Excellent, very readable, all good arguments and points.

I read "How to talk to a Liberal" first, then went on to this book. I liked her essays as short, informative opinions on topics I was not as up to date on as I should be. She is generally very rational person, and even though I don't usually agree with her I can understand her arguments. I just wish I was there to argue back.

Now this book was different. I almost gave her four stars, but her lengthy arguments always started to fall apart. The entire premise of the book that Liberalism is a church is pretty insane. Well, beyond insane. Also, the fiscal conservative and the social conservative hold a strained relationship, as do to a lesser extent fiscal liberals and social liberals. The title suggest she is only going to address the social aspects, yet she jumps from both.

The most informative to me was the section on schools and teacher pay. As education is very interesting to me, I couldn't put into words a lot of the thoughts she had. I wish she talked more about fixing the issue, rather than assuming that taking money away would automatically make schools more efficient. Maybe if we never got to where we are that would have been the right solution 60 years ago, but we are here now.

The most bothersome part to me was the section about the theory of evolution, which she annoyingly referred to Darwinism. The section was filled with half truths about evolution, and showed the lack of thorough scientific rigor she complained about. She proclaimed irreducible complexity as evidence against evolution, even though it has been dismissed. She confuses the origin of life with the origin of species. The origin of life does not have a very robust theory, but after you get past that origin of species by evolution is a highly plausible mechanism.

This also was bothersome because the half truths were half true. The Cambrian explosion is a gap in the theory of evolution. It really doesn't make sense in terms of evolution for so many species to appear so quickly. Neither does the global indigestion that let to fossil fuels. It doesn't make since that large, complicated plant organism were able to evolve such a strong defensive mechanism that it took an amazingly long for microbes to overcome it. And these things aren't taught in school. I saw the embriology studies in school, thought it was bullshit, and not only was it actually bullshit but it was known for a long time to be bullshit. Same as the origin of life experiments. Amino acids are not life, so forming them is still a long way from life. There does appear to be a concerted effort to mislead students and people about proof of evolution. And that bothers me that she is right.

I don't like her writing style as much as others, but the message is very much needed.

A fantastic and cathartic read.