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Blinded by the Right : The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative

Blinded by the Right : The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative

List Price: $15.00
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: An Unconvincing Journey
Review: This book has exactly the same problem as David Horowitz's "Radical Son," which describes the opposite journey (left to right). Just as Horowitz never really comes to grips with why he was a leftist in the first place (or why he came to believe that liberals were the enemy), Brock never convinces me that he's made any kind of an ideological journey -- he denies having really believed in conservatism, but he doesn't really seem to have been ideologically convinced of liberalism either. This is a book by someone who doesn't seem to believe in anything, except his journalistic career; this gives a certain credence to conservative charges that Brock has simply "sold out" for the sake of writing a big-selling book.

Whether all Brock's stories are true or not is almost irrelevant. I'm not inclined to like the people he writes about, so I certainly enjoy thinking they might be true. From the little I do know about the events he describes, I think it's clear that he exaggerates the power of Scaife, and conveniently forgets that the supposedly monolithic, thought-policed right wing was rocked by all sorts of ideological conflicts and schisms while he was part of it (right-wingers may hate liberals, but they hate each other almost as much). But this book does succeed as enjoyable dish and wish-fulfillment for many readers. It fails as a book about David Brock's "conscience." I'm still not convinced he has one.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This guy lies & he admits it!
Review: OK, this guy is an admitted liar! He says that he WAS lying back when he wrote for the Right. But hey, does an admitted liar have any credibility at all?? Hmmm? Who's to say he isn't lying NOW? Or maybe he's lying both times? Don't waste your time or money on a book written by a pathological liar!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Lies entertainingly presented
Review: ... However this book is entertaining in that it shows how one person can deceive themself while attempting to deceive others. Avoid this book and instead try reading a good John Grisham novel like his latest one.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Suitable Penance
Review: David Brock's Blinded by the Right is part autobiography, part expose. Brock's description of his early life and his first political interests (liberal Democratic) is a lead up to a major epiphany: While a student at Berkeley in the early 1980s he saw Jean Kirkpatrick being shouted down by a group of left wing thugs. Justifiably outraged, Brock began to attack political correctness and other foolishnesses in a series of articles for the campus newspaper. Through this exposure he came to the attention of the national right wing, which adopted him and assisted his ideological move from liberalism through conservatism into the arms of the extreme right's lunatic fringe. Brock joined this fringe just at the time it reached its loudest and most hysterical pitch during the early Clinton years, a period when the traditional four horsemen of the Radical Right, greed, sexism, racism, and bigotry were joined by a fifth, prurience.

The story Brock paints of those years when the Far Right launched an unprecedented assault on the legitimately elected government is shocking, especially when he details the campaign of rumor, innuendo, and lies these self-proclaimed guardians of the nation created. For all the weaknesses and frailties of President and Mrs. Clinton (and I make no excuses for either of them), Anita Hill, Vincent Foster, and the other victims of the Right Wing in those years, surely no human beings ever deserved such hatred and vituperation.

Blinded by the Right is an important book for four reasons:

1. It confirms (as if we needed confirmation) the existence of the "vast right wing conspiracy." Brock gives names, dates, places of documented contacts and collusions between individuals and groups who sought to unseat the President and force their extremist agenda on the nation.
2. It clearly delineates the differences between today's right wing and the honorable, decent conservatism of the past. While reading this book one is often moved to mourn the passing of the Goldwaters and Tafts and to muse over the probable reaction of Edmund Burke to today's so called conservatives: would he not rush to scrape them off his shoes?
3. It reveals the hypocrisy of those right wing spokesmen and women who condemned President Clinton's moral failures while maintaining their own cozy little ménages and other dubious liaisons.
4. It depicts in detail the petty meanness and nastiness of the so-called humor of the right wing, which came to dominate the airwaves during the 1990s. Stories and jokes which would be too vulgar for a boys junior high school locker room are banded about freely amongst these self-described ladies and gentlemen. I would use the term "sophomoric" but I teach high school sophomores and few of them would stoop to repeat some of that stuff.

To his credit, Brock details his own part in these savageries without excuses beyond pecuniary ones (he evidently did quite well financially out of it all). And he points out with regret the damage that was done to our nation's political process and to the public's perception of that process. This is indeed damage that will take a long time to mend. I trust that eventually Brock's former associates will join him in regretting what they have done.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Re-institute The Standard
Review: David Brock did a great job in writing "Blinded by the Right". It's a very professional book, and worth reading. I could not agree with much of what it said, however. I have to wonder, when did Mr. Brock change and decide to look at things from a different point of view? The substance of the book, though well presented, seems to loose sight of "the standard". I think it is good sincere journalism, but maybe all of us, liberal and conservative alike, need to periodically "re-institute the standard" regarding morals, ethics, and character. Some of us, maybe, should be humble enough to admit we really don't understand how those things "fit" in the first place. For an easy way to find out, I recommend reading "West Point:...Thomas Jefferson" by Norman Thomas Remick.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Talk About Bias..................
Review: A must read for everyone who wants to know how/why we spent 73m persecuting our last ELECTED president to find out he did nothing wrong except cheat on his wife.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: He's correcting the historical record he helped create.
Review: David Brock's book is basically a long-winded attempt to get certain facts into the record. He tells, in narrative form, the story of how he came to be involved with "neocon" political intrigues, how he enriched himself by acting as a "publicist" for the viewpoints his financiers wanted spread around, how he came to see that his pose as an investigative journalist was based on wishful thinking, and how he painfully gave up that posture and decided to tell the actual story of the early-to-mid-90's as he experienced it. Want dirt on Clarence Thomas, Ted Olson, Ann Coulter, Spencer Abraham, Laura Ingraham, and many others? It's there. This book will make you angry, no matter what you think of the Clintons or their detractors. Its real importance is that it documents how wretchedly the mainstream media failed the public interest in allowing people interested only in fame and money (like Brock) to do the bidding of people interested in power, and get away with it. It gets five stars from me because people everywhere should read it. My main criticism? No index!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Test review.. just testing
Review: This is a test review.. just testing stuff..

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Alarming and Important
Review: David Brock's confessional is alarming as hell. It reads like a twisted drama with characters such as the Reverend Moon (who knew he founded the Washington Times and bailed out Liberty College for Jerry Falwell?) to Richard Mellon Scaife (the godfather of all right wing media) to Ann Coulter(Aryan nation beauty queen)....this book should be required reading for all Young Republicans, who think kneeling at the altar of St. Ronnie of the Reagan is cool.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Hu?
Review: The left is the only one blinding anyone, and this is an example.


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