It's like a riot policeman seeing the school bully and then kicking the living shit out of him until he's a wet splotch on the ground and proceeding to make several straw representations of the bully and doing likewise. And then the riot helmet comes off and it's just another bully. What a twist!

Making fun of liberals isn't hard. ( )

" ..what is lost in these debates [about global warming] is the crucial distinction between science and scientism. The former is a value-neutral enterprise that seeks, through the scientific method, to understand and manipulate the reality of the physical world. Science is a procedure defined by systematic observation and measurement, followed by experiment, and then by the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. It is not the source of moral truths, but moral truths must be informed by them. 'The truth of our faith,' observed Thomas Aquinas, 'becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels, if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.' Scientism, meanwhile, is the act of seeing in science what is not there. It is an act of faith that elevates, nay makes divine, the authority of science to bolster the aims of its acolytes. The practitioners of scientism presume to tell us that we should live a certain way because science tells us we must. It reduces human existence to material causes and humans to bags of water, meat, and bones powered by electrical impulses. It is the ancient naturalistic fallacy updated with more contemporary lingo. Indeed, as the philosopher Edward Feser notes, scientism is itself a fallacy on its face, because it exempts itself from the scientific method. Scientism is not a testable proposition; it is an assertion of faith. No wonder the scientific socialists, technocrats, progressives, social psychiatrists, and environmentalists insist that science is on their side in the same way the mullahs and zealots proclaim that God is on theirs. They respond to inconvenient questions with the same dismissiveness as Bill Murray in Ghostbusters when he barks, 'Back off man, I’m a scientist.'" | near the end of Chapter 4 ( )

Very good book. Some chapters are much better than others. My favorites were: Diversity, Social Darwinism, Dissent, Social Justice, Living Constitution, Middle Class, Science, and Youth. Those chapters all deserve 5 stars while the rest are still good but got a little dragged down in some details I personally didn't care as much about.

The book is very easy to read as Jonah is a very talented writer. He throws in little jokes here and there that give you an idea of why his twitter feed is quite popular. ( )

Erudite and learned though with a panache for flourishing phrases and deft popular culture allusions Goldberg dismantles tyrannical, liberal cliches. He draws upon little-examined historical figures and works while drilling down to actually examine and elaborate upon their actual reflective implications.

I normally do not read too often books which are TOO overtly political - often these are just distasteful and overdone exercises in rhetoric which whip up a loyal 'base' and leave all others annoyed or alienated. This is true for both right and left.

Ann Coulter, to use a prominent example, calls herself a "Polemicist" - one who deliberately deals with controversy, and that statement is quite accurate, to her credit. Such is their domain, leave them well alone.

But Goldberg is a new and insidious breed - he is a polemicist or rambler who thinks himself a serious intellectual, and attempts to write a book of 'ideas'. The book falls apart halfway through the title. Cliches are indeed tyrannical, but he falls victim to them. His first book, "Liberal Fascism", is filled with torturous and fallacious logic - "Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore all fascists are Vegetarians." I confess I have not read it entirely.

A main underlying theme is his conflation of the modern American Left with Totalitarian Communism. Liberals in his view, believe in government intervention in some economic matters. Totalitarians believe in total government control of all aspects of society. Because both of these actions involve government, therefore the two are the same. But Connecticut is not Cambodia. New York is not North Korea. San Francisco is not Stalinism. He does not even differentiate between parts of the left at all. They are all The Enemy, to be defeated.

I will not pretend that the modern American left is free of problems. But this 'criticism' is a cliche, and wholly meaningless.

And of course, Goldberg uses cliches of his own - the 'hippie liberal', multiculturalism is bad because immigrants and colored people are scary, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism", that there are no compromise positions - "Either you're for me or against me!". And so forth. And so on. And so on.

The whole section on Ideology and Dogma is a farce. His own understanding of history is warped, distorted, and completely false. Any item which might support him is twisted to do so, and anything conflicting disappears. "The government does not produce jobs (External contracts, military, etc.), Jews were not killed during the Spanish Inquisition (Exiled, burned alive), and so on. It tires and numbs the mind.

Of course, attempting to deal with such large swaths of the complex American political spectrum can be difficult, and I confess that I fall prey to errors. But this is not a complex or rigorous argument at all. It is a child's wail - "Nuh uh! I'm not a stinky-face! YOU ARE!" Take away the punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and fancy quotes from respectable thinkers garnishing the edges, and it is a Youtube comment. It is not a 'book of ideas'. It is a polemic, something which will sell enough copies to get to the top of the New York Times, garner a few disdainful comments from real historians, and promptly fade into oblivion. ( )