Frustrating Writers

[Sailor Steve]

While I was at the bookstore today, and as is my habit I spent some time browsing through books to see if I want to add them to my list of future reading. A couple of them looked interesting, but a cursory glance through them had me pulling my hair out.

First was 10 Books That Screwed Up The World (And 5 Others That Didn't Help), by Benjamin Wiker. It's a study of famous revolutionary texts, with the summation that they did more harm than good. I didn't go far enough into it to form a real judgement, but one part I did see really set me off.

The chapter in question is titled How Descartes’ Discourse on Method “proved” God’s existence only by making Him a creation of our own ego. The thesis is that Rene Descart set out to prove God's existence through logic, but the author contends that he did just the opposite, as the chapter title suggests. My problem isn't with the chapter itself, which I didn't read. It was with one statement concerning Descart's most famous philosophical concept: "I think, therefore I am."

Wiker concludes that what Descart meant by that was that by thinking I rationalize myself into existence. He ends with the statement that what Descart should have said was "I am, therefore I am able to think." What 'Mr. PhD' doesn't seem to realize is that that is exactly what Descart meant: not that I think myself into existence, but that the fact that I am self-aware proves my existence; at least to myself.

Second case: Stupid Wars: A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions, by Ed Strosser and Michael Prince. It seems to be a nice little compendium of wars that shouldn't have been fought, and I thought it might be interesting. I was naturally drawn to the chapter on The Whiskey Rebellion, in which President George Washington again put on his uniform and took nominal command of the army, with his former aide and Secretary Of The Treasury Alexander Hamilton as actual leader. The authors bring up the old argument of whether Hamilton was actually trying to put himself in a position to be a good presidential candidate, or was actually setting himself up to take over as dictator.

All well and good, but in a little rundown on the main players' good and bad points they make the statement "Hamilton couldn't be president, having been born in St. Croix, but he could be king." That one had me grinding my teeth. The Constitution specifically states

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Simply put, having fought in the Revolution as Washington's aide, and having been one of the movers and shakers behind the Constitution, as well as the primary author of the Federalist papers, and certainly a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, there was absolutely no reason why Hamilton could not have been president.

My point for this diatribe is simple: If the authors of these books can get something so simple so wrong, just based on what little I know, I have to worry about all the parts they might have gotten wrong that, not knowing, I'll read and take at face value.

As I said, pulling my hair out.