Breaking Away
Derych, Jim
BOOKS IN REVIEW to virtually unthinkable, and he acknowledges how steep a mountain we will have to climb. He manages a tone of enlightened skepticism while never quite resorting to...
...It is going to require rage and activism and perhaps some danger...
...Yet this is the sort of ruse that must be sustained ifa piece of political defection literature is to be useful, or, it might as well be noted, profitable, as Zell Miller, DaShawn Macomber is a 2006 Phillips Foundation Journalism fellow...
...Okay, fine, so he's not a Liberty University alum and he doesn't harbor his "hatred of homosexuals" anymore...
...From Mohammed to the present, Karsh traces the ~s~amir ~mperia~ism: A History by Efraim Karsh (YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 264 PAGES, $30) Reviewed by Daniel Johnson Muslim dream of empire and discovers a remarkable Daniel Johnson is a writer in London...
...Similarly, Derych's evolved from a"self-righteous inquisitor" of gays and lesbians who believed HIV-infected human beings should be sequestered "on an island like we did with the lepers and let them die out" to an "equal rights advocate" when his college roommate came out as gay...
...B EFORE CONSERVATIVES begin to rue the day they ever drove Derych away, they would be well I advised to read on for a few more pages...
...Please, Almond, do not hold back...
...It may be unacceptable to champion Social Darwinism in polite company, but Political Darwinism begins looking like a gift to humankind after reading a few chapters of Derych...
...One can almost hear the whispers of a thousand Kossacks, "But if they aren't retarded, why don't they already agree with us...
...Derych keeps the jig up, intoning piously early on that "hate only gets you so far" and "[w]e're not going to win a lot of converts [among conservatives] by out-hating them...
...Preposterous...
...It's true...
...Yet for all his effusive pronouncements of liberal pride, in the end Derych cannot help but play the victim...
...This is going to require more than love and hope and good intentions," Almond writes...
...Hear that Bobby Sue...
...I thought her story eliminated the child from the "argument," it becomes easier to...
...Likewise, using a phrase such as "Orwellian wet dream" to describe modern conservatism and distilling its tenets to shorthand of "WAR IS PEACE...
...Though in light of this, as I finalize my fall travel plans, I must remember to ask Derych or any other liberal essayist in the know, "Who, exactly, is supposed to report to detention camps...
...Suddenly he realizes, "At no point did 'the child"-note scare quotes!-"enter into my Yet for all his effusive pronouncements argument [against abortion...
...Charity has its limits, however, and no matter how many disclaimers Derych crams into the nooks SEPTEMBER 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 73 BOOKS IN REVIEW and crannies of his all-too-eager parroting of leftwing stereotypes, the truth is he is trying to "outhate" his former comrades...
...SEPTEMgER 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 75...
...card next time I'm at CVS...
...Does Derych envision a stadium of "larvalstage human beings" suddenly cheering him on as if he's Balboa in Siberia with the Dittohead masses turning on Limbaugh like the Soviet proletariat turned on Russkie ubermensch Ivan Drago in Rocky IV...
...Efraim Karsh's new book is a scholarly, readable, and persuasive attempt to enlighten us before it is too late...
...In fact, Democrats should consider reporting 74 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2006 BOOKS IN REVIEW to relocation camps now to avoid the unpleasantness of house-to-house searches later on...
...David Brock could no doubt tell you...
...We are so tired of simplistic sound bites and hurled epithets...
...Constantly reevaluating and challenging his own assumptions, Almond is brave enough to change course mid-essay...
...FREEDOM IS SLAVERY...
...W HILE SEARCHING for a comprehensive FDR biography to re-familiarize myself with the nastiness of American citizens in stateside detention camps, I decided I may as well take a little peek-a-boo at some of these formidable liberal arguments...
...You will read much in these pages about my transformation from 'dittohead,' or 'larval-stage Confessions of a Former Dittohead by Jim Derych (IG PUBLISHING, 200 PAGES, $13,95 PAPER) Proud to Be a Liberal Edited by Elizabeth Clementson and Robert Lasner (IG PUBLISHING, 208 PAGES, $12.95 PAPER) Reviewed by Shawn Macomber human being,'" Derych writes, "into the majestic progressive butterfly that flits before you on these pages...
...No straw men there...
...Is this reallywhat passes for heroism on the left these days...
...At least somewhere in the back of their minds they could dismiss that as 'the way God made me.' But alas, I was fated to be liberal, and if ever there was an alternative lifestyle choice, it's the decision to become a liberal...
...Remind me to look for Hallmark's "Congratulations...
...Kneejerk Imperialists C ONFRONTED BY THE THREAT of Islamist terrorism, the West still does not know its enemy...
...This right nice young man says we ain't retarded or nothing...
...Thus, having of liberal pride, in the end Derych cannot help but play the victim...
...Reading Honor is something like examining X-rays of a thousand cultural injuries, only to discover they are all broken in the same place...
...Well, okay, so those are Democrats, but it is simply undeniable, the editors tell us, that naughty Republicans have been "popularizing name-calling in 30 second sound bites...
...N OW, TO BE CLEAR, I harbor no ill will towards those whose political/philosophical outlook undergoes a shift, tectonic or otherwise...
...thanks...
...And so Markos Moulitsas, founder of the insistent liberal weblog Daily Kos where Derych got his start, breathlessly blurbs, "At a time when political persuasion consists of little more than hurled epithets, Jim Derych gifts progressives with a lucid manual for rescuing their fellow Americans from the clutches of the Right...
...well, eliminate the child...
...He manages a tone of enlightened skepticism while never quite resorting to despair...
...vid Horowitz, or (who can forget...
...Tim Johnson calling out the "Taliban wing of the Republican Party" or Howard Dean comparing Katherine Harris to Stalin...
...They are all walking hate crimes, hollow fascists," he rallies back...
...They assume their detachment from reality is due to some form of functional mental retardation...
...The philosophical underpinnings of such arguments are so strong one can almost hear the groaning of conservative prejudices beneath them, strained to the breaking point as gears in conservative heads grind leftward...
...Setting aside the Confessions cover defining a Dittohead as someone with "the uncanny ability to deny any information or 'facts' that contradict their worldview," right-wing radio regulars hardly seem to be Derych's target audience when he christens Limbaugh "the chubby, drugaddicted, matrimonially challenged elephant that resides in the living room of my political past...
...It's not a hole," he revises...
...I half considered buying one of those 'coming out to your family' books, because that's what it felt like," Derych writes...
...Take, for example, the following passage: One mistake liberals often make is thinking that Republicans are not intelligent...
...That said, to partisans of the left it surely must seem as if Derych makes some startling concessions...
...In a culture less overrun by fashion, his book would be on the reading tables of all the people whose good opinion still matters, k, Breaking Away A S WITH MOST ACCOUNTS of political conversions, Jim Derych's Confessions of a Former Dittohead-a not-quite-magnum opus retracing the steps of a 13-year journey from mindless automaton controlled by Rush Limbaugh to mindless automaton controlled by AI Franken-spends a lot of time pretending to be one thing when it's quite another...
...I'm going to take a second look at that Howard Dean after all...
...So it would seem...
...But these are but small islands of left ideas in a sea ofA1 Sharpton-esque bons mot& such as Mark Green's casting of"the Party of CEOs versus the Party for Children" or cartoonist Jen Sorensen's four panels depicting a (literally) firebreathing conservative ("Chairman of the Archaic Values Coalition") attacking along-sufferingwonkish Democratic congressman named Dan Doormat or Blanche Wiesen Cook's refreshing lack of name call"One of the right's most effective strategies in the current age of the media has been turning 'liberal' into a dirty word...
...IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH...
...He's just attemptingto do so without saying so, because to admit he has written a polemic rather than a straight political autobiography or, more ridiculously, some sort of handbook for sane political dialogue-Confessions of a Former Dittohead is as much a thoughtful guide to reaching out to the right as Ann Coulter's How to Talk to a Liberal (If You MusO is a whimsical entreaty for the left to come enjoy tea, crumpets, and lively conversawould be about some slutty friend of hers who'd had an abortion," Derych writes compassionately, only to be shocked when he learns that it was no "slutty friend" who had this abortion-apparently Derych could care less what happens to a woman so defined-but "Amy" herself...
...ing ("George War Bush") in her approach to Bush's liberal education funding policies ("leave no child behind means de-fund public schools and fill our jails to overwhelming with adolescent youngsters...
...One of the right's most effective strategies in the current age of the media has been turning 'liberal' into a dirty word, akin to 'anti-American,' 'Communist,' or even 'Nazi,'" Elizabeth Clementson and Robert Lasner insist in their introduction, perhaps referring to A1 Gore's "Digital Brownshirts" diss or South Dakota Sen...
...To be fair, in the midst of this big glob of crazy there are a few insightful essays from Neal Pollack, Matthew Yglesias, and Eric Zorn...
...they are commonly known as conservatives" who have "a hole where their hearts are supposed to be...
...tion--would be to forfeit the moral authority of one who claims to have evolved his thinking beyond the mental boundaries of those with whom he once made common cause...
...But perhaps they are not grinding quickly enough...
...No entrenched oligarchy cedes its power without a struggle...
...Take, for instance, the following so-not30-second-sound-bite from Steve Almond's essay: "The best impulses of this country, the most generous and tolerant impulses-the adult impulseshave been overrun by a pack of mean children...
...Well...
...As the book progresses so too does Derych's sense of the inherent victimhood of the "majestic progressive butterfly...
...Early in the book, when describing the cynicism of returning World War I veterans, Bowman refers to their "X-ray vision," but the phrase applies rather well to his own work...
...might leave some with the impression that this isn't about engagement at all but, rather, currying favor with the other kids on the left-wing digital playground...
...This knowledge in turn forces Derych to rethink the "classic conservative notion that well-to-do white women are ripping fully formed fetuses out of their bodies so they can resume their lives of alcoholism and debauchery...
...Readers not yet un-chested by relativism will erabrace Bowman's masterful scholarship while deciding for themselves whether honor plays the central role he ascribes to it in the history of the last 100 years...
...The first sign something is amiss appears during the chapter detailing Derych's conversion from sneering pro-life monster to sensitive male prochoicer thanks to his college pal "Amy" who gives him the real skinny on choice...
...His thesis is simple: we have not paid enough attention to the history and ideology of Islamic imperialism...
...Proud to Be Liberal, an essay collection IG Publishing sent along with Derych's tome, seemed as good a place as any to start...
...In fact, it might've been easier for my parents to accept me if I had been gay...
...But Republicans are just as intelligent as liberals...
...The critique becomes more expansive in Harvey Wasserman's essay, "Those Who Hate Liberals Hate America," wherein he presents self-evident truths such as, "The real reason right-wingers hate America is because it was born of the Enlightenment," the Bill of Rights was the "ultimate liberal screed," and Alexander Hamilton is more a liberal hero than conservative hero because he "indulged in a Clinton-esque extramarital affair...
...This particular man-shaped albatross may have been jettisoned none-too-soon...
...Does this mean we have to re-write hate crime legislation again...
...I attempt to avoidsometimes, I'll admit, unsuccessfully-what iconoclastic leftist Paul Berman described in Power and the Idealists as the tendency to personally attack anyone who "displays the mental alertness to change his mind now and then...
...You're No Longer a Bigot...
...It's more like an ulcer, a big, fist-shaped ulcer that keeps pumping bile into their bloodstreams...
...It seems that in Rushworld, Republicans are free to quote the straw man effigies they create of Democrats, but Democrats should never rely on information that could in any way be challenged," Derych concludes...
...Whatever his party affiliation, however he voted, just from a tactical standpoint it would seem an individual who approaches such a sensitive issue with such callousness would be the absolute last person the pro-life movement needs in its ranks...
Vol. 39 • September 2006 • No. 7
