A partisan book consisting solely of quotes from people who are against the point of view the book advocates
For instance, it is probably possible to edit an entire book staunchly defending capitalism entirely consisting of patched-together quotes from speeches and books by people who are staunchly against capitalism. The quotes shouldn’t be out of context, because that would be cheating. Rather, they should be of the “Well, admittedly, this ONE aspect of such and such [captalism in this case] is good” variety.
You just leave out the part where they sigh and apologize for admitting capitalism’s one good point.
Obviously, you couldn’t take much from each capitalism opponent, because most of them are only going to give a few minor concessions to capitalism. Yet by compiling all of these minor concessions from thousands of high-profile capitalism-haters - assuming that there are plenty of concessions that don’t overlap (a safe assumption, because most of them will have some differences in why they hate capitalism) - you have a seamless, airtight defense of a free market economy that even the most ardent leftist won’t bash, for fear of receiving the wrath of Howard Zinn, Noam Chompsky, Robert Jensen, Joseph Stalin, and the thousands of other involuntary socialist contributors.
Since, obviously, under “written by,” you would list - in small print - the thousands of names of progressives you got pro-capitalist quotes from. Won’t the delicate limousine liberal book reviewers at The New York Crimes, The Washington Composte, and The Atlanta-Urinal Constipation be shocked to see their cherished iconoclastic idols apparently selling out to advocate freedom, self-determination, liberty, corporations, and America!
I mean, that’s one direction you could take this concept.
You could also edit a book advocating George Berkley’s immaterialist, idealistic philosophy of perception strictly from quotes by opponnents of his argument that everything that exists is either a mind or depends for its existence upon a mind, and even ordinary physical objects are composed solely of ideas.
Won’t your reality-believing-in philosophy professor be shocked to see Thomas Hobbes’s name amonst the other thousands of materialists seemingly pounding down the doors to scream to the heavens about the medicinal value of tar water!
6 years ago