Amazing the asking prices for this now out of print book.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/unintended-consequences-john-ross/1001770498
http://compare.ebay.com/like/150543838713?var=lv<yp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&_lwgsi=y
Glad I got mine for about $12. Wish I had kept a few extra copies. I’d flip mine but it is one of the few books of fiction that I will read, and that is mostly for the documented firearms history in the book.
A book I have not read but will put on my list.
As an aside and at the risk of appearing to be a complete psuedo-Luddite, I am continually amazed by this whole intergoggle/cyperspace/techtoy nexus. Within five minutes of reading Steyr’s post about this book, I was able to locate a PDF file of the book online, download it to my laptop, upload it to Amazon’s Cloud, and have it installed on my Kindle Fire so I can read it at my leisure.
Probably seems boringly routine to most, but to some of us that grew up waiting for the bookmobile to come by the school once every couple of weeks it’s pretty fucking amazing.
Right there with ya. I’m still stunned by 12 year olds with cell phones and cheap night vision. When I was a kid in the 70s the best we had was Star Trek walkie talkies with 2 foot antennae that kinda worked across the street and some crappy Japanese binos.
About 5 years ago when I was trading movies online with a guy in Japan the enormity of it all really hit me.
As a kid who took “Yeah we’ve already been to the moon” for granted, it would be interesting to know what todays kids will be floored by.
Maybe now’s the time to offload that worthless book
From Publisher’s Weekly, “Like the notorious and paranoid The Turner Diaries, this novel may speak to readers on the fringes of American society…”
Is that us? The fringes of American society? That’s a good thing!
Not a bad investment after all. 
The Turner Diaries was a fucked up book.
I actually rather enjoyed it. While the last part was only slightly better than they typical “second revolution/restore the republic” redneck fantasy and only quality writing when compared to nonsense like “The Turner Diaries”, the first part of the book is actually remarkable for the documented history of the firearms culture, noted individuals and notorious abuses of power.
Factor in the general “freedom” theme and the lack of the commonly encountered racist slant and it’s one of the few books of fiction I can read more than once.
Written at a 4th grade level and it still went slightly over the heads of most of it’s target audience. I have an affinity for dangerous books.
Mein Kampf
The Anarchists Cookbook
On Guerrilla Warfare
If somebody thinks a book should be banned or regulated that is usually enough motivation for me to read it. I also enjoy propaganda films that make people uneasy, especially WWII propaganda films.
That said, The Turner Diaries is one of the few that was so painfully stupid I couldn’t get through it and just stopped.
That’s one of the things I like most about the book as well. Events in history like the Bonus Marchers, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and several others rarely make it into print much less people actually learning about them in school. There are quite a few lesser known facts and history in the book that I can appreciate.
I read a friend’s copy of the Turner Diaries. I wanted everone to die in the end. Everyone was evil.
It always saddens me when The Turner Diaries get mentioned during any discussion of Unintended Consequences. They are as completely unrelated as discussions of Obama and the Unabomber. The only thing they have in common is demonstrating that the people making such comparisons have absolutely no idea what they are talking about or they know and are engaged in a deliberate campaign of misinformation.
Unintended Consequences is a factual look at the erosion of freedoms (especially those related to firearms) in the 20th century and the anticipated result of a continuation of abuses resulting in something like a police state and the justified citizens resistance to a tyrannical government.
The problem for some is the hypothetical police state is not Oceania or Nazi Germany but a future US where the JBTs have familiar names from the current US government and are loosely based on members of Congress. This is of course no more significant than realizing that Hitler was once simply “chancellor” of Germany and that all despots start out someplace.
The Turner Diaries on the other hand is a futuristic racist fantasy where white people “rise up” and unite in the bonds of common skin pigment to destroy the current US government and create a new “white homeland” for white people similar to that of nazi Germany. It is not about freedom but about imposing a white racists will upon the entire country.
For some reason some folks are able to find parallels between the two ideas, but I suppose Obama does sound a little bit like Unabomber. Even if that is all they actually have in common.
And that was why Publisher’s Weekly (and others) made comparisons between the two, a veiled implication that the book is racist and maniacal.
People who are anti-freedom, even if they won’t admit it to themselves, use comparisons such as this to label all far right people as such. Racists, terrorists, militia members waiting to overthrow the government, ect.
Just like every lefty Ive ever met is ready to throw out McVeigh as an example of a “far right wing nut” and use him to libel all far right wing people.
Nazism and nationalist socialists are LEFT WING and has nothing to do with American right wing politics, especially those of libertarians. :mad:
I had them too
I like stuff like that too, but The Turner Diaries just made me fuckin’ mad.
It made me want to beat up Racists, and in that book they were just pointless acts of terrorism and hatred, made to look like patriotism. And it bothered me that the cover of the book featured and AR-15, and a 1911. Both of which (to me) symbolize freedom, Americanism, and overall badassery.
Also… didn’t they bomb the FBI headquarters in that book? When was that book written? Like…3 years before the Oklahoma bombing?
Know anything about the guy that wrote that book? He used to be the head (or directly associated with) of the Neo Nazi party in the 1970s.
Or something like that.
My facts might be off on those two things I mentioned, I’ve been drinking. Maker’s Mark does bad things to my memory.
The only thing I was mad about was that I read so much of it before I stopped. I don’t mind racist psychobabble “if” it’s well written. But that is a difficult thing to find, if you are intelligent enough to be a good writer then you can usually see through blatant racist mindsets.
And yeah, the actual author was William Pierce who was head of Aryan Nations and the Christian Identity movement. Not exactly surprising.
McVeigh actually was using it as a blueprint for his actions. He actually believed he was starting the second revolution and striking back for events like Ruby Ridge and WACO. Only instead of blowing up FBI headquarters he blew up a building full of people lucky enough to have government jobs (who ironically probably held similar views about the government) and a day care full of kids.
I didn’t know about that part. That’s heartbreaking.
William Pierce. That was the guy’s name. Thanks for that.
What is ‘‘On Guerilla Warfare’’?
This is a little off topic, but I think it’s pertinent to the conversation. Has anyone read or seen the storyline behind the new Rainbow 6 video game coming out next year?
I just read about it a few days ago and I have to say I was disturbed.
The bad guys in the new Rainbow 6 game are " domestic terrorists"! That’s right white, middle class, gun owning “survival nuts”.
Anyone who knows anything about Tom Clancy knows this man has his finger on the pulse of what the intelligence communities consider the biggest threat to them and the “county”. I never thought I’d see the day where a video game would have people playing an elite gov’t hit team targeting gun owning americans!!! What’s even scarier is that our gov’t is doing so many effed up things to this country that they know and fear repurcussions!!!
Look at the direction this country is going and tell me this is where anybody on this forum envisioned this country to be? American business moving overseas to avoid paying their taxes. Having to fight for jobs against foreign immigrants (if you think it’s just mexicans coming here to pick lettuce and mow lawns then you’re lying to yourselves). Women and children being abducted almost daily in the news.
I look and listen to people my parent’s age. My stepfather who is a retired Col. and a 3 tour veteran of Vietnam has been one of the most patriotic people I know. I can see the betrayal and pain in his and his friend’s eyes when they talk about what has happened to this country. It’s a damn shame and at this point I don’t know if it can even be fixed by simply voting Republican against Democrat. I think all of the politicians are shady and have thier own agendas.
I really think that the founding father’s of this country would say that the country is taxing and not representing the majority of the people. That the country uses slight of hand sensational news stories to distract people from the truth. :ph34r:
While I’m at it I might as well go full blown crackpot :jester: and also state, and this is just my personal experience watching the weather in South Texas, there is something wrong with the environment. The drought and the heat that we have been experiencing in South Texas over the past decade is unheard of. I’m just saying that there is a lot of things not right with both the country and the environment in my opinion.
Its not just you.
Another summer like last one and we are going to look somewhere else to live. The temps we have seen here since we moved here are all WAY above the “average” for the summer months, and we hit 114 locally one day plus MANY other days 105+.
If someone wants to live in an oven thats up to them but it flat out sucks with young kids trying to get out and do stuff. They sat cooped up for 3 months straight this year only going out right before dusk to play with the neighbors kids. Theres no way a 5 year old kid is going to take being out all day in 105+ or 110+ like we got a few times.