The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong Book

Joshi posits that while conservatives can win elections, they look around and see a stalled agenda. Phyllis Schaffley was not able to convince women that they did not want equal pay for equal work, and William F. Buckley has not seen the end of the USA with the dawn of integrated schools. Schaffley has to suffer seeing the now ubiquitous title "Ms." which she had ridiculed, belittled and condemned. Contemporary conservatives, who's faces grace the book's cover, are a lot more shrill than their predecessors ever were. Joshi posits that this is because they see an America that is not like the one THEY have determined that it "should" be.

Joshi spends most of the text demonstrating "why conservatives keep getting it wrong." By quoting the writings of conservatives, he shows the missing logic of their positions. As contemporary conservative book titles suggest ("How to talk to a liberal if you must"; "Liberalism is a disease"), their program has little to do with policy and more to do with being against liberals. The need to shout and smear, he suggests, results from frustration in seeing the institutionalization and cultural acceptance of the liberal causes they fought against (civil rights, availability of abortion, environmental protection laws, to name a few) and an inability to articulate a logical argument.

He deals with a neglected (I think) issue, as to why, in public debate, "morals" are always about sex. Greed, corruption, etc., are never linked to immorality in the public discourse. Joshi discusses reasons why.

As I finished this book, I started the John Dean book, "Conservatives without Conscience", which adds more perspective.