Asymmetric Books and Literature

I read Godless last year, but since it came out on paperback, I thought I’d discuss it a little here. The term "Godless" refers to those people who, according to Coulter, have replaced traditional religion with liberalism, a quasi-religion many people confuse with a political philosophy. Coulter makes her case by outlining some of the most strongly-held beliefs of the modern left and, finding no logical or physically evidential backing for them, pronounces them indicative of a self-justifying faith. Coulter’s book is a brisk read and not without worth, but it fails to accomplish its most lofty goal-of discrediting left political opinions by analogizing them with religion.

If Coulter were merely saying that people who don’t accept a Christian conception of the world (original sin, et al) are unlikely to advocate the same policies as their Christian brothers, Godless would be wholly accurate if a little banal. It’s when she makes a case for liberalism itself being a religion that Coulter begins to strain, for taken too far, one may apply Coulter’s criteria for opinion as faith to everything from sports fandom to numerous aesthetic appreciations (“he replaces love of God for a love of painting”).

In other words, unless one assumes that faith is the natural state of man and that whatever he cares about most becomes his religion, the thesis falls apart. Coulter doesn’t consider that people can see the same set of facts and arrive at a different conclusion just because they have different goals. For example, when Coulter makes the point that left policies in the sixties resulted in more crime, she’s correct, but the left didn’t relax criminal penalties to reduce crime; they reacted to some of the real abuses in the system at the time and desired a more equal and just criminal system, or proponents of a lax policy could have believed that, the nation being fundamentally corrupt, poor people had some crime coming to them. Those who thought being nice to criminals would reduce crime were guilty of embracing an incorrect theory or of fundamentally misunderstanding human nature, but does that mean that it’s a new religion?

On abortion, liberals don’t believe a fetus deserves protection and that a woman should control her own body. Given that postulation, why would they outlaw abortion? Indeed, do all moral postulations necessarily come from religion? Utilitarianists just think that moral actions are those that lead to the least pain (although masochists may disagree with that basis. Plus, you have to decide that's the goal in the first place. I don't know, maybe Ann's right.)

And who says atheists can’t find some things worthy of respect without calling it “piety”? Can’t liberals have reverence for Roe without it being spiritual?

And, then, why would she want to call mainstream left belief, religion? At some level, isn’t Coulter, conspicuously necklaced with a cross on the cover, insulting religion, implying as she does that religious belief is completely divorced from experience or scientific proof? She might as well say that wanting government to solve social problems is as silly as Christianity is as silly as tree worship.

If one finds Coulter’s "big idea" lacking, one can find value in Coulter’s individual arguments. Her attacks on left causes are each devastating except for the ID one. She knocks teachers down a peg (I’m a teacher, but I don’t like teachers’ propensity for bellyaching and self-importance); points out the contradictions and ironies inherent in liberals’ approach to race(her summaries of the Clarence Thomas and Willie Horton affairs are wonderful); and recounts how liberals react negatively to criticism as if disagreement over policy were akin to blasphemy. I personally can attest to the last one. When I pointed out that the American Psychological Association validated the research in Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve, a liberal friend of mine reacted like a Hezbollite after having read the funnies section of a Danish newspaper.

Which brings me to the most maddening part of the book: The last third is devoted to “debunking” Darwinism. Now, how much do you think Ann Coulter knows about evolution and biology? My feeling is that she knows barely enough to launch an attack against liberals. To be fair, she thanks Michael Behe, the ID godfather, for his “assistance” with the chapter, but I’d rather read a book by somebody who knows about the subject first hand than what is in Godless, essentially, an extended footnote.

As for the "Jersey Girls," a group of 9/11 widows who parlayed people’s sympathy into political influence; I understand what Coulter's saying when she criticizes them. I think less of people who use up good will for advantage in an unrelated enterprise and so does everybody else. Ann Coulter is the only one with the bravery (or tactlessness if you prefer) to say so.

As to Coulter’s writing style, whatever I say can’t compare to the description given to Coulter’s prose by the inimitable Florence King.

Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter

The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism by Michael J. Behe

STET, Damnit! by Florence King

Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) by Charles Murray