Editor's Desk
by Robert James Bidinotto“Do you know that introspectively?
That’s what I’m tempted to ask whenever some smirking postmodern poseur declares the human mind to be innately irrational, unreliable, subjective, distorting, etc. Wouldn’t that very generalization also be irrational, unreliable, emotion-driven, distorting, etc.? Surely, someone who professes that his own species is irredeemably irrational can’t have much to offer me.
Still, because the ideas of postmodernists have caused much damage, I’m grateful to those serious intellectuals who have the professional inclination—and stomach—to study and refute them. Our senior editor, Roger Donway, is one of these latter, and so is the man he interviews this month for our cover feature: philosopher Stephen Hicks. In recent years, Dr. Hicks has won a respectful following by deconstructing the deconstructionists, so to speak. In an engaging dialogue, these two brilliant men offer a lucid summary of postmodernist ideas and their malignant consequences. It’s an important interview that I’m delighted to showcase here.
I also assigned Mr. Donway to review, as a sort of companion piece to the interview, Why Truth Matters—a book which attempts to take on the postmodernists, but which presents an ultimately flawed philosophical defense of truth-seeking. Since we simply can’t get enough of Roger, you’ll find his monthly “Private I” column in the following pages, too. Expanding upon matters he raised in his April essay, he challenges the popular conception of the corporate CEO as the obedient servant of corporate shareholders. Is there a view of corporate organization that’s more compatible with individualism? Read on.
Many readers have enjoyed the profiles of authors Tom Wolfe and Cameron Hawley that Marsha Enright has written for past issues of TNI. This time, she introduces us to another of her favorite writers: James Clavell, whose thrilling romantic novels set in the Far East have beguiled millions.
Last month, Ed Hudgins launched a new feature here, reviewing classic TV documentary series of decades past. He began with Kenneth Clark’s memorable Civilisation, A Personal View. He continues in this issue with Jacob Bronowski’s monumental 1973 series The Ascent of Man—perhaps the finest tribute to human achievement ever to grace the small screen. Ed also reviews two compelling books by atheist Sam Harris that address (and bravely attempt to un-convert) religious believers.
TNI entertainment editor Robert L. Jones saw Pan’s Labyrinth last month and was almost ready to give up hope about the future of independent film. But his optimism returned a few weeks ago when he saw the Oscar-winning foreign film The Lives of Others, which he compares favorably with Orson Welles’s finest. Our Mr. Jones also thoroughly enjoyed Amazing Grace, a biopic of the courageous and dedicated man who ended slavery in the British Empire. And he reports happy news about the recent re-release of a film classic, Becket, starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole.
Environmentalism is making its biggest comeback since the 1970s. The media tell us several thousand times per day that the catastrophic one-degree-Centigrade warming we’ve detected over the past century is caused by humans. If so, no doubt a measurable portion must be attributable to the copious hot air emerging from the lips of Al Gore, the hardest-campaigning presidential non-candidate in history. But is he motivated by sound science? In my closing “Soliloquy,” I suggest that it may be something else: a perspective about human nature that Mr. Gore shares with the postmoderns.