just curious - what books/readings have most influenced people in determining their philosophy? thanks.

Richard Maybury ~ Whatever happened to justice?
Tom Woods~ Who Killed the Constitution
Bastiat ~The Law
Ron Paul~ Liberty Defined

David Wilcock - The Source field Investigations
Richard Marcinko - Rouge Warrior
Stuart Wilde - The Quickning
Ron Paul - End the Fed
Jessie Ventura - Do I Stand Alone

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“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”

Thomas Paine - The Age of Reason
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion
Ron Paul - The Revolution, a Manifesto
Ron Paul - End the Fed
Ron Paul - Liberty Defined

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"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." – Thomas Jefferson (1781)

There is only one:

The Ethics of Liberty - Murray Rothbard

I am pleased that people are still reading books.

I have been reading books about Pythagoras.

Art is dead, or it is dying. Our minds are becoming increasingly binary and dependent upon downloaded modules of pre-fabricated opinion. I read an interesting article in the WSJ called something like, “Your E-reader is reading you”. Apparently, when you read an ebook, a great deal of data is uploaded to the publisher, be it Amazon or Apple or whatever. They gather information on how fast you read the book and what genre of book your prefer and whether you actually finished it, etc.. They’ve actually gathered enough data to know that female ebook readers prefer above everything else a male hero with green eyes, a slightly hairy chest, dark hair, and a European accent. And the WSJ broke it down under several categories, listing the percentages of female ebook readers who prefer a hero with blue eyes or brown eyes, or a shaved chest or a Southern accent, and so on and so forth.

Understand, books are being created now, not by artists with unique visions, but by committees of data analysts. I’m sure that this will warm the hearts of all of you technophiles and transhumanists, but I see in this a terrible precedent. I see in this the death of original art and personal creativity, at least the quality of which might generate the power to transform individual lives and, by extension, humanity.

“The gods of our time, mechanization and organization, have brought life and death. They have wired up the whole world, established contact throughout, created everywhere the possibility of cooperation, concentration of strength and mutual understanding. At the same time they have trapped the spirit, fettered it, and stifled it. They have led man from individualism to collectivism. But with his unguided insight man has so far succeeded only in realizing the evil that is in every collectivism, the negation of the deepest personal values, and the slavery of the spirit. Will the future be one of ever greater mechanization of society solely governed by the demands of utility and power?” – Johan Huizinga (1872-1945)

The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner
Social Statics - Herbert Spencer
Democracy The God That Failed - Hans-Hermann Hoppe
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien

Among hundreds of others of course Those are the big four.

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"Here, every citizen is king; for he has plenitude of power, he reigns and governs." - P.J. Proudhon

Civil Disobedience (Essay) ~ Thoreau
Economy (Essay from Walden) ~ Thoreau
The Law ~ Bastiat
Man, Economy & State ~ Rothbard
Economics in One Lesson ~ Hazlitt
Why Government is the Problem (Essay) ~ Friedman

Being from Baltimore I've been getting into Mencken lately and 'Notes on Democracy' is on my "to read" list at the moment.

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Liberty: "the conceptual extension of the idea, that your rational mind grants you the exclusive right to your body & products of your labour."

I am so excited the end of a semester is very nearly here. I have all of Ron Paul's books and Rothbard so I suppose I will start there.

Personally my eye opening book was:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay.

Reading about the tulip crisis right as the housing bubble was bursting was maddening. How could people not see this had all been done before?

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"There is a war going on for your mind
If you are thinking
You are winning
Resistance is victory
Defeat is impossible"
~FLOBOTS

That is useful information.


One of my favs, too. I even used the title in "quotations marks" when posting a response a week ago to the Darwinists in these here forums. Well, anyone familiar with the book would had gotten the reference and understood a bookful of what I meant by it!

At the moment I am reading The Manufacture of Madness by Thomas Szasz. It was recommended to me by a friend on facebook. I'm in the third chapter.

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I am my commander and chief.

"That is useful information"- Sapien

It is utilitarian science, catering to the lowest common denominator. It is what the Big Mac is to the Fillet Minion. It is Harry Potter to the Lord of the Rings. Ooops, I offended Potter fans. Okay, it's 50 Shades of Grey to Gone with the Wind. It's why everyone seems to have to write a damn vampire book. It is the death of art.

The Bible
Anything by Avro Manhattan (Vatican Billions; Vietnam, Why did we Go? (The Religious Beginnings of an Unholy War))
Alberto Rivera
No Compromise, The Keith Green story
Death of a Guru-Rabi Maharaj
Cancer Step Outside the Box-Ty Bollinger
Robert Mendelsohn, M.D.
Created to be His Helpmeet-Debi Pearl
And this is no book, but Dean Gotcher's videos on what he calls Diaprax have really influenced me.

Oh, I was just making a funny.

And I'm not a Potter fan. Except I did really enjoy the first movie. But I don't mind Potter fans. The fans who really bother me (just in an annoying way, really, trivial) are the Lord of the Rings freaks! So, hearing you put LotR up there as high art before talking about the death of art...

What's a Fillet Minion?

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was not very popular until the 1960’s when people began to relate to it. It lingered unappreciated all throughout the non-fantastical 1950’s. It didn’t cater to the masses of its day. LotR (and the Hobbit), like them or not, were new inventions of previously unknown fiction genre.

I read all the Potter books. I enjoyed them, just like I enjoy junk food. I’ll give Rowling credit for the Hogwarts idea, and a few others, which were original. But, most of the themes and characters are recycled from previous stories which have proven to be bomb-proof over time. The books came out with a built-in youth customer base. Potter adheres to our modern sensibilities and conventions about political correctness, all the way up until after publication when Rowling claimed that Dumbledork was a gay man (during the height of the gay marriage debates).

My father read the Hobbit to my brother and I as a bedtime story during the mid-1970’s. I read the Trilogy of the Rings as a pre-teen, and later several times over. For a millennial, it may be difficult to separate the books from the Peter Jackson films. A movie, regardless of how well it is made, can codify a story in the minds of its audience. For a boy of my age, Middle Earth was a realm to inhabit via imagination that stretched well beyond the narrative of Tolkien.

One invention that owns much of what it began as to Tolkien, and much of what it became was that of Dungeons and Dragons. Gary Gygax converted fantasy fiction, of which Tolkien was the forefather, into an entirely new form of gaming system. It’s funny, I was watching a guy on Playstation playing Tiger Woods Golf, and he went into the virtual pro shop to buy what was essentially a +1 magic wristband of accuracy. I realized then and there how much of a foundation that Gary Gygax built for what would become modern computer gaming (character creation, tables and matrixes for determining success and failure, world creation). You may laugh, but I consider Gary Gygax to be one of the most influential inventers of the 20th century. This is a topic about books. I still have my old 1979-1984 copies of the DMG, Players Handbook, Monster Manual, Deities and Demigods, Wilderness Survival Guide, etc..

Growing up, until I was 17, my friends were mostly jocks. I was a closet nerd. My brother and I began playing D&D as pre-teens. Most of the living space in my parents’ house is upstairs. My brother and I were moved down into the dark moldy dungeon after my sister was born. There were few windows down there, spiders, an ineffective wall heater, and dark synthetic wood siding. My brother’s friends were nerds, and I was the older brother Dungeon Master. My realms were limited only by my imagination. The game depended on the quick wit of the players. The tomes of Gary Gygax would be strewn over a table that I made in woodshop class, just for that purpose. We had beers, when we could sneak them from my parents who regularly had parties on the weekends. We would stay up all night, or I would come back with beers late at night from hanging with my non-nerd friends, and we would roll the dice, which were formed in the shapes of Pythagoras’ sacred geometry.


“What follows herein is strictly for the eyes of you, the campaign referee. As the creator and ultimate authority in your respective game, this work is written from one Dungeon Master equal to another. Pronouncements there may be, but they are not from “on high” as respects your game. Dictums are given for the sake of the game only, for if Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is to survive and grow, it must have some degree of uniformity, a familiarity of method and procedure from campaign to campaign within the whole. AD&D is more of a framework around which individual DMs construct their respective milieux... these boundaries are broad and spacious, and there are numerous areas where they are so vague and amorphous as to make them nearly nonexistent, but they are there nonetheless.” – Gary Gygax Dungeon Master’s Guide (1979)

The trilogy movies weren't too bad, but if one hadn't read the books prior to seeing them, they're truly missing out. The recent Hobbit movie was quite a let down.

Ahh, D&D brings back many good youthful memories. I shared a similar experience, I drew up quite a few elaborate campaigns, although most went unplayed since my older brother was almost always the DM.

Has anyone read Larken Rose's "The Most Dangerous Superstition"? I usually only read books on my reader, but that particular one I haven't been able to find on e-book so I went ahead and ordered a hard-copy from Larken.

I've also heard his novel The Iron Web is quite an interesting story on top of the political points he is trying to get across towards the end.

Lately I've been reading books in bits and pieces, based on some suggestions listed in this thread.. Herbert Spencer's 'Social Statics' is probably about as good as it gets, but it's a challenging read to me - I find myself having to review pages quite often.

I skimmed through some of Stefan Molyneux's books, and I do enjoy his videos, but I kind of felt it was a bit repetitive and eventually got annoyed with continually hearing about DRO's (Dispute Resolution Organizations) heh.. Though they are short, and free, so certainly worth the read if you're looking for something simple and quick

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Liberty: "the conceptual extension of the idea, that your rational mind grants you the exclusive right to your body & products of your labour."

I'm about two thirds through The Most Dangerous Superstition and it's very good so far. If it holds out this well through to the end, I'll be giving out copies to friends and family, as I did with the Iron Web a few years back. The Iron Web is a better place to start for those new to these ideas, since it revolves around an interesting story line, although it does drag on a bit at the end, whereas TMDS gets straight to the point with no story line.

Completely agree about Molyneux. He has some excellent points but he really needs to edit, and learn how to use editing software. He's got a massive collection of excellent points that could be made in minutes, yet they're buried in hours of him blathering on, so most people never hear them.

That depends on the target audience really. I got into Molyneux precisely because his podcasts were extensive and there was a lot in there to think about. Small tidbits of information aren't really that useful because you can get them pretty much everywhere these days. Just look at the abovementioned Larken Rose.

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"Here, every citizen is king; for he has plenitude of power, he reigns and governs." - P.J. Proudhon

I'm not complaining about Molyneux being extensive. My complaint is that most of his podcasts are full of fluff and tangents regarding nothing:
(I'm driving down the highway, on my way to work right now, I had no time at all to eat breakfast and then I spilled my coffee all over my brand new PODcaster2000 recording device, so I had to rummage under the seat through stale french fries and used tissues containing who knows what, in order to find my trusty old PODcaster1000, which of course had flat batteries, so I had to stop at the Jiffy mart for those, a dozen donuts, and some fresh coffee. So anywho, if you see a bald guy in a red Volvo, be sure to toot the horn and stay clear of it because my mind is quite busy creating this two hour podcast, cluttered up with handy little details such as this, and not on driving, ha,ha,ha, blah, blah, blah.......)
This is the type of crap I'm referring to, that he does all the time, which could be quickly and easily eliminated with simple editing software, before uploading to his site. His typical rant could easily be edited to half or less than it's original length, without losing anything important. Adam suffers from this same issue. Which is why I rarely listen to either of them anymore.

Someone must have pointed this out to (I can't handle constructive criticism) Molyneux, since he banned me from his forums today.....
What a bleeding pussy that guy is...

I really doubt Stefan Molyneux banned you for pointing out that you don't like his jokes.
Besides, is that the worst thing you can think to criticize Stefan on? I would go more for the parts his philosophy which seem a bit whimsy.
The length of Stef's podcasts really isn't a pressing issue for the liberty movement. You should join in some of the actually valuable debates we have in other threads on these forums instead of moaning about something you don't have to watch (as you pointed out yourself, you don't listen to the podcasts Stef does).

I look forward to hearing from you when you have something of value to contribute

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"Here, every citizen is king; for he has plenitude of power, he reigns and governs." - P.J. Proudhon

All I know is that I haven't posted anything on his forums recently, but now I'm suddenly no longer able to log in. hmmmm