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Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture
Examines the efforts of scientists, historians, anthropologists, and literary critics to overturn many of the theories and assumptions of such well-known "progressive" authors as Paul Ehrlich, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Mead, and Alfred Kinsey.
307 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2005
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September 22, 2018
4.5 stars rounded up for the accuracy. Page after page after page of research, sources, original material exactness to former decades' quotes at the end. And I do remember many of these absolute "facts" being taught. I was taught more than 1/2 of them myself.
This is a 2005 book I missed because I was in the crux of those places (Academia/ the university erudite arguments times 50) and 2 place locations /nearly two full time jobs and driving more than 12 hours a week then for my nursing and police satellites. And looking back now! What I myself have heard and saw assumed as absolute by some of those around me! Not.
Thank you to the two GR friends who brought this book to my attention. It certainly is worthy to have a solid definition to what is theory, what is science, what is "fact". And how fact itself has become redefined. By a worldview that is growing more pervasive and also more distorting the longer I've lived. "Group think" gone "social". The antithesis of the core of what science truly holds, at that.
The first half of the book was good, but the last half was pure excellence. From the omissions to Stalinist Communistic outcomes (Hellman/McCarthy feud too that I remember OH SO WELL) and what socialism has actually wroth in the real world. From the Mead and Sanger and Kinsey and so many other theories/ studies/ life tracts that were swallowed whole and not questioned at all for their accuracy to real data. Provable and actual data. There are immense numbers of these still which predispose subjects chosen, interpret reactions subjectively and lie or distort outcome "numbers" regardless. Similar to the one that I learned in grade school about stomach ulcers' causes and drinking cream for a "cure", or current world imminent ice ages arriving or bird erasure assured to happen by the turn of the 2000 century. All complete poppycock without any data but a "belief" persuasion. And an immense social warrior "antipathy" gotten under a craw against a human intervention or action. As if humans were not worth the advance or improvement or extension of their life spans. As if it were a zero sum game and "other" creatures would have to suffer. Another, often provable, lie.
I can remember standing in a class way,way back in the day and refuting Rachel Carson. That was pure pap from day one and it was completely swallowed because it "fit" into progressive acceptance. And of course, that means that it is the "correct" answer and no other can be tolerated.
In truth the laws and movements against the use of DDT has been one of the worst offenses against mankind in the last 2 centuries. That's how many millions of humans have died of typhus, malaria, etc. etc. because of lice, insects, starvation- without it. And those proofs of swallowing DDT whole (real data) didn't commute to the propaganda of "Silent Spring". Nor to the ridiculous "Population Bomb" predictions. (I loved the bet that was made between the two opposing views about population growth and commodities/ food etc.- that was priceless. I made one of those exact kinds of bets myself about a certain "item" that would be unattainable by a progressive friend's estimation. 6 years later, I bought her two of them for 1/2 the price of just one when we made the bet. But their economics isn't economics of reality or production either.)
Sanger, Mead with their invented realities and "statistics", how Darwin has been distorted- the "consensus" science being science at all? Many more examples. Superb and unemotional evaluations here of "theory" to data sources to the kernels of actual science. And with Kinsey and Masters "studies" or "proofs"- those children "used" for samples and their perps' words and evaluations taken whole piece? They weren't even worth the magazine articles in the 100's. What kind of truth in study could even have been considered under those circumstances? It's hard to imagine how that was even attempted? (They could never ever use children or adults either in this kind of pattern for memory studies let alone reactions to sexual response.) And the chapter that included the AIDS predictions and scare tactics too. I can remember watching an Oprah when she made that speech included here in the book. Untruth and duplicity masqueraded as reality. For fear mongering and control of "blame"? Used as "truth" regardless for the more "enlightened path" of relative morality. Nonsense not science.
The place of God too in structure, morality! That two or three page section was not as "provable" except in the measurable results of the current "relative morality" outcomes.
There are several pages near the ending that I wanted to quote full boat at the finish of this review. Because the predictions of 2005 have come entirely evident within this movement direction & "method" now. The use of slander, name call reaction to facts or people (both) and the arrogant superiority of "correct" knowledge and only a "correct" thought to the language used/allowed- all included. It's all here by this year of 2018 and further techniques that he identified too. I'd say all the predictions of this book have already occurred in progressive core and behavior since post 2010. Including the increasing alternatives from "persuasion of shunning to violence straight out". Jack Cashill was spot on for what was down the hill.
Falsehood, fraud, "reconstructed" history has hidden under the mask of this "know better" for more than the last 100 years.
This is a 2005 book I missed because I was in the crux of those places (Academia/ the university erudite arguments times 50) and 2 place locations /nearly two full time jobs and driving more than 12 hours a week then for my nursing and police satellites. And looking back now! What I myself have heard and saw assumed as absolute by some of those around me! Not.
Thank you to the two GR friends who brought this book to my attention. It certainly is worthy to have a solid definition to what is theory, what is science, what is "fact". And how fact itself has become redefined. By a worldview that is growing more pervasive and also more distorting the longer I've lived. "Group think" gone "social". The antithesis of the core of what science truly holds, at that.
The first half of the book was good, but the last half was pure excellence. From the omissions to Stalinist Communistic outcomes (Hellman/McCarthy feud too that I remember OH SO WELL) and what socialism has actually wroth in the real world. From the Mead and Sanger and Kinsey and so many other theories/ studies/ life tracts that were swallowed whole and not questioned at all for their accuracy to real data. Provable and actual data. There are immense numbers of these still which predispose subjects chosen, interpret reactions subjectively and lie or distort outcome "numbers" regardless. Similar to the one that I learned in grade school about stomach ulcers' causes and drinking cream for a "cure", or current world imminent ice ages arriving or bird erasure assured to happen by the turn of the 2000 century. All complete poppycock without any data but a "belief" persuasion. And an immense social warrior "antipathy" gotten under a craw against a human intervention or action. As if humans were not worth the advance or improvement or extension of their life spans. As if it were a zero sum game and "other" creatures would have to suffer. Another, often provable, lie.
I can remember standing in a class way,way back in the day and refuting Rachel Carson. That was pure pap from day one and it was completely swallowed because it "fit" into progressive acceptance. And of course, that means that it is the "correct" answer and no other can be tolerated.
In truth the laws and movements against the use of DDT has been one of the worst offenses against mankind in the last 2 centuries. That's how many millions of humans have died of typhus, malaria, etc. etc. because of lice, insects, starvation- without it. And those proofs of swallowing DDT whole (real data) didn't commute to the propaganda of "Silent Spring". Nor to the ridiculous "Population Bomb" predictions. (I loved the bet that was made between the two opposing views about population growth and commodities/ food etc.- that was priceless. I made one of those exact kinds of bets myself about a certain "item" that would be unattainable by a progressive friend's estimation. 6 years later, I bought her two of them for 1/2 the price of just one when we made the bet. But their economics isn't economics of reality or production either.)
Sanger, Mead with their invented realities and "statistics", how Darwin has been distorted- the "consensus" science being science at all? Many more examples. Superb and unemotional evaluations here of "theory" to data sources to the kernels of actual science. And with Kinsey and Masters "studies" or "proofs"- those children "used" for samples and their perps' words and evaluations taken whole piece? They weren't even worth the magazine articles in the 100's. What kind of truth in study could even have been considered under those circumstances? It's hard to imagine how that was even attempted? (They could never ever use children or adults either in this kind of pattern for memory studies let alone reactions to sexual response.) And the chapter that included the AIDS predictions and scare tactics too. I can remember watching an Oprah when she made that speech included here in the book. Untruth and duplicity masqueraded as reality. For fear mongering and control of "blame"? Used as "truth" regardless for the more "enlightened path" of relative morality. Nonsense not science.
The place of God too in structure, morality! That two or three page section was not as "provable" except in the measurable results of the current "relative morality" outcomes.
There are several pages near the ending that I wanted to quote full boat at the finish of this review. Because the predictions of 2005 have come entirely evident within this movement direction & "method" now. The use of slander, name call reaction to facts or people (both) and the arrogant superiority of "correct" knowledge and only a "correct" thought to the language used/allowed- all included. It's all here by this year of 2018 and further techniques that he identified too. I'd say all the predictions of this book have already occurred in progressive core and behavior since post 2010. Including the increasing alternatives from "persuasion of shunning to violence straight out". Jack Cashill was spot on for what was down the hill.
Falsehood, fraud, "reconstructed" history has hidden under the mask of this "know better" for more than the last 100 years.
June 20, 2013
To many readers much of what's in this book will not be a surprise. All the facts were out there. For that matter though they have often been buried under an avalanche of "reconstructed history" the facts are still out there.
From the age of Marx himself through the time of the book's publication this book follows the rewriting of "facts" about what goes on in the world. I could cover some but it would be far better if you read the book instead of me trying to give a taste...but I'll try.
The problem here is (as it is with many books) that the "liberal/progressive" audience will probably refuse to read it without ever thinking about what it has to say.
One example you'll look at in the book is the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. There was a time when most people had heard of this case...when people actually learned things in schools for example. Now I don't know. This became the cause célèbre in 1920 (and onward). The two in question were arrested for a payroll robbery and the murder of a guard. When arrested one had on him the antique gun that killed the guard and antique ammunition for said gun. The other had the guard's gun on him.
They were found guilty and executed.
During the trial one of their lawyers decided the way to go was to make them...poor Italian immigrants who were being victimized because they were...well, poor Italian immigrants. There have been piles of books written on the subject many with total fabrications and as noted, rewritten "facts".
This book takes a cogent look at this over the years, the cumulative effect of all this...and how this country has been Hoodwinked.
From the age of Marx himself through the time of the book's publication this book follows the rewriting of "facts" about what goes on in the world. I could cover some but it would be far better if you read the book instead of me trying to give a taste...but I'll try.
The problem here is (as it is with many books) that the "liberal/progressive" audience will probably refuse to read it without ever thinking about what it has to say.
One example you'll look at in the book is the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. There was a time when most people had heard of this case...when people actually learned things in schools for example. Now I don't know. This became the cause célèbre in 1920 (and onward). The two in question were arrested for a payroll robbery and the murder of a guard. When arrested one had on him the antique gun that killed the guard and antique ammunition for said gun. The other had the guard's gun on him.
They were found guilty and executed.
During the trial one of their lawyers decided the way to go was to make them...poor Italian immigrants who were being victimized because they were...well, poor Italian immigrants. There have been piles of books written on the subject many with total fabrications and as noted, rewritten "facts".
This book takes a cogent look at this over the years, the cumulative effect of all this...and how this country has been Hoodwinked.
July 27, 2011
The other day I mentioned to a New York friend that I was headed to an amusement park in Arkansas. He sarcastically asked whether its theme was Creationism, whereupon I responded, “That’s correct. My favorite ride is the ‘4,892 Year-Old Apatosaurus Log Flume!’” I relay this anecdote in order to pinpoint what really annoyed me about this book - namely, the needless infusion of Christian belief (or lack thereof) as part of the basis with which to assault these various “progressive” targets.
If Cashill is synthesizing the “dogged research” of an “unconnected squad” of scientists, historians, and other bona fide experts as the book description states, then why does he feel the need to sprinkle in a “there is no God in Carson’s world” or something about a “godless revolution” to supplement what otherwise are seemingly well-researched (though one-sided certainly) diatribes about these sundry figures?
My take on this should not be considered a slight against religious belief but, just as I firmly believe in a separation between Church and State, I feel a book like this - biased but fairly rigorous in argument and documentation - doesn’t need a thread of God-fearing versus God-lacking to knit everything together. It’s enough to relish in Alan Sokal’s “postmodernist” hoax and I may even buy into some aspects of Noam Chomsky being positioned as the “world master of the Marxist shell game” or Margaret Sanger as eugenicist nonpareil. Such inclusions as the Rigoberta Menchu “story” (or “magic realism”), similar fabrications by that New York Times guy, and Michael Moore’s interesting take on what constitutes documentary content is enough to roil most of us. To then add in that Moore has “less commitment to the ‘truth’ as that concept is known in the Judeo-Christian tradition” I find completely baffling! It’s as if the 700 Club hired this guy to alter an otherwise rational book to balance out whatever Jack-assedness pontifications Pat Robertson was recently spouting or perhaps the author’s spouse or agent was pushing to get it published through Bob Jones University Press. I see now that Thomas Nelson Publishers does specialize in Christian matter in addition to a smattering of books about folks like Albert Pujols and Donald Trump (huh?). I’ll also admit that this was not the Hoodwinked… I intended to download from Kindle (maybe that Prados book? Chait’s exposé? I dunno…my book list isn’t very detailed and “Hoodwinked” is obviously overused), but my personal research/attention deficit aside, I at least read the whole thing so I think this is a fair evaluation.
If I’m willing to engage with the majority non-church-guided text as mentioned above (add to that the insane Alfred Kinsley portion), the full chapter about “Darwin’s Heirs” is clearly the keystone of the problematic Judeo-Christian infestation here. Patently pro-“Intelligent Design,” Cashill positions his argument against complete acceptance of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (the author, I’ll admit, cautiously pinpoints only that portion that revolves around mutation spurring new species) paralleling the recent debates in some school districts in some states. I happened to have watched a documentary recently about this - patently on the Evolution-only side - and it seems the conflict can be summed up in this dialogue (heavily paraphrased and non-contextual, mind you):
Topeka School Board Member: “Think about the functional complexity and inherent beauty of the human eyeball. The iris and the pupil and the rods and cones and how they are all cohesive parts in an elegant and inimitable system. That couldn’t be accidental - that must be the preordained design of a higher entity.”
Harvard Scientist: “Think about the digestive system of a rabbit. A rabbit will eat a food and, because it’s stomach can’t immediately process foodstuffs, the rabbit will first have to excrete the food that is only then ready for full digestion. The rabbit then re-eats the excretion to be processed into nutrients, calories, etc. before being excreted again. Doesn’t seem like an elegant design to me.”
I don’t know that I have more to offer on this particular chapter (or, indeed, should be reviewing this book at all) other than to say that it relates firmly to the incongruous inclusions of “godlessness” infiltrating the rest of the chapters. I agree that the infamous Ernst Haeckel embryo diagrams - per Jonathan Wells - is always an interesting story but one clearly based on lazy textbook publishers/editors - per Steven Jay Gould - as much as any continuance of a 135 year-old fraud. Piltdown man and the circus surrounding the fabricated Scope’s Trial make for good reading but in positioning such things to shore up a repackaged attack on evolution will certainly limit the potential audience of this. It solidifies that uneasy feeling that Cashill is more intent on doing the bidding of certain institutions rather than positioning a critical reappraisal of a cross section of Leftist figureheads for it’s own sake.
Another aside, three days after finishing this I randomly met Chomsky’s personal assistant from MIT and I most certainly didn’t fess up to reading this. Therefore I’ve clearly said way too much here…
If Cashill is synthesizing the “dogged research” of an “unconnected squad” of scientists, historians, and other bona fide experts as the book description states, then why does he feel the need to sprinkle in a “there is no God in Carson’s world” or something about a “godless revolution” to supplement what otherwise are seemingly well-researched (though one-sided certainly) diatribes about these sundry figures?
My take on this should not be considered a slight against religious belief but, just as I firmly believe in a separation between Church and State, I feel a book like this - biased but fairly rigorous in argument and documentation - doesn’t need a thread of God-fearing versus God-lacking to knit everything together. It’s enough to relish in Alan Sokal’s “postmodernist” hoax and I may even buy into some aspects of Noam Chomsky being positioned as the “world master of the Marxist shell game” or Margaret Sanger as eugenicist nonpareil. Such inclusions as the Rigoberta Menchu “story” (or “magic realism”), similar fabrications by that New York Times guy, and Michael Moore’s interesting take on what constitutes documentary content is enough to roil most of us. To then add in that Moore has “less commitment to the ‘truth’ as that concept is known in the Judeo-Christian tradition” I find completely baffling! It’s as if the 700 Club hired this guy to alter an otherwise rational book to balance out whatever Jack-assedness pontifications Pat Robertson was recently spouting or perhaps the author’s spouse or agent was pushing to get it published through Bob Jones University Press. I see now that Thomas Nelson Publishers does specialize in Christian matter in addition to a smattering of books about folks like Albert Pujols and Donald Trump (huh?). I’ll also admit that this was not the Hoodwinked… I intended to download from Kindle (maybe that Prados book? Chait’s exposé? I dunno…my book list isn’t very detailed and “Hoodwinked” is obviously overused), but my personal research/attention deficit aside, I at least read the whole thing so I think this is a fair evaluation.
If I’m willing to engage with the majority non-church-guided text as mentioned above (add to that the insane Alfred Kinsley portion), the full chapter about “Darwin’s Heirs” is clearly the keystone of the problematic Judeo-Christian infestation here. Patently pro-“Intelligent Design,” Cashill positions his argument against complete acceptance of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (the author, I’ll admit, cautiously pinpoints only that portion that revolves around mutation spurring new species) paralleling the recent debates in some school districts in some states. I happened to have watched a documentary recently about this - patently on the Evolution-only side - and it seems the conflict can be summed up in this dialogue (heavily paraphrased and non-contextual, mind you):
Topeka School Board Member: “Think about the functional complexity and inherent beauty of the human eyeball. The iris and the pupil and the rods and cones and how they are all cohesive parts in an elegant and inimitable system. That couldn’t be accidental - that must be the preordained design of a higher entity.”
Harvard Scientist: “Think about the digestive system of a rabbit. A rabbit will eat a food and, because it’s stomach can’t immediately process foodstuffs, the rabbit will first have to excrete the food that is only then ready for full digestion. The rabbit then re-eats the excretion to be processed into nutrients, calories, etc. before being excreted again. Doesn’t seem like an elegant design to me.”
I don’t know that I have more to offer on this particular chapter (or, indeed, should be reviewing this book at all) other than to say that it relates firmly to the incongruous inclusions of “godlessness” infiltrating the rest of the chapters. I agree that the infamous Ernst Haeckel embryo diagrams - per Jonathan Wells - is always an interesting story but one clearly based on lazy textbook publishers/editors - per Steven Jay Gould - as much as any continuance of a 135 year-old fraud. Piltdown man and the circus surrounding the fabricated Scope’s Trial make for good reading but in positioning such things to shore up a repackaged attack on evolution will certainly limit the potential audience of this. It solidifies that uneasy feeling that Cashill is more intent on doing the bidding of certain institutions rather than positioning a critical reappraisal of a cross section of Leftist figureheads for it’s own sake.
Another aside, three days after finishing this I randomly met Chomsky’s personal assistant from MIT and I most certainly didn’t fess up to reading this. Therefore I’ve clearly said way too much here…
April 27, 2022
This book is, for the most part, a very good overview of progressive hucksters and hoaxes since Sacco and Vanzetti in 1920. The book was published in 2005, so it is getting somewhat out of date 17 years later. It is still a useful survey of huge scandals that leftists like to pretend weren’t, from the never-ending frauds in The New York Times, to Alger Hiss, Alex Haley, Edward Said, Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore and Margaret Mead. The writing is brisk and enjoyable, 5-10 pages per hoax, and generally well documented with endnotes. It is organized into four broad sections: politics, race, science and sex.
Cashill goes out of his way in the book to proclaim himself a Christian. He is clearly not from one of the quieter, humbler and more reasonable sects. For most of the book, he limits injecting his religious beliefs, things he accepts on faith, to a few snarky comments segregating humanity into good guys, who believe in his God, and bad guys, who don’t. It is obnoxious and off-putting, even to an otherwise sympathetic reader, but infrequent enough to be overlooked. Unfortunately, he becomes thoroughly unhinged for 30 pages in the science section. He apparently also believes in creationism and labels Darwinism a “withering, godless revolution”. He attempts to portray evolution as hucksterism based on the Piltdown Man hoax. He proceeds to shamelessly smear those who find the extensive real evidence for evolution credible with fallacious Nazi guilt-by-association.
But Piltdown Man and Nazis no more disprove natural selection than fake relics and corrupt popes disprove Christianity. You can’t prove creationism by nitpicking Darwinism. Most Christians have been able to reconcile their faith with the abundant evidence for evolution, just as they have with the earth revolving around the sun. An omniscient and omnipotent God wouldn’t need to create everything piecemeal, when He could more easily set a process in motion that He could foresee would have the same results.
This section is an embarrassing mess and mars and detracts from the whole book. I would have given the book 5 stars without it, but have to deduct at least 1 star for its inappropriate and regrettable inclusion. I was interested in reading some of Cashill’s other books, but this section caused me to understand why he has largely been dismissed and ignored as a nut. He did it to himself. He may be 90% right about history and politics, but few take you seriously if you have the poor judgment to mix it with religious fables. It shows you to be untrustworthy and discredits the whole project.
Cashill goes out of his way in the book to proclaim himself a Christian. He is clearly not from one of the quieter, humbler and more reasonable sects. For most of the book, he limits injecting his religious beliefs, things he accepts on faith, to a few snarky comments segregating humanity into good guys, who believe in his God, and bad guys, who don’t. It is obnoxious and off-putting, even to an otherwise sympathetic reader, but infrequent enough to be overlooked. Unfortunately, he becomes thoroughly unhinged for 30 pages in the science section. He apparently also believes in creationism and labels Darwinism a “withering, godless revolution”. He attempts to portray evolution as hucksterism based on the Piltdown Man hoax. He proceeds to shamelessly smear those who find the extensive real evidence for evolution credible with fallacious Nazi guilt-by-association.
But Piltdown Man and Nazis no more disprove natural selection than fake relics and corrupt popes disprove Christianity. You can’t prove creationism by nitpicking Darwinism. Most Christians have been able to reconcile their faith with the abundant evidence for evolution, just as they have with the earth revolving around the sun. An omniscient and omnipotent God wouldn’t need to create everything piecemeal, when He could more easily set a process in motion that He could foresee would have the same results.
This section is an embarrassing mess and mars and detracts from the whole book. I would have given the book 5 stars without it, but have to deduct at least 1 star for its inappropriate and regrettable inclusion. I was interested in reading some of Cashill’s other books, but this section caused me to understand why he has largely been dismissed and ignored as a nut. He did it to himself. He may be 90% right about history and politics, but few take you seriously if you have the poor judgment to mix it with religious fables. It shows you to be untrustworthy and discredits the whole project.
April 8, 2008
This man is an extreme fundamentalist whose disdain for multiculturalism is obvious and unfounded through out the book.
January 3, 2025
"The hard left attracts the intellectual left...The intellectual left in turn intimidates the soft center left that so dominates America's news production into silence and/or compliance. The news producers educate the open-minded center and the less informed liberals in their audience" p.9
I've been dragging my feet on reviewing this because my habit is to include tidbits from each book in my reviews (so I remember what I read) and there are just too many of them. Cashill lays out a myriad of debunked lies and half-truths that progressive elites have forwarded over the decades, from politics (social activists disguised as journalists/researchers/historians downplaying the atrocities of Marxism), to race (Planned Parenthood downplaying Sanger's influence on forced sterilization of poor, minority, and mentally-ill citizens at its outset, the forwarding of an ethnic victimization narrative into the judicial system), to science (the dubious, early 'proofs' of evolution that were proven to be fakeries: A human skull joined with an orangutan jaw, stained to look old and the teeth filed down. A bird with a dinosaur tail glued to it. Biology textbook pictures of embryo growth stages that were inaccurate but unchallenged), and sex (lauded studies on human sexual response performed by known pedophiles on hundreds of teenagers over months and years, the misallocation of resources and increased death toll to AIDS due to downplaying the increased vulnerability of gay men having unprotected sex in an effort to destigmatize the population).
The hoaxes that particularly stand out for me are the ones that are unforgivably inexcusable. For the NYT to have a journalist cover-up human rights violations associated with Marxism (famines, executions, trials, forced labor camps, torture, and the exile of millions of people) and then for him to be awarded a Pulitzer Award for New Correspondence? Knowing an estimated 500 million lives could have been saved from using DDT to safely kill mosquitoes and lice infested with malaria and typhus, but negative propaganda surrounding its use caused unnecessary panic. Knowing environmental hysteria disproportionately impacts poor countries, but progressive elites continue to push ideals over daily welfare.
I was considering rating this four starts for importance, but I have to go three on format and writing style. I don't know quite how this could have been presented better, but as it is, it was a slightly tiresome read and oddly formatted for such an important subject matter.
I've been dragging my feet on reviewing this because my habit is to include tidbits from each book in my reviews (so I remember what I read) and there are just too many of them. Cashill lays out a myriad of debunked lies and half-truths that progressive elites have forwarded over the decades, from politics (social activists disguised as journalists/researchers/historians downplaying the atrocities of Marxism), to race (Planned Parenthood downplaying Sanger's influence on forced sterilization of poor, minority, and mentally-ill citizens at its outset, the forwarding of an ethnic victimization narrative into the judicial system), to science (the dubious, early 'proofs' of evolution that were proven to be fakeries: A human skull joined with an orangutan jaw, stained to look old and the teeth filed down. A bird with a dinosaur tail glued to it. Biology textbook pictures of embryo growth stages that were inaccurate but unchallenged), and sex (lauded studies on human sexual response performed by known pedophiles on hundreds of teenagers over months and years, the misallocation of resources and increased death toll to AIDS due to downplaying the increased vulnerability of gay men having unprotected sex in an effort to destigmatize the population).
The hoaxes that particularly stand out for me are the ones that are unforgivably inexcusable. For the NYT to have a journalist cover-up human rights violations associated with Marxism (famines, executions, trials, forced labor camps, torture, and the exile of millions of people) and then for him to be awarded a Pulitzer Award for New Correspondence? Knowing an estimated 500 million lives could have been saved from using DDT to safely kill mosquitoes and lice infested with malaria and typhus, but negative propaganda surrounding its use caused unnecessary panic. Knowing environmental hysteria disproportionately impacts poor countries, but progressive elites continue to push ideals over daily welfare.
I was considering rating this four starts for importance, but I have to go three on format and writing style. I don't know quite how this could have been presented better, but as it is, it was a slightly tiresome read and oddly formatted for such an important subject matter.
Read
April 8, 2018Everything on conservative talk radio; yet presented more elegantly, and with less yelling.
August 9, 2011
Loved it. Thought it had a lot to consider, while providing a thorough list detailing what sources he used.
June 11, 2017
I will take this book's argument with a grain of salt. By the way, does Morton sell by the truck load?
February 18, 2021
Probably a 3.5 for people with their left turn signals broken off. ;-D
Some interesting debunking of popular "narratives" with some weird politically tinged detours.
If you just want the easy cynicism about western culture confirmed in an fast read--this is perfect.
There are better researched, more interesting, and more credible books on this subject.
Some interesting debunking of popular "narratives" with some weird politically tinged detours.
If you just want the easy cynicism about western culture confirmed in an fast read--this is perfect.
There are better researched, more interesting, and more credible books on this subject.
October 5, 2020
This is one of my favorite books of all time. Very eye-opening examples of events and people in the past hundred years that were spun very differently from reality, in ways that meaningfully shaped history.
August 18, 2020
A straight from the shoulder analysis of a different viewpoint leading to new truths.
September 29, 2024
A brilliant and well written book that in case after case exposes the controversies (often with outright fraud and corruption) that have marked so many popular social and scientific celebrities and their causes. Highly enjoyable, highly recommended!
Note to Mr. Cashill, I would LOVE to see you do a 20th anniversary edition of this book with some updates on important popular/scientific hoaxes, delusions and deceptions of the past 20 years - such as climate change, trans-gender dysphoria, DEI, the Green New Deal and Covid 19.
"In the ongoing culture war, politicized trials are frequently used to breach enemy defenses, but these spearheads are inevitably part of a larger front. This book identifies four such fronts: radical naturalism, sexual hedonism, Marxism, and multiculturalism.. All share an enemy in traditional Western cultures, an antagonism to a Judeo-Christian God, and indifference to truth, and common ancestors in Charles Darwin and Karl Marx.
"Until now, no one person has fully documented the sweep of this assault. But for years, an unconnected and largely apolitical squad of literary detectives, biographers, anthropologists, scientists, historians, classicists, and cultural critics has picked off the frauds and their enablers one by one. Taken together, the work of these critics is devastating. This book will synthesize their dogged research and reveal the depth and breadth of the rot at the very foundation of progressive culture." (p.10)
Note to Mr. Cashill, I would LOVE to see you do a 20th anniversary edition of this book with some updates on important popular/scientific hoaxes, delusions and deceptions of the past 20 years - such as climate change, trans-gender dysphoria, DEI, the Green New Deal and Covid 19.
"In the ongoing culture war, politicized trials are frequently used to breach enemy defenses, but these spearheads are inevitably part of a larger front. This book identifies four such fronts: radical naturalism, sexual hedonism, Marxism, and multiculturalism.. All share an enemy in traditional Western cultures, an antagonism to a Judeo-Christian God, and indifference to truth, and common ancestors in Charles Darwin and Karl Marx.
"Until now, no one person has fully documented the sweep of this assault. But for years, an unconnected and largely apolitical squad of literary detectives, biographers, anthropologists, scientists, historians, classicists, and cultural critics has picked off the frauds and their enablers one by one. Taken together, the work of these critics is devastating. This book will synthesize their dogged research and reveal the depth and breadth of the rot at the very foundation of progressive culture." (p.10)
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December 2, 2013Although the title is a bit self referential, it's quite an interesting read and certainly worth the two dollars I paid for it at Half Price Books. I thoroughly enjoyed the font.
July 24, 2014
Informative and really makes you think twice about everything what we are told in the media, however there is too much of communism, almost half of the book.
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