The Smearing of Paul Gottfried
Letter to the editor from Thomas Woods
Washington Times, 10/1/02
As an avid reader of The Washington Times, I was stunned at the childish and unprofessional review of Paul Gottfried's new book Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt, Books, Sunday).
Reviewer Herb Greer, a self-described "American writer who lives in Salisbury, England," is guilty either of gross incompetence or appalling ignorance, since no other explanation can account for how he could portray Mr. Gottfried's book as merely a lengthy conspiracy theory. Mr. Gottfried's whole point is precisely that multiculturalism is not a conspiracy, but rather is promoted by a reigning ideology whose premises are taken for granted in the media, government and even in corporate America.
In fact, he specifically pointed out that in Britain, the politically correct regime of Tony Blair may well be what the British public wants. Isn't that the opposite of a conspiracy?
Your reviewer seems to think that by accusing Mr. Gottfried — a Yale Ph.D., by the way, whose 1999 book, After Liberalism, was published by Princeton — of peddling nothing more than a conspiracy theory, readers will conclude that this poor soul must be some kind of crank who can be safely ignored. No one who read even part of Mr. Gottfried's book could have arrived at this dishonest conclusion.
If I want brusque, uninformed dismissals of distinguished conservative scholars, I'll read The Washington Post.
October 2, 2002
Copyright 2002 by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. [send him mail] holds a AB from Harvard and a PhD from Columbia. He teaches history, is associate editor of The Latin Mass Magazine, and is co-author (with Christopher A. Ferrara) of The Great Façade: Vatican II and the Regime of Novelty in the Roman Catholic Church (2002). The book (as well as a sample chapter) is available at greatfacade.com.
