Reviews for Rules for Radical Conservatives: Beating the Left at Its Own Game to Take Back America

The average rating for Rules for Radical Conservatives: Beating the Left at Its Own Game to Take Back America based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-01-05 00:00:00 Nicole Ragen Arganda This book was written by David Kahane, a progressive/socialist strategist, but in reality a pen name. The actual writer is an un-named Conservative columnist. The book represents a reaction and counter-balance to the leftist manual "Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky. The book is a sort of "letter from the devil" or perhaps more accurately a letter from one of his missionaries, Kahane. It purports to give us an inside look at how dark side leftists and statists view Conservatives. Why would the devil want to give out this information? Because the fight has just been too easy, with Conservatives crying defenseless in the dust. By giving away some of their "secrets", the devil can bring more enjoyment to his ultimate triumph. The intention is to give us a humorous but truthful account of how the ends-justifies-the means crowd operates so that an effective way may be seen to counter them. Part One sets forth who the enemy is, what they want, how they have operated through history and the tactics they use to neutralize the opposition. There are many enlightening moments. Part Two offers what Kahane thinks are the solutions which will enable Conservatives to successfully defend the experiment known as America and to counter attack those who envision a new socialist world model called "Amerikkka". Kahane is often funny but a little too clever. He assumes that we are familiar, especially in Part One with a huge variety of movies, fiction novels, plays, music, and television shows that many may have been to busy to spend time with. Also he is, he tells us a "screenwriter" and so must entertain us with the invented dialogue of the playwright. This gets tedious so quickly that I must confess, I skimmed much of Part One. Part Two on solutions was more interesting. Some critics have said that his solutions were too Machiavellian--- adapt the same tactics as the opposition, because the ends really do justify the means. There is an element of this perhaps, but I don't entirely agree. For example, Rule 6 is "At All Times, Think Constitutionally". This is of course the opposite of leftist philosophy which is more to destroy or render meaningless the Constitution. I think the book is worth reading. You may especially enjoy it if you are a connoisseur of the entertainment media…. Which I suppose, perhaps unfortunately, I am not.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-09-02 00:00:00 Gerald Rhodes I enjoy the Kahane persona columns on NRO, and therefore I picked up this book for cheap when a local bookstore went under. The premise is that Kahane (the pseudonym for a conservative screenwriter and novelist--Andrew Klavan is my suspect) is a liberal who is revealing to us poor lost conservatives the game plan of the Left and what we might do to thwart it, in the spirit that it's no fun if we don't fight back at all. C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters are referenced outright, and the tone is similar. The first half of the book "reveals" the plan of the Left to fundamentally remake America. Kahane asserts that we are in a non-violent civil war, and that only the Left realizes this and only they are acting accordingly. They have made a Long March through the institutions, taking over media, Hollywood, the universities, the schools, and most of the government. They use political correctness to control our speech and therefore our very thoughts, and constantly berate America for its faults, especially the Original Sin of our nation: slavery and racism. "The Civil Rights Act was not passed until 1964, therefore everything about America prior to 1964 was evil." This shuts down any nostalgia for any aspect of society before the "liberal revolution of the 1960s." Kahane sounds much like Rush Limbaugh in these assertions that liberals are bitter enemies, to be defeated, who do not share the same fundamental faith in America's founding ideas, instead of simply politically different. He frames the American political scene as a black-and-white battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil, and naturally the Left are the bad guys. His prescription is that conservatives need to pick up the weapons of their enemies and fight back, just as ruthlessly. He argues for a Long March of our own, to take back Hollywood and the schools. He argues for our own answers to Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show, where we can heap ridicule on the heads of the Left. He argues that conservatives need to live, eat, and breathe politics, the same way the Left does (which to me is the biggest disadvantage--whereas a liberal wants to make everything political, from food to sexuality to the CO2 we exhale, a conservative just wants to be left alone!). I'm torn in how I feel about this book. I don't view my "progressive" friends as followers of Lucifer who want to destroy America simply because they can, or because they hate it. I don't believe there is a large segment of our society who is actively working to subvert the Constitution, or who has warm feelings for the Soviet Union. I do smile at such turns of phrase as the "criminal organization known as the Democrat Party", and I'm certainly cognizant of the Party of Slavery, Segregation, and Sedition, of Tammany Hall, of the Chicago Daley machine, etc. I do believe in the universal struggle for liberty, that it is only preserved with eternal vigilance, and I do feel that the modern American left is less interested in liberty than it is in power. I think they are wrong; otherwise I'd be on their side. I want them defeated in elections and I want the Leviathan of the State drastically reduced. What I'm not sure I can absorb is Kahane's Manichean view of the struggle. Perhaps I do not want to see my opponents as being this ruthless and relentness, simply because I doubt the resilience of the American people--I fear we have lost much of the vigor of 1776, and my reading of history shows that the normal course of a society means we will eventually succumb. As Kahane points out, we are always on the defensive, standing athwart history yelling "Stop!" So while I found Kahane's wit bracing, and his clarion call somewhat energizing, in the final analysis this book depresses me.