But even with that caveat, there is a small part of me that is disappointed in his latest book The Tyranny of Clichés.  Don’t get me wrong, it is a quick, entertaining and informative book; full of useful arguments, insights and food for thought.  At its most basic it is a challenge to conservatives to fight back and not allow the left in this country to continue to make lazy, ideological loaded statements and arguments in the name of pragmatism and a fake “just the facts, ma’am” attitude.

For more on the book’s message and arguments, and on my rather subtle disappointment, keep reading.

First the sense of disappointment.  Here is the thing.  I am a intellectual history nerd.  I love the battle of ideas and the war of words and a host of other – yes – cliches that we use when we talk about intellectual history and public engagement with worldviews and arguments.  I thought Liberal Fascism was a powerful piece of historical push back.  As I said at the time:

I found Liberal Fascism to be an interesting read and one that forces you to understand and wrestle with many of the fundamental political issues of the twentieth century and their implications for today.

It bugs me that many attempt to dismiss Jonah as a joke teller and try to dismiss his success as a fluke (or worse connect it to his mother).  Jonah is a serious writer who wrestles with important issues that lie at the heart of so many of our political, cultural and societal problems.  He understands the rot at the heart of liberalism and yet the unwillingness of so many to deal with the actual intellectual, philosophical and historical truths at the root of this problem.

Yes, he enjoys and is engaged with and knowledgeable about popular culture.  Yes, he is funny and doesn’t take himself all that seriously.  But he is much more than pull my finger or woman’s prison flick jokes.

But Jonah has admitted the voice he enjoys writing with, and that most reflects his personality, is closer to The Tyranny of Cliches (TOC) than Liberal Fascism.  Which frustrates me somewhat because there so much potential depth and intellectual heft involved in Jonah’s thesis yet this book really just skims the surface.

But you know what? If Jonah took the time and hard work to write a detailed, flushed out more academic style book about the cliches and deceptions that underly contemporary liberalism few would probably read it and its impact would be much smaller.  This is in many ways a problem of popular perception and so perhaps that is where the battle must be fought.  But I would have loved a more fully geeked-out version. Just sayin’ …

So what is TOC about? Basically, it is about how the left seeks to sneak in ideology, and poor thinking, by laying claim to science, pragmatism, rationality and just plain goodness via an assortment of cliches, catch phrases and pithy statements.

As Jonah explains

Pragmatism is the disguise progressives and other ideologues don when they want to demonize competing ideologies.

For Goldberg ideology is not an insult.  Everyone has an ideology.  Whether you call it a worldview or first principles or fundamental assumptions or political philosophy or framework or whatever, we all start somewhere when we seek to make decisions, make policy or judge actions and outcomes. This is ideology.

Perhaps contra Russell Kirk, and other in the traditionalist or Burkean school, modern conservatives embrace ideology (at least of this type).  We argue about conservatism versus libertarianism, about paleocons versus neocons, about Ayn Rand versus William F. Buckley, about Kirk versus Frank Meyer (OK maybe just me on this one), etc.  We pride ourselves on arguing from bedrock principles and ideas.

The left in contrast is supposedly about what works.  Study the facts and find the solution, right?

Hogwash, says Goldberg. Progressives have a deep-and often dark-intellectual history that continues to influence their thought and policy prescriptions to this day.  But those roots don’t sell quite as well today, and they have some larger implications that the public might not accept, so the left chucks it all in the closet and pretends it doesn’t exist.

The point of TOC, in my opinion, is to help conservatives recognize this history and behavior and engage the left, forcing them to own their history and admit their ideology. I also think there are a few lessons for the right in the book.

First, both history and ideas matter.  Conservatives must be ever vigilant in defending their ideas and history from the encroachment of these liberal urban legends.  In chapter after chapter Jonah shows how these concepts and catch phrases are built on faulty history and ideological bias.  The historical background has been so warped as to produce a meaning in public discourse that is the exact opposite of what actually happened and was intended.

Philosophical Pragmatism is ideology not mere practicality or trial and error; Social Darwinism has no connection to conservatism and never did; Social Justice has come to mean the opposite of what it was intended to convey and is now an ideological trojan horse used to indoctrinate students; the Catholic Church in fact has a long history of fighting for the dignity of human beings and the defense of civilization not the destruction of science and freedom; on and on it goes.

Conservatives must know this history and be able to communicate it to the public so as to change their perceptions.  We must be able to tell stories that emotionally connect so as to tear down the default liberal assumptions of so much of popular culture and political debate.  You can’t assume that your ideas and the actual history of issues are known and understood.  We must not just attack the left but build on own story and tell our own history.

And a related point, and a cautionary one, is that self-deception is dangerous and damaging.  Seems like common sense but it is important.  Jonah argues that the underlying root of the tyranny of cliches is that these are the lies the left tells itself.  This has not led to an intellectually robust and dynamic movement but instead to a flabby, and in many aways viciously reactionary and often vulgar, movement that seeks a soft despotism of state involvement in every aspect of people’s lives all in the name of “solving problems” and “helping people” (hello Liberal Fascism).

What the right must do is reach the public with the message that things are not so simple and pretending they are leads to bad policy and bad outcomes.  A massive welfare state leads to dependence and dysfunctional families not a utopian community; sometime violence is needed and avoiding it quite often leads to even more violent and widespread suffering; an ideological and rigid belief in diversity as a good in and of itself leads to discrimination, closed minds and mediocrity not social uplift; there is such a thing as too much democracy and unity at the expense of freedom and individuality is dangerous a common tool of tyranny.

The simple message underneath is lazy thought leads to bad things.  This is a deeply conservative viewpoint – life isn’t as simple as you think it is and can’t be controlled and planned through willpower and good intentions.  In a humorous and engaging way, TOC forces you to unpack and re-think some of the fundamental cliches of our time.  And to see the base stealing the left is engaged in every day.  Conservatives must challenge and seek to overthrow this default position.  But they must also guard against engaging in equally damaging simplification and self-deception.

Perhaps, that could be Jonah’s next book …

Related articles

• Jonah Goldberg on The Tyranny of Cliches (collectedmiscellany.com)

Listen Here.

Sure enough, Buckley is as fair-minded a study of its subject’s career as you could possibly expect from a contributor to The Nation and Tikkun. It deals bluntly but honestly with such difficult topics as his equivocal views on civil rights, and it gives him full credit for having purged the conservative movement of such “loonies” (Buckley’s word) as the members of the John Birch Society. Above all, Bogus recognizes that “Buckley and his colleagues changed America’s political realities,” both by making conservatism intellectually and socially respectable and by turning the GOP into something not far removed from a genuine conservative party.

But Buckley is too soberly written to be of interest to the average reader, and the only full-scale biography, John B. Judis’s William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of Conservatives (1988), is both outdated and overly partisan. The best thing published so far about Buckley is Richard Brookhiser’s Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr., and the Conservative Movement (2009), a sympathetic, at times startlingly candid memoir that describes him more vividly than anything other than Buckley’s own autobiographical volumes, of which Cruising Speed: A Documentary(1971) is the first and best. What is now needed is an up-to-date biography written by someone with the twin gifts of literary portraiture and historical perspective. This, alas, isn’t it.

Frustrating because I was looking forward to reading it (and probably still will).

Speaking of Richard Brookhiser, Richard Beeman finds his bio of James Madison worth reading:

The amount of scholarship chronicling these events is immense, and although Brook­hiser is somewhat sparing in acknowledging his debts to historians who have preceded him, his sprightly narrative will serve as an entertaining introduction for those who are making their first acquaintance with Madison. Moreover, Brookhiser’s book is a useful corrective to some of the recent works in the fields of political science and law that place excessive emphasis on Madison the theorist.

For more on Brookhiser from my perspective, see the related articles links below.

And from a completely different perspective, Eloisa James brings a book to my attention (Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact By A. J. HARTLEY) that I think will be added to the ever-growing TBR pile:

Post Harry Potter, we can all sketch the outlines of a paranormal private school novel. Darwen Arkwright is a far odder and more creative addition to the genre than I have read in years. Darwen has powers of a sort…but he also has the ability to behave like a bumbler, like a dunce, like a grieving boy. The book never relies on paranormal flourishes alone to carry the reader’s interest. A. J. Hartley shows an uncanny, brilliant ability to shape the inner life of an unmoored child, who realizes that the worst thing of all is that there’s no one to be disappointed in him.

This sounds like a great fit for me and a potential read aloud book for my daughter.

Related articles

• Q&A with Richard Brookhiser on Right Time, Right Place (therightreads.com)
• James Madison by Richard Brookhiser (collectedmiscellany.com)
• Is James Madison an under-appreciated founding father? (collectedmiscellany.com)
• Right Time, Right Place by Richard Brookhiser (therightreads.com)

Two things drew me to this short bio of William F. Buckley: the author Jeremy Lott is someone whose writings I have admired for some time and the subject, WFB, is something I have been interested in since high school.

So when I was offered a review copy it wasn’t a tough choice. As soon as I got it in the mail I breezed threw this brief biography - and promptly did nothing about it.  As with so many other books, I read this back in the summer but did not get a chance to review it until now.

And? It is an excellent introduction to one of the central figures of the post-war conservative movement. But it is important to keep in mind that it is just that: an introduction.

You can’t do justice to a man like Buckley in less than 150 pages. But this book does what this type of book should do: give an interesting overview of the life and times of the subject and prompt the reader to seek out more.

First of all, Thomas Nelson’s Christian Encounters, of which this book is a part, gives the books some of its flavor. Here is a brief description of the series:

Christian Encounters, a series of biographies from Thomas Nelson Publishers, highlights important lives from all ages and areas of the Church. Some are familiar faces. Others are unexpected guests. But all, through their relationships, struggles, prayers, and desires, uniquely illuminate our shared experience.

Lott highlights how Buckley’s faith informed/influenced and in many ways inspired his politics.

And the hook Lott uses to introduce WFB is one of a “prophet.” He saw America headed in the wrong direction and committed himself to calling the country he loved back to the straight and narrow path.

This makes for an interesting story arc particularly when conservatism seems ascendant and Buckley is less the prophet and more the man trying to herd the cats of the various factions. Lott doesn’t have the space for the details of Buckley and conservatism post-Reagan but it is an interesting aspect of the Buckley as prophet perspective.

In short: Lott’s short bio doesn’t break any new ground – we are all still waiting for a more definitive biography – but it is a quick and well done introduction to this larger that life figure in American politics.

Students or those looking for a brief introduction would do well to read this and then use the further reading recommendations to dig deeper.

For more check out Ten Questions with Jeremy.

So I was intrigued when I saw that an author who I enjoy, Jeremy Lott, had come out with a short bio of WFB as part of the Christian Encounters series at Thomas Nelson.

This was another book I read back in the summer but didn’t get a chance to review until now. I thought it would be useful to bring back the Ten Questions format and ask Jeremy to answer a few questions.

He graciously agree and the Q&A is below (my questions in bold)

1. How does viewing WFB through the lens of “prophet” help us understand him better?

It helps us to see how he saw himself, at least in part. I quote from a letter that William F. Buckley wrote to Ronald Reagan recounting Buckley’s appearance on the Tonight Show. WFB told Johnny Carson “that vaticide was the act of killing a prophet, and that if he wanted to go down as guilty of that crime, all he had to do was kill me.”

Now, this was a witticism, so we shouldn’t place too much weight on it, but neither should we ignore it. I argue that it was along the lines of what Ben Stiller’s villain White Goodman said several times in the movie Dodgeball. You remember? “I’m kidding, but not really.”
2. This is a Christian Encounters series, how did WFB’s faith impact and inspire his politics?

His politics grew out of his faith and his upbringing, though the faith sometimes had to serve as a check on the upbringing. It moved him on segregation, anti-Semitism, and mutually assured destruction (the last very late in life), for instance.

3. Did Buckley’s anti-communism during the Cold War hide, to a degree, his more libertarian side?

To a degree, it did. When you are concentrating on using one national security apparatus to grind down another, more threatening one, you are going to appear less libertarian.

But there’s also the fact that his libertarian side emerged from a political theory, dubbed “fusionism,” that was really developed in the 1960s. Fusionism said virtue that is coerced is not virtue, and so government should get out of the virtue-promotion business. This eventually inspired to his call to end the war on drugs, but it took awhile.

4. How is the National Review of today different from the magazine WFB created and ran for so many years?

It’s more reliably Republican. In 1956 and 1960, NR declined to endorse the GOP nominee, and Buckley regularly criticized Eisenhower and Nixon. That started changing in 1968 when the magazine threw its weight behind the Nixon-Agnew ticket. In 2008, it endorsed Mitt Romney in the primaries and John McCain in the general.

5. How important was Firing Line to making WFB a household name? How do you think the show impacted both conservatives in the media and political media in general?

It put him in people’s living rooms once a week and allowed him to mix it up with most of the great politicians and cultural figures of the time. Many conservatives, including current NR editor Rich Lowry, were inspired by this. It also proved that a regular forum for ideas on television could find a dedicated audience.

6. How significant (both short and long term) was the damage from the ill fated NR Civil Rights editorial? The almost immediate reversal seems to be forgotten.

I was shocked to learn that National Review’s stance in favor of barring blacks from the ballot lasted for only one issue. In the very next issue, NR reversed itself. And yet this is often cited as some long-standing policy of the magazine. Very odd.

It did a lot of damage, obviously. It helped defenders of the Civil Rights Act to brand all of its critics as racists. The professional anti-racists really haven’t changed their script since.

7. What was the most surprising thing you came across or learned researching this book? Was there anything that struck you as new and/or under-reported?

How about the fact that Buckley didn’t really want to found National Review? He tried to take over The Freeman, Human Events, and even the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal before he finally threw in the towel and founded NR.

8. What do you see as WFB’s legacy in terms of the conservative movement?

The fact that there is a conservative movement.

9. Is “fusionism” still possible?

I think its central insight is still valid, though it only goes so far. It doesn’t help us settle some contentious issues like abortion. Practically, it will always be applicable because any conservative coalition in this country is going to be a mix of conservatives and libertarians. They’ll have to find some way to get along.

10. Ayn Rand, and her books, have made something of a comeback. WFB tried to write Objectivism out of the conservative movement. Did he succeed?

We should distinguish between Rand-as-entertainment and Objectivism. She wanted people to swallow the philosophy and the novels as a single shot but that’s not how it usually works, in my experience. Modern Rand fans prefer cocktails. One of her biggest boosters, Glenn Beck, mixes his Atlas Shruggery with Mormonism. That should have Rand turning over in her atheist grave.

Related articles

• Reason.tv: Author Jeremy Lott on William F. Buckley Jr.’s Faith and Politics (reason.com)
• William F. Buckley (Christian Encounters) by Jeremy Lott (collectedmiscellany.com)
• Breaking the Buckley Rule | Jeremy Lott (guardian.co.uk)

You have to wonder, under the circumstances, whether the ambitions of a young conservative novelist would be unreservedly encouraged and diligently nurtured in a contemporary MFA program.

If the answer is no, then the ramifications are profound — and profoundly disturbing. For the issue here runs deeper than the run-of-the-mill ideological browbeating that goes on in college classrooms across the country. Students can always weigh their professors’ rants against more moderate views, and indeed contrary ones, that they hear off campus. But MFA programs now seem to exercise a gatekeeper function. If you don’t pass through one of them, your odds of literary recognition are vastly diminished. It may be that we’re cutting off future generations of conservative novelists at the knees.

That’s not fair. Fairness, though, is a secondary consideration. If conservatives are being denied entrée into the halls of literary production — not by a sinister gentlemen’s agreement but by an inbred ideological disdain — then what we’re cutting off is not just a group of writers, or a political agenda, but an entire sensibility.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Image via Wikipedia

I have not posted in a while.  A variety of things contributed to that which I will not bore you with.  On the bright side, I really like the new look of the site and WP 2.8 is working well.

I have for the most part tried to keep partisan politics off this blog.  This is for a number of reasons.  I started this blog to get away from politics and feel that books can be a source of common ground for people who disagree politically.

I started The Right Reads as a place to review and discuss non-fiction dealing with right of center politics.  It seems better to keep that separate from a site that still mostly reviews fiction, history and creative non-fiction rather than political activism and philosophy. I will link to content here when it seems appropriate – and vice versa – that way readers are aware of it and can read it if they so choose but it doesn’t distract from the focus

With that in mind, here are some links from a couple of memoirs tied to William F. Buckley Jr.:

–> Right Time, Right Place by Richard Brookhiser

As the subtitle – Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement –indicates, RTRP is a blend of history, memoir, and political commentary.  I find this type of “creative non-fiction” can lack focus, often jumping between subjects and styles, but Brookhiser’s unique perspective, style and flair for language make this a remarkably focused and powerful read.

It is a very personal and honest look at the man and magazine at the heart of the conservative movement’s rise to power, and eventual return to earth, while at the same time a meditation on the dangers of hero worship and the nature of mature relationships.

–> Q&A with Richard Brookhiser on Right Time, Right Place

–> Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley

I was prepared to be angry about Christopher Buckley’s latest book Losing Mum and Pup.  I have been a fan – idealized is probably more accurate – of his father’s since a very young age and worried about any attempt at sullying that reputation.  I was so sure a tell-all book about losing both of his parents within a year would be offensive.  Throw in Christo’s (the name his parents used for him) less than astute political judgment of late and I had all but pronounced him beyond the pale.

But I decided to read the book first.  And, despite the difficult nature of the subject, I am glad I did.

So it is not surprising that when his latest book (Right Time, Right Place) came out I cleared the decks and read it.  Add in the fact that it is about William F. Buckley, National Review, and the history of the conservative movement, and it was a must read for me.  Look for my review later today.

As an added bonus, Brookhiser generously agreed to an email Q&A to discuss the book, his career, and the conservative movement. (Questions in Bold)

Had you always planned to write about your experience at NR, with WFB, and conservatism after Buckley’s passing?  How did this book come about?

I knew I wanted to write about my years with WFB. Death was the wake-up call: now you must get this done. I spoke to my agent, Michael Carlisle, who said, write a proposal, and I remember thinking: It’s on.

Was there ever a moment where you thought I shouldn’t write this; or I shouldn’t make it this personal?

I never doubted writing the book, which I owed to WFB, myself, and the history I lived through. If you don’t want to be personal, you should not write memoir (you will also have a lot of trouble living, but that’s another matter).

Were you worried that some would see it as a cheap shot at WFB (as some have done in comparing to Christopher’s book)?

Right Time, Right Place is a book about love—what it is, what it feels like, how it can go wrong, how you save it. Readers who can’t understand that should go back to Dan Brown.

You famously – and perhaps annoyingly by now – had your first cover story at NR at the age of 14.  When you first started actually working for the magazine what was the most challenging aspect of the job?

I so liked writing and editing that they felt challenging only as I suppose a horseman feels a good gallop on a fine day is challenging. Handling WFB’s correspondence with the mad and with prisoners was hard—the former because they were pitiable, the latter because they struck me as dishonest and manipulative.

What was it like coming from upstate to New York City?  At what point did you feel like NYC was your home?

I came from Irondequoit, a suburb of Rochester, and my parents came from the Mohawk Valley. We in upstate New York perhaps dislike the city more than anyone else in America, since we are cobbled into the same state with it. But in a year I was a convert. I still love upstate, and my wife and I have a weekend house in Ulster County. But the city is the omphalos.

You have been involved in conservative journalism through a number of electoral cycles and presidents (from Carter to Reagan, from Clinton to Bush to Obama).  Do you think conservatives do better when out of power or were Reagan’s terms, for example, the golden age?

We do best for the country and for the world when we put good ideas into practice. Reagan brought the economy out of stagflation, and set the Soviet Union on the road to ruin. George W. Bush was much less conservative, but he took the Terror War to the jihadists, and liberated millions of Afghans and Iraqis. Such achievements have to be prepared by work beforehand, including wilderness years.

What do you think was the strength of NR under WFB? Its weakness?

NR under WFB was lively, varied and authoritative. It explored ideas, made you laugh, and laid down the law. One of the ways WFB achieved this was by publishing a stable of columnists—James Burnham, Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer—but as the A team aged or died off, that format begged to be retired, which is what John O’Sullivan did.

You were an English major who wrote about politics and have become a writer of historical biographies.  What, if anything, do you feel unifies your career?

It all revolves around language and the world.

I was struck by how many sharp aphorisms are in this book (funny, pointed, illuminating, descriptive, etc.) and your books have none of the denseness of much history.  Does this style come from reporting and only having so much space to set the scene or capture a personality?

Journalism certainly gives you a tight turning radius. NR used to have a Bulletin, edited by James Burnham, that appeared in the weeks the magazine didn’t. The iron rule of the NR Bulletin was that editorial paragraphs could not exceed ten printed lines. If the Soviets swarmed through the Fulda Gap, you would have to describe it in ten lines, or JB would trim you back.

You argue that WFB wanted to change “cultural fashions” regarding liberalism and this required someone who was “very cool.”  How so?  And is this still a problem for conservatism?

Mill called conservatives the “stupid party.” The element of truth in this is that conservatives tend to accept the world as it is. The discontented have to be imaginative, if not more intelligent. Conservatives in the fifties and early sixties were disdained as Babbitts, hicks, Klansmen, or Catholic proles. WFB was a living refutation of these stereotypes. He could go head to head with Arthur Schlesinger Jr.—Harvard, Pulitzer Prize winner, Camelot courtier—and beat him at his own high end game.

You had to deal with building (and re-building) a relationship with someone you idealized.  Does the right too often idealize its leaders – from Reagan to WFB – and then struggle to come to grips with their faults?

The right does it, but so does the left. The institution of the presidency encourages leader complexes. I just taped a TV discussion with a smart liberal professor who was complaining, sotto voce, about Obama’s compromises. In time, we will hear it on air.

At some point, at least it seems to me, NR changed from a collection of conservative thinkers/personalities/writers to a magazine of conservative journalism and journalists.  Is that fair? How would you describe the changes/evolution?

When NR started out it could not be a magazine of conservative journalists, since there hardly were any such. Success—and I think it was a success to catalyze a conservative commentariat—always brings its own pitfalls.

You famously backed Giuliani for President.  Many labeled you one of those squishy urban conservatives; more concerned about cocktail parties than principals, etc.  Where do you see yourself on the political spectrum or how would you describe your conservatism?

Yeah, Giuliani was a real cocktail party sort of guy. His critics have not set foot in New York in the last twenty years. Giuliani was simultaneously an extreme conservative and an extreme liberal. His liberalism could be off-putting, even abhorrent. But his conservative qualities—respect for responsibility and the rule of law–transformed a ruined city. No recent American politician, except Reagan, can show a greater achievement. Then to top it all off he was president of the United States for three days after 9/11.

As for me, I am conservative without prefix or suffix.

You were not a fan of much of the conservative reaction to Bill Clinton.  How should conservatives approach President Obama?

Fight him on the beaches, fight him in the fields. He is a cool character, who will not make the mistakes that tempted us into making the mistakes we made fighting Clinton.

What’s next for you?

I am finishing a documentary for PBS with Michael Pack about Alexander Hamilton, and beginning a book on James Madison. Publius rides again—or 2/3 of him.

I have to admit, I was shocked to find out that National Review editor Rich Lowry had co-written a novel.  I just didn’t picture him as the novel writing type.  Of course, he had the help of literary agent Keith Korman.  But still a surprising project. For thos unfamiliar with the book here is the PW set up:

Unlikely hero Peter Johnson, a mildly buffoonish writer working for the Crusader, a left-wing magazine, is recruited by CIA agent Stewart Banquo for the assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist. Banquo figures no one would ever suspect Johnson, known for his drunkenness and willingness to take a bribe, to be working for the CIA. Johnson, who accepts the job for a variety of reasons, heads off to Iran. A series of double crosses lands Johnson in the hands of the Iranians and sets up the rest of the plot involving a chillingly plausible terrorist attack.

And so my curiosity piqued, I decided to give it a read.   Banquo’s Ghosts turned out to be a entertaining thriller with a distinct political style to it.  This part is not surprising.  In many ways Lowry is following in the footsteps of the man he succeeded at NR: William F. Buckley; who wrote a number of espionage thrillers with strong contemporary political undercurrents.

For more see below.

The political aspect of the novel is both a strength and a weakness.  The strength is what one reviewer labeled the works “moral clarity” (the NR review noted the “clarity of vision” as well).  Lowry and Korman have a clear point of view and this gives the book a certain confidence and voice.  And conservatives will of course like the lack of moral ambivalence involved. But it also means that, at times, the story can get lost a little in the book’s didacticism.

At points the authors stop the story to make a point.   Whether they pull this off probably depends on your political compass to some degree.  Like this comment clearly aimed at the security lapses connected to lax immigration enforcement.  After noting the ease with which drug runners cross the border, thus making tracking nuclear material very difficult, a mini-rant:

What no one ascertained for certain was  the identity of these Mexican drug runners or  where they were headed. No matter. The next day  politicians of every stripe continued to celebrate  themselves in their particular ways. Some  postured on the cable shows about the dangers of  transfats in corn chips, while others called for  safer kiddy-kar kid seats. In a fit of statesmanship,  Bangor, Maine, banned smoking in privately  owned cars with children in them. Finally: kids in  Bangor, Maine, were safe from second-hand  smoke.

This would bring a chuckle – or a sad shake of the head – to those who are furstrated by the lack of border security in this country.  Others may find it bland anti-pc rhetoric.  But it is clearly editorial commentary not an integral part of the story. This type of commentary is threaded throughout the novel.

For the most part, however, the commentary doesn’t derail the story nor is it jarring or out of place.  The book has a clear political perspective so the commentary comes with the territory. (I would imagine, however,  if you are the type of person who uses the words “neocon” and “cabal” in the same sentence you might find yourself frequently arguing with Lowry and Korman’s portrayal of Iran, progressive journalists, and much more.)

If there is a problem with tone and style it has more to do with balancing satire and thriller not political opinion with plot.  Lowry and Korman clearly set out to mock a number of elite institutions from the CIA  and the State Department to the liberal media establisment.  But at its root the book is a thriller and the satirical aspects don’t always mesh with thriller aspects (for more see this Forbes review).

But these critiques don’t really make much of an impact if you find the novel an entertaining read.  Sure, the book strains plausibility at times, and its political commentary is rather run of the mill War on Terror supporting anti-liberal media conservatism, but the plot is nevertheless well done and the pacing brisk.  And as noted above, it has a certain voice or tone that works well for this genre.

Conservatives looking for a fun read that takes their perspective seriously, and pokes fun of liberals, will clearly enjoy this one. But I think the partisian jibes are low key enough that most readers from whatever side of the political spectrum will enjoy it for what it is.  With summer coming this makes for a nice beach/airplane read for political junkies of every stripe.

Cover via Amazon

In The University Bookman Gerald J. Russello reviews two books I want to read: Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s by Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, eds. and A Conservative History of the American Left by Daniel J. Flynn.

Russello argues that neither book quite captures the complexities involved.  Flynn first:

Flynn has done a significant amount of research, and the text is readable and lively, even if one would wish for more explicit connecting threads. The same ideas—common ownership of property, say, or free love, and odd juxtapositions of science and social criticism—occur throughout Western history. To merely lump them all on “the Left” is as helpful as a different farrago of ideas—monarchy, say, joined with capitalism, hierarchical social classes, and table manners—is when defining the Right. The problem is not that such dichotomies do not have explanatory power; it is that they do not explain enough. Even according to Flynn’s taxonomy, the connections among these various radicals are unclear. The Puritans may have opposed free enterprise, but no one could say they opposed religion or the family. Similarly, one can find in Washington or New York many Republican stalwarts defending free trade, but whose devotion to traditional values of the kind Flynn wants associated with the Right leave something to be desired.

But Rightward Bound even more so:

By and large, however, the contributors are not really up to the task of explaining the Right. They stick too closely to the academic formula, where conservatism is somehow not an authentic cultural position for people who wish to preserve their traditions, but an ideological construct forced upon a supine electorate that is otherwise liberal except when manipulated by well-financed corporate cadres. The collection ignores the bigger stories of those years: why conservatism could not stop the leftist onslaught of the 1970s and later. Despite ferocious conservative opposition in the years following the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade in 1973, which legalized abortion, the decision still remains the law of the land. Where once mildly controversial television programs and movies would have spurred protest, young men and women from the South and Midwest (traditionally the most conservative parts of the nation) now compete on crass reality programs. What was it about the conservative strategies of the 1970s that, from the point of view of the cultural concerns that motivated conservatives to enter politics in the first place, have been largely failures?

Given Russello’s review, I think I will look to read A Conservative History of the American Left but avoid Rightward Bound for now.