Note: Updates below
Stanley Kurtz in National Review Online's Corner is excited about Mary Eberstadt's edited anthology, Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys. Kurtz, himself a contributor, waxes enthusiastic about the other contributors, including Peter Berkowitz, Joseph Bottum, Dinesh D’Souza, David Brooks, Danielle Crittenden, Tod Lindberg, Rich Lowry, Heather MacDonald, P.J. O’Rourke, Sally Satel, and Richard Starr. Kurtz says the book is hard to put down, both for its enthralling stories and also for the sheer excellence of the writing.
Update 5/29/07 - Stanley Kurt files the following post:
Wilfred McClay has a very thoughtful review of Why I Turned Right in the June issue of Commentary (not available online). According to McClay, the essays by David Brooks, Joseph Bottum, and Peter Berkowitz "should be required reading as a prolegomenon to all future American conservatisms." McClay also says that the Berkowitz essay contains, "the best short description of the work of Leo Strauss I have ever read."
Update 3/6/07 - The Washington Times carries a good review by A.G. Gancarski. "And better than any other book in recent memory, "Why I Turned Right" spotlights why conservatism is the most essential of all political philosophies."
Update 2/22/07 - Kurtz offers his responses to three of the essays: D'Souza's, Bottum's, and Heather MacDonald's. Keep reading...
Kurtz says:
Dinesh D’Souza’s contribution to "Why I Turned Right" comes at a good time. I’ve criticized D’Souza of late. But I also believe that, contrary to what quite a few others have suggested, D’Souza’s controversial argument in The Enemy at Home is sincerely held. It all makes sense once you read D’Souza’s piece in Why I Turned Right. D’Souza came to America from India as a high school senior. The social liberalism he encountered at Dartmouth ran smack up against his Indian upbringing, and this would appear to be the germ out of which grew D’Souza’s idea of forming an alliance between American conservatives and traditionalists across the globe. The Enemy at Home synthesizes the culture war rabble rousing D’Souza helped invent at Dartmouth with his sense of being part of a world-wide traditionalist fraternity. Again, I have my differences with D’Souza, but if you want to see where he’s coming from, just read this book. It’s obvious that the man is sincere. He’s also darned smart, and a great writer. This is another one of several flat out funny essays in a volume filled with humor. I’ve been an admirer of D’Souza since his important book, Illiberal Education, helped kick off a national effort to do something about the leftist takeover of the academy. Differences of approach notwithstanding, it’s good to be reminded of all that. This is vintage D’Souza.
I don’t so much want to comment on Heather Mac Donald’s piece as to genuflect before it. If you’ve ever found it difficult to explain to someone of just how stark-raving-mad the post-modern academy has gone, your worries are over. Hand them Heather Mac Donald’s piece and they will believe. Keep extra oxygen on hand. The writing here will take your breath away, as will the story’s extremism. Because Mac Donald lived for a time at the heart of one of the most influential–and seriously looney–intellectual movements of the past few decades, her testimony has real historic significance. Mac Donald is a one-time post-modern mobster who’s turned state’s evidence. I promise, you, the jury, will vote to convict. I myself have seen shock waves from the Yale Mac Donald describes wash up on the shores of Harvard. (I cringe at the memory.) Mac Donald’s piece casts her wonderful investigative reporting for City Journal in a whole new light. Agree or disagree with Mac Donald in her recent criticisms of religion, that too will make sense as part of her own remarkable intellectual-political journey. A friend of mine claims to have laughed out loud on every page of this essay. I laughed not once. Instead, I sat in mute silence, my mouth agape. Read it.
As the editor of First Things, America’s premiere journal of religion and public life, Joseph Bottum gives us a true conversion narrative–religious and political at once. Appropriately, Bottum’s religio-political road-to-Damascus moment was occasioned by a vision. And logically following from that instant of conversion (you’ll see how), Bottum’s essay pivots around the abortion issue, in its narrowest and broadest implications. This is a deeply felt–and deeply thought–statement from someone at the heart of America’s pro-life movement. It is also an excellent piece of sociology (religious folks are often the best sociologists). Watch for what Bottum calls contemporary America’s “two great commandments” (not included in the old ten). Bottum puts his finger on some fundamental questions about the relationship between liberalism and religion. Yet as Bottum unpacks the big-picture issues, we feel the concrete tensions kicked up by the pro-life movement from within the life of a man. How do you tolerate the intolerable? How do those who can’t abide your moral principles tolerate you? How does democracy accommodate itself to radically opposed moralities–and they to democracy?
Update 2/26/07 -
Having covered P.J. O’Rourke, Richard Starr, David Brooks, Dinesh D’Souza, Heather Mac Donald, and Joseph Bottum, I’m moving on today to Danielle Crittenden, Tod Lindberg, and Sally Satel.
As a long-time admirer of Danielle Crittenden’s powerful critique of feminism, this piece was a special treat for me. Here we get to see how Crittenden’s take on feminism grew directly out of her life experience. Russell Jacoby’s absurd knock on "Why I Turned Right" is that such well written essays cannot also be thoughtful and substantive. Yet it’s tough to imagine a more beautiful blend of story and substance than Crittenden’s piece. A number of other contributors to this volume speak about the Burkean stream of conservatism–the dangers of trying to reinvent society’s rules yourself, from scratch. Well, that’s exactly what the feminist revolution attempted. Crittenden’s piece is an object lesson in the limitations of that kind of radicalism. Her personal story is a deep, embodied (and entertainingly told) instantiation of conservatism’s core theoretical insights.
Oh those nasty neocons. What would a book about turning right be without the story of a “card carrying neoconservative” who earned his club membership in the heyday of the movement’s influence. "Policy Review" editor, Tod Lindberg, is that neocon man. Lindberg was a student of that famous teacher, and author of "The Closing of the American Mind," Allan Bloom, about whom we hear plenty in Lindberg’s piece. What’s more, The Corner’s own John Podhoretz vies here with Bloom for best supporting actor in a neocon conversion story. Apparently, even before it existed, The Corner was winning recruits to the movement.
Sally Satel made her name as a psychiatrist willing to advocate limited and reasonable forms of coercion for those homeless mentally ill who pose serious physical dangers to themselves, and to ordinary citizens. Dubbed “the most dangerous psychiatrist in America,” Satel’s story is fascinating example of how moderate and reasonable professionals who refuse to bow to the pressures of political correctness somehow find themselves standing on the right side of the political spectrum–without ever having moved a step. A strong point of "Why I Turned Right" (and of the Republican coalition, if we can keep it) is that you can find deeply committed pro-life activists, like Joseph Bottum, as well as pro-choicers, like Satel, within its pages. Yet it’s too simple to call Satel a libertarian, since she stresses personal liberty for the competent while insisting on supervision for the dangerously incompetent. (Come to think of it, do contemporary libertarians have a position on laws for the mentally ill?) Satel’s story will acquaint you with a whole new axis of issues through which to think out the meanings of conservatism and liberalism. And Satel’s inside account of life on Capital Hill is a revelation. This political conversion was cemented by an eye-opening stint at the very center of America’s political life. Wait till you see what Satel found there.
Peter Berkowitz is some kinda neocon–whose intellectual life was turned around when he discovered the writings of Leo Strauss, in Israel. Now that’s red meat for paranoid leftists and paleocons alike! Yet Berkowitz confounds the silly stereotypes of Straussian neocons. More important, Berkowitz explains, in the context of a life (and in clear, easily accessible language) what the writing and thought of Leo Strauss is all about, and why it is so important. A polymath, Berkowitz is a prominent political philosopher with a Ph.D, a decade-long teaching stint at Harvard–and a law degree from Yale. Talk about judicial activism: Berkowitz’s pointed, insider tales from Yale Law School show that the notion is at home there. If P.J. O’Rourke is the brilliant anti-intellectual of the pack, Berkowitz is the ultra-intellectual political philosopher you’ll find it fun and easy to learn from.
No need to introduce Rich Lowry to Corner readers. Rich bears his responsibilities at NR with such grace, it’s tough not to wonder what prepared him to take on a central role in the conservative movement at so young an age. Lots of reading, for one thing. Like a couple other contributors to this volume, Rich’s story is actually not one of political conversion. Instead of a conversion, Rich’s apprenticeship in conservatism was a progressive (sorry) process of discovering the rationale behind what he’d instinctively believed all along. One of the most interesting and unexpected themes in this piece is Rich’s discussion of his religious faith: of how religion has at once nothing, and everything, to do with his conservatism–and with conservatism generally. There’s plenty of playfulness in this story of a teenage conservative (which makes it fun to read). Yet showing themselves repeatedly here are the marks of a young man mature beyond his years.
Mary Eberstadt’s introduction to Why I Turned Right includes a brief account of her own political journey. As with Joseph Bottum in this volume, abortion was the issue that first powered Eberstadt’s political transformation. This collection clearly shows that both Roe v. Wade specifically and the issue of abortion generally have the ability to change political lives. Yet as Eberstadt observes, merely breaking with left-liberal orthodoxy on any specific controversy often raises a cascade of questions about other issues as well. (That was how the affirmative action issue affected me.) Eberstadt’s story is fascinating for showing this unraveling process from the inside.
Another theme Eberstadt elicits from the volume is the effect of marriage and parenthood on political conviction. We already know that marital status is one of the most powerful predictors of political affiliation. The Democratic Party is particularly attractive to singles, while the Republican Party is preferred by married parents. Notwithstanding the many exceptions, the general tendencies are clear and strong. One way of reading at least a few of the pieces in Why I Turned Right is as the inside story of the passage from single, blue America to married-with-children, red America.
As Eberstadt notes, the backlash stirred up by leftist dominance of America’s college campuses is another key theme of this book. I think the leftist takeover of the academy is a net loss for conservatives (and certainly for America). Yet as this book makes clear, the effect cuts two ways. Finally, she points to the dynamic of religious belief and political tendency as one other theme that runs throughout this volume. Many of us make a profession of studying just such issues. But Why I Turned Right affords a unique opportunity to examine them as they play themselves out in the lives of real people–some of your favorite conservative scribes, telling their stories here for the first time.