Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys

Mary Eberstadt ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from Threshold Editions was reviewed on 10-Dec-2008.

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1) Hardcover Book Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys by Threshold Editions. Very interesting to read the experiences of people who have come to be conservative and why they did it. It gives one a good overview of the various reasons people may have had an epiphany in this regard.¤

2) Hardcover Book Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys by Threshold Editions. This quick read is also must read for any political junky. The book teaches the reader that there are many paths to conservatism but a whole lot of conservatives began moving to the right as a reaction against over-reaching on the part of liberals at one of our country´s many fine universities. Practical experience in the real world does a lot of changing of political minds as well (that was the case for me).

It also teaches the reader that there are lots of funny conservatives out there. P.J. O´Rourke´s essay was a stitch. Danielle Crittenden´s is funny and rings true to every parent.

Joseph Bottum´s observation are not really humorous, but they are some of the most profound as he discusses society, the respenct for life and how said it is that the 10 Commandments have been replaced by in our society by the two new great commandments: "Be Nice and Be Cool"(p. 156). this observation is so dead on and obvious to this public school teacher that I´m embarassed that I didn´t think of it myself.

A pleasure to read.¤

3) Hardcover Book Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys by Threshold Editions. Although I am neither a conservative nor a postliberal, I read some of these stories with interest, particularly the stories of Heather Mac Donald and Sally Satel of their intellectual revulsion at the cognitive insanity of many parts of academia.

The people in this volume are not the only ones who have changed, however. In the 1970s, liberal ideology began to metamorphose until it had changed into something quite different, even antithetical: an illiberal ideology that should be called "postliberalism."

Stanley Kurtz in his essay gives a play-by-play of this transition. The first break with liberalism came in the 1970s with the policy position that not all groups are to be treated as equals. Some are to be treated as "more equal" than others. As a result, groups given unmerited advancement did poorly. Since some liberals objected to abandoning equality as a goal, this policy was coupled with the position that it was okay to impose the group´s will on dissenters through mass action. The failure of the "more equal" strategy led to the postliberals accusing America of hidden, widespread racism. In the 1980s came the break with freedom of speech with dissenting speakers being shouted down. This necessitated the position that "democratic principles are a cover for white male oppression." By 1995, what used to be called "liberal" was being excoriated as "conservative." (p. 150)

The academics and media people continued to call themselves "liberals." As a result, almost all former liberals accepted these changes and believe that this illiberal ideology is "liberalism". And most conservatives don´t know the difference.

These three saw that it wasn´t. Why don´t other liberals figure out that they´ve been had? Maybe because these three liberals were in graduate school in the 1970s, which means that they had more-or-less conventional schooling for their K12 and college years. Today´s college students have been drilled in mind-numbing exercises like what color is math and if you feel a statement is true, then it is true. How could college students with that background think their way out of anything?

What we really need is a book like this one that tells the stories of today´s college students who have shifted from postliberal to conservative--if indeed there are any such students!

I was, however, saddened by certain similarities between the thinking of some of these conservatives and the conceits of postliberals, namely, the perception that the majority in this nation are leaning THEIR way, together with elaborate explanations for why this shift is occuring.

This is particularly curious at the present time (2008). The Democrat Party´s Presidential race has sifted down to only two candidates--both avid postliberals. The Republican race has sifted down to only one candidate--a combination of centrist social policy and military foreign policy. This is hardly evidence of a massive shift to the right.

(P.S. If you want the details of the shift from liberalism to Dhimmism, they can be found in the second half of While America Sleeps: How Islam, Immigration and Indoctrination Are Destroying America From Within ).
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4) Hardcover Book Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys by Threshold Editions. A terrific collection of inspirations, insights and road-to-Damascus-style epiphanies, this book shows how the logomachists on the right side of the American political spectrum got where they are today. For some it was the amorality and vapid pangamy of college life. For others it was later on, as the dissonance between professional/intellectual honesty and cherished liberal shibboleths ultimately midwifed a transformative reevaluation of their weltanschauung.
WITR is an entertaining and illuminating read. Even if you disagree with a PJ O´Rourke or a Sally Satel, their reflective stories will give you pause and provide fodder for lengthy and lively discussion.¤

5) Hardcover Book Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys by Threshold Editions. I am far from a bleeding-heart liberal, and generally find David Brooks in the New York Times reasonable and his ruminations well-tempered and well-meaning. His autobiographical essay made interesting reading -- he often disagreed with the editorials he was paid to write at the Wall Street Journal. Sally Satel is likewise clear in her compassion -- as a practicing psychiatrist, she seems on a quest to seek different methods to end the drug addiction of her patients, and is far from didactic in her reflections, rather genuinely frustrated with her efforts to work within the Veterans Administration.

But so many of the other writers just come off as rich, ignorant and mean-spirited. DeSouza just sounds like an idiot -- gleefully relaying his worship of the Dartmouth Review faculty advisor who kept a set of wooden pinchers in his office so he wouldn´t have to touch ugly women, who stooped to attack his political enemies on the basis of their looks, rather than their thinking.

Perhaps because the author of this essay grew up in India, he embraced the backward-thinking "satire" publication for commenting "the question isn´t whether or not women should be educated at Dartmouth, but if they should be educated at all." I didn´t realize he was this bad.

Heather McDonald claims that homeless people are on the streets of New York because they genuinely want to be there -- under her watch as think-tank advocate, she noted they didn´t flock to the many housing alternatives offered them by the city. She doesn´t tell us whether or not she visited the accomodations then provided, if they had running water, electricity, rats, etc. The fact is, since she was involved, scores of buildings have been successfully renovated into clean, well-functioning Single Room Occupancy dwellings, and most of the single men who populated the streets in the early 90s when I volunteered with the Coalition for the Homeless are now housed. Most of the men were not drug addicted, but mentally ill Viet Nam vets, very grateful and well-behaved.

She also claims that "the welfare queen mentality is alive and well." That she "met one" -- One!! My goodness! A person she describes as tall, wearing an animal print outfit and high heels, living off of SSI. I wonder -- does the fact that she was born tall mean that she can´t possibly be ill with a kidney disorder, MS, hepatitis, etc. or some other illness, physical or mental that prevents her from working? Are the heels the issue? Does the flamboyant outfit the essayist objects to not in itself indicate a lapse of mental acuity?

Or, on the other hand, is this possibly ill personage condemned for expressing herself through creative clothing? Should she be walking around in sack cloth and ashes? So far removed from the realities of life is this author, she didn´t figure out that homeless people, and those collecting disability, are usually clothed in donated wear -- you see them in designer goods, gaudy impulse purchases, and brand new clothing, purchased and donated at Christmas drives. I left with the sense that the author doesn´t think anyone on social services is legitimately ill or in need. Her suspicion of veterans is especially disheartening.

I was actually surprised at the mean-spiritedness of these essays. I do recommend this book to anyone interested in the great divide between right and left.

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6) Hardcover Book Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys by Threshold Editions. Political vicissitudes aside, with or without a conservative administration, whether or not America is engaged in war, or regardless of who next holds the majority either in Congress or the Court, the United States as a whole (as the infamous red and blue map made unforgettably clear) has boldly, unabashedly moved Right. But the question remains: Why? How did a movement that appeared so sidelined and embattled only a generation ago emerge as such a strong, influential, and enduring united front?

In Why I Turned Right, eminent and rising conservatives -- at odds themselves on a number of issues from religion, family, sex, to stem cell research, abortion, and war -- answer the question. And they answer it not through polemic, reactionary preaching, or rage, but in the most practical and sensible way possible: via the sharp, critical, and unfiltered voices and canny observations of uniquely positioned authors, editors, humorists, and political refugees inadvertently born of the sexual revolution and the PC movement, who ultimately landed on the conservative side of America´s red-blue divide -- in some cases, much to their own surprise.

A fascinating intellectual journey, this "family of opinions," as contributor Peter Berkowitz terms it, represents the extraordinarily varied paths that have led these authors from the championed liberalism of their youth to eventually fuel the world of conservative think tanks, magazines, blogs, and book publishing.

Whether you are for the Right or against, guarded supporter or puzzled progressive, Why I Turned Right proves an entertaining, enlightening, and edifying read for anyone with an open mind -- both the red and the blue, and everyone in between.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 7-Jan-2009, , 6X0-280-410-751-1KB-KSB-8

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