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Get Smart: The Rise Of Authoritarianism And Our Crackpot Culture, Kenneth Anderson
Get Smart: The Rise Of Authoritarianism And Our Crackpot Culture, Kenneth Anderson
Book Reviews
Review of "Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety", by Wendy Kaminer, Pantheon (2000)Abstract:This essay reviews a book by distinguished cultural critic Wendy Kaminer on the rise in American society of culturally and politically powerful forces of irrational belief that have become increasingly able to impose what amounts to their private pieties on the polity and the public square. Kaminer has a wide range of targets in mind, ranging across the religious and belief spectrum, from Christian creationists to New Age occultists. She argues that the prevalent multicultural ethic gives them ground to demand that their …
Where No Man Has Gone Before: Star Trek And The Death Of Cultural Relativism In America, Kenneth Anderson
Where No Man Has Gone Before: Star Trek And The Death Of Cultural Relativism In America, Kenneth Anderson
Book Reviews
This 1997 Times Literary Supplement (London) essay reviews the 1996 Star Trek (Next Generation) film First Contact, along with a book of essays in cultural studies about Star Trek (Taylor Harrison, et al., Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek). Of greatest long term interest in the moral and political philosophy of Star Trek is the so-called Prime Directive - non interference in local culture on local planets. This Vietnam era ethic of cultural relativism was prominent in the original 1960s Star Trek series as much for its assertion as for being regularly violated by Captain Kirk and his crew. …