The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics - Kevin D. Williamson
Language: EnglishKeywords:
America
Conservatism
Culture
History
Liberalism
Patriotic Resurgence
Patriotism
Progressivism
Shared by:alnilam
Written by
Read by Stephen Graybill
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged
Length: 6h 43m
History has thrown up a character whom we are accustomed to call the ‘mass man.’ His appearance is spoken of as the most significant and far-reaching of all the revolutions of modern times. He is credited with having transformed our way of living, our standards of conduct and our manners of political activity. He is, sometimes regretfully, acknowledged to have become the arbiter of taste, the dictator of policy, the uncrowned king of the modern world. He excites fear in some, admiration in others, wonder in all. His numbers have made him a giant; he proliferates everywhere; he is recognized either as a locust who is making a desert of what was once a fertile garden, or as the bearer of a new and more glorious civilization.
● Michael Oakeshott, “The Masses in Representative Democracy,” 1961
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Listener beware: Kevin D. Williamson—the lively, literary firebrand from “National Review” who was too hot for “The Atlantic” to handle—comes to bury democracy, not to praise it.
With electrifying honesty and spirit, Williamson takes a flamethrower to mob politics, the “beast with many heads” that haunts social media and what currently passes for real life.
It’s destroying our capacity for individualism and dragging us down “the Road to Smurfdom, the place where the deracinated demos of the Twitter age finds itself feeling small and blue.”
“The Smallest Minority” is by no means a memoir, though Williamson does reflect on that “tawdry little episode” with “The Atlantic” in which he became all-too-intimately acquainted with mob outrage and the forces of tribalism.
Rather, this book is a dizzying tour through a world you’ll be horrified to recognize as your own.
With biting appraisals of social media (“an economy of Willy Lomans,” political hustlers (“that certain kind of man or woman… who will kiss the collective ass of the mob”), journalists (“a contemptible union of neediness and arrogance”) and identity politics (“identity is more accessible than policy, which requires effort”), “The Smallest Minority” is a defiant, funny, and terrifyingly insightful book about what we human beings have done to ourselves.
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“The most profane, hilarious, and insightful book I’ve read in quite a while.” —BEN SHAPIRO
“Kevin Williamson’s gonzo merger of polemic, autobiography, and batsh*t craziness is totally brilliant.” —JOHN PODHORETZ, Commentary
“Ideological minorities—including the smallest minority, the individual—can get trampled by the unity stampede (as my friend Kevin Williamson masterfully elucidates in his new book, The Smallest Minority).” —JONAH GOLDBERG
“The Smallest Minority is the perfect antidote to our heedless age of populist politics. It is a book unafraid to tell the people that they’re awful.” —NATIONAL REVIEW
“Williamson is blistering and irreverent, stepping without doubt on more than a few toes - but, then again, that’s kind of the point.” —THE NEW CRITERION
“Stylish, unrestrained, and straight from the mind of a pissed-off genius.” —THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON
Kevin Williamson is “shocking and brutal” (RUTH MARCUS, Washington Post), “a total jack**s” (WILL SALETAN, Slate), and “totally reprehensible” —PAUL KRUGMAN, New York Times
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nationalreview.com/author/kevin-d-williamson
goodreads.com/book/show/43015877-the-smallest-minority
audible.com/pd/The-Smallest-Minority-Audiobook/179972221X
thefederalist.com/2019/08/16/kevin-williamsons-new-book-is-a-call-to-arms-against-mob-rule
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| Creation Date: | Mon, 08 Aug 2022 11:46:20 +0200 |
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This post has 18 comments with rating of 2.3/5
August 8th, 2022
Independent thinking? No, I’d have 2 c what every1 else thinks abt that 1 1st, I’m afraid.
August 8th, 2022
poor, poor wannabe elites, eagerly swallowing garbage that passes for ‘independent’ thinking these days
August 8th, 2022
^^^ A group thinker get’s upset with independent thinking. Funny that.
August 8th, 2022
Elites: can’t live with them, etc.
If everyone could be somehow ass-imilated into the elites. Those Borg lads knew what time it was. “We are Borg” they used say. It was a very 20th century energy they had. They were going after something called “perfectibility” in the end, I think (I didn’t get all the details, tbh).
If you refused to drop all that individuality nonsense, they’d apprise you that “resistance is going to be fairly problematic.” Like I said, very 20th c & uniformy in the extreme.
August 8th, 2022
Recommended by Ben Shapiro.
So that’s a hard pass for me.
August 8th, 2022
They even assimilated that hot “Half Past Seven” character.
August 8th, 2022
Really? By Shapiro?
Hard pass here, too.
•••
Gweilo
August 8th, 2022
Recommended by Ben Shapiro.
So that’s a hard pass for me.
August 8th, 2022
i am a simple man. anything neocons like, i dislike.
August 8th, 2022
This book claims that conservative thinking, one half of the political mob in the US, is independent thinking.
This is unusual, because 38% of US adults are political independents, not affiliated with either political party. Party affiliation, which the author has with the more conservative faction of the GOP, seems a disqualifying factor in writing a book about independent thinking. Were Bill Clinton to write “The Joys of A Faithful Marriage” or Obama to write “The Duty Of Elected Officials To Uphold Governmental Transparency” I would be similarly skeptical. But those books don’t exist and this one does. Which says a great deal about the GOP and the credulity of its members.
Here is a helpful litmus test: If you live in the united states and you identify strongly with either political party due to a belief that they have your best interest at heart, or actually believe the claims they make, you are probably not an independent thinker. If you don’t vote at all, or hold your nose and vote for the political party you think might do the least political harm, while hating that these are the best candidates our system has come up with, then you probably are an independent thinker.
August 8th, 2022
Whinging about political correctness, wokeness and cancel culture is hardly independent thinking. There are hoards of mindless zombies parroting that exact same sentiment, angry that they aren’t allowed to use racial slurs without repercussions.
August 9th, 2022
Don’t you guys actually sometimes register as “independent” over there (p’haps to participate in primaries without being pressured to join a private party)?
One of the journos who was moderating a presidential candidates’ debate said in interview that he was registered as a Democrat, because in Washington “you have to register as something” - which sounded a bit odd. To be quite honest, he didn’t sound all that enthused about being a Democrat either.
August 10th, 2022
Yup. Registering as independents is a literal thing we do in most places.
Washington is corrupt like that, to vote in this year’s primary, you have to affiliate with either the GOP or the Democrats, after which you can go back to being an independent. https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/voters-will-have-to-check-democrat-or-republican-on-washington-state-primary-ballot/281-8a16b59e-df4d-4e8e-b66f-ff0fdbadf19c
Why? So the two main parties can harangue you for donations of course! Personally, I will be replying to any suck solicitations with a variety of creative curse words written boldly across said solicitations and mailed back.
Party affiliation is not required to vote in the general election in Washington.
Most of us aren’t enthused about either political party. We’d like a third option that’s more sensible than the extremists third parties that currently exist, or than the two main parties have become. A majority of us support a progressive tax system and lobbyist reform without, for instance, thinking that convicted male sex offenders ought to be housed with female inmates because they put on a wig and some lipstick, as seems to be the present stance of the democratic party.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/11/17/exclusive-california-forces-transgender-belief-system-on-female-prisoners-housed-with-biological-males-lawsuit-says/
https://www.womensliberationfront.org/news/washington-aclu-male-rapists-confirmed
To be clear here, people can do whatever they want and be whatever they like, but only if they don’t cause material harm to others in the process. Where they do cause harm, or are obviously abusing the system, any political party has a duty to stop them, as opposed to showing how woke they think they are by enabling sexual assault. This is one of the many reasons a lot of us are independents.
August 10th, 2022
Correction: Washington rolled the primary registration requirement back, following 36,000 people refusing to pick a party and their votes not being counted. Doesn’t apply to this years primary and hasn’t applied since 2020, at least so far as I can tell.
August 13th, 2022
@erouting : You’ve bought in to the transphobia that is the current boogeyman of the GOP. And citing “Daily Signal”. All of that, as well as the traditional racism (e.g., “CRT” panic), and the ever popular “They’re going to take your guns”, is what they are using to distract and energise their base so they don’t think about the economic policies they have and will enact to ensure the 1% get ever more privileged.
August 13th, 2022
@Gweilo
Absolutely correct.
Most capitalist govts don’t actually give a toss about trans people, “wokeness” or any of these other magic things. They care about their taxes and tax exemptions. That’s it. Everything else is just chum for the angry masses who should be toppling them.
August 13th, 2022
The moderator was referring to the political culture pertaining to D.C. rather than State (inside the beltway?). In fairness to him, he didn’t sound like any kind of l/r extremist, he was largely a moderate moderator.
Broadly, female inmates should of course be consulted on issues impacting their prudential welfare (physical & psychological). Merely because someone is convicted does not mean they ought to lose all legal rights. The specific punitive measure is time-specified loss of liberty. With regard to Trans convicts, this engages a balance of rights, in order to vindicate their rights as well.
September 7th, 2023
The first 4 people cited as praising this work of brobdingnagian genius are: Ben Shapiro, John Podhoretz, Jonah Goldberg and someone, unnamed, from The National Review. So there you go. America’s deepest thinkers.
May 13th, 2024
Funny to hear that Gweilo is allowing Ben Shapiro to decide what books Gweilo will read LOL.
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