Friday 11 November 2011

Thought Prison - reviews so far

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James Kalb -

http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node/2909

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Blogger 'Bonald' -

http://bonald.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/
thought-prison-the-fundamental-nature-of-pc/

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Blogger 'Proph' -

http://collapsetheblog.typepad.com/blog/2011/08/
hell-and-the-politically-correct-mind-a-review-of-bruce-charltons-thought-prison.html

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SciFi writer John C Wright -

http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/11/
political-correctness-is-the-substance-of-darkness-part-i/

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http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/11/
political-correctness-is-the-substance-of-darkness-part-ii/

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Thanks very much for these - such engaged and thoughtful consideration is exactly what this author yearns for.

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4 comments:

Jonathan said...

I really like the second paragraph of Bonald's review for the way it connects different threads of your work together. Even though I've read your blog start to finish and re-read a good portion of it in the book, this excerpt from Bonald helped me see how it coheres:

The PC adherent sees the universe and human life as meaningless, and he sees truth as an arbitrary social construct. He regards natural and customary human behavior as irredeemably corrupted with selfishness. He finds moral purity rather in abstract organization, which alone can be truly altruistic because it can be undeniably unnatural and unspontaneous. The specific nature of the alleged moral failings of prior systems are of secondary importance–more a matter of justification than real motivation. How well the PC-managed replacement works is entirely irrelevant, because it is morally superior by definition. The struggle to destroy the old, unjust, “reactionary” organizations re-fuses the world with pseudo-meaning; PC has a greater need to identify enemies than belief systems that acknowledge an objective ultimate Good.

Daniel said...

Murderer's row!

Bruce Charlton said...

@Daniel - for British readers benefit, I am assuming you refer to the 'deadly' New York Yankees baseball batting line-up in the Babe Ruth era...

Daniel said...

@bgc

Yes. For opposing pitchers, facing "Murderers' Row" and emerging intact was considered a mighty feat.

Any stretch of consecutive great hitters gets called that these days (Seattle had it's own Murderers' Row back in the late 1990's), but the name was originally given to the Yankees (especially in 1927), including Ruth and Gehrig back-to-back.