A book review.

Scandal is the title of the novel written by Endo Shusaku in 1986. Its setting is modern Tokyo, centered around the Yoyogi-Harajuku area.

The way Endo describes Yoyogi, Harajuku and Shinjuku in the eighties is just as I remembered it. In 1986, Yoyogi and Shibuya were my main playgrounds. For that reason, it’s especially meaningful to me.

The novel itself is a treatment of the nature of man. The main character, Suguro, is a novelist who in every way resembles Endo himself. Suguro is a highly respected, award winning novelist. He is thought to be upright, moral, socially sanitized.

Gradually, Suguro is forced to admit that he has an evil side. An extremely evil side. So much so that it makes his “main side” look like a fabrication. Which side is real? Both sides?

In the final chapters, we find Suguro in a hotel room, with the embodiment of innocence - a middle school girl by the name of Mitsu - intoxicated, naked and unconscious on the bed.

He wants to rescue the young girl. He wants to take her out of the hotel room now, before anybody can harm her.

He does that, but not before molesting and strangling her.

So which is it? Are we evil? Or are we good?

I think I’m a good person myself, but I am also aware of my extreme capacity for evil. I think we all have that capacity. History shows us we do. In a sense, we have two “natures”. A “good” nature that tells us to be good, regardless of negative consequences. And an equally extravagant “evil” nature.

Yes, that’s right, deny it. Deny that you could ever enjoy killing somebody.

That won’t make it go away though.

Another book review.

I took a break from the overtly political and philosophical books.

Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, is cited in many a political treatise. Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought it the most valuable of all books for education. He went so far as to say:

There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No-it is Robinson Crusoe.

Political writers from Karl Marx to Lyle Rossiter have used the story as an foundation for their analogies. The story itself is intriguing and romantic. A single man, fighting to survive alone on an island.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract Or Principles Of Political Right came after John Locke’s Essay Concerning The True Original Extent And End Of Civil Government. John Locke’s Essay came out in 1690; Rousseau was aware of the Essay when he published his Social Contract in 1762.

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John Locke is at once one of the strongest defenders of freedom and at the same time an unwitting enemy of that very freedom. His Essay Concerning The True Original Extent And End Of Civil Government expounds the foundation of capitalist property ownership, describes a theory of state that heavily influenced the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Basically, John Locke’s social contractarian theory of government supposes that men are born free into the state of Nature, and the only legitimate government is one consented to by the governed. When a government acts outside the boundary of consent, it is a war with the people and they have the right to overthrow the government.

Two major flaws to this theory are accepted and continued to this day. The first, that “Natural Rights” exist. Insofar as “rights” are the product of contracts, natural rights cannot exist outside of the social contract.

The second is his taking for granted the legitimacy of democracy. While expounding the legitimacy of individualist society, and defending the individual rights from impeachment, he suicidally accepts for granted that democracy will guarantee those rights.

Some could argue that democracy (i.e., majority rule) is no more legitimate than monarchy. What right does the monarch have to order me? None. And what right does the majority have to order me? None. In that respect, they are identical in their absence of legitimate authority. Not to mention that democracy tends to devolve inevitably into socialism or communism or some other form of collectivism.

He does address collectivism (”Liberalism” in modern America). In addressing the ability of democracy to legislate minutia:

Chap.IV. 22.

Nobody can give more power than he has himself.

In other words, “nobody can forfeit the rights of others because those rights do not belong to others to forfeit”.

Of course, he should have foreseen that democracy would arrogate to themselves all rights of all men to forfeit as they please. After all, Hobbes defense of totalitarianism (i.e., Leviathan) was published in 1651, 38 years before Locke’s Essay Concerning The True Original Extent And End Of Civil Government.

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It’s almost been 20 years since my mother gave me a gift - Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind.

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A Book Review

How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America - Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex by Cristina Page

“Devastating. This book exposes the anti-woman, anti-family, anti-American, and anti-democratic goals of the far right’s true agenda.” - Roseanne Barr

With glowing reviews from such intellectual giants as Roseanne Barr, how could I not spent a paltry $11.70 to enlighten myself?

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