Ugh, or, How to Identify a Crazy Book
I bought a book written by a fucking crazy person today. I’ve been looking for a book of Chinese political philosophy, and I found something called “A Confucian Constitutional Order”. Looks awesome, right?
FUCKING NO, and in fact the book gives a number of great examples of how to tell if a book is crazy (which is hard to do when you’re younger and more likely to buy a crazy book)
A)If it’s being written as much against some chimeric idea as it is written *about* anything
B)If it doesn’t understand its own topic
C)If, instead of giving a comprehensive understanding of the topic it is about or the argument it is against, you are instead assailed by a list of undefined terms
D)If the solutions presented do not follow from the argument
In this example, the first ‘problem’ presented isn’t a problem of Chinese governance, it is that Westerners are attacking Chinese governance as illegitimate (ignoring whether it may be or not). Qing then AGREES that there is a problem with Chinese governance, but says that the CCP cannot be replaced with ‘Western Style Democracy’ (a Chimeric idea which is never defined).
Instead Communism should be replaced by the far more legitimate Confucianism (misunderstanding of one’s own subject—Qing has a very narrow definition of what Confucianism means which wouldn’t really be accepted by most Confucius scholars let alone the Chinese people), which would derive sovereignty from Heaven, Earth, and Humanity (UNDEFINED UNDEFINED UNDEFINED), which would be organized as a tricameral legislature led by a Constitutional Monarch who is directly related to Confucius (a conclusion which does not seem to derive from the argument, or from reality).
Read this, and don’t get tricked by crazy books!
