Lying for Jesus comes straight from Paul Weyrich's playbook.

Principles of the Dominionist movement:

1) Falsehoods are not only acceptable, they are a necessity. The corollary is: The masses will accept any lie if it is spoken with vigor, energy and dedication.

2) It is necessary to be cast under the cloak of "goodness" whereas all opponents and their ideas must be cast as "evil."

3) Complete destruction of every opponent must be accomplished through unrelenting personal attacks.

4) The creation of the appearance of overwhelming power and brutality is necessary in order to destroy the will of opponents to launch opposition of any kind.

(On new classics) Any list that has the Da Vinci code in it is extremely suspect to me.

Tim - WOW! I have not heard about this (Dominionist movement). Frightening to read about but also a restorative to sanity since you can say - Ooooooh - that's what they're doing.

I have also been thinking a lot about the Republicans and the "noble lie" and that it has been behind their embracing the Religious Right. Also, using some of the psychology to get away with tax cuts for the wealthy (instead of Plato's version saying there are different metals in the blood but your children might end up rich, the Republicans act like anyone can jump financial classes with just enough hard work. Essentially, they dupe people into thinking they will be able to take advantage of those self-same tax cuts in the future when they are wealthy...) Not sure I'm presenting this clearly - using the optimism of Americans and the American dream against the middle and lower classes to vote against their own interests. Of course, you would have to have a natural greed of your own to want an unfair level of tax cuts for yourself - present OR future.

I guess I'm going off on a tangent here (or maybe stating what is obvious to everyone else? :) but the link reminds me, just when you think you are giving the Republican party too much credit, you realize, you aren't thinking quite Machiavellian enough...

I actually was going to write about the reading list before I saw Tim's comment. I was going to say - yes, very mixed bag, and I would like to hear some of the readers take on the top 10 out of this list....

BTW - sorry, I'm writing way too much today and I think I'm a little over the top...I think I mentioned the California heatwave in another post. I'd like to just mention it again as an excuse.... :)

I'd like to hear from Norm, who probably reads more fiction and non-fiction than anyone I know, what his top 25 from the past 25 years are.

"(On new classics) Any list that has the Da Vinci code in it is extremely suspect to me."

Yes, but the list also has Jose Samargo, Don Delillo, Joan Didion, and Charles Frazier. The order is the main thing that's screwed up. Yes, Dan Brown, J.K Rowling and Barbara Kingsolver are light-weights. Entertainment pundits won't recognize this but history will.

Like Norm I've also heard that fiction is dead, but the idea seems absurd to me. If so when was it alive? I'd like more non-fiction greats to be on the tips of people's tounges. The ones on this list are mainly best-sellers like David Sedaris and Malcom Gladwell.

If Mystic River is basically the same story as the film, I think it's a really dumb book.

Harry Potter raised an eyebrow. Is it now the conventional wisdom that Goblet of Fire is far-and-way the best one?

Jill,

I will have to read Kevin Phillips' books - not because they are particularly well written - I've read that they aren't, in fact. However, as one the guys who built the GOP majority, he provides an especially useful case - he loathes the dominant forces at work in the party. His latest article: High noon for the Republican Party: Why the G.O.P. must die. The theocons want to destroy the nation's institutions by any means necessary and replace them with their churches. The neocons, inspired by their great leader, Leo Strauss, are fully in cahoots. Both these factions are basically right-wing Marxists - they don't believe the economic ideology, of course, but they are completely imitative of Marxist tactics. Lying is a perfectly acceptable way of getting what you want because the ends justify the means. The theocons want authoritarianism handed down by the televangelists, Strauss and his neocon acolytes are fine with that because they do agree with Marx that religion is the opiate of the masses. Strauss was an atheist (like Rove), but he believed that religion was necessary to control people. These guys are the ultimate "elitists" - religion is not necessary for them to believe and morality is not necessary for them to practice, but it is the glue that hold the masses together and makes them manipulable. The neocons and the theocons believe in democracy that is entirely hollowed out - i.e., not a real democracy with real choices. (They must chuckle that they've gotten away with painting liberals as elitists.)

Throw in the corporatists who are willing to sell the nation to the highest bidder and to use the levers of power to increase profits, and you've one hell of a political party, eh?

yes, very mixed bag, and I would like to hear some of the readers take on the top 10 out of this list....

I'm more of a classics guy than a contemporary lit--I'm working on the Man without Qualities by Musil now, for instance--so, having only read a few of the top ten, my two cents: I loved The Road and read it in one sitting, but think Cormac McCarthy surely has other novels that would deserve the status of classic and would rank higher (such as, Blood Meridian). Roth deserves to be somewhere in the top ten, in my view, and I thought American Pastoral was extraodinary. I've never bothered to read Rowling or Brown; am frankly surprised, with Dende, that Delillo and a few others were so far down the list; and I am amused that John Stewart is at the 100 slot.

I'd like to hear from Norm, who probably reads more fiction and non-fiction than anyone I know, what his top 25 from the past 25 years are.

Let me second that request!

Wow reading the story about the naval blockade of Iran was so shocking to me. That was the first I've heard of this and it's seems to be that it could be really scary if that bill actually has a chance of passing.

Tim - Thanks. I didn't know who Kevin Phillips was but a quick google around and he does look like someone very interesting to read. From a very dispassionate position, I find the whole thing pretty fascinating but the reality of it is truly awful. Greed and fanaticism.

I'm curious, too, how men like Bill O' and Rush fit in. On what level are they aware? And, how do you explain something like this to the Calligraphs of the world (or my friend's mother who is now convinced the only reason her daughter doesn't agree with her is she went to college and the liberal professors got a hold of her...)

Let me put in a belated plug for #10 on the list. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was a fantastic novel, with a narrative style similar to (but predating) Everything is Illuminated. It has a far heavier dose of mysticism to it, though. Murakami in general is a superb writer and I never fail to enjoy his books.

And, how do you explain something like this to the Calligraphs of the world (or my friend's mother who is now convinced the only reason her daughter doesn't agree with her is she went to college and the liberal professors got a hold of her...) How Jill?