Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

[lazarus]

This book is by Charles Pierce. He starts and ends the book at the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

I give it 3.7 out of 5.2 stars (who says you have to use round numbers?). It's pretty good. I felt it lost the thread, so to speak, in the second half of the book.

He talks about the Three Great Premises, which are

1. Any theory is valid if it moves units
2. Anything can be true if it is said loudly enough
3. Fact is what enough people believe

and spends most of the book pointing out famous examples of these. One is the NAFTA Superhighway. He also goes into intelligent design and spends a little time on talk radio. I wish he had spent more time on how much damage talk radio and Faux News are doing to our political discourse, but he covers is fairly well.

I wouldn't buy it in hardcover, but it's worth the pick up in paperback or, as I did it, on the Kindle.