Howdy MOQers: It took about two minutes to realize that this critic is a right-wing crank. Check out the difference between the Publisher's Weekly review and the praise heaped upon him by the Washington Times, The Conservative Book Club and a Chesterton fan over at the newspaper written for fifth graders. One says his book is ferocious, amateurish and abounds with ugly stereotypes and the others say it's brilliant and insightful. The web site where his Harris review was published is also biased to the right, as you'll notice George Will's endorsement. (Compare this presentation of such a conspicuously biased source with the recent dismissal of an encyclopedia as biased!)
>From Publishers WeeklyIn this essay collection, British writer Dalrymple (Life >at the Bottom) lays out a case for the decline of Western civilization, >finding its symptoms lurking in everything from multiculturalism to the >delusions of honesty by political leaders. Although less of a lovable >curmudgeon than plain ferocious in his ire, the author's forays into literary >criticism are appealing if amateurish; a former prison doctor, the author is >most cogent when on his own beat, analyzing the criminal justice and medical >systems. Predictably pessimistic on the political front, the author has sharp >words for his fellow Brits (They are educated by the state, the state provides >for them in old age and has made saving unnecessary or, in some cases, >actually uneconomic; they are treated and cured by the state... they are >housed by the state.... Their choices concern only sex and shopping). He saves >his worst condemnation for Muslims: ([Muslim men] satisfy their sexual needs >with prostitutes and those whom they quite openly call 'white sluts' ); his >pieces on terrorism and suicide bombers abound with ugly stereotyping from >which this otherwise entertaining book never fully recovers. (Oct.) Copyright >© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights >reserved.ReviewMr. Dalrymple illuminates with great clarity and precision some >of the most difficult problems of our times. -- Washington Times "Beautifully written, insightful, and often sad." --<I>Neofusionist<I> "Brilliant essays." --<I>Conservative Book Club<I> "The book draws upon both deep and broad cultural references, illustrated with cases with which Dalrymple intimately is familiar. ... Despite refusing to bow to the eagerly offended, he does not confuse meanness and wit. ... [I] compare him to G. K. Chesterton." --Dolores T. Puterbaugh, USA Today, March 2009 dmb continues: Don't you think it's obvious that Sam Harris is going to anger people on the right, most of whom are religious and many of whom are very religious? Of course they are. Those are the people Harris is complaining about. It would be plum crazy to expect anything but anger and hostility from the right. Such criticism can't be taken be taken seriously. Harris wants us to create a situation in civil society wherein it becomes shameful and embarrassing to espouse unbelievable beliefs. Dalrymple construes this as a call to genocide. That's just ridiculous, over-the-top bullshit and that sort of thing makes it pretty obvious doesn't care what Harris actually says or means. If he's willing to construe conversational pressure as genocide, he's willing to construe any thing as anything he wants. My point? You've cited a ridiculously biased and unreliable source. The only way I'd ever cite such a thing would be in a piece about the kind of low quality sources we should avoid, like this piece. > More from a link I sent to Jon B regarding what the author calls, "the > neo-atheists". The author himself is an atheist, so I find his criticism > more cogent than I could provide. > > http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_oh_to_be.html > > "This sloppiness and lack of intellectual scruple, with the assumption of > certainty where there is none, combined with adolescent shrillness and > intolerance, reach an apogee in Sam Harris’s book *The End of Faith*. It is > not easy to do justice to the book’s nastiness; it makes Dawkins’s claim > that religious education constitutes child abuse look sane and moderate." _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy think 9 to 5 is a cute idea. Combine multiple calendars with Hotmail. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multicalendar&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_5 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
