|
| 
 enlarge | Author: David Klinghoffer
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $8.66
You Save: $16.29 (65%)
New (37) Used (14) from $7.65
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 712955
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0385515421
Dewey Decimal Number: 261.7
EAN: 9780385515429
ASIN: 0385515421
Publication Date: June 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-9 of 9 | | « PREV | | |
 An important read. July 4, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book left me with a lot to think about. The author knows his stuff and makes very interesting points, some quite unexpected from a Christian perspective. The book gave me a different way to look at current events in this country, more from God's perspective based on what the Bible says God's perspective is. I truly enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone who would like to have a better idea of what God thinks about current events.
 I read title and subtitle July 2, 2008
4 out of 27 found this review helpful
I read title and subtitle but not the rest of the book. The title page is enough for me to offer my criticism that the most dangerous and imbecilic persons of the world are those who claim to know the mind of God.
Whenever you hear such a person speak the Cuckoo clock should start chiming and the Department of Homeland Security's terrorist threat level should be raised.
Conservatives ignore this book at their peril! June 30, 2008
11 out of 21 found this review helpful
This is an important book. It is well researched, easy to read, and most of all timely. It is not a book for the hard core left or liberals in general whose unifying principle is a rejection of biblical authority. It is timely because, however softly it has come upon us, we conservatives no longer feel free to make our points from Scripture. But why should this be so when for most of American history this is precisely how we have argued? Scripture is at the foundation of our society and culture--and of Western Civilization. Even atheists should appreciate this, for their freedom too issues not from a state atheism, which in the 20th century enslaved millions, but from our forefather's reading of Scripture.
Klinghoffer has put his finger on the unstated pivot in the culture war--the Bible. The left speaks of "framing"--seemingly to frame its arguments so as to hide its atheism. Well, if we don't begin to frame our arguments from their true source we are going to lose.
Klinghoffer also provides insight into scriptural understanding generally unfamiliar to Christians, yet as an Orthodox Jew he is sympathetic to Christians and backs up his reasoning from both Old and New Testaments. One can argue with his conclusions--that's not the point. The point is that we argue from Scripture.
Of particular interest is Klinghoffer's refrerence to the biblical concepts of "purity" (tahor) and "impurity" (tame), the first pertaining to life, the exercise of free will, responsibility, creation, and the latter to the suppression or denial of these things. The political party and mindset which sees us all as victims of chance and necessity, and is thus hostile to concepts of guilt and moral obligation, has fallen under the spell of "tame". This is an area of biblical thought that Christians as well as Jews would do well to ponder.
Klinghoffer also pinpoints the problem as idolatry, as on page 210: "Idolatry manifests itself in every age. Its essence lies in setting up moral authorities in competition with, or to the negation of, God. Today, aggressive secularism possesses all of the classic pagan hallmarks: relativism, nature worship, sexual corruption, and a willingness to sacrifice children for the cause."
John Kwok (the reviewer above) has it wrong. Though Klinghoffer doesn't go into it in this book, evidence for the Darwin-Holocaust connection is overwhelming and documented by many reputable historians. Darwinism lies at the very heart of the culture war. One can take whatever side he will, but let's not deny the crux of the conflict.
I highly recommend the book.
Well-Written, Fundamentally Flawed Thesis In Favor of Injecting "God's Politics" Into American Political Life June 23, 2008
24 out of 49 found this review helpful
Having encountered such "enlightening" pearls of wisdom (see below) recently from a fellow Brunonian, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Klinghoffer, I didn't quite know whether I would be interested in reading Klinghoffer's latest excursion in defending Orthodox religion and advocating its insertion into American political life. Well my "friend" Klinghoffer doesn't disappoint, offering some well-reasoned logic amidst his ample quotations from Old Testament Scripture. Much to his credit, Klinghoffer offers an extremely cogent, quite persuasive, argument in support of gun control. However, that is the logical and literary apex of his book.
"How Would God Vote? Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative" isn't nearly as stridently polemical as some of David's recent musings on the relationship between Darwinian thought and the origins of the Shoah (Nazi Holocaust):
"While it must be very clearly emphasized that the gentle-souled Darwin himself never supported ill treatment of any race or group, his words inspired a movement to 'scientific' racism."
"'Eugenics,' breeding humans for excellence, is a word coined by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton in 1865, six years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species. In America itself, between 1907 and 1958, in states including Indiana, California, and Washington, some 60,000 genetically "unfit" persons were legally sterilized against their will. Germany took eugenics to the point of murder, euthanizing 70,000 of the unfit."
"You only have to read Mein Kampf to see the indebtedness. A shrewd manipulator of his fellow Germans' sympathy for scientifically flavored racial theorizing, Hitler gives a Darwinian-style analysis of how the struggle for existence mandates a defense of the Aryan race."
"After the release of a controversial new documentary on evolution, public debate spiraled into the gutter. The Anti-Defamation League is making sure it stays there."
"It was from an obsessive Darwin-defender that I learned of the Anti-Defamation League's attack on the theatrical documentary Expelled, for 'misappropriat[ing] the Holocaust.' This guy is constantly emailing me. He warned that the ADL had just 'issued a terse press release today condemning the equation of `Darwinism' with Nazism in Expelled. How can you call yourself a religious Jew and still believe in such Fundamentalist Protestant Christian nonsense like Intelligent Design?'"
"I thanked my email correspondent for a good laugh. The idea that, having defended Expelled's thesis concerning Hitler's intellectual debt to Charles Darwin, I would now feel chastised and repentant because of a statement from the ADL, an organization for which I have not a feather's weight of respect! This was rich stuff."
Again, much to his credit, Klinghoffer's "perceptive" arguments stray far from the breathtaking inanity of these absurd comments of his (which you can find posted at www.discovery.org), especially the last three paragraphs, which were written as a rebuttal to my email correspondence (EDITORIAL NOTE: I am the "obsessive Darwin-defender" he refers to, but I do recall - and have saved my email correspondence - that I only rarely wrote to him. Look under the appropriate heading at www.expelledexposed.com to see how deplorable and despicable Klinghoffer's comments truly are.) In addition to his thoughtful comments on gun control, Klinghoffer has some intriguing comments on the state of United States foreign relations with Europe and Israel. But these few excellent chapters do not constitute the entire totality of what is yet another dismal effort from a Discovery Institute Senior Fellow - I'd prefer the term "mendacious intellectual pornographer" - to inject his own Fundamentalist religious beliefs into the American body politic.
Klinghoffer is wrong in condemning abortion. He is wrong in condemning gay and lesbian rights. But most importantly, he is wrong in condemning the state of "secular" public education in schools (Incidentally he attacks "Darwinian evolution" as valid science, stating that there are valid scientific alternatives such as Intelligent Design, without explaining how and why they are valid. As someone trained in evolutionary biology, I will only note that Klinghoffer's claim is not merely incredulous, but truly a sterling example of breathtaking inanity.).
Instead of reading Klinghoffer's "brilliance", I must recommend instead, "Grand Theft Jesus", written by Robert S. McElvaine, a moderate Evangelical Protestant historian who recognizes why a strict separation must exist between church and state. Not only will you get a better understanding as to how religious fervor is corrupting the current state of the American body politic - which Klinghoffer doesn't offer - but also a better understanding as to what ought to constitute good theology from a Judeo-Christian perspective.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
