Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter
Posted on 01/30/2010 6:29:11 AM PST by Travis McGee
“Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter” is about the struggle of the creative, productive members of society against the parasitic masses that author Tom Baugh refers to as the monkey collective. Monkeys are the looters and moochers who essentially dine from the plates of the producers through the tax and legal structures they have put in place. Baugh contends that the vast army of collectivist monkeys would literally starve if left to their own devices.
“Starving the Monkeys” refers to Baugh’s recommendation that the producers strictly limit the monkey diet, by withholding their productive efforts on behalf of the collective. Not by refusing to pay taxes, but by temporarily throttling back on their productive output, and thereby hastening the fall of the monkey collective, which is even now teetering on the brink. He advises retreating into a personal “Galt’s Gulch” until after the impending financial and social collapse, and then emerging with one’s intellectual and productive tools intact. In the former Soviet Union, beleaguered individualists referred to this as “internal emigration.” Whether this strategy will be taken up by enough producers to have an effect on the collective remains to be seen, but it reflects the “Atlas Shrugged” meme that is echoing loudly today, as employers hold off on new hiring for just one example.
Although this is a book designed to help you survive what may be our imminent financial Armageddon, you won’t find recommendations on long-term food storage or home defense firearms. Other recent titles cover that ground, such as Fernando Aguirre’s “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse,” and John Rawles’s “How to Survive the End of the World As We Know It.” According to Baugh, by far the most critical survival weapon is the one between your ears. This book is all about honing your mental edge to razor sharpness for the purpose of surviving the collapse intact.
Starving the Monkeys is not an easy read. It’s extremely challenging, not only to political correctness but to many popular dogmas, including some religious ones. No sacred cow or ox is left ungored. I guarantee that thin-skinned feminists will be highly offended. If you have a low tolerance for seeing your pet beliefs or heroes under attack, this is not the book for you. For example, if you think that Lincoln was our greatest president, you will certainly not enjoy this book, to say the least. I picked the ingrained American devotion to “Honest Abe” as one example among countless others. Be warned. Baugh comes after numerous cultural and social beliefs and traditions with a steel crowbar, to pry them apart and analyze their weaknesses as he sees them. In fairness, he turns the same critical analysis on himself.
So why should you read such a problematic and often uncomfortable book, by a consistently prickly and acerbic (but always hilarious) writer? Simple. For the equally consistent brilliance of thought displayed. You may disagree vehemently with many of Baugh’s suppositions (as I certainly did), but you cannot deny the breadth and power of his thinking. The single chapter titled “The Idea Factory” is worth the entire price of the book, and so are several others.
The Left will immediately trash the book, its author, and its fans as racist - sight unseen, words unread.
Whatever point the author is trying to make, he could have used a better metaphore.
PR nightmare.
Bttt
I'm pinging the CW2 list to this book review, because the author is advocating a form of guerrilla civil war, the strategy being the deliberate withholding of the productive output of society's non-parasites. Author Tom Baugh sees the same impending financial and social meltdown that many of us are predicting. His contribution is to suggest that we help to kick the rotting edifice over sooner rather than later. If the "monkey collective" manages to suck the last ounce of liberty and freedom from our country, there may not be enough of a foundation left for rebuilding. Baugh is advocating sort of a "capital strike" against the growing socialist collective. It's a pretty radical book, and many readers will not enjoy some of his positions. I had trouble with some myself. But the book is a welcome edition to any freedom-lover's shelf. I strongly recommend it. If nothing else, it will force you to critically examine some of your own ideas.
If you think the author gives one damn about what the left might do to trash his book, you really have no concept of what the book is about.
The author takes a dirty sharp stick and jams it deep into the left’s eyeblls on every page. He really doesn’t care what the monkey collective thinks.
on the wish list!
Bookmark Bump
From the author’s website, “Monkey, Defined.”
In the context of this book, a monkey is defined as a person that chooses to collectively seize, by unearned means, the property, material or intellectual, temporal or spiritual, of its rightful owner. The means employed may be fiat, guilt, force, theft, fraud, subterfuge, or anything other than a willing and negotiated exchange of value.
In our modern world, each person is given the opportunity to make a conscious choice whether to be monkeys or men.
Conspicuously absent from this definition is race, birth, gender, heritage, cultural influences, or any factor other than that singular deliberate decision.
But men choose to live their lives upon their own merit. It is this very spirit of independence of thought and action that makes men the prey of the monkey collective.
As such, monkeys abandon their claim to the rights of men.
But monkeys could just as easily choose not to, and become men themselves.
http://www.starvingthemonkeys.com/MonkeyDefined.html
Damn the collective and all the collectivists....
Who wrote the actual review? You or Baugh?
I wrote it. It’s Baugh’s book, my review.
The dude just put into a book what most of us here at freereupblic have been saying for the last year. The guy is probably a freeper and most of his ideas probably come from right here. Which is OK by me.
Thanks for the review.
I just bought the book - received it last week. My wife is about half way through and I’ll be reading it after.
I have discussed many times here at FR the concepts of ‘Starve the Beast” and “Leaderless Resistance”. .....
That’s what it’s about. But be warned, the author swings his axe freely. No ox goes ungored.
I don’t think he’s a freeper, but he does share many (not all!) of our usual beliefs.
Folks won’t agree with all of this books, and that is FOR SURE.
But it is extremely well written and thought provoking.
I hope we don’t hit rock bottom as a fictional USA did in ATLAS SHRUGGED. I think we can purge the collectivist parasites from most important institutions of American life by simply limiting the federal government to its constitutional role and giving the right to vote to only those who can pass a simple high school level Civics examination in ENGLISH.
lol, it won't.
Quite.
We’re producers. We produce. It’s what we do. To not produce is to not be who we are.
Maybe we can change what we produce to something not taxable, but part of why we produce is to provide for our own, and to “starve the monkeys” requires providing less for our own first.
...and that’s how we’re controlled: we produce to provide, and to not produce is to FIRST neglect our dependents. The system will hardly notice one stopped producer, but that person WILL suffer the consequences of stopping.
I have a rare Saturday when I am not working and when I have no real obligations, and it’s cold and rainy outside. I might have to re-read EFAD.
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