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18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Both True-Life Horror Story, February 21, 2004
This review is from: The Slaves Shall Serve: Meditations on Liberty (Paperback)
This book was a great pleasure to read, due to the authors' wonderful writing style. But in another sense it was a horrible book to read. I have never been a fan of the horror genre, and reading this book is akin to reading a Stephen King novel, except that it IS NOT FICTION! In this new book there are no gods, devils, or other evil spirits; the monsters are all too human. If you are easily scared by true events, then this is NOT a book for you. But if you want to learn the truth about what is going on in the world, and why the world seems so insane lately, then this book does a wonderful job of explaining things. The writing style is very easy to read, and it is not a heavy scholarly tome. The book begins with the author's chronicle of his very personal experiences that brought him to the point where he felt compelled to write this book. Then there is a look a look at the various major strains of political thought, such as statism, collectivism, libertarianism, and so forth. Next, a look at a subject painful to everyone: Waco. This is not the usual "such and such happened at 11:03 AM" type of chronicle (though I am not criticizing some of those very useful accounts). This is a personal account. One man trying to cope with an obvious disaster of truly epic proportions that literally stripped the veil from his eyes regarding American politics. All those people dead over a $200 tax! It gets worse, since he then covers September 11th. I say "worse" because what other adjective can I use to describe 9/11? But the author gives a very detailed account of the forces at play. This is not your usual New York Times article on why terrorists hate us. He lays bare the actual foundations of the evil, showing how the actual issue is about a
thousand years old. Next we get a lesson in very modern history, showing how liberty is a concept that the modern statists abhor and do their best to destroy. It is a U.S. "centric" but I can't blame the author for that; he can tackle Europe later. He next emphasizes the need to have a system of self-discipline that transcends the individual so that a free person may function properly in society (in other words, how to be a good person). The next chapter details actions that we can take to try to prevent the horror from continuing or getting worse (and it is getting worse). The author does a masterful job here, having previously built up an iron-clad case, and now showing how we can resist
while playing by the rules. Next is a reproduction of the one-page manifesto of liberty by the Englishman Crowley. Not an American! An Englishman mind you, and a highly controversial one at
that! There is something deliciously ironic about this. It is written in words of one syllable that anyone can understand. Crowley's manifesto will initially shock some (it was deliberately written to shock by using some mystical statements that will no doubt offend many who don't understand the underlying meaning and symbolism). But upon reflection, you'll see that Crowley's statement will put a LOT in context. What follows next are a series of appendices. It is in the nature of appendices that most readers skip them. These should not be skipped. There is Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution which are always worth reviewing. Then there is the absolute shock of the U.N. Charter, and a bunch of other U.N. documents. I am struck by the internal inconsistencies. For example, the U.N. seemingly declares human rights to be innate "up front" but if you read further you'll see they clearly state that human rights are GRANTED by governments and are NOT innate within us. Shocking in the extreme. And that is just ONE example! If you think the U.N. is the way to go then you need to read these documents and have your eyes opened. The last appendix contains some writings by then U.S. President John F. Kennedy which I guarantee will shock the living daylights out of anyone who has not read them! Taken in the context of things that Kennedy was involved in, such as the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam, it puts a LOT of things into context. An annotated bibliography of suggested reading ends up this gem. It will allow you to start your own personal journey like the author has done, if you haven't already. Plus it verifies everything in the book (the author is a very careful scholar, who attributes all his sources; I'm a real nit picker about that, and could find no fault). I can't praise this book more highly. Buy it. Read it. Buy more and give the copies to your friends. Recommend it to everyone! I have been waiting for a book like this for a LONG time and am overjoyed that it is now available. Destined to be a classic in the literature of freedom, I give Jim Wasserman my congratulations for having the guts to write this.
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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beware lest any force another, King against King! - AL II:24, January 6, 2005
This review is from: The Slaves Shall Serve: Meditations on Liberty (Paperback)
This book is a sort of talisman, in that it was clearly produced to bring about changes in the world. Whether the author's goal was to champion the rights of the individual and thereby weaken the power of the state, or simply to get occultists to join the NRA, is a matter open to debate. Nonetheless, it is an interesting book.
Mr. Wasserman advocates a peculiar philosophy in "The Slaves Shall Serve", blending gun control statistics and the facts of Waco and Ruby Ridge with the teachings of Aleister Crowley and the Libertarian Party to advance the idea that the individual is at the very least sovereign, if not god. Few readers of this book would agree with the author on every point on religion and politics, but his views are logically consistent and worthy of consideration. Additionally, Mr. Wasserman offers valuable and penetrating insight into the minds of the 9/11 hijackers with his analysis of militant Islam.
My only complaint about this book is that it is too short (nearly half the book could have been condensed to a page of URLs), but I suspect that the author did this on purpose, sneaking a printed copy of the U.S. Constitution into the "New Age" section of bookstores and libraries. Regardless of its shortcomings, any reader of "The Slaves Shall Serve" will be compelled to draw two conclusions - that the rights of the individual are under attack from enemies both foreign and domestic, and that these liberties are worth fighting for - and that is reason enough for me to recommend the book.
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32 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
mediocre right-wing bromide, August 12, 2004
This review is from: The Slaves Shall Serve: Meditations on Liberty (Paperback)
Book Review
The Slaves Shall Serve - Meditations on Liberty
James Wasserman (2004)
When I bought this book, I had hopes that I had come to the end of a long search for a book that combined a genuine understanding of both politics and the occult. That sense of hope mainly hinged on the fact that Wasserman is a Thelemite, one of the few modern esoteric traditions which I consider not fluffy. Unfortunately, what I found was yet another magician who seems to have spent so long on the astral plane that he has been able to develop only the most superficial understanding of the social-political realm.
Wasserman has seen the smokescreen of liberal ideology for what it is... only to trade it for the most common and silly ideas put out by conservatives. For example, while condemning the "liberal" notion of gun control, he states that he thinks Senator McCarthy was right, and believes than an invasion of blue-helmeted U.N. troopers is imminent. One of the most amusing claims he makes is one parroted by right-wing talk-show host almost daily: that there is a leftist bias in mainstream media. As evidence, he points out a Media Research Center report that found a 10-to-1 ration of "anti-gun" to "pro-gun" stories on major news channels between 7/1/97 and 6/30/99. Well and good, but if the media is really so left-biased, then why did the same research organization find a *100-to-1* ratio of pro-war to anti-war stories in the months leading up to Gulf War II, at a time when the most conservative polls showed over half of all Americans opposing the war? And if the media is so leftist, why do right-wing pundits like Newt Gingrinch and Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson all have their own talk shows while leading Left intellectuals like anarchist Noam Chomsky and socialist Howard Zinn find themselves confined to poorly-compensated tours between universities?
The gun-control essay is, in fact, the best-written and best-researched essay in the entire book. There is another decent essay about Waco, but the documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement, which Wasserman references, does a better job of laying out the horrors that the U.S. government carried out there. The others I find to be rather groundless opinion papers with few convincing arguments to back them up. The book is further weakened by the fact that these essays comprise a little under half of the book - the second half is a reprinting of the U.S. and U.N. Constitutions with some minor notes and observations tacked on. The book sells for $20, a rather steep price for about 100 pages of original writing, especially for such superficial analysis.
I'm sure Mr. Wasserman really does cherish the idea of freedom, but I'm not sure he entirely understands it. He condemns both collectivism and democracy! "Would you really want the post office to run the world?" he asks, to which the True Libertarian (i.e. Anarchist, from whom the so-called libertarian party mis-appropriated the term) responds with a resounding Yes! The post office is a perfect example of how a non-centralized federation of autonomous communities could function. There is no central high command for the post office, but if you put a letter to Prague in a mailbox in San Francisco, it will get there. Wasserman also defends the idea of a republic, saying that true democracy is like two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Well, that goes to show that you can prove anything by allegory. If we inject a little realism into this allegory, we can see how quickly it disintigrates though. First of all, nowhere in nature will you find two wolves for every sheep. Common sense tells you that this is impossible. And even if wolves did outnumber sheep, it has been shown that even these fierce predators practice- not survival of the fittest!- but mutual aid, that other important anarchist principle. If a member of the pack is sick or injured, the pack doesn't abandon it, but shares food to try and keep it alive. The individualism which Wasserman so often invokes sounds to me more like egoism, which, unless I am mistaken, is the enemy in Thelema. Perhaps that is why he feels the need to justify his worldview with a divine power as the basis for morality. His position just doesn't hold up on its own.
The fact is, the whole liberal/conservative split is itself just a smokescreen put up to hide the true agenda of those in power, the heads of the multinational corporations whose GDPs are larger than those of almost every country in the world, and whose transactions in fact make up a large percentage of the GDP of the world's superpowers. Both "liberal" and "conservative" presidents have obediently carried out the secretive and undemocratic World Trade Organization's program of "neoliberal" economic reforms. NAFTA, for example, was dreamed up by Reaganites, refined under Bush Sr., put into action by Clinton, and then further expanded under Bush Jr. More than the U.N. coming to take away your guns, Mr. Wasserman, you should be concerned about the WTO coming to take away your food, your water, and your livelihood through programs which no bullet can damage.
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