World Turned Upside Down [Paperback]

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.

Quite seriously, don't bother. Two-hundred years ago we would have had the option of sending the author to Australia - I suggest that Coventry is our only option now. And to think we don't get VAT off this because she calls it a "book".

This is a great book. Phillips brings together some varied themes that define our times, such as, atheism, scientism as an act of faith, antisemitisim, and post-modernism and finds a compelling link; that we have lost the ability to think reasonably. She contends that a rational understanding of the world is essentially derived from positive view that God has formed this world and permits us to enjoy its discovery. Our abandonment of reason has left us unable to tell truth from lies or even know whether there is truth, which gives rise to the title of the book. In short, we abandoned our Christian dogma in favour of reason, because we did not want to be bound by Christian dogma, but then we found reason to be too hard a master, so we abandoned reason as well. In this book Phillips will alienate many readers who refuse to allow their predjudices to be challenged, but this book should be a light to many who are confused and alarmed about where contemporary culture is leading us and how we are being led there. Please read this book.