We don’t do many book reviews on the website but this one deserves some attention. This book is primarily written by a man for men, to help them be better men, fathers, and leaders of their families. The author pulls no punches, and everyone gets a poke in the nose at some point through this book. Frankly, I wish it had a few more footnotes in it because it assumes that you know it’s references to pop culture, history, theology, and other areas of life. While this can make a good book in this present moment, it will age terribly.
I would also recommend “How the Irish Saved Civilization” as background to some comments made by the author. Ironically, I doubt he has ever read the book. St. Patrick often evangelized Ireland by going to a city and creating a Christian community on the outskirts of a city that showed the difference that being a Christian could make to the way we live our lives. It sounds like this idea was picked up a few years ago in a book the author does reference, The Benedict Option. The author of the Boniface Option rejects the idea of retreat into Christian Communities (ghettos in the eyes of some) and instead advocates that we actively fight against the Trashworld.
The Boniface Option uses a few terms repeatedly, one being “Trashworld. From page xi:
“The society we have is already an anti-human one. It is already one designed to remove from you all that made life meaningful and fulfilling. It has torn you from people and place. It is designed to make you isolated, lonely, and, above all else, totally docile.”
“I use the term Trashworld to describe this dystopian society.”
Another concept mentioned in various ways is references to homosexuality. The homosexual attitude is described on pages xii and xiii as living only for now, following the basest urges, and no thought for the future.
“The gayness of “fake and gay” is not merely some schoolyard slur. There is deep meaning to this, too. The homosexual is not just a sexual deviant. His very nature and the very center of his identity is a man whose urges take precedence over all else.”
“For the homosexual, insatiable desires must be pursued even knowing it will cost him his life. In economic terms, he is the ultimate high-time-preference man. He only lives in the present. There is no thought for the future.”
“In short, the homosexual is both the apex consumer and the easiest personality to manipulate and lord over… the gayness of Trashworld is our rulers’ social engineering of the population to create the exact same ethos of the homosexual in everyone, regardless of their sexual tastes. They want you to be spiritually homosexual whether or not they can make you actually homosexual. They want everyone uprooted and alone.”
The third term permeating this book is “bugman”. Bugman is described as one stripped away from family, people, and place and made “a willing vessel for the religion and culture of the globo-homo world order.”
Once stripped of their identity, children then go to college and “… are presented with a Pleasure Island where hedonism and sexual exploration are the carrot to the stick of ideological cajoling by leftist, anti-Christian faculty.”
After college, people are just bugs in the hive.
The book is in two halves, first the idols of Trashworld and then transforming Trashworld.
The author describes his realization of Trashworld on pages 30 and 31. Below are some parts of that story.
“I remember the day I realized I was living in Trashworld. I once took my wife on a date to a restaurant in a hip retail and entertainment development in an affluent suburb of a large American city. Full of trendy bars and restaurants and complete with tiny, absurdly overpriced studio apartments above them. The place was filled with twenty- and thirty-somethings … What I did remember about this place was that there was not a single child anywhere. Not only not at the particular restaurant, but anywhere in that entire development. The place was designed specifically for childless people… It was designed for a spiritually homosexual people, for whom life is a matter of consuming fleeting pleasures… I will never forget how overcome I was with melancholy upon the realization that this place, this lifestyle could only be achieved when built upon a mountain of tens of millions of dead babies… the murder of children, the abandonment of all sexual mores, and the destruction of the household is dedicated: so that you can live on Pleasure island without ever turning into a donkey.”
“… if Satan were to design a society where every lust and every sinful desire could be freely pursued, and men would then feel the maximum possible misery, how much different from our society would it look?” page 36.
And yes, this book does take some serious swipes at conservatives. Here’s some excerpts from pages 67 and 68.
“You will need the faint-hearted, conflict-averse conservatives who are ostensibly on your side …”
“… much force is needed to get conservatives to see that the idols that they rightly detest are downstream from the idols they are comfortable with.”
“Conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit.”
“If you are not asking questions that will outrage conservatives from time to time, even if you think you are a radical, you are actually going the speed limit … and still going the wrong way.”
Andrew Isker dismantles those who think the Second Amendment is their refuge with one question, if the SWAT teams comes knocking on your door, who in your friend’s list can you call that will show up to defend you?
Again, this book is directed to men to start acting like men. Ladies, you are also welcome to read the book but just know that you will get your toes stepped on also. The topics are provocative and intended to be. I think part 2 of the book could be fleshed out more but it’s a great read at just over 160 pages.