Sanford Aranoff says:

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.
Rating: 5 / 5

Geoff Puterbaugh says:

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.” As Phillips memorably and accurately states, “a glance at what was said at the time…shows that this was not so.” At least for those who still have enough command of English to distinguish between a “lie” and a “mistake.” Most of those emitting Cultural Smog pretend to be incapable of such subtle distinctions (”It doesn’t MATTER whether Bush believed what he said or not,” as someone memorably put it). Further elements in the Grand Irrationality about the Iraq War include “Bush-Hitler,” and other items detailed by Phillips.

The third item, Misrepresentation of Israel, deserves volumes in itself. One such volume is: Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left. I would be wasting your time and mine if I went into more detail. I recommend reading this book instead.

The fourth item, Scientific Triumphalism, may be the most important on the current list. Triumphalists such as Richard Dawkins imagine that science has disproved religion, and is here to explain everything to a waiting humanity. The most interesting volume taking these self-important blowhards to pieces is: The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions. How did this become such an important part of the Cultural Smog? I am not sure, but I can tell you a definite symptom: when I was young, it was literally unheard of for an atheist to run for President. It was considered important that JFK won as a Catholic. Nelson Rockefeller could not run because he was a divorced man. By the year 2010, anyone running for political office had to be defensive about his religion, and the sort of “religion” preached by Jeremiah Wright was regarded as “better” than the mainstream Protestantism of such “yokels” as Sarah Palin.

All of this deserves a good challenge, and Melanie Phillips does yeoman work outlining that challenge.

I have glanced ahead at her proposed solution, and I find that a little problematic. She claims that reason developed from Jewish monotheism, and says we need to get back to that. What I found problematic was her way-too-casual dismissal of Greek and Roman philosophy. From my own study of history, it seems clear to me that pagan philosophy played an extremely important role in the development of Catholic theology — that the dynamic European civilization which gave birth to the Renaissance and then to science was a result of Judaeo-Christian beliefs working together with Graeco-Roman systems of thought. Melanie Phillips seems to think that Rabbinical Judaism alone could have accomplished this. We will never know, of course, but I doubt it.

All of which is another reason to recommend that you get this book and read it. It looks like it might be a game-changer.
Rating: 5 / 5

William Muehlenberg says:

In the West we are involved in a war of worldviews. On the one side is the Judeo-Christian worldview. Opposed to it are various contenders, chief of which are two main rivals: radical secular leftism, and radical Islam. Indeed, Phillips notes the many striking similarities between the Western progressives and the Islamists.

Both are a threat to the free West and to Judeo-Christian values because both are involved in coercive utopianism; both demonise any dissent from their ideology; and both have declared war against Israel and the Jewish people. And often these two forces find themselves working together in their assault on the Judeo-Christian West.

In this volume the incisive British journalist examines in detail these and related threats, and highlights how successful these attacks have been in the past few decades. Those familiar with her regular columns for the Spectator and other publications will find familiar ground here.

But this volume allows her to take her brief opinion pieces and develop them in much more depth and detail. In 18 meaty chapters she chronicles this war of worldviews, and demonstrates how very much at risk Western civilisation in fact is. She clearly delineates “The global battle over God, truth, and power” as the subtitle puts it.

She covers quite a bit of ground in this substantial volume. She offers a wide-ranging probe into the problems we face and the reasons behind them. Various confrontations with the Judeo-Christian worldview are explored in some detail. For example, she has chapters on the radical environmental movement, including the global warming crowd.

She assesses the politicisation of science and how radical agendas are being pushed in the name of science. She also notes how scientism has replaced hard science, whether among the atheistic Darwinists or the climate change true believers.

She also assesses the suicidal tendencies of the West over the past few centuries, noting how a collapse in the belief in God turned out not to be liberating as imagined, but enslaving. The rise of totalistic police states, coercive utopias, and depersonalising social engineering, has been among the bitter fruit of the attempt to sacralise man while dethroning God.

About a third of the book deals with Israel and the war against the Jews. Phillips looks at how Israel so often gets a bad press from the mainstream media, and how both the Islamists and the political left seem to have Israel in their sites.

Like all writers, she had an obvious point of reference which she proceeds from. She happens to be English, and Jewish. Thus while the Western world is discussed in general, much of her commentary focuses on the UK in particular.

And as a Jewish author, she has certain takes on other monotheistic faith systems. She calls herself “an agnostic although traditionally minded Jew”. She obviously sees Islam as a clear enemy of the Jews and of Israel. With Christianity she makes more obvious distinctions.

She rightly recognises that Protestant evangelicals are “passionately supportive of Israel” while the liberal progressive churches are mainly hostile to the nation. She sees the established Church of England as especially tainted by leftist, pagan and secular nostrums and values, including contempt for Israel.

My admittedly biased Protestantism finds what may be biases on her part concerning Christianity. She can be guilty of somewhat sweeping or overloaded charges, such as: “Medieval Christianity – like contemporary Islamism – stamped out dissent by killing or conversion”.

Or she can say rather sloppily, “the New Testament accuses the Jews of deicide and curses them for all time”. Leaving aside some of these unfortunate and somewhat reckless remarks, one can take much from the book as a whole. Phillips has been a tireless defender of the West and its democratic freedoms, and she has been quite bold in promoting Christian freedoms.

As she notes, “Christianity is under direct and unremitting cultural assault from those who want to destroy the bedrock values of Western civilization.” She has often defended the Christian faith when so many Christians have been unwilling or unable to do so.

Indeed, her passion in this regard puts many Christians to shame. She rightly is perplexed and dismayed at the war against the West, and why so many Westerners – including Christians – are simply standing by, watching it collapse around them.

Indeed, she finishes her book by asking whether the West in fact wants to defend itself and its many important goods any longer. Or, could it be that “Western civilization has now reached a point where it has stopped trying to survive”?

That is certainly the question of the hour. Do we have the will to resist, or have we already raised the white flag of surrender? Phillips has done her part in sounding the alarm, detailing the war we are in, and highlighting the many battlefronts this war is waging on.

She has done her service admirably. It is hoped that readers of this important book will then do theirs.
Rating: 5 / 5