It’s a truism that converts to an ideology are often the most zealous, and for a while, that described me. As I moved from Republican to conservative to independent to liberal to Democrat, I often found myself too partisan. In that leftward drift, I maintained conservative friends and sources that I could disagree with yet respect. However, in the era of Trump, a number of those same sources lost their intellectual grounding to defend the indefensible. When I read through Charles J. Sykes latest book, How the Right Lost Its Mind, I found an intellectual conservative that I could respect and with whom I have, do, and will disagree. Through his radio program, one of the many Right wing talk shows that populated the airwaves from the 90s through today, Mr. Sykes became a political player in Wisconsin. As candidate Trump converted the conservative establishment, Sykes remained true to conservative principle. His career suffered for it. He lost his audience and more, but he embodied the conservative virtue of personal responsibility. He chose principle over power. For this, he was ridiculed and ostracized. He watched as the party of limited government, his party, became consumed with owning the libs and populism while also becoming a welcome home for white supremacists. In his latest book, Charles J. Sykes traces the conservative movement from the intellectual days of William F. Buckley Jr. to the inspiring yet flawed presidency of Ronald Reagan to the scandal laden chaos of Donald Trump. Mr. Sykes dives deep into How the Right Lost Its Mind.
TL;DR
How the Right Lost Its Mind by Charles J. Sykes is a must-read for political junkies looking for the conservative never-Trumpers assessment of the current Republican party. Highly recommended.
From the Publisher
Once at the center of the American conservative movement, bestselling author and radio host Charles Sykes is a fierce opponent of Donald Trump and the right-wing media that enabled his rise.
In How the Right Lost Its Mind, Sykes presents an impassioned, regretful, and deeply thoughtful account of how the American conservative movement came to lose its values. How did a movement that was defined by its belief in limited government, individual liberty, free markets, traditional values, and civility find itself embracing bigotry, political intransigence, demagoguery, and outright falsehood? How the Right Lost its Mind addresses:
- Why are so many voters so credulous and immune to factual information reported by responsible media?
- Why did conservatives decide to overlook, even embrace, so many of Trump’s outrages, gaffes, conspiracy theories, falsehoods, and smears?
- Can conservatives govern? Or are they content merely to rage?
- How can the right recover its traditional values and persuade a new generation of their worth?
The first line sums up the book as a whole. “This is not a book about Donald Trump, even though he will play a central role.” (xiii)1 Charles J. Sykes is a true believer when it comes to conservative ideology. For him, conservative principles are the whole point. How the Right Lost Its Mind documents how many so-called conservatives betrayed their ideology in exchange for power or to keep their audience. It’s a scathing indictment that spares no one, not the conservative establishment politicians, conservative commentators, or evangelical Christians, not even Rush Limbaugh. Mr. Sykes establishes the modern conservative movement with William F. Buckley Jr. This history lesson gives the Right a history of intellectualism that I only knew superficially. Mr. Sykes dives in and gives us examples of Buckley’s principled stand and the troubles he faced with the conspiracy theorists of his own time. He continues the Rights evolution through Goldwater to Reagan and on to the heady days of the conservative talk radio ending with Trump’s embrace of conspiracy theorists and white supremacists as his base. The sad decline in the Right’s intellectualism is beautifully laid out with academic precision by a conservative who hates the academy.
A Liberal's Thoughts
To be clear, I am politically left of center, a liberal, and, as of 2018, a Democrat2. Since the 2016 election and since leaving Facebook, I’ve been glued to Twitter where I’ve found new sources of liberal political thought. But I’ve dropped a number of conservative sources since they have become little more than a cult of Trump. At least, that’s what I thought. When I saw an opportunity for an Advanced Review Copy of the paperback edition of How the Right Lost Its Mind, I saw a chance to learn. Really, I expected a book about a Republican jumping ship to join the liberals in their resistance. Instead, Mr. Sykes remained a conservative as Republicans moved on to populism, and the book is better for it being about a conservative remaining a conservative. For standing firm, he was labeled a traitor and with the idiotic acronym RINO3. Near the end of the book, he summed up the problem of politics in general but Republicans at this moment in history with the following quote: “Of all the areas of American life, politics may be one of the very few where you can get booed for saying that people should follow their conscience.” (pg 231)
The history of the modern conservative movement fascinated me. It appears that the Right has always had a conspiracy theorist problem, but traditionally, they eschew the crazy. By embracing it in 2016, Republicans have gone against their own history. The intellectual lineage is wholly at odds with how I view modern conservatives. Mr. Sykes in-depth documentation of where the party came from gives me hope that the Right can return there in the future.
Those Mean Liberals Made Us Do It
Unfortunately, Mr. Sykes sprinkles in that special brand of conservative victimhood that makes no sense. While he reserves the majority of the blame for conservatives, he puts part of the blame on mean liberals. These are the least convincing arguments of the book. For example, he says that the Lefts use of racist/racism made the Right numb to the more blatant examples of racism displayed by Trump’s supporters. It’s lazy thinking that places all responsibility on liberals to operate only under the conservative definition of racism. To be clear, there exists a fundamental disagreement between the Left and the Right for what racism actually is. Liberals tend to consider how racism is inherent in the modern systems that slavery, Jim Crow, and the Southern Strategy created. Conservatives tend to view racism only based on definition without consideration of how society treats people of color. When it comes to racism, the Right and Left talk past each other because they’re not speaking a common language.
But absent that, if Democrats being mean makes racist words and actions acceptable to you, maybe you were always going to find them acceptable. It’s here where the party of personal responsibility decides to shirk its duty to blame the mean Democrats. While some liberals could work on their delivery, any discussion of racism will cause defensiveness in anyone. This defensiveness results in a sensitivity and belief that an accusation of racism is more malicious than it is. Conservatives, for all their talk about snowflakes, play victim just as quickly and often as liberals.
Racism
While we’re on it, Mr. Sykes does inquire into the Rights easiness with racism. He correctly sums up my and a number of folks on the Lefts thoughts about Trump voters and supporters. “It is impossible to say how many conservatives actually harbor racial resentments, but what is undeniable is that a great number of American conservatives have proven themselves willing to tolerate and even accept racism and racial resentment.” (pg 14) This is the statement that stood out most for me in the book because it connected liberals with Mr. Sykes brand of conservatives. I’ve seen it in a number of places on the Left but nowhere on the Right. This type of party-examination showed that Mr. Sykes is genuine in his attempt to document the departure of Republicans from conservatism.
Further Reading
Before this book, I only knew of popular conservative media, like Fox News, Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and, well, mostly talk radio hosts. But throughout, Mr. Sykes uses supporting evidence from various conservative thinkers that I’ve heard of but never sought out. The quotes and excerpts provided a number of resources for me to check out. In fact, I bought Johnathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind simply because of the quotes that Mr. Sykes used.
I firmly believe that the only way to know if your ideas are good is to test them. But my normal conservative sources have joined the cult of Trump, and for the last year, I haven’t found conservative think pieces worth reading. But Mr. Sykes has given me resources to check out. Besides his own blog, The Contrarian Conservative, I’ve begun to visit the Weekly Standard and National Review’s websites. Of course, I don’t agree with either very often, but the intellectual aspect of the essays are a much needed addition to my political reading.
Conservative Media
Mr. Sykes’s analysis of the transformation of conservative media is one of his most convincing arguments. He correctly discusses how conservatives have built their own echo chamber as a backlash to the liberal bias of the so-called traditional or mainstream media4. While I think he’s again playing the victim card a little too much about the traditional journalism, the liberal bent does exist. Mr. Sykes looks at how conservatives ran so far out of balance that individual stories are no longer questioned but the whole institution is considered fake. All the time on social media, news is dismissed not because the story got facts wrong or because it’s fake. No, now, people dismiss it out of hand based on the source of the news story. To be fair, both sides do this. The Left dismisses Fox News out of hand, which I think is too simple. Fox does deserve some of the blame for this because they do not clearly delineate news programs and opinion shows. When I hear the accusation out of conservatives5 that the New York Times has opinion even in its weather reports, I ask for proof. Zero evidence that the NYT does this has ever been presented to me. And on the flip side, when it’s a Fox News news show, it tends to be good reporting that focuses on stories I do not find interesting6. Mr. Sykes shows how conservative media has built and become prey to an audience fueled by anger and purity. Woe unto the show host that challenges the audience.
In Wisconsin, Charles J. Sykes hosted his own radio talk show, which propelled him to a force in state politics. He built an audience and helped turn Wisconsin into what it is today. In other words, he participated in the industry that propelled the Republican Party to the far Right. In his mind, he discussed policy and conservative philosophy, but he soon found out that the audience wasn’t interested in either so much as returning to power. Sykes stuck to his principles as Trump rose to prominence in the Republican Party. His audience, however, ditched conservative philosophy and principle to jump on the nationalist band wagon attached to the Trump train. Trump supporters, once loyal listeners, began to insult Sykes and engage in the low behavior that the internet age encourages. Where he once helped elect Scott Walker, he was no longer Republican enough. He was labeled a RINO. Tangentially, he wonders if he contributed to the current environment but only momentarily. I don’t think he interrogates his own role in pushing the Right from a party of small government to the current authoritarian loving regime it is. I know that’s the purpose of the book, but it would have added to the personal journey that he’s clearly on. The book is excellent without it; I think it would have been better seeing him wrestle with his role rather than acting as a neutral observer.
Conclusion
Politics in the Trump era is a toxic cesspool. In this environment, political norms are dead and buried. With each escalation, Trump wins, and our democracy loses. One of our major political parties has abdicated their principles and decency. How the Right Lost Its Mind documents this decline from the party of Reagan to the party of Trump. It’s well researched, well written, and compelling. Anyone interested in politics – Left, Right, Undecided – will get a new perspective on conservatism based on this book. How the Right Lost Its Mind gives me hope that intellectual conservatives understand the danger that Trump and his most fervent supporters pose to our Republic.
The paperback publishes 10/02/2018 from Saint Martin’s Press.
8 out of 10!
1. All quotes are from the hardcover edition since it is out in print.Click here to return.
2. Typically, I leaned Left but didn’t vote straight Democrat. In 2016, I voted for Eric Greitens, who ended up being another compromised Republican. Between Trump and Greitens, I vowed never to vote Republican again. Lindsey Graham’s antics during the Kavanaugh hearings have solidified that vow. Click here to return.
3. Republican in Name Only – the Right’s version of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Not only is it further proof of the Right’s obsession with purity, no one can tell me who gets to decide what a real Republican is. Trump? The Base? The voter? Click here to return.
4. With Fox News, Hannity, Drudge, and Limbaugh getting audiences in the millions, I don’t see how they can be anything other than mainstream.Click here to return.
5. To my shame, I did the same thing when I was a conservative. Seeing that I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about is partly what led me to the Left. Click here to return.
6. Another irritating complaint conservatives make is, “Why don’t the media report on [insert story that conservatives think is awesome here].” Where they see some conspiracy to keep ‘real’ news that helps the conservative cause out of the press, I see a business making decisions on what will sell. If conservatives want the press to cover their stories, they should become customers of that company. Isn’t that how the market works? Instead, conservatives complain that the press only covers news that appeals to their customers and not their non-customers. Click here to return.