by Mel cross posted from her blog When Cows and Kids Collide
Quoted parts of the book in blue
In this book, the term “statism” or “statist” receives a lot of play. The problem is that I could not figure out what the Botkins actually meant by either term.
According to Wikipedia, statism is the involvement of the government in economic or social policy in some form. This roughly corresponded with what I remember hazily from some poli-sci discussions held in college. This sort of explained why the Botkins seemed to conflate any Marxist governmental system with statism, but there seemed to be something else missing.
Then, I received my $4.00 second-party seller copy of “So Much More”. In their “Endnotes”, the Botkin Sisters note that
Problems I see:
- No one else defines statism as a rival religion – anywhere.
- I know that the Botkin Sisters mean that statism = “welfare state” or “Nanny state”, but technically that sentence structure read to me that the Messianic State is the welfare/nanny state.
- The list of characteristics describes EVERY modern civilization since the body of laws and regulation grows over time.
After that overview, here’s a “history” lesson that is plunked in the middle of the chapter titled “Boys Are People Too”. Fair warning: the history is convoluted, exists mainly to hawk Botkin crap merchandise and has nothing to do with the fact that boys are people. On the positive side, it’s a hoot to read aloud to your friends and family.
- The second sentence is a common weak writing flaw. The sentence says “when we move in a direction, we move in that direction!”
- In the absence of a state, who the hell are the freedom-fighters fighting against? Shouldn’t they excel in a statist society?
- Leaders and out-of-box thinkers arise in every group of people. Don’t believe me? Watch children at a park for awhile…..
- That’s quite a bizarre list. The connection is the interests, businesses and products of the Botkin family.
- British removal of guns: The Botkin Brothers bring home the money through T.Rex Arms – custom plastic gun accessories. I find the entire site creepy and will not link it. That’s where the anti-gun control schtick comes from. (On the positive side, the boys are in favor of the “Appendix” concealed carry which gives carriers the chance to shoot their genitals and/or femoral arteries while drawing OR from clothing movement).
- Illiteracy in Ancient Egypt: Issac Botkin did a whole “Ancient Egypt” movie and book. (Also, Egypt was totally different than most societies within the last 100 years in terms of literacy /massive sarcasm)
- Anti-Communism: Another nod to Geoffrey Botkin’s imaginary upbringing in a massively Marxist family.
- Can’t find a direct link to the “Greece and Rome” bit, but I’m sure they’ll pop something out.
- When you quote, you should cite the source of the quotation. There are plenty of options for HOW you cite – I am a APA junkie, but there are so many other options – but just dropping quotations without citations would have gotten me in trouble starting in 5th grade which is ~11 years of age.
- I have no idea who this group of European socialists who moved into education and media are – but you should totally use them as a reason to opt out of public education and mainstream media. Instead, you should use the Botkin Family Homeschooling Curriculum and allied Vision Forum films for entertainment!
- I needed to look up both Wilhelm Reich and Antonio Gramsci on Wikipedia. Antonio Gramsci was a critical Marxist thinker who wrote over 3,000 pages of information. Wilhelm Reich tried to align Marxism and psychoanalysis – but he had a lot of personal issues and seemed very unstable.
- Conspiracy theories are (generally) interesting. This feels like a novice attempt at a stream-of-consciousness conspiracy theory.
- IMHO, men who know they are “more godly” than others want more control over others.
- Is there historical evidence for the Tower of Babel?
- Note the Botkins ability to insult Germans and China in a single clause of a sentence; they have a lot of biases in this section.
- Bomp-Bomp-Bomp! The great reveal! We have seen the enemy and it is US!
- I don’t think that Karl Marx was the first person to realize that women can be catalysts for social change. In the USA, women were highly involved in anti-slavery and temperance movements prior to 1868.
- Plus, I do have to give the underground Marxist/Communist/Socialist movement in the USA credit; they must be willing to play one hell of a long con game. The most recent quote so far is from the 1930’s and this book was published in 2011 when the USA was still a democratic republic.
- Paragraph summary: Women can make deals in exchange for full participation in society. Damn. That’s deep. It’s like women are people, too.
- I feel that dropping Betty Friedman’s maiden name has one purpose: anti-Semitism. If she was only pretending to be a wife who found being a housewife boring as hell, she was a great actress; so many women agreed with her!
- This paragraph brings us up to 1975 with Dworkin’s quote – but I can’t find any information that said she was on the Marxist/Communist spectrum of politics. That makes the most recent Marxist/Communist quote from 1974. That was 37 years before the book was written.
- Time out: what’s wrong with getting rid of classes? There are LOTS of Bible quotes about how to treat others and they lean strongly towards making sure the poor are taken care of?
- Wait. I thought this was all worked out by the evil MALE social planners. The Botkins alluded to that in the last chapter. Now, the Botkin sisters are saying that WOMEN have goals. Which is it?
Stay in touch! Like No Longer Quivering on Facebook:
If this is your first time visiting NLQ please read our Welcome page and our Comment Policy!
Copyright notice: If you use any content from NLQ, including any of our research or Quoting Quiverfull quotes, please give us credit and a link back to this site. All original content is owned by No Longer Quivering and Patheos.com
Read our hate mail at Jerks 4 Jesus