Quite a few creationists, conservatives, and religious-right-types appear to be enthusiastic about Ann Coulter’s latest rant, Godless. So I stopped by at a bookstore and hastily read about half of it. (I’m not buying the thing. Being a bibliomaniac, I spend enough on books that I don’t feel guilty stting down in Borders occasionally and reading loony literature I have no intention of supporting financially.)

It was kind of interesting. It has quite a lot of anti-evolutionary posturing, aside from its perhaps more predictable attacks on secularism and “liberals.” There’s nothing resembling a real argument in the book — it’s a series of insults against “liberals,” can-you-believe-this anecdotes etc. Nothing wrong with that — much of it is actually kind of humorous, even when it’s my ox that’s being gored. But Coulter (and her audience, presumably) clearly have no regard for truth as I understand it. My first reaction was to think that she’s just lying in every other sentence, but now I’m not sure. Perhaps she just doesn’t care. Ideology frames everything — her “facts” and attempts at reasoning are just apologetic devices for a position that has little to do with any actual argument.

Thing is, when reading stuff like this, I invariably start wondering if this is the way most people think about political and religious matters. Scary thought…