The perfect book for fence-sitters or hard cord GOP voters?

[Hamlette]

I picked up The President of Good and Evil, the Ethics of George W. Bush, yesterday and started it last night. It's by Peter Singer, a bioethics prof at Princeton originally from Australia.

He sets out very interesting arguments about ethics and W using W's own quotes to make his case. He says no president in history has framed the issues in moral terms like Bush has "good vs evil" etc. Then he walks you through how to analyze morals to determine if they are ethical, and uses Bush quotes to show that we as a society obviously believe in that rather than just indoctrination of our ideas.

Then he proceeds to show, through Bush's own words, that what Bush does is NOT what he says he believes in.

It's all here. The numbers on how the tax cut helps the rich and hurts all Americas. In that discussion he destroys Bush's line "Its your money" in a way that is impossible to argue with. His example is that he works for a car company making $1000 a week. $200 goes for taxes and he complains "its my money".

" ... the corporation could not make its cars without a legal system that fosters and protects mining rights, private ownership of land, an accepted currency, systems of transport, the production and sale of energy, the existence of an educated labor force, corporate oversight, the protection of patents and the prevention of monopolies, judicial resolution of disputes, national defense, and the protection of trading routes. Even if it could make them, without security and at least a moderate degree of prosperity few people would buy them. In other words, without taxes, and the system of regulation that could not exist without taxes, the corporation would not be able to pay me $1,000 a week---and if somehow, I did get paid, the money would be of little value because I could not be secure in my ownership of anything I bought with it."

I'm thinking this is THE book to give to people who are on the fence or are going to vote for Bush but would read something if it was framed right.

Anyone read it? Any other book suggestions for fence sitters? (A woman in my office listens to Rush but has promised to read any book I bring in as long as its not like Lies. (The name calling pisses her off, as it does me when they do it to us.)

[leftofthedial]

1. thanks for the recommendation

I will check that one out.

I've found most hard core repukes are beyond reason. Fence sitters, though, can be reached with logic and rationality.

[jeff30997]

2. Sounds like a must-read to me !

For fence sitters there's of course all the Michael Moore and Al Franken's books but Noam Chumsky's work is a sure bet.

[CrispyQ]

3. His other books are worthy reads, too.

He's got some radical views. Makes you think.

<snip>

The New Yorker calls him "the most influential living philosopher." His critics call him "the most dangerous man in the world." Peter Singer, the De Camp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, is most widely and controversially known for his view that animals have the same moral status as humans. He is the author of many books, including Practical Ethics (1979), Rethinking Life and Death (1995), and Animal Liberation (1975), which has sold more than 450,000 copies. This year he published Writings on an Ethical Life (Ecco Press) and A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation (Yale University Press), which argues that the left must replace Marx with Darwin if it is to remain a viable force.

Singer is perhaps the most thorough going philosophical utilitarian since Jeremy Bentham. As such, he believes animals have rights because the relevant moral consideration is not whether a being can reason or talk but whether it can suffer. Jettisoning the traditional distinction between humans and nonhumans, Singer distinguishes instead between persons and non-persons. Persons are beings that feel, reason, have self-awareness, and look forward to a future. Thus, fetuses and some very impaired human beings are not persons in his view and have a lesser moral status than, say, adult gorillas and chimpanzees.
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