The Culture Warrior

Recently finished reading Fox journalist Bill O'Reilly's Culture Warrior (Broadway Books, 2006). O'Reilly sums up the beliefs of the 'secular-progressive' as

• A sharing of the wealth by targeting the affluent for most of the government's revenue.
• Lax school discipline on American children to promote ehtir so-called liberties.
• Naked hostility to religious values and their expression in public.
• A "one-world" approach to foreign relations that would prevent the U.S. government from imposing a policy that would benefit America first.
• A touchy-feely vision of our society that places individual self-expression and rights over self-sacrifice and adult responsibility.

Of course this is nothing profound to the veterans of the culture wars, but it is nice to have a summary of the position of those we disagree with. I would have included something about the political policy of Multiculturalism, Political Correctness and the philosophy of ethical relativism. But I guess O'Reilly is not a philosopher and he wants to stick to the issues at hand.

The book was an eye opener and identified some of the key figures and movements amongst the S-P movement, definately informative, but the book had too much of an "its us vs them, so lets get 'em" type flavour to it. A little too military. Although I generally agreed with O'Reilly, I guess I would have liked some more argumentation for his positions than was given. I think it is important to know why we believe what we do and why we disagree with others. But otherwise, the book is worth reading and definately applies to much that goes on in Australia too.

Damien