Rating: 
Summary: It doesn't get any more real than this
Review: I make it a point to read non-fiction books that encapsulate a perspective that will unsettle me more than non-fiction in any category could ever hope to. Specifically on matters that cut to the quick of what it is to be human in our time: psychology, religious and cultural origins, and controversial views on politics. I can think of only four or five books out of the hundreds I have reviewed and read on ANY subject, that have made me as queasy and exhilarated simultaneously as Michael Lind's UP FROM CONSERVATISM. "Economic inequality is another subject on which the right has been anything but straightfoward. For most of the past decade, politicans and journalists pretended either that the rise in inequality in the United States was a myth, or that it was only a temporary phenomenon. The magnitude of the problem, however, can no longer be denied..." "If further proof is needed for my contention that much of today's conservative political theory is merely Marxism with the substitution of "bourgeois" for "proletariat" and "culture" for "class," it can be found in [the] call for enlisting art and literature in the service of Republican conservatism, a program that is indistinguishable, except in its content, from the aesthetic orthodoxy of American [communist] communities during the 1920's and 1930's...the literary and artistic techniques used by communists and fascists alike would be adopted to disseminate conservative ideology...For the time being, it seems, Americans will have to be content with the work of conservative public policy intellectuals." Michael Lind, UP FROM CONSERVATISM
From Chapter Ten: "Soaking the Middle"
and Chapter Three: "The Triangular Trade: How the Conservative Movement Works" Michael Lind's detailed analysis of the modern day conservative movement is frighteningly astute. He says that the Conservative movement, dead from betraying its own doctrines for Machiavellian scheming, is built on the inevitable flight of the Catholic coalitions, the New Deal labor force of FDR and the Southern white Dixiecrats from the identity politics of the Democratic Left after the Civil Rights Movement. He examines the movement's origins as its ideals became codified not with William F. Buckley's GOD AND MAN AT YALE, but with the elitist ideology and political practices of Communist hunter Joseph McCarthy (a close friend and trusted mentor of Buckley in his youth), the culture of the inherited-riches elite, and the Plantation economy mentality of the Confederate south. The Jeckyll party of Lincoln has become the Hyde party of the present day. "The resemblance between Marxism and the classical liberal economic utopianism of the American right is a family resemblance. Marxism and free-market fundamentalism are squabbling twins, the offspring of the Enlightenment's naive belief in inevitable progress....neoclassical economists serve as guardians of the orthodoxy, promising "scientific" approaches to economic progress...Today's American conservatives, however, have adopted free-market fundamentalism, in its crudest forms, as their political religion." From Chapter 10: "Soaking the Middle: The Conservative Class War Against Wage-earning Americans" "American conservatism, then, is a countercommunism that replicates, down to rather precise details of organization and theory, the communism that it opposes..." From Chapter Ten Soaking the Middle: The Conservative Class War Against Wage-Earning Americans What Alice Miller is to psychology, Michael Lind has become to American Politics. Gore Vidal's comparisons of him to both Voltaire and deToqueville are, astonishingly enough, understatements. "The danger is not that conservative policies will succeed....The danger is that when the inevitable failure of conservative governance occurs, an angry populace will conclude that mainstream conservatism as well as liberalism has been discredited--and that the extremists of the populist and fundamentalist right will be well placed to take advantage of popular alienation and wrath.... Make no mistake, the present Republican spree on behalf of the corporate elite will sooner or later provoke a backlash... ...Indeed, it seems increasingly likely that the now moribund mainstream conservative movement of 1955-1992 will be viewed by historians as nothing more than the icebreaker for a resurgent radical right. Historians of the next century may well record that the conservatism of [William F.]Buckley, Kristol and Podheretz was an ephemeral offshoot from the main line of descent on the American right, a line that leads from [the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist radio priest of the 1930's] Father Coughlin through [1950's communist hunter]Joe McCarthy and [1960's Southern segregationist] George Wallace to Pat Robertson and Patrick Buchanan. Though they claim to be students of the French and Russian revolutions, all too many of the thinkers and strategists of the conservative movement appear to have forgotten that those who begin revolutions are seldom the ones who finsh them. Indeed, they are often among the first victims of the brutal forces they unleash upon the world." From the Introduction It doesn't get any more real than this. Read this now before history cries HAVOC, and lets loose the dogs of war.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent history muddied by passion
Review: I ordered this book based on a recommendation I found on Josh Marshall's blog. I was immediately enthralled with it and finished it over a weekend. This book does a superb job of tracing several arcs of American political history from Thomas Jefferson, to Jefferson Davis, to George Bush. For my own part, I recently left the Republican Party because it seemed increasingly obvious that it has become the province of race-baiters and mercantilists, not of individualists and pro-market (as opposed to pro-business)conservatives. The title, "Up From Conservatism", and the author's good reputation, convinced me to buy. I'm glad I did. In this book, you will learn that the GOP's southernization is not a marriage of convenience - the south has fully taken over the party. This is now the party of creationists, religious fanatics, and the generally intolerant. I do not believe - for one minute - that George W. Bush is a racist. In fact, much of the party's leadership, in my opinion, are good people. But they've made a deal with the devil - they wink and southern racism as a way of appealing to low-income southern whites. This bloc of voters, along with the GOP's alliance with business elite, constitute a winning formula for the GOP. It is now THE national party. This book has several serious flaws. It frequenly stoops to sneering and name-calling in lieu of analysis. And although the GOP is truly guilty by its association with southern-style racism, it uses the tactic of guilt by association far too much. For example, the book mercilessly mocks school vouchers as transparently impotent, and goes even further by stating (probably correctly) that the idea was first touted in the south as a way of allowing whites to pull out of integrated schools and form new all-white districts. Perhaps. A more honest appraisal of vouchers would acknowledge Milton Friedman as the true source of this idea. It may not be a new idea, but it's not a continuation of a racist policy of decades ago. To suggest that it is is breathtakingly dishonest, a really cheap shot. Another of this book's failures is its treatment of supply-side economics. In fact, Lind should have taken his criticisms of Jude Wanniski, the father of supply-side, even further than he did. Wanniski is now a full-blown crackpot of the first order, referring (for example) to Slobodan Milosevic as Yugoslavia's Abraham Lincoln. Anyway, when Lind gets into the Laffer curve, he trips terribly and again stoops to mockery when analysis would have served his readers better. The Laffer Curve is a simply indisputable theory. Very simply, the Laffer Curve assumes that (a) federal revenue at a tax rate of 0% would be $0, (b) federal revenue at a tax rate of 100% would be, if not $0, at least very low, and (c) federal revenue at a tax rate between 0% and 100% would be higher than either 0% or 100%. Plot (a), (b), and (c) in a piece of paper, and there's your curve. Therefore, if you start with a tax rate of 100%, and lower it, federal revenue will increase as tax rates decrease. But this does not hold forever. At some point, decreasing tax rates will result in lower revenue for the government as you approach a tax rate of 0%. Whether lowering tax rates will increase revenue depends entirely on what point of the curve you're currently on. Lind's mockery of the Laffer Curve prove that he does not understand it well enough to even explain it. The problem with the Laffer Curve is how it's implemented in practice. Our tax rates are closer to 0% than 100% - that is, we're on the part of the curve where increased tax rates clearly do not result in lower revenue. The 1990s ought to prove that - Clinton raised taxes, and internal revenue soared. The point is that Lind's smarter-than-thou attitude deprives him of a good opportunity to truly deconstruct supply-side economics, instead of merely mocking it. There are other flaws in this book. Still, it remains an excellent guidebook to how the Republican party maintains an alliance of business elites and poor white cultural conservatives in the south - which, if you've been following the GOP lately, remains as timely a topic as it was when this book was written. It stands up well over the intervening years and is worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: wasn't surprised
Review: I read some of the reviews here, and wasn't surprised that people compared him to Marx and Mao. Both of those writers were flawed in their thinking and assertions as well.
Rating:
Summary: A Real Eye Opener
Review: I recommend this book to anyone who wants a lot of information about what went wrong with the Republican Party (Lind was a Democrat who switched parties then left the Republicans in disgust.) Lind isn't a partisan though, he has many problems with the Democratics and liberals in general, so his critique of the Right is clearly from the middle. It's is also rich with the names of the people who are the major players in the Party - whose names you see today on TV news shows or on op-eds in major news publications nationwide. This book left me with a real sense, though, that much of Republican ideaology is just propaganda designed to maintain the power and profit of a super rich overclass -- and that the current Democratic ideology is nearly as bankrupt. The future, as I read the book, lies in a return to New Deal Liberalism, where the government is meant to benefit the working middle class and protect it from the abuses of unchecked capitalism. Altogether a great insight into our modern History.
Rating:
Summary: A Real Eye Opener
Review: I recommend this book to anyone who wants a lot of information about what went wrong with the Republican Party (Lind was a Democrat who switched parties then left the Republicans in disgust.) Lind isn't a partisan though, he has many problems with the Democratics and liberals in general, so his critique of the Right is clearly from the middle. It's is also rich with the names of the people who are the major players in the Party - whose names you see today on TV news shows or on op-eds in major news publications nationwide. This book left me with a real sense, though, that much of Republican ideaology is just propaganda designed to maintain the power and profit of a super rich overclass -- and that the current Democratic ideology is nearly as bankrupt. The future, as I read the book, lies in a return to New Deal Liberalism, where the government is meant to benefit the working middle class and protect it from the abuses of unchecked capitalism. Altogether a great insight into our modern History.
Rating: 
Summary: Dense, and yet thin
Review: If you are planning on reading this book then I would suggest that you get a good nights sleep, fix some strong coffee, and find a comfortable chair. This is a book that requires more then the average amount of concentration. I think the author wanted everybody to know that he had a very good education and understanding of the topic, because he certainly did not make the book light and easy to read. To be honest I was looking for a book that gave me a run down of all the things that a Democrat would dislike about the far right wing of the Republican Party. The book does provide some of this information, but you need to work at it to get it. The author spends the majority of his time on the economic issues and how the conservatives differ from the main stream of America. He also talks a good deal on how the spin is put out by the conservatives to make the average person think that strong political policies that benefit only a few of the richest in America somehow will help the middle class. Overall the book is interesting and well thought out. I think maybe the editor should have forced the author to cut out some of the more difficult to work through areas, there are some chapters that have 15 different "isums" in them, how is one to keep them all straight. The author did hit some of my frustrations with the conservatism movement. It is just that I doubt it will ever get a wider audience given its tough to work through writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Topic, Interesting but Difficult to Read
Review: If you are planning on reading this book then I would suggest that you get a good nights sleep, fix some strong coffee, and find a comfortable chair. This is a book that requires more then the average amount of concentration. I think the author wanted everybody to know that he had a very good education and understanding of the topic, because he certainly did not make the book light and easy to read. To be honest I was looking for a book that gave me a run down of all the things that a Democrat would dislike about the far right wing of the Republican Party. The book does provide some of this information, but you need to work at it to get it. The author spends the majority of his time on the economic issues and how the conservatives differ from the main stream of America. He also talks a good deal on how the spin is put out by the conservatives to make the average person think that strong political policies that benefit only a few of the richest in America somehow will help the middle class. Overall the book is interesting and well thought out. I think maybe the editor should have forced the author to cut out some of the more difficult to work through areas, there are some chapters that have 15 different "isums" in them, how is one to keep them all straight. The author did hit some of my frustrations with the conservatism movement. It is just that I doubt it will ever get a wider audience given its tough to work through writing.
Rating:
Summary: thoughtful analysis of conservatism derailed by extremists
Review: Lind makes a convincing argument that the American conservatism of Lincoln and Dewey has been hijacked by extremists like Pat Robertson, Patrick Buchanan and Wayne LaPierre. That much is easy for anyone to see. What made this book more interesting is the author's contention that there has also been a change in the Left's priorities, evidenced by the rise of neoliberalism (Carter, Clinton and the DLC, for example) and the shift from working class and immigrant concerns to that of identity politics. What remains is a gaping void where middle class working folks reside -- moderate-to-conservative on social issues and liberal on economics -- left-populists. Essentially, both parties are looking out for the economic concerns of corporations and the affluent, while each does its best to appeal to various special interests in order to get votes. When is the last time either political party decided to strengthen employees' rights, keep jobs in this country, reward workers for having the best productivity in the world, or eliminate the obscenity of a class of working poor? It was interesting to read this book post-9/11. I expected a lot of it would be outdated and made irrelevant by that awful morning, but much of what the author said then still rings true, though at the time of writing he had no inkling (who could?) of GW and the 2000 election debacle to come. Lind discusses the religious right's stranglehold on the GOP even without knowing that they would sabotage John McCain with a disinformation campaign in South Carolina in 2000. He traces the myths of the success of supply-side economics and the failures of the public schools and social welfare even before knowing that the Bush administration would bankrupt the country for upper-income tax cuts and push faith-based programs and school vouchers through the back door. He denounces the whacko anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic, irrational rantings of Pat Robertson that conservatives allow to go unchallenged because he controls a vast grass-roots network of voters. (This is what finally led him to renounce his own conservative affiliations.) But my favorite chapter has to be the one attacking the conservative myth of the Golden Age (the 1950s for Newt Gingrich, the 1930s for Trent Lott). It is very funny. Tragically, scandalously funny. Lind calls attention to the hypocrisy of conservatives who call for law and order (at the same time they let the NRA halt even the most basic controls on weapons), smaller government (at the same time they establish the department of Total Information Awareness headed by situational ethicist John Poindexter), fiscal responsibility (at the same time they dip into Social Security in order to give tax breaks to the top 1%), pro-family (at the same time they tax families to give tax breaks to the rich), and non-intervention (at the same time they send young people off to die in order to divert attention from a poor economy and constitutional shenanigans). Lind, most interestingly, makes the case that the GOP has shifted from American conservatism to southern conservatism, with its concomitant anti-intellectual, anti-government, pro-industry and separatist attitudes; at the same time, corporations have shifted from a pro-government (investment) model to a low-wage/non-regulation model favored by conservatives. This is a big-picture book that will give you a lot to think about. If you are a curious and honest thinker, of any political persuasion, you will find this treatise, at the very least, thought-provoking. The title's implication that current conservatism is bottom-of-the-barrel politics is bookended by the work's final lines: "It is too late to rescue American conservatism from the radical right. But it is not too late to rescue America from conservatism." You gotta love that. An excellent companion book would be David Brock's Blinded by the Right. While Lind looks at the philosophical underpinnings of conservative thought, Brock's emphasis is on the evolution of the conservative movement since the 1980's and on specific individuals and the media.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful dissection of conservative "thought"
Review: Lind, a former conservative, does several things in this fine work. First, he describes how the conservative movement has been taken over by the reactionary right, totally abandoning the great tradition of Daniel Webster and Dwight Eisenhower. He goes issue by issue, explaining why the right is wrong on education, welfare, economics and other issues. He explains the racism in three books that got me disgusted when I read them but which conservatives now use as their "bible" on certain issues. Lind shows how conservative populism is and always has been an oxymoron, showing the conservative fear of true populism even as they preach it on occasion. He shows how the modern right has catered to extreme groups that the Eisenhowers and Fords would never have dealt with. He also emerges as critical of the conservative Clintonites who would seek the wreck the progress created by FDR, Truman and LBJ. A very expansive work that lives up to the challenge of covering all those bases in considerable depth without-> getting dull. A good companion to this book is "Who Speaks for G-d?" by pastor Jim Wallis, which explains why the Religious Right is wrong and violates its religious roots.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Takedown of the Modern Conservative Movement
Review: Michael Lind has provided an excellent overview of the many ways that the modern Republican Party, particularly its conservative leadership, is a danger for current and future American society. From shifting the tax burden from the rich to the middle class and working poor, to lending implicit support to right-wing extremist groups, the agenda of the today's Republican party would create a country similiar to an East Asian or South American dictatorship.
While Lind provides an excellent discussion of Conservative economic, social, legal theories, his most valuable contribution is his demonstration of the danger to America of not having the views of the "vital center" liberals in the tradition of FDR, Truman, and LBJ represented in this country today. To that end, Lind advocates political support to anyone, either Democat or Republican, that does not identify, or is not beholden to the conservative GOP leadership.
This is an excellent, if sometimes dated, argument for a resurrection of that vital center that was destroyed by the Vietnam War after attackes from both the left and the right and an excellent takedown of the GOP.
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