We have been fortunate in the West to have inherited the classically liberal values of individual liberty, freedom of speech and association, private property rights and many other traditions enshrined in our founding documents. With these bedrock principles in place, the West has created probably the most opportunity, innovation and prosperity for the greatest number of people than any other previous civilization.
But there are forces at play in our society that seek to undermine the West's core principles. These postmodern forces attempt to deconstruct traditional norms and underlying objective truth claims and seek to replace them with relative reality claims and grievance based argumentation.
In this book, Gad Saad, evolutionary psychologist, addresses the growing and alarming movement of postmodernism, social constructivism and progressivism that is invading and parasitizing social discourse. In this movement, the one who can deconstruct truth the loudest or can make the greatest grievance claim can claim the intellectual and moral high-ground in an argument, despite any relationship (or lack thereof) that their claims bear to the truth.
Dr. Saad shows in this book, how a small minority of people making these parasitic arguments can significantly influence the tone of society and public discourse. He shows how to restore the authority of truth over grievance by creating nomological networks of cumulative evidence. This is a great book and necessary read for anyone interested in engaging effectively in the marketplace of ideas.
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