Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The premise is a great one. The exploration of how people are so committed to a mindset that anything which takes a contrary position to that ideology is immediately, blindly, discarded. What's unfortunate is that Daniel Flynn is crippled by this very same problem, he lets his staunch conservativism distort his methods. If this book did not have such a political axe to grind, in this case it is Flynn tailoring his structure and subjects to cast the left in as bad a light as possible, this could have been a truly great and important book. Flynn is at his best when he is not talking about his subjects but rather when he is discussing his conclusions and personal observations on how ideologies affect people and the dangers of submission to this mindset. His beginning and conclusion are first-rate because it captures the best of his offerings in a completely non-partial (or partisan), way. Although he is most certainly a strong right-wing conservative, Flynn is not a party-line regurgitating, hack Republican mouthpiece, like say, Sean Hannity. He is surprisingly scathing in his critique of the current situation in Iraq and extremist neo-conservative policy as a whole. In the chapter, "A Truth That Lesser Mortals Failed To Grasp," he sounds like he's making the liberal case for opposing Bush and Iraq, and he really means it. Despite these positives, the overwhelming negatives showcase themselves again and again. His biggest sin in my opinion is that he has come to the conclusion that the trait of letting ideology blind people into buying stupid ideas has somehow become a partisan issue, namely that it is the trait of the left-wing liberals. The book takes certain people as case studies and basically tears them down, and 14 out of the 16 people profiled are leftists. If the book were called "Intellectual Morons of the Left", then this might not matter, but the author has put on an appearance of being objective, and I believe he fails miserably at that. Also, the two that are not stated leftists, are not really right-wing either, it just so happened that their PHILOSOPHIES could be and were interpreted in support of capitalism and the individual, though they themselves are not aligned with a conservative cause. So Flynn has not put his own side under the microscope at all (and there are volumes of conservatives who have committed this same sin of blind devotion, believe me), which sort of contradicts his whole premise. And by the way, he doesn't even label one of his targets, Noam Chomsky, correctly. He states repeatedly that Chomsky is a leftist, presumbly for his defense of communist regimes from time to time. But Chomsky is really a radical libertarian by his own admission, and that is actually an extreme faction of the RIGHT, not left. He's the closest thing that we have to a mainstream anarchist. So I guess that means that we now have only 13 of 16 profiled being leftists. Examples abound. He tears into Alfred Kinsey for profiling a highly selective group of people to compile his data on sex in America, to, as Flynn believes, slant the evidence to support his opinions, rather than be objective and select random people to make the experiments more believeable. Sort of like writing a book where nearly 90% of your subjects are of the same political standing (which, by the way, opposes yours) and then announcing that in your "balanced" study, you've come to the conclusion that political standing (leftists) are the biggest purportrators of this crime. Consistency is not his strong point. He has some good points about Kinsey, but he attacks him mainly for the crime that he himself commits repeatedly, so he is fair game as well. When he discusses environmentalist Paul Ehrlich, he basically concludes that he is a moron because most of his predictions were wrong. Problem is, most sceintific theories in the history of mankind were wrong as well. New technology and breakthroughs at many points in history have discredited way more theories than they have upheld. Just because we now know that most early formal studies of physics were incorrect and have been discredited, does that mean that the scientists who once developed those theories without everything we have now are totally useless? That they made no contributions at all and are by Flynn's definition, morons? Flynn does not acknowledge the possiblity that Ehrlich's research, any experiments he performed, his dedication, and his championing of certain causes could have any merit. Nope, it's all about the bottom line, Ehrlich was proven wrong and therefore, nothing else matters about him. He's just a statistic on the wrong side. One last major sin that he commits is that Flynn does not go after mainstream people at all. Some of their ideas may have gotten into the mainstream, but he attacks the fringe only. That seems like a heck of a crutch to me, it is pretty easy to attack the fringe. It's no wonder that his least effective attack is on Howard Zinn, who in my opinion is probably the least "radical" or "fringe" of those leftists profiled. Flynn says that Zinn is a communist who sees history as one big class struggle over money and power. Hmmmmm, that doesn't seem so far-fetched to me, but beyond that, his arguements are just dead wrong. Flynn contends the reason that Zinn says Columbus voyaged was to obtain wealth and riches. Well, yeah. Historically, that was the reason. Bring back gold and any information on new trade routes to get exotic goods from Asia. Likewise, he says Zinn is being a moron for thinking that during WWII, Roosevelt held meetings with business leaders to get the economy of the US "second to none" with war being the catalyst. Again, this is totally true. Business leaders like Forbes and Mellon were actively seeking to make money using wartime economic stimulation and held meetings with FDR's administration to try and serve this goal more effecively. Flynn also subtley reinforces his conservative beliefs by slipping slights to leftists in many of the profiles. When he takes on Alger Hiss, for example, he mounts the evidence of communism against him. But he also refers to Hiss repeatedly as a "New Dealer," even when there is no connotation within the context to FDR's administration thereby subtley equating the New Deal with horrible communism. He also uses the proverbial, "some say" or "critics of this man have said" instead of just saying that these crticisms are his. Also in this book, logical fallacies abound, with even the title being an ad hominiem. Flynn rarely critiques the people's ideas at all, but rather attacks the person, dismissing their ideas as stupid without explanation, and I guess just assumes that the stuidity is obvious. In some cases it is, but to not ever provide analysis of the actual ideology, but rather just saying ideology is bad, is not the best way to prove your point. I could go on, but I've done way more than enough to get the point across. Worth reading, but watch for the many ways that Flynn contradicts himself and becomes what he preaches against.