Let's hit the ground running.

I think we have enough people interested in the project. If others want to come on board later, all very well. Let's get going. I'll give everyone a week to read through chapter one and get their thoughts together. Next Saturday, I'll post the summary for chapter one with an invitation for everyone to chip in their thoughts, questions, disagreements, etc. As I don't want to dominate this conversation, I'll probably wait until one or two others have commented before I do the same.

Thank you all for joining me, and I hope we all learn something here.

A general plan and the ground rules

So the initial purpose for this group is to read through and discuss Hilaire Belloc's book The Jews. To give everyone plenty of time and allow for detailed discussion, I thought we could do one chapter a week. You can find the book as a free download on Project Gutenberg. If you'd prefer a paper copy, it is also available on Amazon. (That link is the edition I am reading.)

Since Belloc has helpfully provided a series of chapter summaries in the table of contents, I thought that would do as a post to introduce each chapter.

Now comes the less fun part. Regrettably, merely by discussing this topic, we are putting ourselves under scrutiny and suspicion. Therefore, I must lay down some ground rules:

• No racial slurs against any group whatsoever. Obviously, this includes the subject of the book, but it applies to all groups (even white people).
• No advocacy of violence. If you are cheering for some kind of violent action, you will be banned.
• This is not intended to be a general discussion about the misdeeds (real or imagined) of the group in question. Each chapter has a topic; discussion should be relevant to that topic, not merely a series of screeds about how terrible they are.
• This is my house. While I would prefer open and honest discussion, I reserve the right to kick anyone out of my house for any reason whatsoever. I don't anticipate doing so, but I am willing to ban troublemakers so the rest of us can have a real conversation.

If all of this sounds acceptable to you, we'd love to have you on board. Once I spread the word and see how many we can get on board, we'll plan for when we're starting.

God be with you.

If you are interested in taking part, please comment letting me know so and how soon you think you could start. I need to get some feedback here.

What we're doing here

Although we're still in planning stages, this is intended to be the home of an online book discussion group. I recently started reading Hilaire Belloc's The Jews. Originally published in 1922 in England, it sounds eerily similar to my own experiences a century later in America. I would like to discuss this book and our current political situation. I hope that you will join me, that we will have a good discussion, and that everyone can learn something.

God be with you.