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Sir, you are too kind: What they are afflicted with is Marxism, and they suffer us to bear the din of their agitprop.

This screed is nothing more than a barely veiled attempt to degrade Western Civilization. It has become so vile in the academy that the mask can now be purely symbolic. The mask is merely a mannerism - it is not meant to conceal anything

I keep wanting to write a book that contrasts this period of learning with other decadent periods, say the Scholastic period or the early Georgian. Certainly these clowns today are in pursuit of substances as rare as phlogisten and alkahest

This is not history: It is modern alchemy. (I would wager, however, that the "author" would take this as a compliment.)

What a wholly ignorant, uncivilized and brutish lot have taken over our schools. Can we survive it?

It is like watching a orangutan with a rare oboe in its hands.

These people haven't th faintest clue about what a civilization is or what it is for. They think it is about tastes in coffees.

T>>>>his is not history: It is modern alchemy

A lot of what Guns, Germs and Really Crappy Thinking has to say seems almost argued on its own merits, rather than on evidence. In his chapter on how supposedly Asia and Europe got better agriculturally because they tended to migrate from East to West, I finished it thinking to myself.

"He can't be stupid enough to argue this. Between the Appalachian Mtns in the Southern US and The Mississippi River, you've got more arable land than the entire country of Germany. This chapter explains absolutely nothing. The Natives could easily have gone West for 300 miles before they would even have had to invent the canoe."

His chapter on agricultural animals was even more vapid. This man has obviously never broken a Mustang or talked to anyone who had before he wrote. No member of the equine specious is naturally calm and gentle. Zebras are much like the old horses in North America in temperament. The book is twaddle.

These people haven't th faintest clue about what a civilization is or what it is for. They think it is about tastes in coffees.

I may need to borrow that for a supplemental tagline. It is worthy of VDH or G.K. Chesterton.

Cheers!