Customer Reviews

Harvard Hates America: The Odyssey of a Born-Again American

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I'm surprised that this book hasn't been reprinted. Leboutillier looks at the US from the viewpoint of Harvard in the 70's. Some of his stories are hilarious, some just sad. The amount of sheer self-indulgence of the professors and students he describes is amazing.

The importance of the book today is that the folks who are the main targets of his criticism--generaly speaking--Ivy-league liberals and their sycophants, are now running the country!

Given the title the author chose, can we safely assume objective reporting is not Leboutillier's strong suit? I almost ignored the book because of the title, but I felt compelled to give it a try anyway. I got a kick out of reading William Buckley's jeremiad, "God and Man at Yale" before I attended that school in the 60s, so I thought I'd check out Leboutillier's version for Harvard. Yet even though I attended college in a more radical era, I didn't encounter ANY professors bearing similarities to the cartoon-like, dim-witted radical ideologues Leboutillier describes at Harvard College. Now I suppose it's possible that Yale professors were brighter--or more self-reflective or more even-handed in their pedagogy--but I'm more inclined to think the author has a somewhat biased memory for detail.

Fortunately--though misleadingly--most of the book has nothing to do with Harvard. Leboutillier's accounts of his GOP fundraising experiences and his policy recommendations actually make interesting reading. As a conservative he questioned the big-business bias and "lack of soul" of mainstream Republicanism in the 1970s--which he also encountered at the Harvard Business School. I'd give him four stars for that section of the book, two stars for his accounts of Harvard (I'm cutting him some slack, because I wasn't there), and zero stars for the insult-the-reader's-intelligence title.

The first several chapters relate interesting classes with professors who were deeply critical of the Fed and the bankers. John sort of pokes fun at them but it I feel that the same arguments are extremely relevant today. That the bankers have ruined this country ... that the FED is accountable to nobody but the private interests that control it. John later works to raise money for various political campaigns but becomes disillusioned himself.
" I saw more than anything else, that what governs today is not the politics of principle, but rather the politics of prostitution. "

Well said John.

Page 8 brings up the University of Chicago and Milton Friedman. Timeless. Of course Obama and many other cabal figures have emanated from that 'institution'.

John, thanks for the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote on page 15:

" Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs."

John, if you are listening ... What do you make of arguments by Bastiat, Spooner and Larken Rose ... that the Constitution is of "no authority" ?
[...]

Personally, I have come to the conclusion, like Jefferson, that govts move inexorably to a level of corruption that must be expurgated. Re-examine all contracts you have signed. Repudiate them. Move toward the self reliance expounded by Emerson and others.

So, we have an author who...

- was born with not one, but two silver spoons in his mouth (he is heir to two huge fortunes)
- parlayed that into getting accepted into Harvard (money.. Money changes everything)
- parlayed that into pretty well buying a house seat (only to serve one term only, once his constituents realized what a buffoon he was)
- has since been involved in numerous pow/Mia misadventures, some of which have resulted in heartbreaking false hope to families, and one of which resulted in John getting scammed for around $800,000
- and is now a reverent tea party supporter and occasional fox news contributor

Who here is happy to attack a place which offers a worldwide standard of education. Every place has its occasional excesses, but the takeaway from this book is that the author resents the fact that his idiotic political and social views get no respect from intelligent people and Harvard and other top institutions. That's really all there is to this lame, lame book.