Genre: Nonfiction—Politics
Completed: 20 May 2012
Summary & Review:
Modern political discourse
is filled with hundreds of supposed truisms and words of wisdom, which are
actually little more than ready-made clichés dispensed by those who do not want
to bother defending their positions and beliefs with reason, logic, or facts. National Review editor and contributor,
as well as scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Jonah Goldberg takes
on dozens of these clichés and shows how they are not worthy additions to meaningful
discussion and debates. These discussion ending, largely accepted bits of “wisdom”
that Goldberg dissects include “diversity,” “unity,” “better ten guilty men go
free than one innocent man is punished,” “one man’s terrorist is another man’s
freedom fighter,” and “let them eat cake.”
I have
been a fan of Jonah Goldberg for a while now. I read his excellent Liberal Fascism (#138) about two years
ago and loved it. Liberal Fascism was
a very serious, academic look at the roots of modern American Progressivism and
its ties to European Fascism. This book had a much lighter tone, very similar
to much of Goldberg’s writings on National Review Online, and throughout the
book he would employ his witty, dry humor which I enjoyed a lot. While I
absolutely agree with Goldberg’s premise, I wish he would have explored and
defended his positions a little more deeply. By taking on so many of these
asinine sayings, he had to be shallower in his analysis of each. That is a very
minor complaint, however, because I really enjoyed the book in toto.
Rating: 8.0
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