A Passage from Alex Jones’s The Great Awakening
“I've lived an intensely human life, warts and all.” — Alex Jones, The Great Awakening, Chapter 2, p. 20
I'm going to do something a little different here. I could give you the standard disclaimer that seems to accompany almost every discussion of Alex Jones: “I don't agree with everything Alex Jones says.”
I'm not going to do that.
I don't agree with everything anybody says. What I want to do instead is give Alex Jones credit for something I genuinely found worthwhile. I read The Great Awakening, and there are passages throughout the book that struck me as considerably more thoughtful and reflective than the public image of Jones might lead someone to expect.
If you're interested in what I think about the Sandy Hook controversy that inevitably gets brought up whenever Jones's name is mentioned, I've written about that separately. My thoughts are here:
911debunkers.blogspot.com Censored Via Court Order For Defending Free Speech And Talking About Sandy Hook" https://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2020/05/911debunkersblogspotcom-censored-via.html
That's not what this post is about, though. Now, on to the excerpt.
The following passage comes from Chapter Two of The Great Awakening. I think it's particularly interesting because it is pretty representative of Jones's thinking throughout the book. Strip away the personality you see on camera—the shouting, the intensity, the larger-than-life presentation—and you get something different when you simply encounter his thoughts on a page.
People can get caught up in personality. I certainly understand why. But personality and substance aren't the same thing.
Here Jones describes himself as a “child of the Enlightenment” and discusses limited government, freedom of expression and religion, open debate, respect for evidence and reason, and the historical struggle between tyranny and individual liberty.
“But I consider myself a child of the Enlightenment, the intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, which gave birth to our common concepts of a government with limited powers over the individual, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, curiosity for the opinions of others, the value of honest debate, respect for evidence and reason, as well as the separation of church and state.”
He goes on to reflect on the historical reasons these ideas developed and concludes:
“The truth is there has always been a war between tyranny and freedom, and I am unshakable in my belief that we are better poised than ever before to push back against the current totalitarian darkness.”
Whatever one thinks of Alex Jones, I think those are ideas worth engaging with rather than dismissing simply because of the personality delivering them.
That's ultimately why I'm recommending The Great Awakening. Read the book. Judge the arguments for yourself. You don't have to adopt an entire worldview—or even like the person presenting it—to find an idea worth considering.
And sometimes it's worth stripping away the noise and simply asking:
What does the person actually think?
