In Hoodwinked, Jack Cashill argues that progressive liberal intellectuals have been fabricating "facts" in order to shape the way Americans think about sex, abortion, guns, corporations, history and the American legal system.

America has been in the midstm of a culture war for sometime now. Progressive Liberals have had the advantage in that conflict for at least the last century. When considering this, one asks the obvious question: how have progressive intellectuals been able to commandeer the American cultural establishment? This is the theme of Jack Cashill’s "Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture." Using factual information combined with thoughtful and bold analysis, the author explores the impact that progressive intellectuals have had on American culture. The author’s primary argument takes the following form: progressive liberal intellectuals have been fabricating "facts" in order to shape the way Americans think about sex, abortion, guns, corporations, history and the American legal system. Cashill argues that progressive intellectuals alone could not have exerted much influence on American culture. What makes the progressive ideology so dominant, the author posits, is the fact that they have been supported by a leftist cultural establishment that took on the mission of praising, promoting and protecting any of the pronouncements forwarded by liberal intellectuals. Any declaration that advanced a leftist agenda was supported, regardless of the moral standards involved or complete lack of scientific basis.The purpose of the book is twofold. The author's first objective is to expose the many variations of cultural fraud perpetrated by those on the left of the cultural and political divide. As stated by Cashill:

Although cultural fraud has any number of variations, one can discern a general pattern: The hard left attracts the intellectual left with its almost Rousseauian purity and rawness. The intellectual left in turn intimidates the soft center left that so dominates America’s news production into silence and/or compliance. The news producers educate the open-minded center and the less informed liberals in their audience (9).

The second objective of the book is to identify the “spearheads” that are used by the liberal establishment to force their views on American society. The author identifies them as follows:

…but these spearheads are inevitably part of a larger front. This book identifies four such fronts: radical naturalism, sexual hedonism, Marxism and multiculturalism. All share an enemy in traditional Western culture, an antagonism to a Judeo-Christian God, an indifference to truth, and common ancestors in Charles Darwin and Karl Marx (10).

Cashill then proceeds to take the work of “unconnected and apolitical” professionals in the fields of literature, anthropology, the hard sciences, history, and the classics and fuses them together in an order that presents a devastating rebuke of progressive culture. Ultimately, Cashill’s analysis yields an “…unsettling pattern of institutional deception” (Powell’s Books.com) that clearly reveals the rot at the base of progressive liberal culture. The book is organized by chapters that are dedicated to each of the four spearheads mentioned by the author. Chapters 1 and 2, “The Poster Boys” and “The Sounds of Silence,” deal with the progressive left’s obsession with murderers turned Marxist scholars. The subject of chapter 1 is cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Accused and convicted of the murder of Officer Danny Faulkner in 1981, the author traces the killer’s rise to fame in leftist circles such as National Public Radio (NPR), The University of Colorado and the People’s International Tribunal for Justice. Chapter 3, “Colors of the Wind,” explores the Marxist attack on Anglo-American values. The form that the attack takes is classified by Cashill as “Zero-Sum Multiculturalism” (99). The author specifically points out those progressives who played a key role in ushering in the current wave of anti-Americanism, such as the recently deceased Susan Sontag and pseudo-documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. Most interesting in this chapter is the example that Cashill uses to prove the hypocrisy of the left and its blatant disregard for science and history. The example centers on the issue of the “Out of Africa” theory. According to this theory, the Greeks “stole” most of their civilization from Africa. Proponents of this line of thinking claim that Aristotle plundered the library of Alexandria and created Greek culture with what he stole –- conveniently ignoring the well-established historical and archaeological fact that the library of Alexandria was built after Aristotle’s death. Chapter 4, “Darwin’s Heirs,” is a treatment of the current state of the Theory of Evolution, and the connections of this theory with the intentions and plans of Nazi Germany. Exposing the flaws that the leftist scientific community has hidden from most of America, Cashill covers those elements of the Theory of Evolution that conflict with modern science. In addition, the author explains the American education establishment’s continuing efforts to keep challengers to Darwin’s theory, such as Intelligent Design, from being taught in the classroom. The fifth and final chapter, "Sexual Fantasies," explores the left’s fascination of sex without morality. "No Gods, No Masters" is the apt title of the chapter’s first section. Cashill tackles and exposes to his audience all the crimes committed by progressive heroes such as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and “legendary” sex researcher Alfred Charles Kinsey. Well researched, Hoodwinked has a wealth of endnotes that can be used to start individual research into the arguments and claims made by Cashill. The afterword does an excellent job of summarizing the book’s arguments, and even provides a list of lessons that, according to Cashill, history has taught on the subject of why progressives and the liberal establishment do what they do. Cashill's achievement is thoroughly engrossing. The book’s richness of detail make the work difficult to put aside and the author’s arguments hard to dismiss. Cashill’s opinions are so well argued that they are impossible to ignore, and while they are, for the most part, written in an academic style, the prose is easily understandable. Based on the strength of the author’s research, the objective reader can easily be swayed to agree with Cashill’s arguments. Even the most basic level of research can prove Cashill correct, if one takes the time to look. The societal impact that the book will have on American culture is what makes the work so unforgettable. The larger issue raised by the book is the possibility that the hegemony held by the progressive establishment is almost at an end. This can be seen in the reactions to Cashill's book in liberal circles. The truth is coming to light, not just in Cashill’s work, but in the work of other writers as well: authors such as Michael Fumento, Dr. Jeffery Satinover, Judith Reisman and Johnathan Wells. Hoodwinked is a definite must read for those Americans who value honesty above all else. More than just a shot across the bow of the progressive establishment, Jack Cashill has brought to the American public the unadulterated truth. While his critics may be able to fault him because of his ideology, they will not be able to fault his arguments and the evidence that supports them. More important, however, is the fact that Cashill has made this information readily available for public consumption, and this availability is what will prove to be the book's greatest contribution to American culture. Hoodwinked is available on Amazon.com.