Meet the Author

You’ve probably heard of the Book of Virtues but did you know that it’s author and the author of America the Last Best Hope are one and the same?  William J. Bennett told us why he wrote this book in the introduction, but who is this guy anyway?  What do we know about him?

We know that he is a conservative.  Now you have to decide if you really know what that means.  He is known as a conservative pundit.  That means he is someone who likes to offer his opinion to the media about politics (well, it could be other topics, like sports, but usually it refers to politics).

He has served in official roles in our government.  He was the U.S. Secretary of Education for three years in the late 80’s.  (That combined with his conservative pundancy may underline the explanation he gave us in his introduction about why he wrote our text.)  He also served as Drug Czar under President George H. W. Bush (that’s George Herbert Walker Bush – the father of George W. Bush).  That of course wasn’t the real title of his job, but it is the popularized name for the person who directs the propaganda for drug control policy in our country.  As you can tell from the irony or sarcasm of this title there are some differences of opinion about this government position and its role.  Besides, Director of National Policy on Drug Control is not only boring – it’s too long to say!

He is also known as a political theorist.  That means he has joined the long line of thinkers from Hammurabi to Plato, from Thomas Aquinas to Martin Luther, from Francis Bacon and John Locke to Immanuel Kant and Thomas Jefferson, all the way up to Karl Marx, John Dewey and beyond.  There are hundreds of such men – many, many more whose names we won’t recognize – and some I hope that you will in the near future (one of my favorites is Wendell Berry).  So what have they done – do they do exactly?  They think – about ideas like government, and then they tell us what they think.  We get to decide if we like their ideas – if we agree with them or not!

That’s what I want you to know most about the author of our text – that he’s a man.  That just because he wrote the book we are reading does not mean that you necessarily need agree with him.  I wouldn’t have chosen his book if I didn’t think it was a good book for us to use (our book is just one of many that we could read – you can find many more at the library to compare ours with), but that doesn’t mean that I think his opinions – his political theories need necessarily be your own.  Look at the Guide to Reading hand out that I gave you.  Ask those questions as you read your text.  Don’t buy everything you read hook, line and sinker just because the words are on the page.  Test his ideas and decide for yourself if they will hold water.  (But first you have to find his ideas and decide what they mean!!  That’s part of becoming a good reader.  And learning to take into account Point of View when you are making decisions about meaning is one of the next steps toward become a good reader.)  Hopefully now that you’ve read the introduction and this short post you know a bit more about Bennett’s point of view.