No. 171 - Bookshops, Mountains, and the Red Manifesto

1:34 p.m., August 6, 2025 – Austin, TX
I swung by Alienated Majesty Books, a small, locally owned indie bookstore off 28th Street near the University of Texas campus. For someone who visits a lot of bookstores, I’ve never been in one this esoteric – not in New York or San Francisco, where quirky and barely-turn-a-profit bookshops reign.

For starters, I had never seen even one book of theirs – a peculiarity on a galactic scale. There are tiers to independent publishers, and this one plays in the furthest reaches of the literary sandbox.

Do you know how odd it is to not know a single author? To walk amongst thousands of them was the literary equivalent of taking acid in a forest of mirrors. I was having the time of my life.

Not knowing where to start, I perused the exterior walls for an hour, poring over books of every shape and size, of every color – all square pegs in round holes.

In a few days, I’m heading to Park City to golf and relax, then on to Jackson Hole – Grand Teton National Park, really – to camp for several days on Colter Bay. I needed something to read by the fire with my morning coffee, so I browsed with a curiosity I’d never felt before, until I found Resist! In Defense of Communism by Gustaaf Peek. I’ve long wanted to learn about it. What better place than the mountains of Wyoming?

1:21 p.m., August 7, 2025 – Austin, TX
I was a few minutes early to meet a buddy in East Austin and, by sheer luck, the coffee house where we were meeting was next door to Vintage – one of Austin’s most unique bookstores.

Housed in an old home from the late 1800s, the first floor is new releases. The second floor holds one of the best-curated used book shops I’ve ever seen. Each bedroom is filled with old furniture and small shelves labeled with titles like “Books Your English Teacher Told You to Read” and “Books Your English Teacher Read and Didn’t Want You to Know About.”

I found a first edition of The Socialist Decision by Paul Tillich, once the property of Concordia Seminary in Exile in St. Louis. The library card in the back shows it was last checked out on Sept. 21, 1982. Who knows where this literary vagabond has been for the last forty years; all I know is it has that intoxicating old book smell, and it’s coming to the Rockies with me.

Like Communism, I’ve wanted to study Socialism too. So, while I’m in Utah and Wyoming, I’ll be reading a few unusual books – at least for me.

7:07 p.m., August 10, 2025 – Grand Teton National Park, WY
I spent the last few days goofing around in Park City but never got around to reading. Between chairlift rides in Deer Valley and walks on Main Street, my schedule was entirely leisure – not conducive to reading.

Now I’m sitting lakeside in Grand Teton National Park with In Defense of Communism. The sun is setting behind the mountains, casting a burgundy and tangerine glow over the sky – truly magnificent.

I’ve read half the book, only 32 pages (no page numbers, no chapter titles). So far, I’m enjoying it, but it’s getting long in the tooth with its anti-capitalism.

12:39 p.m., August 26, 2025 – Atlanta, GA
I just finished In Defense of Communism. The author is no doubt talented – a master of creative prose, explaining historical lessons with clarity, even calling out the Soviet Union for failing to achieve anything close to the real communist vision – but he delivers no actionable steps. Worse, he ends with a question: how do we live collectively free? If you’ve talked to anti-capitalists, you know this move – plenty of questions, no answers.

An anti-capitalist might call me a cynic when I say the forces that created capitalism are too deeply woven into our collective well-being to be seriously challenged (a point a communist would dispute). But they are – especially after a century and a half of communist failures. Over ninety percent of the world’s sovereign nations have market-based economies – all using capitalism in some form. This isn’t David vs. Goliath; it’s David vs. a Roman legion.

I read the book – hell, not many of my Wall Street buddies would have bought it, let alone read it in public. And yes, I’ll admit there are parts of the Communist Manifesto that I can sympathize with. But it doesn’t offer a realistic alternative to capitalism – never mind the utopian fantasies that seem to guide its core principles.

I don’t believe man really wants a communal existence. I’m a 12th-generation American, raised in and benefiting from American capitalism. I’m inclined to side with the system I understand. I believe it’s human nature to provide for oneself first – not for someone else – collective or not.

By the halfway point, I wanted solutions, not another lecture on capitalism’s flaws. The book fails at the one thing capitalism demands and communism despises – solutions – not pie-in-the-sky intellectual bullshit.

I’m too pragmatic to believe entirely in the goodness of man. Yes, 99% of mankind may be inherently good, but we’re also capable of atrocious acts in our self-interest. Communists may think the 99% can work together for the common good. But the 1% who actually lead – who make decisions, take risks, survive bankruptcy court, or lead a platoon into battle – don’t play by the same rules, because someone has to lead.

To think communism will tame these men (yes, 99% are male) with a collective of kind-hearted idealists is political theory best enjoyed by the “sunshine and lollipop” crowd – those who hide behind tenureship, worship at the altar of Noam Chomsky, and form an elitist troupe of overeducated ass clowns living in fewer than a dozen coastal zip codes the 99% couldn’t dream of visiting (nor would they be welcomed, lest the unwashed masses sully their manicured lawns). These NIMBY idealists are lost in a relatively new way of thinking that has universally failed. Worse, their left-wing Valhalla has murdered hundreds of millions of innocent people, and somehow, with all their Ph.D.s, these so-called intellectual aristocrats fail to recognize the atrocities of communism.

So while I hear this author blame capitalism for the destruction of the planet, the robbery of individual liberties, and a dozen other abominations, he’s silent on murder at an industrial scale. But let me guess – next time you try communism, you’ll get it right. Right?

P.S. I’m currently reading The Socialist Decision by Paul Tillich. At over 200 pages, it warrants its own article — which I’ll publish later.

*Composed, Edited, and Published in Atlanta, GA