The White Whale.

The article discusses the ways that reason and empirical thought have been downgraded in the United States, and how a religious movement in the Middle East and a fundamentalist reading of an ancient text has led to tribal war, jihad, and the denial of the Holocaust by the president of Iran. The author discusses the ways that U.S. President George W. Bush has set our national education back by creating reasons for entering the Iraq war, and by fostering secret surveillance of U.S. citizens.