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Melanie Phillips is an award-winning columnist for the Daily Mail. Educated at Oxford, she won the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996. She is the author of Londonistan, All Must Have Prizes, and other books. Her regular blog appears on the Spectator website.
Melanie Phillips is doing her best to understand the modern world. I guess many of us are, but she is really giving it the old college try.
She joins R. Emmett Tyrrell (see After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery for his latest) in a new and laudable effort: nailing down elements of what Tyrrell calls the Kultursmog, a term which I will now steal and English as: Cultural Smog. James Piereson has defined this Strange Smog as: "the Liberal understanding of events ratified as a matter of morals and etiquette within the media and academe." This Cultural Smog is so pervasive that you cannot escape it: it pollutes everything.
Phillips devotes four chapters to four different elements of this Cultural Smog. They are (1) Environmental Armageddon (2) the Iraq War (3) Misrepresentation of Israel (4) Scientific Triumphalism. And each of these subjects could be treated in a book!
The first item of the Cultural Smog, which pervades all media and academic jabberwocky, is the Myth of Environmental Armageddon. In the year 2010, this has its own particular annoying particulates, such as totally ignoring Climategate, the resignation of Phil Jones in disgrace, and Jones' subsequent confession that he had lost his data. For more detail, you want to read this book! :-)
The second item in the Cultural Smog, the Iraq War, needs to be described carefully and precisely. We are NOT talking about principled, reasoned difference of opinion: we are talking about Code Pink and the New York Times perpetrating the obvious fiction that "Bush lied, thousands died.Read more ›
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121 of 144 people found the following review helpful
In order for Western Civilization to survive, it is vital that we think rationally about the problems we face. Many do not know how to think rationally. Part of the blame lies with our university professors, who often teach dogma instead of rationality. This book clarifies these issues. Individuals must learn how not to trust our leaders, and how to think critically. Although she is not a scientist, she discusses phony science. For an additional comments about false groupthink in science, see [...], the article about the aura of Einstein. I gave it 5 stars for it is essential that we know about the nonsense we hear from everywhere and how we can fight it.
An excellent book about rational thinking, see Rational Thinking, Government Policies, Science, and Living. Rational thinking starts with clearly stated principles, continues with logical deductions, and then examines empirical evidence to possibly modify the principles.
It's more than a little odd that countless secular intellectuals and academicians not only lack an absolute epistemic ground, but they maintain power and make a living promoting irrationality; hence much of the global political goals are alogical as deference for the anti-rational and anti-ethical is advanced. In "The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power," Melanie Phillips provides a fine assessment of the massive problems within the evolution of the global culture as well as the proper approach necessary to enact a turnaround.
Phillips reveals that irrationality is manifested in the affirmation of:
- pretending that violent religious views are the fault of their victims - the growth of bizarre cults - para-psychology - paganism and witchcraft - nonsensical conspiracy theories.
The fundamental moving source of the global lunacy is the embrace of an irrational worldview as the architects of culture reject much of Western civilization. The astute author argues that it was "Christianity and the Hebrew Bible that gave us our concepts of reason, progress and an orderly world--the foundations of science and modernity." I would make the distinction that CT(Christian Theism) and the Bible furnish the epistemic wellspring, absolute ethical ground, and consistency within the motivation for progress (as well as a standard to judge progress) and not just a discovery of the right application of reason. Yes the Greeks exhibited history changing philosophical notions, and the Romans build imperial governance, and other cultures have advanced numerous significant concepts, but CT provides the immutable universal absolutes necessary to account for reason, advancement, and true truth.Read more ›
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25 of 30 people found the following review helpful
This book develops a reasoned argument for the author's point of view. If you are caught up in ideology, read this book with an open mind (is that possible) at risk of abandoning your ideologically driven views in favor of rational ones.
From the books starting words, it delivers.
This book arose from a sense of perplexity and cultural disorientation. It appears that much of the public discourse has departed sharply from reality. Self-evident common sense appears to have been turned on its head. Reality seems to have been recast, with fantasies recalibrated as facts while demonstrable truths are dismissed as a matter of opinion at best, or as evidence of some sinister "right-wing" plot. This isn't just a question of disagreement over issues or policies. Those who dissent are vilified as beyond the pale, and many fear speaking up. The phenomenon has affected not just the political sphere, where ideology often crowds out facts, for event parts of the scientific domain have given in to irrationality. Over a diverse range of issues, such as the war in Iraq, Israel and the Palestinians, manmade global warming and Darwinism - not to mention all the "phobias" and "isms" such as homophobia, racism and sexism - no debate is possible because there is to be no dissent from positions that are indisputably true and right.
Except that they are not. The planet is supposedly about to fry or drown and succumb to epidemic famine and disease because of manmade global warming - but all the evidence suggests that there is nothing untoward about the climate at all, let alone that mankind is responsible for an imminent catastrophe. We are told repeatedly that were "taken to war in Iraq on a lie" - but a glance at what was actually said at the time by President George W.Read more ›
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