BLM, and he cites other brave journalists from Project Veritas who have similarly risked their lives to expose domestic terror.
The fact such an organization exists without being officially designated ‘terrorist’ is a blight on the US government. Democrats, whom Antifa claims to despise, continually obfuscate the existence of Antifa’s organized crime as it serves their common Marxist purpose of dividing the nation on trumped-up bases such as racial injustice or police brutality. What Antifa is, however, is exposed by Ngo as not some organized attempt to genuinely better society by addressing inequality: Antifa is more of an outlet necessitated by years and years of Marxist teachings, including Critical Race Theory, to a generation of students. These students need an outlet because they are often filled with anger, anxiety, depression, and especially self-loathing, all created by vicious indoctrination.
During his life, KGB-informant turned defector Yuri Bezmenov related that Marxist subversion generally takes between 15-20 years, which he pointed out is the time it takes to subvert just one generation. It is sad to say that many of the millennials of North America fell deep into this trap, twice the children of hell corrupted by Marxist Baby Boomer academics. We can compare Antifa to Mao Zedong’s Red Guard during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The ranks of the Red Guard were simply university students who were convinced to turn on their elders and anyone who dared to question Maoism (a Marxist descendant). The tactics revolving around violence and shame are entirely similar for both Antifa and the Red Guard.
As Ngo illuminates, there is some ideological variance in Antifa between communist, socialist, and anarchist, but the overlap in the goal of destroying civil society allows various ideologues to cooperate. Ngo critically exposes Antifa course curriculum materials that are steeped in Critical Race Theory and physical combat alike. The dominantly white, millennial students of Antifa are taught to hate being white and male, even though this demographic comprises a majority of their ranks – particularly those that commit the most frequent and violent criminal offenses. One has only to examine the arrests made in major Antifa riots.
Ngo also exposes the mythos around Antifa as being unorganized by displaying how covert and complicated their communications and organizational tactics can be. He shows that their strongest link is a depraved and violent ideology that is repeated in every dark corner they operate alone, so that when they come together, there is a relatively simple protocol to follow. This protocol also serves to help them verify their own. Ngo also reveals Antifa’s real roots as linking back to before the second world war, during the Weimar Republic in Germany. After their inception, they gained an anarchist component as they moved through Europe into the United Kingdom, and picked up a good deal of the punk sub-culture.
It is very likely Antifa is followed and recorded by the U.S. government covertly, since it would otherwise be a very unstoppable ideological threat. That Andy Ngo has decided to come forth before the time when Antifa will finally and clearly be labelled for the terrorists they are simply does not seem to be in line with the deep state. However, you will note that as soon as Aaron Joseph Danielson was murdered, Antifa got a call-back. The FBI was suddenly and rapidly unleashed and was quickly able to identify and kill Danielson’s murderer, Michael Reinhoel. The FBI maintain that the original intention was not to kill Michael Reinhoel, but to arrest him.
Ngo points out the claim that Antifa doesn’t kill is simply another myth propagated by the mainstream media and certain Democrats. What is especially worrisome is that such powerful entities will likely sit and do nothing until a very major and irrevocable tragedy caused by Antifa will come down upon civil society. At that time the Antifa-deniers, such as Hawaiian Senator Mazie Hirono, or CNN’s Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo, will likely disappear from public view as fast as possible.
Andy Ngo is ahead of his time. He has risked life and limb to go out and recover the truth because larger entities such as the FBI refuse to deal with such insurgency in an upright manner. Do yourself a favor and find out just why Antifa is so dangerous, before you join the ranks of the uneducated and dismissive. Read this book.
Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy
Ngo, Andy
Center Street Publishing, 2021
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 14: Courage of One
Apocalypse Never: Why Climate Alarmism Hurts Us All
Woken Promises Rating: 4.0/5
RECOMMENDED
Michael Shellenberger is a Gen-Xer who has become disillusioned with the conflicted and often outright false environmental predictions of the radical left. To try and heal this rift and re-aim the focus on the environment with humans at the top, Shellenberger advocates a return to fact over fiction. However self-evident this approach sounds, Shellenberger delineates numerous infractions and outright lies by climate alarmists in their attempts to manipulate the public. He calls such doomsayers as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sarah Lunnon, and Greta Thunberg Malthusians, as they are ideological descendants of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). Malthus’ belief was that without some form of control over the human population, the world would encounter an apocalypse of mass starvation and death. This was because population would increase geometrically while food supply only increased arithmetically. Shellenberger goes on a fact-finding mission against the modern-day Malthusians – climate alarmists – and challenges their popular claims throughout this book. He takes on claims like “we’re in the middle of a mass extinction,” and “the Amazon is the lungs of the Earth.” This makes for both informative and entertaining reading as Shellenberger ends up espousing viewpoints completely contrary to his environmentalist alarmist contemporaries. He supports nuclear energy as the cleanest and most containable solution to the energy crisis and points out the flaws in the renewable initiative. He asks why climate scientists like Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. are attacked and marginalized for simply presenting data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If one can ignore the ideological bent of Shellenberger’s suggested “environmental humanism” and also his Marxist roots as a teenager, which he promotes thankfully sparingly throughout the book, this book is a wonderful resource. Almost all the great climate alarmist claims are addressed here with evidence – and not ideology.
Apocalypse Never: Why Climate Alarmism Hurts Us All
Shellenberger, Michael
Harper Collins Publishers, 2020
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 8: Climate of Fear
Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe 1958-1962
Woken Promises Rating: 4.0/5
RECOMMENDED
This book is a story carefully sewn together with facts as its thread. Dikötter stitched this book together around a combination of the recently released records from the Communist Party of China (CPC) and numerous one-on-one interviews with survivors of the horrific Chinese famine from 1958-1962. Dikötter pinpoints the failing policies in the communist machinations brought to life during what was supposed to be China’s Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward was supposed to “stand on two legs,” meaning simultaneous industrial and agricultural revolution was its purpose. This meant the collectivization of the Chinese countryside to create more efficient agriculture with new and massive irrigation systems. While those initiatives turned out to be catastrophic failures, the Great Leap was also responsible for fiascos like backyard furnaces employed en masse for creating steel. These innumerable mini-furnaces ran by farmers ended up wasting a massive amount of metal tools and resources for nothing. Dikötter shows the ideology of the CPC, based on Marxism and then turned into Maoism, really was a dictatorship. At the highest-level of the CPC, Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976) employed Marxist tactics to publicly shame and browbeat his enemies into submission. Chinese culture held fast to the appearance of honourable behaviour – and this was manipulated by Mao to shame not just “conservative rightists” but even his opposition within the CPC: his most powerful critics. One of Mao’s biggest critics was Zou Enlai (1898-1976) who served as the CPC’s Premier during the Great Leap Forward. Another adversary Mao had to keep under wraps was Liu Shaoqi (1898-1969), who replaced Mao as the Chairman of the CPC, and who made the mistake of visiting the countryside and witnessing first-hand the disaster Mao had led. The countryside, left devoid of young male workers who had moved to cities to find more lucrative work, was falling to pieces. The book illuminates the horror story of rulership by cadres over huge areas of the countryside that produced continually shrinking amounts of grain against increasing promises and quotas. Dikötter’s cataloguing of eyewitnesses and CPC data is one of the best ways to see the abject failure that socialist policies lead to. The entire book reads well because it is so carefully crafted, and it seems more like a story than a historical account. I would recommend this book to anyone with interest in the history of the world, communism, or China.
Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe 1958-1962
Dikötter, Frank
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 2: Hands in the Air, Canada! (But Not in a Good Way)
The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense
Woken Promises Rating: 3.75/5
RECOMMENDED
It’s hard to be objective when completing a review for Dr. Gad Saad’s “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense”. The good doctor is someone we happily follow on Facebook, where he ceaselessly and fearlessly posts his opinions for all to see. Yet his opinions, couched in reason, are not foreign to us, and remind us that reason is not outside of the Christian God’s purview, but exist completely within it. In a different time, perhaps as far back as the 18th Century, we would join those people that condemned such atheist thought as allowing in all sorts of evil into the world.
But that time has passed, the French Revolution has passed, and we are hundreds of years from Nietzsche’s “God is dead,” conjecture. The door opened in the Age of Enlightenment for atheism to penetrate the Christian world has long since been flooded with the afterbirth of the maniacal and the obscene. Gad Saad likely believes that the Age of Enlightenment was the arrival of the ultimate belief system in reason, but Christians will see it as inexorably related to faith in scientific materialism.
In the world of today, wherever it is tangible, Gad Saad challenges the maniacal and the obscene. He challenges all belief systems, in fact – as any scientific materialist would – but targets aggressively those belief systems which he observes are actively contributing to the destruction of the Western world. In “The Parasitic Mind,” Saad hits fastest and hardest at his own livelihood: universities and colleges. He is relentless in challenging his wayward peers, and those professors who claim to be his supporters but refuse to stand up for fear of reprisal. He rattles the cages of the Christian population, too – and his opinion about activism is well-worth reading.
Postmodernism is clearly target number one for Dr. Saad, and correctly so. While we here at Woken Promises have been more focused on the Marxist subversion of civil society, Dr. Saad gets to see the scholarly attack on what he considers most essential to a free society: reason and the scientific method. Postmodernism, a rejection of the values of the Age of Enlightenment, rejects rational thought. It rejects reason and the scientific method, too. The Christian can get on board with Gad’s counter-attack on Postmodernism, as we know that rational thought and argument were used for instance by St. Paul in his mission to bring the Gospel to the known world. We also know that Christ’s arrival on earth is a fact cited both in the Holy Bible and in secular literature.
Gad Saad also presents a unique perspective as we learn he is a Lebanese-Jew who grew up during the extremely violent Lebanese Civil War. Although this provides opportunity for Dr. Saad to lambaste both self-professed Christians and Muslims alike for their descension into such a horrific conflict, he seems more focused on Islam as a source of that conflict. From a Jewish perspective, one can imagine this is entirely reasonable, as although some self-identified “Christians” exhibit no tolerance for the Jewish culture or faith, there is no Scriptural call to attack or eradicate the Jewish culture. In fact, the early Christian disciples big earthly act against Jews who would not convert was simply to shake the dust off their feet. To move along. This is entirely different than the theocracy of Islam, which makes no effort to curtail genocidal hatred toward the Jewish culture, and accepts it as mainstream in the Middle East. Whether this is overt in the Western world or not is immaterial, because it is still a tenet of Islam. Saad often posts television clips of Imams publicly calling for Jews to be murdered as a reminder of this unchecked hatred.
Gad approaches many more of what he calls “enemies of reason,” in his book with a tone that can switch from heavy and lamenting, to angry, to light-hearted, to suddenly and sharply humorous. His diction reflects that of a tenured professor, so sometimes his propensity for terminology unique to his profession is slightly cumbersome. Like that last sentence. Despite this, the book reads like a conversation with Dr. Saad, and so generally stays light and very readable. It’s a conversation we think most people would be better for having. It’s quite an interesting perspective and requires a whole lot of courage to publish – including excerpts that may evoke childhood trauma for the author.
For Christians, the difficultly will come when Dr. Saad delves into both Darwinism and later theories that have developed from Darwinism. As an evolutionary psychologist, Dr. Saad is entirely rooted to the Darwinian perspective and has built his life around it. Yet we found this Darwinian lens was relatively constrained throughout the book – perhaps to purposefully invite a Christian audience to hear his soft protestations. A little joke here or there. We suggest that the Christian reader can avoid these sections entirely with minimal loss in the value of Sad’s material.
So, this book has its limits, we think. But the exposition on the enemies of reason is so powerful and so intertwined with Christianity that this book should be read by Christians, and without fear.
The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense
Saad, Gad
Regnery Publishing, 2020
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 15: The Last Reason Guy
The New Technocracy
Woken Promises Rating: 3.75/5
RESOURCE ONLY
The literature on technocracy was, up until the creation of this book, a fragmented series of compilations, journal articles, ideas and op-eds reaching back at least as far as the beginning of the 19th century, to Henri de Saint Simon (1760-1825). St. Simon postulated there would come a ruling class comprised of the technically skilled, industrious, contributors to society, and they would be pitted against the inertia of an idling class. He wanted science to become a religion. “The New Technocracy” author Anders Esmark lauds the Frenchman as having the vision – despite not being an engineer – to see the coming ascension of technocrats in society. Esmark omits the instability of St. Simon, which was exacerbated by lack of success of his published ideas, perhaps a consequence of being too far ahead of his time.
A good portion of the book is devoted to painstakingly delineating exactly what the difference is between the old and new technocracy, and it can thankfully be further boiled down. Esmark’s work is comprehensive, with enough citation and exposition to keep the inquisitive reader busy for months of research. According to Esmark, the old technocracy, which experienced a “golden age” between 1946-1980, was the age of the engineer. The engineer’s value in society was paramount during this timeframe, and nowhere was this more evident than in communist China and the Soviet Union, where civil engineers were handed high-ranking government positions based solely on their technological expertise. Technocracy was very close to becoming a controlling ideology for a quarter of the planet under Leonid Brezhnev and Chairman Mao.
Esmark starkly contrasts this time with the new technocracy (from 1980 onward), which is involved chiefly with information and communication technology (ICT) as it applies to a network society. The new technocracy is dominated by economists, computer scientists, analysts, and a multitude of other ICT specialists. The engineer, while still important, has been relegated to secondary connections to government power and is now seen much less in governments with technocratic components. According to Esmark, the great change happened approximately around the year 1980, at the inception of what he refers to as the fourth technocratic revolution, which focuses on ICT and an interconnectedness, and includes the micro-computer revolution.
The sources in the book are numerous and highly varied, and while more nebulous contributions from ideologues such as Saint Simon and even postmodernist Paul-Michel Foucault (who described the abstract concept of the “Art of Government”) are expounded on at length, they do not detract from the overall survey. It seems their inclusion is instead an attempt to exhaust all contributing avenues to the study of government so as to best define what technocracy is, although it seems there has never really been a fully-fledged technocracy on the planet earth.
Esmark’s style of writing is permeated with quips, clever references, and somewhat abstract citations - typical of certain social science journals, which does little to make it easier to absorb for the average reader. In fact, his diction often only complicates matters. This confusion is thankfully balanced by the book’s excellent content, including a key contribution in understanding that Esmark offers in the conflict of technocracy vs. populism, where academics are loathe to address anything but a punitive stance against the masses. Instead, Esmark realizes that it takes two to tango. In one of the most intriguing sections of the book, he defines the feedback loop between technocratic depoliticization and populist repoliticization as creating a “death spiral”. A “death spiral” is a phenomenon known to pilots, where they risk falling into a deathtrap from becoming acclimated with their surroundings (believing them to be normal when they are not). Esmark is not afraid to challenge the governments of the world, from the European Union to Singapore, who have extensive technocratic components. He demonstrates they have a great deal of responsibility in the worldwide populist phenomena of Brexit, the Yellow Vest Movement, and the election of Donald Trump. Until the technocrats and technocracies are aware of their part in this feedback loop, it seems, the world is going to continue accelerating into Esmark’s death spiral.
To work through this kind of exhaustive reference is tedious and slow, but ultimately very rewarding. I cannot recommend it as anything but a reference work, as the reader will simply become bogged down in all the various branches the work affords (experienced academics excepted).It is very easy to get lost in the attempt to differentiate between technocracy, bureaucracy, and democracy, for instance, but the time spent on such finer points of government is not time lost. Anyone interested in understanding technocracy as it exists today must read this book.
The New Technocracy
Anders Esmark
Bristol University Press; 1st edition (May 8 2020)
Covered in Woken Promises Episode 22: Rise of the Technocrats; Episode 23: Toying with Democracy; Episode 24: The Good, The Bad, and The Immune; and Episode 25: Don’t Bury ALL the Lawyers!
The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great
Woken Promises Rating: 3.5/5
RECOMMENDED
Ben Shapiro is well known for his stand-offish character, and for controversies surrounding his public speeches on campuses across America. A relatively young lawyer, Ben has a network of friends who have helped him to produce this book and it does come off as having an Orthodox Jewish perspective. That is a tricky sea for the Christian to navigate, as conclusions based on Christ Jesus’s influence and reality have been hidden or simply ignored. No where is this more poignant than in the most crucial argument in the book, which is basically a modern day repeat of Edmund Burke’s comparison of the French and American Revolutions. Shapiro postulates, adding to Burke’s idea, that the addition of ancient Greek telos and virtue combined with Judeo-Christian values was what created the survivability and success of the Western world. What is curious about Shapiro’s take on Burke’s idea is that the worldly success of the Christian and Jewish populations is in no way equivalent. The Jews saw horrific treatment throughout the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806), and most notably and terribly under Nazi Germany. There is no such temporal equivalent for Christians, despite their own early history of persecution. It may therefore not be correct to suppose that simply Judeo-Christian values created the success of the Western world, without first focusing on the key component of faith. Shapiro points instead to the law of the Torah as the great bringer of success. Shapiro points to the goodness that come out of God’s laws, such as the third commandment “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” He mentions how his observance of the Sabbath is his favourite time because there is no computer or work distraction for him, and instead critical time for family is provided. This is a beautiful story, and Shapiro clearly practices what he preaches. Yet again, however, this idea reinforces the belief that adherence to the law will necessarily result in a reward. Despite all this, Shapiro’s historical exposition on the ancient Greeks is a terrific and succinct establishment of their contribution to reason and the Western world. Ben’s sharp mind is enjoyable to follow with his quips and conclusions, but there are many difficult waters to navigate when his belief system comes into play. What Ben has really done successfully with this book is bring back attention to Edmund Burke, a Christian whose ideas are worth going back to – perhaps directly from the source.
The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great
Shapiro, Benjamin
HarperCollins Publishers, 2019
Not covered in Woken Promises episodes
The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism
Woken Promises Rating: 3.5/5
RESOURCE ONLY
When Dr. Jordan Peterson made the grandiose claim (in another book on this list!) that the falling away from the imitation of Christ was responsible for the rise of such evils as totalitarianism, communism and fascism, his claim had to be investigated. One available avenue to study fascism was this academic resource by Woodruff D. Smith. To better understand exactly where the most prominent Nazi ideologies came from, it was essential to look at Smith’s book to identify what supporting ideologies were at play in the Nazis ideological framework. It seems Germany was the last of the great powers to industrialize, and this made them particularly susceptible to societal and economic collapse. This fragility could be seen early on in events like the auswanderung, a mass emigration out of Germany that peaked around 1850. But nowhere was that vulnerability clearer than the US stock market crash of 1929. This crash created a crisis that allowed a formerly marginal Nazi party to explode into popularity. Smith demonstrates the Nazi’s ideological leanings were among the most conflicted hodgepodge of beliefs one could construct. For instance, they openly supported agrarianism, from which many of the rich Prussian nobility benefited, but they also secretly endorsed industrialization and economic colonialization, which competed directly with German agriculture. At the core of the Nazi’s ideological beliefs was a combination of the ideologies of lebensraum, racism, and nationalism, which summed up were essentially Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism was the view that the human races, like any other animal population, had to grow and compete with other human races for space to survive and grow. It was and is the ultimate racist belief. After Darwin’s hideous work “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, the German educated elite such as Ernst Haeckel (1834 – 1919) grabbed onto the idea of the Germans as the most evolved of races, and how their advanced evolution therefore necessitated the right to enslave or destroy other human races. This thinking helped lay the groundwork for the first and second World Wars. After Haeckel’s early efforts in the late 1800s, Social Darwinism was revised, published, and normalized in German schools by German ethnographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844 – 1904). Was this all - include the World Wars - due to the removal of the imitation of Christ as Peterson claimed? There seems to be no proof of this at all. Instead, individuals such as Darwin and his cousin Sir Francis Galton (who coined the term “eugenics”) suggest that their ideology was turning away from faith in Christ, not an imitation of his values. Peterson suggests a doctrine of works in that if we just imitated Christ a bit more, we would have been successful, and Nazism might never have been born. But there is proof that things are much more complicated than that. Woodruff’s book is an incredible resource, though it is difficult to work through. I would only advise this book if you want a very deep, almost esoteric understanding of why the Nazis espoused so many conflicting ideologies, and how they managed to survive as long as they did under such a confused set.
The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism
Smith, Woodruff D.
Oxford University Press Inc., 1986
Not covered in Woken Promises episodes
The Case Against Socialism
Woken Promises Rating: 3.5/5
RECOMMENDED
US Senator Rand Paul is an interesting character to watch in American politics, because wherever the action is seems to be where he is trying to place himself. This means if there is a trial on Donald Trump’s impeachment by the Senate, Rand Paul is yelling at the top of his lungs in the Senate Chamber at Chief Justice Roberts to publicly reveal the whistleblower. This means if there is a Black Lives Matter protest outside the 2020 Republican National Convention, Rand Paul will defiantly walk through the middle of it (but with security). The guy is courageous (not foolish), and he utterly detests socialism and social policies, and that must be part of why he wrote this book – surely, he is concerned about the massive socialist movement in the US. However, he lost me in the segment of the book where he defends capitalism, by defending the right of people to be rich and own nice things. That is not the chief argument I would use to defend capitalism. I want to discourage people from the love of money, which is something that has consumed many. Instead of the right of people to materially prosper, I see capitalism as providing a lesser of two evils. The free-market system has one clear advantage that makes it the go-to-choice: competition. Centralization of power - even banking - is a dangerous thing as demonstrated in the past. Where Paul really shines in this light and easy read is with his exposition of the history of socialism, and just how ugly that history is. Paul looks briefly into the horrors of China, Cambodia, Venezuela, Cuba and other communist regimes. He connects the socialist desires of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez today to such tales of woe to remind us of where everything could be headed. He further connects the socialist movement to its latest trend of environmentalism as seen in the Green New Deal. Paul defends traditional values in an admirable and easy-to-read fashion. A nice book if you want some light historical reading from the perspective of a traditional conservative.
The Case Against Socialism
Paul, Rand
HarperCollins Publishers, 2019
Not covered in Woken Promises episodes
The Librano$: What the media won’t tell you about Justin Trudeau’s corruption
Woken Promises Rating: 3.5/5
RECOMMENDED
The Libranos is well-written, easily read, and a succinct exposition of the federal Liberals under Justin Trudeau. It is a compilation of all the stories we see pop up here-and-there on the news, but which are never covered in necessary detail. One of Levant’s chief purposes for his news outlet Rebel News is pushing the envelope against Canada’s media, whether that is against the corrupt practices of the CBC or the government’s lack of transparency. Levant is a lawyer by trade and involves himself in those conflicts which we Canadian citizens may wish to enter; but are ill-prepared for. Therefore, if Levant is willing to take the time to assemble all the various news items that expose Trudeau, investigate those claims deeper than the public can possibly do, and even take the government to court to fight for his and our freedoms, it might just be a good idea to support this rebel! Levant has traditional conservative leanings that focus on the most critical aspects of maintaining civil society, and he is careful to not let ideological differences creep in the way. This book is no different. It sticks to the facts and quickly demonstrates just how corrupt Trudeau’s practice is. Examples of Trudeau’s lies such as his failed promise on electoral reform highlight how he will do or say anything when it’s time to steal the vote. Examples of Trudeau’s elitism and cronyism occur throughout the book. My favourite part is the utter hypocrisy Levant points out in Trudeau’s fake feminism. No where can this faked policy to get votes be seen better than in the treatment of Jody Wilson-Raybould, who refused to play along with the SNC-Lavalin Scandal. She lost her job because of her courage. Trudeau is a hypocrite and a dictator, and we should support his opposition that they can assist us in bringing him either to justice, repentance, or most preferably both. Buying Levant’s book is one way to learn about and support this initiative.
The Librano$: What the media won’t tell you about Justin Trudeau’s corruption
Levant, Ezra
Rebel News Network, 2019
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 5: Devil’s Advocate
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
Woken Promises Rating: 3/5
NOT RECOMMENDED
Journalist Abigail Shrier set the online transgender community on fire with the release of her investigative work “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” in 2020. Backlash was instantaneous on outlets such as Amazon.com, but after being carefully reviewed, the book was not considered to be transphobic.
Shrier decides early on to address the issue of transgenderism with a cold, distant, and mostly scientific eye. She believes that she has identified the most critical victims of transgenderism are not the ideologues who constantly fight for it, but the pre-pubescent girls exposed to such ideologues. And in this, we believe she is very much correct. However, she also clearly leans towards the opinion that transgenderism has exploded in popularity because it is what some would call a psychic contagion.
The informal survey Shrier conducts for the book is a series of interviews with parents of children who claim to be transgender. This is probably the only way to safely and legally compile data on transgender children, although some gender clinics do release limited data, such as England’s Tavistock Child Gender Clinic. Shrier reveals she has made edits in the stories of the families she reports on to protect the identities and well-being of the children involved.
Right off the start, there is a serious problem when relating testimony of the 40+ families Shrier interviews. Because she has opted to change some of the fundamental details of her interviewees, we have no idea just how veridical her reporting is. The reader must assume she has not edited data too much, which might bias our own assessment of her conclusions in the book. She could very easily have taken minor details, for example, and changed them to reinforce her own conclusions. These are untraceable changes, and don’t support good data in general.
Another major issue with “Irreversible Damage” is that Shrier (intentionally or not) descends into what is tantamount to mockery of YouTube transgender influencers. In Chapter 3, entitled simply “The Influencers,” we found out that several transgender YouTube influencers were sandbagged as they were represented without their informed consent. To learn about this, we had to look up some of the actual YouTubers Shrier had written about, including Chase Ross and Ty Turner, both female-to-male transgender people. Going over the responses of the YouTube influencers to “Irreversible Damage,” it is clear they are in general horrified by their incredibly feminine descriptions as provided by Shrier, and that they were not properly informed they would be displayed in such a way, or at all in the book. One might think to themselves this is an emotional issue and simply say “who cares?” but remember, Chase and Ty are both biological females. Isn’t that the exact audience that Shrier is claiming to strive to protect? Or are these biological females less worth protecting because they are transgender? While its very likely Shrier wrestled with this argument to some degree before publishing the book, its also very clear she has chosen to make examples out of these influencers, and not protected them with the same anonymity as her other interviewees.
A last misstep to be mentioned in “Irreversible Damage” is made with what we believe is a blatant appeal by the author towards identity politics: specifically, the lesbian community. Shrier leans toward the ideological – and not scientifically proven – belief that biological females who transition to males are often actually simply lesbians who are misdiagnosed. It’s the kind of argument that pits one minority group against another, and it was probably this victimhood Olympics standoff that kept the book from being de-platformed on Amazon. Instead, attempting to reject the null would test that these transgender people are hetero-normative and cis-gender.
The exposition of the damage being done to children, especially pre-teens, cannot be understated. However, the very serious holes in this attempt by a journalist lacks either the scientific discretion of a seasoned professional or the sincere compassion of a psychologist or psychiatrist who has dealt with families and especially children going through such crises. This book promised a great revelation but delivered it in a swamp of conjecture. There are better sources that can be accessed for these very pressing concerns.
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
Shrier, Abigail
Regnery Publishing, 2020
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 16: Queer Pressure and Woken Promises: Episode 17: T.E.R.F. Wars
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Woken Promises Rating: 3/5
NOT RECOMMENDED
I don’t recommend this book to our fans, although that was not an easy decision to come to. In truth, it contains some fantastic insight into the Marxist infiltration of universities across America and even the mental health crisis among the young. Yet there are just too many difficulties against these good points. Let’s start with examining those good points. The most outstanding quality of this book is its identification of the fragility of students being promoted in universities today. The authors do not blame universities for the inception of the dramatic increase in anxiety and depression in the Western world, however. Instead, they cite social psychologist Jean Twenge’s research which points to Generation-Z’s rapid rise in the use of smart phones and social media as related to the current mental health crisis. This is because such forms of media have very detrimental psychological effects such as the dopamine response associated with Facebook “likes” or the constant insecurity propagated by social comparison on Facebook. Where the book begins to fall apart for me is when it starts comparing the human species to what it considers related species. Darwinism and evolutionary psychology have never proven beyond a serious doubt that such comparisons are helpful. In fact, adherence to the premise of Darwinism is an unproven reality which confines the interpretation of empirical data. For instance, using the research of evolutionary psychologist Peter LaFrenière, the authors reinforce the idea we need to play as children because we are similar to other mammals and such play trains us to be predator and prey. However, this descension is completely unnecessary in promoting the benefits of play versus the risks involved. Instead, dropping the premise of Darwinism allows us to recognize that the current trend of diminishing play (which is decidedly un-Darwinian!) is something we must choose to actively fight against as parents. So, with regret, I cannot suggest this belittling approach to mankind. The problems this book solves are not worth the problems it creates.
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Lukianoff, Gregory; Haidt, Jonathan
Penguin Random House, 2018
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 1: Why Teachers have F’d Up so Badly
COVID-19: The Great Reset
Woken Promises Rating: 3/5
NOT RECOMMENDED
Mainstream media in Canada such as the CBC and CTV News continue to gaslight the public regarding the Canadian government’s ties to the World Economic Forum (WEF). Under a dishonest shield of “plausible deniability,” media outlets figure they can claim anything related to the WEF is simply a conspiracy theory because it is not in the “public interest” just how much our policy has been influenced by what is technically a foreign power. Think about how the RCMP refused to prosecute Trudeau’s Aga Khan affair due to it not being in the “public interest” because the Prime Minister is technically allowed to give himself permission to accept gifts. The mainstream media might happily obfuscate the truth as an unofficial exchange for the federal subsidies they receive, or in the case of CTV (owned by Bell) from the type of shady assistance that keeps big tech and big industry from drowning in its own morass.
When Klaus Schwab, with the help of economist Thierry Malleret and the WEF, published “COVID-19: The Great Reset,” in July of 2020, they sent free copies to world leaders around the globe. The idea was simple enough: the long-standing impetus for a great reset, centered on global governance and stakeholder capitalism, had just been given a shove into overdrive with the pandemic. Unsure of how long such a crisis would last, Schwab and his ilk opportunistically put forth this effort just six months into the pandemic. That early date of publication didn’t stop them from making wild claims like the expectation that unemployment in the US would rise to 25% because it was heavily invested in the unstable gig economy and had no social safety net such as the European Union does. The pandemic was the globalists’ chance to shine and say, “I told you so!” as the heavily nationalist world leaders China and the US would fall because of their isolationist undertones as well as unabashed nationalism.
In fact, a good portion of the book is dedicated to proving how detrimental nationalism is in the face of world-wide crises such as global warming, the former WEF sweetheart, and the pandemic. Schwab goes so far as to blame the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) pandemic failures on the competition between the US and China. He implies that if we could just all get along in one happy, open, global family, worldwide governance would not only manifest itself naturally, but would operate in such a way as to handle global crises with the best chance of success.
Of course, Schwab was unable to predict the “defection” of Russia from global governance upon entering a war with Ukraine in late February of 2022. This is especially concerning when one considers his decades long personal relationship with Vladimir Putin. Instead of forseeing the disaster, Schwab and the WEF clumsily assumed that Russia, perhaps because of Putin’s token appearances and participation in the WEF for several years, was a happy global kid-on-the-block. Klaus Schwab had to make an official statement denouncing Putin and Russia for their invasion of Ukraine, some serious egg on the globalist’s face, especially after buying into his own idea that Vladimir Putin was just another “Young Global Leader” in the WEF’s official programming.
The more surprising elements of the book occur when Schwab and Malleret consider multiple scenarios to various situations, most prominently when they attempt to describe possible outcomes of the US-China conflict. The subtext is (consistent with the WEF) that it is all in general negative outcomes due to nationalism and protectionism, and the world would be better served if everyone simply fell in line and it was possible to begin delineating a system of global governance.
The book also touches repeatedly on the phenomenon of populism, but mostly in the way you’d expect from a global organization, with trepidation. While touting technological initiatives and a technological reset as part of the overall great reset, there is little consideration given to the average men and women who will lose their livelihoods along the way. Instead, the WEF sees this as a necessary cost of progress, and that it will be akin to the kind of disasters that eventually followed the first industrial revolution – specifically communist revolutions and the world wars. There is absolutely no attempt to address the possibility that some technology and some progress are not beneficial to mankind. Instead, the idea that an interim sacrifice (of the poor and disenfranchised) is a necessary evil to get through before the technological reset can safely benefit everyone in the wake of the next coming global catastrophes.
And finally, it must be mentioned that Schwab’s “I told you so!” is also applied on his previously existing impetus for stakeholder capitalism, which he has put forward since the inception of the WEF in 1971. No matter what happens in the world, stakeholder capitalism just seems to get more and more right according to Schwab. In the case of the coronavirus pandemic, Schwab believes those companies that prioritized environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics, instead of prioritizing shareholder value, were the most successful companies during the pandemic. This is critical because, as Schwab reveals: “ESG can be considered as the yardstick for stakeholder capitalism” (Schwab, p.185). In effect Schwab touts the value of greener, more woke, and more government-controlled industry as the only sustainable economy for our future.
While this book may seem pure fantasy to some, it’s clear the WEF impetus for global governance, which includes a push for universal basic income, has arrived in Canada. In the same manner also, the push for stakeholder capitalism is occurring under the green and woke initiatives, and they preferentially favour certain ideological standpoints over others, which means that new ideologies are threatening to overturn our economic system. If nothing else, this book is worth reading to discover the very real and nefarious initiatives that our self-proclaimed betters have planned for us.
COVID-19: The Great Reset
Schwab, Klaus; Malleret, Thierry
Forum Publishing, 2020
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 27: The Great Reset
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Woken Promises Rating: 2.5/5
NOT RECOMMENDED
University of Toronto psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson shocked the world with his meteoric rise to fame over the last several years, but this was followed by an even faster fall into dire circumstances. Thankfully, Peterson seems to be recovering, and we wish him a full recovery and continued good health. Peterson’s latest book is a kind of “how to” guide to life, which rejects a great deal of what he and others term as postmodernism. He is also an avid opponent of Marxism and its presence in academia, which readily makes one believe he is an ally. This book is a very brave attempt by Peterson to reveal what he believes to be the truth, and to move people back towards a culture of truth, meaning, and classical virtue. But the book fails in its key argument in dramatic fashion: First of all, in its identification of the key worldly problem, and secondly in the attempt to replace what Peterson believes is lost from the world. Specifically, Peterson postulates that the loss of the imitation of Christ has led to the rise of evils such as nihilism, communism, fascism, and totalitarianism. He is riffing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844 – 1900) infamous “God is dead,” conjecture with such a claim. And Peterson is not just referring to the communist threat, the World Wars, or even the French Revolution rising to fill the void. He believes such evil is alive and well today. And in that regard, he is correct. But Peterson’s habit for conflation and over-generalization gets in the way of any chance his book has of accurately diagnosing the world. These habits must in part come from his great depth and breadth in reading, which could explain why he attempts to haphazardly string together completely unrelated beliefs such as, for instance, Christianity and Taoism. Peterson further completely undermines such religious beliefs with his beloved Jungian Analysis, a creation of fringe psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961) that suggests all religion is a kind of back story created by man on his journey throughout the centuries to explain both his individual and collective self. Because Peterson relies so heavily on Nietzsche, Jung, and even Charles Darwin (1809-1882), he exposes his belief system as stemming from some of the most corrupt thinkers in history. “12 Rules for Life” contains rare hints of what could help you in your daily life buried in ideological trappings that will have you fighting to keep your head on straight for the rest of your life. I do not recommend this book to anyone.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Peterson, Jordan B.
Random House Canada, 2018
Not covered in Woken Promises episodes
The Right Path: How Conservatives can Unite, Inspire and Take Canada Forward
Woken Promises Rating: 2/5
NOT RECOMMENDED
After the failure of Erin O’Toole to make a dent against the Trudeau Liberals in the 2021 Federal election, the question of leadership quickly arose for the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC). O’Toole made surprising and inconsistent policy changes during his election campaign on abortion, carbon tax, climate change, and firearm ownership that left voters confused, angry, and ultimately unmotivated. Although he resisted attempts to remove him after the loss, O’Toole ultimately faced too much opposition to hold onto the CPC leadership. His lackluster attempt to win brought conservatives too close toward the values of the Liberal party of Canada.
In the power vacuum after O’Toole was removed, several ready candidates jumped eagerly into the fray, most notably Pierre Poilievre. One unexpected candidate, however, was former Quebec Liberal leader Jean Charest. Charest had a history of being a Red Tory under Brian Mulroney when the Conservatives were obliterated back in 1993, and this book, “The Right Path”, was written from the perspective of a Red Tory in author Tasha Kheiriddin, a former CBC producer, analyst, and contributor to the National Post. Kheiriddin became co-chair of the Jean Charest leadership campaign, and this book was dedicated to explaining the Red Tory take on a new direction for conservatism.
Tasha begins the book by disavowing the Freedom Convoy in the ugliest sense of the word, by buying wholesale into the false narrative that the Convoy was racist. This is the weakest point of her whole effort. After implying that Trudeau and the federal Liberals are not worth voting for because they “stoke the woke,” Tasha does exactly the same thing, playing identity politics with the Freedom Convoy instead of legitimately addressing their concerns regarding rights and freedoms. Tasha’s ultimate fear proves to be the exact same as O’Toole’s, that the CPC will inevitably be equated with Donald Trump by centrist voters.
From there, Kheiriddin shifts into denouncing Harper’s populist conservatism brand, and in effect makes her bed with what she hopes will be a new wave of conservative voters in Canada. She connects the Freedom Convoy with Pierre Poilievre and Stephen Harper, and paints adherence to such values as a doomed path. According to Kheiriddin’s statistical analysis, the only way the conservative party can achieve power is by winning urban votes, especially of millennials and immigrants, and all three of these classifications are sore points for the Conservative party of Canada. To address these untapped voters, Kheiriddin wants a kinder, gentler conservative that can virtue signal their way out of any claims of racism by broadening their acceptance of other cultures. To this end, she paints the acceptance of Muslims as critical, and prioritizes them over “convoy conservatives,” whom she considers to be less important because their votes are more scattered and less able to affect the overall status of the CPC.
Tasha’s approach can be boiled down to the end justifies the means. There is no other way to explain how she expects the CPC to abandon so much of its base in the name of winning an election. She also decides to make the nebulous promise of “social mobility” to voters, without explaining where such new job opportunities will come from in a foundering gig economy. She accuses the Freedom Convoy supporters of promoting simple solutions – an accusation she parrots from Trudeau – without offering any genuinely structured solutions herself.
The reality of the situation, which individuals with similar beliefs to Kheiriddin, O’Toole, and Charest clearly subscribe to, is that the CPC cannot possibly survive in a country with vastly growing numbers of immigrants and young people. But therein lies the rub, for as long as there is poor control over immigration, the current path (not necessarily the right path) will continue. It makes little sense to define a country by what it has yet to receive, but that is exactly what these moral relativists are attempting to do, pandering to the flavour of the day. Kheiriddin’s harping against “Old Stock” Canadians not only devalues the citizens of the country she claims to love so much but reveals her lack of loyalty to those that have already spent generations building Canada into what it is today.
The Right Path: How Conservatives can Unite, Inspire and Take Canada Forward
Tasha Kheiriddin
Optimum Publishing International (2022)
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 26: Liberal Johns and Neo-Cons
Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada
Woken Promises Rating: 2/5
NOT RECOMMENDED
If Marxism is one of the chief opposing forces to traditional conservatism in the world today, then reading this book is kind of like staring down the barrel of a cannon. Reading through its pages will tell you exactly what kind of ammunition the Marxists are going to fire at you. Its startling how the Marxists that are Black Lives Matter (BLM) are so matter of fact with their contempt for the prison industrial complex (PIC), the police, and the criminal justice system itself. They also see Canada as completely controlled by white supremacists; a claim based on terribly memorable incidents of racism such as the story of Africville. However, there is no form of acknowledgement that racism is currently completely unacceptable in Canadian society. That fact does not register here. This book makes it clear that even in Canadian federal prisons, the idea of abolishing the police has been around for more than 30 years. This despite how novel we find hearing “defund the police!” on the news. The book further explains that groups of Canadian inmates meet to learn and discuss Marxist teachings which are brought in by sources in an attempt to give the prisoners constructive outlets to deal with personal issues. This policy of reinforcing a hatred for the system which incarcerated them in the first place may help explain the remarkably high rate of recidivism for Canadian inmates. The book has the benefit of many different contributions from many different BLM members, but all of their stories have one over-riding theme in common. They are all based on what American Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas refers to as “modern victimhood”. It is not something Justice Thomas agrees with. Whether they are referring to unjustly incarcerated inmates, marginalized queer folk, or black people hated solely for their skin colour, there is always a victim delineated in every story, whether or not that story has any verifiable evidence. The whole ideology is closely related with the theory of intersectionality, which suggests there are numerous dimensions on which one cane be oppressed (gender, sexual orientation, class, fertility, colour, looks, etc.) What is real in many cases is the pain and suffering Black families and individuals have gone through with various traumatic events related to their socio-economic standing. But it is hard to imagine BLM as having a cure with a victim approach. The work blatantly appeals to emotional reasoning, pointing the finger at an unjust society ruled by white supremacy. The dichotomy of either being black or part of the white supremacist problem is pushed onto the reader, perhaps assuming they are either a BLM member or a BLM ally. Perhaps not caring either way. I could not recommend this book to anyone, as it is pure Marxist propaganda, and it is near impossible to take any value out of stories that are meant for such purposes.
Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada
Diverlus, Rodney; Hudson, Sandy; Ware, Syrus Marcus
University of Regina Press, 2020
Covered in Woken Promises: Episode 6: Bending to Marxism