Outrage, Inc.

When I was a kid, I was big into conservationism.  I thought re-using things and recycling things was pretty cool.  We had a guy on our street that worked for Reynolds Aluminum Recycling Company (as I remember it, anyway; I could be wrong), and I remember driving with my dad to a semi trailer set up in a parking lot in Layton to drop off a bag of old aluminum cans and get a few dollars in return.  It seemed like a pretty cool thing to a kid.  I watched National Geographic specials about the ozone hole with interest and once even got a book from those Scholastic catalogs they always send around in schools about things kids could do to save the planet and stave off the impending ice age.

Outrage, Inc.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood by Derek Hunter (ISBN: 978-0-06-283552-9) talks about that very ice age and how it never came, but the same alarmism that drove the talk about it has not abated at all.  In fact, according to Hunter, the hype about the ice age’s replacement cause, climate change, is exponentially greater and has been combined with overwrought hype about dozens of other issues.  The thesis of Hunter’s work is that that hype is lacking a foundation in reality, but has overtaken all of pop culture, a lot of the news media, and a lot of the scientific world.  He talks a lot about the Leftist bias in all of those areas that the Right so often complains about.  In each section, he provides concrete examples and then some analysis to drive home the points being made.  He digs into some things that many readers probably would not even consider on their own, such as the budgets (and sources of those same budgets) for various movies.  He found that while the movie studios and producers make their mainstream fare, they also unabashedly spend millions on agenda-driven movies that usually don’t do well at the box office.  An agenda-driven press, though, happily covers those films in great detail.  Hunter discusses the origins of some of pop culture’s environmentalist stars like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson and why they are really only qualified to speak about certain issues, but seem to be asked for what are portrayed as authoritative statements on a variety of things.  Hunter notes that if people can be incited to anger, they do what all people do when angry: make less-effective decisions, including asking for government policy that limits liberty and voting in politicians that want to expand government control.

The book was an interesting read.  The bias argument is an old one that is not always easily provable either way.  Hunter’s myriad examples were welcome additions to this argument.  The strong connection he made between the ineffectiveness of emotion-driven decision making and the push in the media to keep people worked up about something was well made.  In the last few years, the Right in America has started paying more attention to pop culture than in the past, and they are right to do so if they want to make inroads there.  Hunter’s analysis explains why this is so key.  While I appreciated so many concrete examples of movies, newspapers, and other works that bolstered the points Hunter was making, I was disappointed that the book was so laid-back in tone and even had a few of the lame jokes that both political sides make about the other.  Leaving that out and using the same pages and ink for a few more solid examples of Hollywood spending, editorial bias, or pseudo-science would have improved the book markedly and made it applicable to a wider audience.

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Church of Cowards

I grew up in a religious family with parents and grandparents who were examples of hard work, service, dedication, and faith.  A lot of what they did was within the framework of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  As a young teenager, I remember when my dad gave a talk in church (almost every Sunday, two or three people from the congregation give talks — sermons, essentially — that they have prepared ahead of time, by invitation).  I don’t remember the particular subject, but it involved God’s command to love and serve our fellowmen.  As people were milling about after church, I overheard one person commenting on how my dad was certainly entitled to give a talk on that subject because he walked the walk, as they say.  I don’t know if I was meant to hear that comment, and I’ll never know, but I did, and it taught me a lesson.  In later life, I have spent a lot of time and effort trying to convince both myself and others that the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is one of action.  He expects us to be active instruments in His hands, seeking out others and lifting them up.

Church of Cowards: A Wake-up Call to Complacent Christians by Matt Walsh (ISBN: 978-1-62157-920-5) is a book about that very call to action.  In the book, Walsh discusses some of what he perceives to be problems in America and then talks about how they are largely, if not completely, overcome by Christians getting up and putting their religious beliefs into action.  While he is Catholic (not discussed in the book, but a known fact), the book is not directed at any specific denomination; the things he says are meant to be applicable by all believers.  He notes that polls generally find America to be about 70% Christian, but that America does not function like a country that is 70% Christian.  The opening chapter presents a fictionalized situation where barbarians come to America to slaughter Christians, something like ancient Rome, but can’t find anyone that will stand up for what the barbarians believe to be Christianity.  The people they find are wishy-washy and non-committal about anything other than their openness and tolerance.  The rest of the book that looks deeper into those watered-down values and how far they are from what Walsh believes is taught in the Bible.  Modern man’s disdain for organized religion, the commitment many show to entertainment instead of God, and a brand of religion that doesn’t require any sacrifice from its adherents are a few of the topics that draw Walsh’s ire in a, typical for his Internet-based daily show, scathing take-down of modern American Christianity.  The book asks those who call themselves Christian to start taking their religion more seriously, which, for most, will mean making effort to change and become more active.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book.  Podcasting doesn’t always equate to writing, so even though the author has a successful show, that doesn’t mean he’ll write a book successfully.  It probably helps that he also writes a regular column that tackles similar subject matter.  American culture is always in Walsh’s crosshairs, and the writing was not a disappointment.  I was also interested to see how religious writing from a conservative Catholic would square with the theology of my own church.  In general, it did, and the doctrinal differences expressed in the book were not central to his arguments, so I didn’t think they detracted from the points made and believe that would be true for most any denomination.  As with anything that touches touchy subjects, I didn’t agree with every word (he brilliantly took on Christian entertainment in a section with which I couldn’t agree more, though), but there was much where I was nodding in agreement and there was no arguing on the main point: America would be a vastly different country today were we who profess Christianity to actually live by its precepts in all facets of our lives.  The book is a call to action; it’s action that usually starts with ourselves.  Are we living our lives in accordance with God’s will or are we seeking our own?  The book serves, as its subtitle claims, as a great wake-up call.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.