A small, well documented book which is most certainly, “Minding True Things By What Their Mockeries Be.”
Almost expelled from my senior high school civics class, for attempting a crude review of this book in 1967, this would serve as a succinct reminder about power, absolute or unchecked power.
My teacher, a former Marine w/out combat experience, was later rumored to have resigned over a problem with money from a school club & he also was said to have taken a school bus filled with boys to an infamous Texas whore house. Well, the teacher most certainly did have a rough side and who knows, maybe he was all that & more-but it is all just rumor to me. I did however finally come to absolutely know the dark side of LBJ, both by public & private means-although I don’t think there was any other side to LBJ. Literally, by the week of my graduation from high school in Houston, his war had already killed several close friends, wounded others, and altered the course of my life in a most complete and erratic manner. His corruption was shown to me personally, via business as well. LBJ hideously miss-pronounced the country & the war as “vYet-nam“- I wonder if it was a mauling of the word due to his unmitigated & protracted guilt.
The book was originally published in hardback, with a forward by the illustrious M. E. “Mel” Bradford-a self made thinker & writer of political philosophy, trained classically in English Lit at Vanderbilt & then so well read in political philosophy & history as to become notorious scourge for the authentic Marxists among us. Bradford was sort of a ‘Good Ole Boy’ philosopher, in the vein of Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams, Bradford also being of the back-burner in the academic kitchen. All of these things cost Bradford a post as Chairman of the US government’s National Endowment for the Humanities-loosing out to the far softer, less courageous Bill Bennett-another former Marine, seemingly without combat experience, who would not Dane to ‘scare the customers’ ( which is of course, the functional motto of the NWO types who now run our corporate/government complex ). Dr. Bennett would also advance, bureaucratically speaking, to the cabinet post of “Drug Czar”. Such is the quiet path to power.
Mel Bradford & J. Evetts Haley had a great deal in common-Texans of the land & the blood-with more courage than their contemporaries would accept. In the Fall before graduation, I would personally discover that it just may be true that a tangible demonstration of courage is often required for acceptance, or just peace, from those who are lacking in several respects.
A Texan Looks at Lyndon: A Study in Illegitimate Power
J. Evetts Haley, Prof. of History at West Texas State, Canyon,Tx, Palo Duro Press, 1964
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Texan Looks at Lyndon, May 25, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: A Texan Looks at Lyndon: A Study in Illegitimate Power (Mass Market Paperback)
Growing up in Texas, I found this book to be alarmingly accurate. Living in Jim Wells County, I found this book to be no less than the absolute truth. I knew most of the people mentioned, or their children (who of course were not only grown, but certainly more than adults) Mr. J. Evetts Haley and his family were banished from Texas, his book banned and illegal to own. Some things were not spoken of in Texas, but Mr. Haley told it all. (or most all) It is a shame that no one else picked up where Mr. Haley left off. But there has never been a more honest, forthright, or honestly correct book written about any of our politicians. I found no discrepancies in names, dates, times or events in this book. I perhaps saw just a bit more evidence than he did, or perhaps, he chose not to mention all that he had seen, but after reading the book, I rather doubt that he hid anything that he knew. This book will be passed down to my children and hopefully to their children until the entire truth will be found.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An ominous note, August 10, 2001
By
S Trout (USA) – See all my reviews
This review is from: A Texan Looks at Lyndon: A Study in Illegitimate Power (Mass Market Paperback)
I have little to add to the above reviews, except to endorse them.
But Haley accuses LBJ of using a hired man to kill a political enemy, one who was causing him trouble in the Billie Sol Ester scandal. The man, who is named by Haley, was questioned and released. The scary thing is that many years later, a previously unidentified fingerprint found on a box of books on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository was positively identified as being that of the man Haley names as LBJ’s personal assassin.
