World Turned Upside Down [Hardcover]

I found Melanie Phillip's book refreshing, challenging and, can I confess it, a little chilling. Having read Peter Hitchens', 'The Abolition of Britain' some years ago, I found that this began on a not dissimilar line - that the old mores by which we understand our world and our place in it have been gradually and almost subliminally undermined by a culture generated not by reason, but by ideology and fanatical creed. The author then narrows her detailed argument into an examination of the rise of the thought processes that have warped and bent truth to become something unrecognisable but difficult to contend with in a world where informed opinion is so invaded by its rhetoric. She records with the demise of reasonable thought, the rise of all kinds of wacky and insane ideas, ideas encouraged by an elite to whom the only virtue is the contemptuous destruction of anything virtuous.

I think of Pilate who, embittered and heart-hardened over years by the politics and machinations of the Roman court intrigues, was to say to the One in Whom was embodied Truth itself, 'what is truth?'. That cynicicsm and disregard for empirical reality is evidenced in our own world, made suspicious and distrustful of anything pure or just simply true if it does not fit the agenda. Melanie in fact goes further, she identifies the discounting of reason as not simply a lack of thinking, but an active process aimed at corrupting the facts and producing a whole set of new 'realities' by the new self-appointed Select who have set themselves up as the makers of the new truth. A brave new world indeed.
C.S. Lewis described something similar in his fictional book, 'That Hideous Strength' though, in Mrs Phillip's book, it is not fictional and she presents real and historical damning evidences with thorough and painstaking research.
The highlighting of the pulling down of the old certainties and a creation of new ones built of dangerous, idealogically distorted world-views based on the new truth construct is something we all need awakened to. Sleep-walking into a world where being able to debate and argue using fact and reason is reviled and outlawed by the intolerant cant of 'tolerance' will be a real shock for those who wait til then to awaken.

Although I cannot say I share all of Melanie Phillip's opinions and conclusions, nonetheless, I applaud her integrity and courage in saying what surely needs to be said. Truth is not something like beauty; in the eye of the beholder. It is what it is, and the author shows us that so much of what we are program-fed today is simply not it. Dangerously not it.

I have just finished reading this book and was particularly interested to read a social comentator who describes herself as 'an agnostic Jew' coming to similar conclusions to myself from my Evangelical Christian perspective. Having said that, she seems to be arguing that there is some virtue in the ideas in the Hebrew Torah which are beneficient and society-building in themselves without quite coming to terms with the idea of the BSG (Big Scary God)who must be obeyed. This is a bit of a stretch.

Her main thesis is, essentially, that the Western civilisation (formerly known as Christendom) of which we enjoy the benefits is deeply threatened because our leaders and key opinion formers and leaders-including the heirarchy of the Church of England- have misled us into neglecting and denying the foundational beliefs and values upon which it was based. These are found in or arise from the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish people, and have been proved and tested by the remarkable survival of the Jews despite persecution for millenia. She argues that the so called 'Enlightenment' divorced from the Judaeo-Christian background in which it arose, became the Terror of the French revolution and various other godless Utopias since.

She says, science, rationality and Western civilisation arose from a world view that was shaped by the Bible and will not flourish in a world from which Biblical values, specifically for Phillips Old Testament values, have vanished. This view is at odds with the 'we do not need God in order to be good' school of thought as articulated by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Chris Hitchens, A C Grayling etc.

In a chapter called 'the green/black/red/Islamic alliance' Philips offers an explanation as to why various Utopian creeds (the 'Deep Green' environmentalist movement, Islam and Socialism) have formed a kind of alliance against Jewish and Christian beliefs. The strange thing about this alliance is that the 'Green' and Liberal-Left movements fail to appreciate that Islam with its non-negotiable global ambitions will devour them, 'Enlightenment', modernity, liberal sexual values and all, once they have helped Islam to devour Judaism and Christianity.

Phillips' attempt to explain this strange blindness is in terms of a broad based and deep loathing of Jews and Israel based on their obstinately standing in the way of the realisation of global Utopias, whether secular or Islamic. Her arguments are more complex than I can satisfactorily set out in a brief review. I find them partly convincing and certainly worth considering. Her bias in favour of Israel does limit the book's value, but at least she is open and honest about her bias unlike many others who hide their equally strong opposite bias under a cloak of pretended objectivity and balance. Philips offers historical evidence for her claims, I confess I am not enough of a history scholar to evaluate them, but they at least deserve to be heard given her claims of anti-Israel bias especially in the BBC.

4 stars only as I feel it is too Jewish-centred, but a challenging read. For those who can see Britain in particular going to hell in slow motion and wonder why nobody who is worried about Islamification, the intolerant PC culture, creeping overregulation and intellectual tyranny seems to be sufficiently concerned or engaged to do something about it, this may be of some interest. Recommended reading for disenchanted conservatives, and to be read alongside Peter Hitchens 'The Cameron delusion'.

She also touches on the pathological God-hatred of the Dawkinists and, while disavowing young earth creationism, asks why the intelligent design hypothesis is demonised, lampooned, misrepresented and denied a hearing but never seriously engaged with, when it offers realistic and rational scientific arguments that at least deserve a hearing and which many think severely challenge Darwinian orthodoxy. But that's another story

Melanie Phillips has produced an analysis of the malaise which currently afflicts British culture specifically, and western culture in general. It is breathtaking in its scope and meticulously researched. Her conclusions are extremely worrying, but they are logically deduced from observance of objective reallity. Melanie Phillips is an excellent journalist and she brings the journalistic skills of research and analysis to this book; her literary style is almost colloquial and very readable.

Anyone who experiences a sense of unease at the decline of western culture, morality, and values will find that this book gives shape, form, logic, and reason to their feelings.

This is possibly one of the most important books written in the last half century. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone.