How the Right Lost Its Mind

by Charles J. Sykes

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?

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Political Science, American, American History, Sociology

288 pages, Hardcover

First published October 3, 2017

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a Democratic Socialist who is worried about the fate of the Republican Party. I don’t think this is as strange as it may seem, for a healthy democracy requires vigor and honesty at both ends of the political spectrum. I admire the French Revolution, sure, but although I may relish Thomas Paine’s vision, I also have learned to heed Edmund Burke’s measured and deliberate rebukes. The United States never moves forward without the idealism of its progressives, but it is conservatism—properly considered—which can often save us not only from revolutionary bloodbaths but from bureaucratic boondoggles and just plain bad ideas.

It is in this spirit that I welcome Charlie Sykes' How the Right Lost its Mind. Sykes, veteran Wisconsin radio host and influential backer of Scott Walker, persisted as a NeverTrumper beyond the 2016 primary and found himself sharply attacked—and sometimes vilified—by the audience who used to admire him. He resigned; now you may find him—as I did—as a regular guest commentator on MSNBC.

Sykes, born in 1953, was raised as a Democrat, but became a full-fledged conservative by the end of the Reagan era. In his teens he watched his liberal father, member of the ACLU, become disillusioned by the “humorless and strident ideologues” of left-wing antiwar politics. Then, in his twenties, as a new reporter on the education beat, he became frustrated as he watched the teachers’ unions shield their incompetence beneath the banner of the Democratic Party. Plus, at the time, conservatism “just seemed smarter”: Buckley, Friedman, Will, and von Mises talked sense, taking “the world as it was,” and Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol showed him the way, as his father had done, by moving to the right, abandoning a liberalism they longer recognized.

Now, in the first quarter of the 21st century, Sykes finds himself surrounded by a “conservatism” he no longer recognizes or endorses, and asks: what were the steps that led us here? Broadly, he blames a rise of illiteracy and anti-intellectualism, represented not only by Palin and Trump, but—among others—by Tomi Lauren, the pretty blonde media star (“I have a very short attention span, so sitting down with a book is very difficult for me.”) Crucial to this rise, has been a failure, over the last few decades, to “purge the crackpots” from the movement, something in which Pope Buckley and the Church of The National Review used to excel (The Birchers and the Randians—the crucial examples—failed to received the Buckley imprimatur).

Although Sykes is good on our recent presidential election, he covers little new ground. I find him more interesting when he catalogs the “storm warnings,” the list of the things that began to skew the course of conservatism from the latter days of the last century until a few years ago: the derailment of the Gingrich revolution by the Clinton scandals, the rise of Fox news, the failure to address concretely—as the “reformicons” urged—the economic concerns of the working class base, the transformation of the Tea Party’s fiscal-conservative protest into a vituperative (and for-profit) stew of Obama hatred, the rise of the crackpot candidate (Todd Akins, Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle), the weaponizing of the Heritage Foundation by Jim DeMint, the attack of Rush Limbaugh on Sandra Fluke (resulting in a loss of sponsors that caused el Rushbo to become more extreme, more susceptible to Trump), and the linking by the Drudge Report—the “menu of conservative radio”—to the vile rantings of conspiracy monger Alex Jones and even more destructive fake news.


Sykes writes well. He can also apply a useful literary allusion when he wishes to, yet he never lets his education—or a concern for the niceties of style—keep him from saying clearly and forcefully what he wishes to say.

Speaking of clearly and forcefully, I’ll let Charlie himself sum things up in his “Some Modest Advice for Fellow Conservatives”:

Winning is great, but weigh the cost. My father always used to say that sometimes the only fights worth fighting for were the lost causes. I never really understood that, but as I’ve gotten older and seen more, I’ve come to appreciate it. There is nothing dishonorable about losing, but there is something shameful about abandoning your principles. After all, what profits it a man to win the whole world, if he loses his soul? But for an election? Any election?

[Tim Null · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boils down to this: conservative philosophy and policies aren't popular (even with conservatives), so Republicans follow fanatic leaders like Reagan and Trump. Sykes was happy enough with Reagan but finds Trump way too crazy for his personal taste.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

A conservative journalist and former radio host from Wisconsin, Charles Sykes now contributes opinions to national media outlets and still champions a few voices he calls conservative, e.g., Jennifer Rubin, George Will, Bret Stephens, Bill Kristol, among others. His conservative bonafides are proven by his longtime support for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Wisconsin politico, now Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Sykes broke with the lunatic fringe that has taken over right wing politics during the lead up to the 2016 election when people he knew would contact him with crazy stories they’d gotten off the web, which were then passed around and repeated by candidates and lawmakers, despite clearly being false stories.

Sykes traces a dawning recognition of the Right’s delusions to the 1964 essay by Richard Hofstadter called “The Paranoid Style in American Politics:”

“The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has gradually been undermined by socialist and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power.”

This sense of loss can also be seen in the Right’s far-right wing. In her groundbreaking book, Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean traces this fear to a monied class--the "old competitive capitalism"--that was essentially Southern slave-owning money, money accumulated by the use of slaves. Integration and the Voting Rights Act threw that old slave money into a tizzy. They didn’t want ‘intellectuals’ or government telling them what to think or how to spend their inheritances.

Back with Sykes’ main thesis, we are treated to a quick run through Republican history since the 1960s, noting in passing Buckley, Goldwater & the Birchers, and the rise of the New Right in the 1970s who were impatient with establishment conservatism, i.e., conservative IV-Leaguers were “sellouts” back in the 70s (?!) Sykes credits Nicole Hemmer in Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics for pointing out that the Reagan presidency oddly coincided with a declining conservative media. Without that conservative echo chamber we see now, there was no group enforcing political purity and Reagan had more latitude.

That ended in the 1990s, when the end of the George W. Bush presidency showed the party to be in disarray. Many political analysts on both sides of the aisle now point to the Gingrich Contract with America (1997) and the rise of Fox News (also 1997) as the beginning go the end for democratic systems as we had always known them, with both parties far more aggressive and divisive than ever before.

While we go along without much objection to Sykes’ analysis through much of the book, a few things hit a false note:

“Many journalists do not recognize their bias any more than a fish recognizes it is wet: The swim in an ocean of like-minded professionals. Being pro-choice on abortion was simply the position of everyone they knew, while opposition to abortion rights was, by definition, 'controversial.'”

This from a man whose profession is journalist. It is controversial to oppose abortion rights, obviously, because abortion rights have been the law of our great country for forty years. Assuming adherence to the law is not a bias, sir.

Sykes defense of Ryan is indefensible:

“In contrast to Trump. Ryan’s approach reflected the distinctive sort of conservatism that had flourished in Wisconsin: principled, pragmatic, reformist, but not afraid of taking on tough, controversial issues.”

I guess we can put those ideas to bed now, given Ryan’s not-so-principled stance at the feet of DJT. Ryan was always about ignoring the country when it suited him. Pragmatic, perhaps. Principled, no.

Sadly, Paul Ryan is not the furthest right one can get without falling off the planet. His Breitbart-supported challenger Paul Nehlen horrifies with his statements about immigration and support for white supremacy. But Sykes begins to talk about Friedrich Hayek, Ryan’s favorite political philosopher, on the subject of authoritarianism:

“Emergencies have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.”

Hayek also says the populist impulse leads to handing power to a 'strong man,' a position which precedes the suppression of democratic institutions and the creation of a totalitarian regime. This is Sykes now:

"the preconditions for the rise of a demagogic dictator is a dumbed-down populace, a gullible electorate, and a common enemy or group or scapegoats upon which to focus public enmity. The more educated a society is, Hayek says, the more diverse their tastes and values will be…the flip side being that ‘if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and common instincts and tastes prevail.’"

Since modern societies do not have enough of these primitive people, “he will have to increase their numbers by converting more to the same simple creed,” which is where propaganda comes in.

This is pretty heady stuff when we look at this past twenty-four months, when Breitbart & co put all this jazz into action. It actually worked. Paul Ryan and his henchmen rode on the coattails of the dumbing down movement and have shafted us with proposals we did not like and do not want. Near the end of this long explanation for the Republican Party decline, Sykes addresses the so-called Christians. Evangelicals were read portions of editorials suggesting DJT’s appeal was "dangerously close to Satan’s offer to Jesus in Luke 4:9: ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’" The study found white evangelical support dropped after hearing this argument. Good grief.

The conservative party is over, gone, kaput, destroyed. Just this morning in the Washington Post, conservative pundit Jennifer Rubin said the same thing. Good riddance to bad rubbish is how I look at it. Hold onto some important ideas and start again. The left needs a right or it gets out of kilter. Stop bemoaning the implosion of your party (something the ‘liberal intellectual elite’ saw long ago, by the way) and get to work rebuilding a coalition. We have work to do! Governance. What a novel idea.

[Kressel Housman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charlie Sykes is a Never Trump conservative talk show host from Wisconsin, but I first learned about him when he teamed up with NPR for a call-in show called “Indivisible” in which Americans across the political divide attempted to find common ground with one another. He promoted the book on the air, and with a title like that, who could possibly resist? (Tee hee.)

The book is an analysis of the crackpot theories that have invaded traditional conservatism, and Sykes hits all the spots you’d expect: the Moral Majority, Rush Limbaugh and his imitators, Fox News, InfoWars, and Breitbart. Of course, he shows how they all culminated in the presidency of Donald Trump, but because Sykes is a conservative himself, he has a different perspective than reporters in the "liberal" media, which is where I usually seek my information. He has seen more and more crackpot conspiracies emerging in his media diet, and he objects to how they’ve warped the conservative values he supports. He defends those values in this book. Just as he’s a Never Trumper, he was also a Never Hillary, and he’s a friend of (*shudder*) Paul Ryan.

The biggest insight I got out of this book builds on Michael Wolff’s recent revelation that the Trump team never intended to win the election. Sykes argues that many conservative media outlets and even some conservative PACs don’t really care about conservative policies. They care about ratings and donations. Just as sex is a sure sell, outrage keeps people tuned in, so as long as people’s buttons are being pushed, the audience is delivered to the corporate sponsors, and the PACs draw in their money. He claims that they underfund the actual candidates, but their directors' bank accounts are swelling. This is the real case of coastal elites reaping benefit at the expense of small town middle America. It's like what the televangelists did to believing Christians, except with political ideology. Meanwhile, these media outlets continue kowtowing to Donald Trump, in spite of his betrayal of conservative and even American values, because they’re too invested in him to call him out.

I recommend this book to liberals and conservatives alike. Liberals will gain from the differences in Sykes' perspective to ours, and conservatives, especially those who supported Trump and are now doubting him, might appreciate a return to the values they cherish from someone who seems never to have abandoned them.

[Diane · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm only a third of the way through but so far I've had to allow my eyes to glaze over on more than one occasion. Sykes makes many salient points about how the GOP has abandoned its principles, engaged in tribal jingoisim, and embraced alternate realities but he also succumbs to the conservative tendency to blame conservative behavior on perceived slights from the left: basically, "we wouldn't have done this if you hadn't done that". To my mind, this is what is essentially wrong with conservatives and is personified by Trump, who never takes responsibility for his actions and instead consistently engages in blame and deflection ("but her emails" and a thousand other "but they did this!!" defenses) He then cherry picks his facts to support his claims; for example, he claims the Obama administration "rammed through" the ACA on Christmas Eve when in reality, the act's passage was the culmination of over a year's worth of subcommittee hearings and public debates. While discussing the Tea Party, he completely ignores incidents where the Tea Party burned and lynched Obama's effigy but is willing to mention posters comparing Obama with Hitler. He decries the "bubbles" we keep hearing about but it is clear he himself is still a product of the conservative bubble he inhabits. He does not understand what white privilege actual is and only gives cursory attention to the role racism has played in the GOP's demise. He criticizes what he calls the left's "cult of personality" towards Obama, and tries to equate that with the cult of personality surrounding Trump and Trump's election but fails to address the clear character and intellectual differences between the two men because he himself is obviously still married to the conservative extremist narrative of Obama as some sort of fiend rather than simply someone with whom he disagrees politically. This becomes painfully apparent when he starts espousing the hard right's apocalyptic ideas about how liberals want to ruin the country. He understands the lunatic fringe has infiltrated and basically taken over but he refuses to take a hard look at what it is about conservative doctrine that attracts the lunatic fringe in the first place. Maybe he will address this directly as the book goes on and I will soldier on to find out but I suspect my eyes will be glazing over quite a bit more over the next day or so.



Ok, now that I'm done, the biggest takeaway for me is despite his criticism, he is still not entirely willing to recognize the fundamental responsibility the conservative movement has in its own demise. He soft pedals the endless "tests" conservative leaders fail and too often engages in the same contorted rationalization for which he berates others. Perhaps the most interesting statement he makes also underscores the overall problem: "by its nature, conservatism flies in the face of popular ideas and culture". If this is true, then why do conservatives like Sykes think that it should rule the majority? That also would explain the paranoia lacing conservatism: if you feel like you're being attacked for your views, it's probably because you are trying to force them on to a majority that does not agree with you. And this would explain why conservatives have retrenched to their conservative media bubbles because there, they don't have to learn to accept their ideas aren't shared by the majority. This also is the crux of the right's animus towards "liberal media bias" which is really just code for "I reject you because you don't validate my specific views that are not shared by the majority.

Finally, I did not know Sykes had written books with titles like "A Nation of Moochers" and "A Nation of Victims" before I read "How The Right Lost Its Mind". It's clear Sykes is a white male who does not have the ability to understand or empathize with what it is like to be a person of color or a woman in the United States and this is typical of conservatism. Ultimately, THIS why it was able to dismiss so easily Trump's racism and misogyny. But Sykes only gives cursory mention to the issue of race in this book, which suggests he still does not want to accept the ugly truth that the right did not lose it's mind with Trump, it just finally succumbed to the racism that has always permeated it. This entire book is Sykes dancing around that stark reality.

[jess ~has abandoned GR~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title may be a bit misleading, to some. Charles Sykes is unabashedly conservative, and an ardent supporter of right-wing causes. Where he splits with Trumpers is in his disdain for post-literate outrage media and the proliferation of fake news and "alternative facts."

Those who may be flabbergasted by the direction of the Republican party since 2016 will find an ally in Sykes, who makes critiques of liberals' and conservatives' conduct and political etiquette alike without stooping to name-calling and ad hominem attacks. Citing an alarming upward trend in made-up facts and blatant lies spread by talking heads and internet commentators on the right, Sykes places the blame at the feet of an expanding entertainment media that prioritizes ratings and feelings over facts, and the conservative intellectuals and politicians who decided that the ends justified these means. This created a vicious cycle of untruths, where trying to stem the flow invites criticism and derision from other "journalists" who are willing to say whatever the crowds want to hear. Essentially, hardline conservative commentators were hoisted by their own petard in their quest for anger-filled ideological purity; if they tried to take a more truthful or moderated view, they were castigated and blacklisted.

"How the Right Lost Its Mind" is a rallying call for conservatives disenchanted with post-truth Trumpism, and an impassioned plea of a man without a country, abandoned by his former colleagues and finding little to no common ground with those on the left. It is also for liberals who may also find themselves isolated in an ideological echo chamber and who will welcome a reasonable review of the past year from a new viewpoint.

More liberal readers may criticize Sykes' glossing-over of racism that has been present, to one degree or another, in the conservative movement. While he looks back longingly on the days of National Review repudiating antisemitism, he fails to acknowledge that at that same time, they were opposing the Civil Rights movement. In his defense, he does express surprise and distress at discovering that a virulent strain of nationalism had been hiding under a rock, unknown to him and his social circles.

This book is highly recommended, both for conservatives trying to find their party's way back home, and for liberals who will appreciate looking at a familiar subject through a new lens. It ends on a hopeful note, encouraging the readers to pursue the truth and stand for what they believe in, even if they stand alone. Readers exhausted by the toxic, hyperpartisan climate will be refreshed remembering that it is possible to disagree with someone politically on the government's role in public and private life without claiming that they smell like sulfur and may possibly be possessed. (Yep, that happened.)

received via Netgalley

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

During the 2016 election, I heard someone (maybe even Charlie Sykes!) argue principled conservatives shouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. I was with my mentor at the time and her response stuck with me. She snapped back without malice or defeatism but pure frustration in her voice, "Then what CAN we do?"
The same question echoes in my head after reading this book. I agree with Charlie Sykes about the problem. I'll even accept his version of how the problem came to be. But I don't buy his solution. I don't even think it is a solution. I just keep coming back to that one question - then what CAN we do?
I came of age with the Tea Party. I started volunteering before I reached my teen years. I was 14 in 2008. In 2010, I campaigned to get Scott Walker elected. I witnessed (and fought for) Act 10, Right to Work, and Prevailing Wage reform. I watched the Tea Party implode into factions and e-mail chains. Like so many young conservatives, I found a group that fought for what I believed in and dug in. I gave up on politicians and parties and focused on policies. I epitomize the sort of Wisconsin conservative Charlie Sykes references in this book. Heck, I even live in Paul Ryan's district.
I hated when Donald Trump became the alternative to another President Clinton. We literally had our pick of great candidates, how did we mess up?
According to Charlie Sykes, we messed up because we didn't silence Crazy Uncle Jones at the dinner table.
His solution? Shun Crazy Uncle Jones. Start again.
But does shunning our crazy relatives and neighbors really solve the problem? He goes to some length to talk about how the alt-right blockaded itself in a media bubble as thick as the one we used to accuse the Left of having. He points to talk radio in Wisconsin as part of the reason Wisconsin conservatives voted against Trump in the primary. Yet beyond that, he leaves this problem unsolved. I don't know how we fix this communication problem, and that leaves me more frustrated than motivated to change.
Yet Charlie Sykes also does a great job summarizing why conservatives went so dramatically towards their own bubble. They got tired of being marginalized and ignored. He says conservatives ignored the liberal cries against Donald Trump because they sounded like they same cries they leveled against George W. Bush and John McCain and Mitt Romney. Piecemeal observations like that really echoed for me. Despite my frustration with this book, it made me think. It caused me to explore my own interaction with media. It led to self-analysis. But not change.
His chapter "What Happened To the Christians?" particularly hit home. Seriously, what happened? How did the voices raised against Bill Clinton become vocal supporters of Donald Trump? How did the president somehow become comparable to King David? That should never have been. As we begin to distance ourselves from 2016, Christians in particular need to do some real self-reflection. I include myself in this. We need to talk about that.
But then what? What can we do?
Here I agree with Charlie Sykes. We can't let President Trump - an at-best crony capitalist nationalist - define conservatives. We can't let the discussion end. We need to call out wrong in the Republican Party and the Democrat Party. We can't silence discussion and dissent because someone who claims to share our beliefs is in power.
Yet unlike Charlie Sykes, I would not say Conservatives have forgotten their identity. I think a very strong remnant remains. It has been silenced, but not defeated. We've seen what true conservatives can accomplish. Wisconsin is at an all-time low for unemployment. The free market works. We fight for reform.
In the end, that is what conservatives need to keep doing. Our salvation isn't going to come from a Perfect Candidate. If we think a politician will solve the country's problems, we will always be let down. However, if we emphasize the importance of engagement and involvement, if we hold our elected officials accountable not just at the polls but every day, if we push our ideas forward, we will see true, lasting, and impactful change.
Conservatives can't retreat to lick our wounds and try to redefine who we are. We need to keep fighting. In the end, our actions will define us faster than our rhetoric and fancy words. And that is something we CAN do.

[Maru Kun · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 45th Presidency of the United States has given birth to a new literary genre - the “Book of Conservative Regret”.

A sub-genre of Romance, the hero of a work of ‘Conservative Regret’ is always a thoughtful, honest, intelligent, clean-living and handsome young man whose love affair with an attractive but fickle and not-too-bright voter is brought to a sudden end when she falls insanely in love with a charismatic but dishonest celebrity billionaire. The hero wonders how his former lover could be so shallow and not see through this mendacious villain, but is even more shocked when the adults who should help guide the morals of this naïve young girl do nothing to end the doomed affair with the billionaire sadist.

Writers in this new genre include David Frum, Rick Wilson and now Charles Sykes. But why should an unreformed ‘Libtard’ like me want to spend their time in the romance section reading these turgid works?

One reason, of course, is that Libtards enjoy Conservative Tears just as much as neo-fascists enjoy Liberal Tears and ‘How the Right Lost its Mind’ certainly has its fair share of weepy conservative moments.

However, unable to escape my bleeding-heart liberal instincts, I became genuinely sad as it became ever more apparent to the reader that Charles Sykes has wasted most of life as nothing more than a small patch in a thin intellectual veneer meant to cover over an authoritarian, nativist Republican party that has no love for the US constitution and which is beholden to loony conspiracy theorists, billionaire donors and the NRA.

My schadenfreude was further tempered when I read about how conservatives who oppose Trumpism are treated by their former political comrades. The death threats, the actions of the Troll Army of 'The Stormer' website and their attacks on the children of never-Trump conservatives (such as white supremacists posting photo-shopped sexual images of the daughter of one of them, claiming they had had a child with an African American and threatening gang rape), the vicous personal attacks on a conservative journalist who adopted an Ethiopian Child, are shocking and saddening. It looks as if Trumpists are even more of a danger to anti-Trump Conservatives than they are to the Libtards.

A second reason to read ‘How the Right Lost its Mind’ is to get a different perspective on the reasons for Trump’s victory and in this respect the book succeeds. Many of these reasons come as no surprise but are engagingly presented and some had not occurred to me before.

To mention a few, Sykes gives the rank hypocrisy of the religious right a thorough going over. It gave me great amusement to read about Falwell being photographed with Trump along with a picture of him (Trump, not Falwell) on the cover of Playboy hanging on the wall behind them both. The young lady Trump is pictured with is currently serving time for drug smuggling.

I was also interested to read that in areas where pastors spent a few sermons talking about Trump, rather than completely avoiding the subject, Trump’s support actually dropped. A shame then that most of the religious right still support Trump.

I was also surprised to learn the extent to which the 2016 election was sold to conservatives as the last chance to save western civilization. It seems strange to anyone with even a slender grasp on reality but many Republican voters believe that Obama and Hillary Clinton smell of sulphar, that flies won’t land on them and that a vote for either of them was a vote for the Anti-Christ. Sykes spares no sympathy for conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and the damage they have been allowed to do by an ineffective GOP leadership that let the loonies run riot.

Although Sykes talks a good game of Conservative Regret what he leaves out rather than what he puts in tells us that he hasn’t yet quite come to a full accounting of his wasted years in the conservative movement. Here are three areas that he avoided talking about that came to mind without too much thought on my part. I am sure I could find many more:

The first is money in politics. The purchase of GOP politicians by the Kochs, the Mercers, Sheldon Adelson and the like just doesn’t get a mention. A second topic is election rigging and the GOP fight against democracy. There are no references to gerrymandering, voter suppression and the fake enquiries into voter fraud by psychopaths like Kobach. The third is the financial crisis – a total failure of the GOPs beloved free market fundamentalism and an outbreak of crony capitalisam that Obama was forced to deal with doesn’t get a mention.

It looks like our hero hasn’t realized that to win back the love of his life he has to come completely clean on the bad things he’s done and show some genuine love and compassion for his beautiful voter rather than just woo her with more nice words and hollow promises. Otherwise he might find himself a wall flower for quite a long time while someone else wins his darling’s heart away from the evil billionaire.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

A cursory history of conservatism up to and including the current day coming off the rails/driving over the cliff, i.e. Trump’s election. The chronological political dots connected are logical and valid. But this reader found the writing dry - very dry - Sahara Desert/Hawkeye Pierce martini dry - which unfortunately made this short-ish book a long, slow read.

[Ava Courtney Sylvester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pleasant Surprise

This book was not what I expected. I was unfamiliar with Sykes when I preordered this book based on title and cover alone; I expected it to be a polemic from a fellow liberal. After overcoming my initial surprise, I grew to appreciate the opportunity to view recent history from another perspective. While I may not agree with all of Skyes' ideas, and I don't, this book has provided me with an invaluable opportunity to hear someone else's views and come to appreciate the common ground liberals and conservatives can share if we time down the histrionic rhetoric and build a foundation of respect.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interestingly, Sykes admits that conservative ideas really aren’t especially popular, generally fail when put into practice and that the conservative movement has essentially given up on whatever ideals it once held dear in favor of winning elections by any means necessary. Unfortunately he also spends a fair amount of time claiming that the GOP went insane because of liberal beliefs - “look what you made us do”, a line that anyone who’s ever survived an abusive relationship knows only too well.
I would be curious to read an update to this, given that it was written in 2017.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with his views on Donald Trump as a person. I agree that the Sean Hannitys of the world should have their heads examined. Thus I agree with most of this book. So let me focus on a few of the things that bugged me.

-he constantly conflates "the right" (i.e., conservatism) and the GOP. These are not the same thing. One is a philosophy. The other is a party that seeks to win elections. There is not total overlap in the makeup of these two groups, obviously. But he never delves into why the Republican Party embraced Trump but plenty of honest conservatives did not (he praises National Review, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, and WSJ for mostly holding firm, but did not mention why--they are not beholden to a party).

-although Sykes is a conservative, he loves to quote liberals' views of Trump and of his fans. This comes across as very one-sided.

-he has no answer for the "binary choice" of Trump vs. Clinton (this is probably my biggest criticism). He several times makes clear his disdain for those who presented the election in those terms. But in terms of who was going to win, it WAS binary. Thus this was a perfectly rational reason for voting for Trump. Sykes seems to think there were no good reasons to vote for Trump; that doing so was a sell-out. Sure, lots of people sold out (Bill Bennett, I'm looking at you). But voting for Trump that does not ipso facto make one a sell-out of one's values. I didn't vote for Trump. But I still wanted him to win. Why? Because the only other possibility was that Hillary Clinton was going to win, which I thought was worse. Sykes totally ignores this fact.

-he critiques the fact that "only" 9% of evangelical pastors mentioned Trump from the pulpit. He thought this was way too low. I thought this was exactly 9% too high. He misunderstands the purpose of a pulpit if he thinks it's for commentating on elections.

-I think he misunderstands the purpose of talk radio. It's entertainment. Pure and simple. It is not a party platform or a political movement or an arbiter of values. It is filler between the commercials. Pure and simple.

-the book shows no internal direction. It just meanders from topic to topic.

More probably bothered me, but these were the main things. Despite all these things, still worth reading. Or just read Bill Kristol's editorials over the past 12 months. Even better.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book because I wanted to read a conservative's perspective on Trump and his followers and enablers. I rolled my eyes and flipped through the pages of slobbering, cartoon-heart-eyed adoration for Buckley and Reagan and others, which was about the first 1/3 of the book, before we finally got to the point. For the most part, Sykes' dissection was right on the money - he examines, in turn, the Alt Right, the conservative media echo-chamber, the rejection of truth and intellectualism, the hypocrisy of the Christian right, and a too-tiny section about bigotry and racism.

But I keep wondering...what took you so long? These are all things that people have been saying for YEARS. YEARS! And all the while, "sane" conservatives like you just stuck your head in the sand, laughed when Ann Coulter or Hannity or Limbaugh or Michelle Bachmann or any number of whackadoos said something completely off the rails, didn't push back forcefully against birtherism, legitimized the alternate reality of Fox News/Rush/Drudge etc. And only when the inmates started to take over the asylum and could no longer be ignored, did you actually wake up and try to put a stop to all this nonsense, and it's all just too little, too late.

I believe Sykes' dissection of conservative radio talking head Mark Levin's flip-flop on supporting Trump could be applied to most Republicans, and across many decades before Trump came along:

Levin had been prepared to back Trump despite the fact that Trump had routinely smeared his opponents. But those were other people. He spread vile gossip about women. But those were other people. He mocked the disabled, and lied with impunity. But until Trump's thugs turned their sights on him, Mark Levin saw none of this as disqualifying the man from the Oval Office. In that respect, he was like so many other conservatives who decided that what was happening to their movement was somebody else's problem.

As one of those "other people," I'd like to thank you for finally coming to your senses, but it's past time to get to work. Writing this book was a good start. Now what?

*Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, provided by the author and/or the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

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. I believe that people have the right to be a conservative, believe in that political ideology but currently the American conservative movement seems to represent racist, non-accepting, pro-big corporation, screw the little guys party. The purpose of this book isn't to hate on anyone but to ask 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?


I really enjoyed this book

[Duncan Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

First, let me say that Mr Sykes is a highly intelligent man and good writer. But this guy just doesn't get it. He can't understand why his brand of polite, calmly reasoned conservatism has been shunted aside.

There's a time for scholarly treatises and cordial exchanges. That time is not now. The Western world is under siege by various forms of insanity from inside and outside. Stuffy gatekeepers, nuanced analyses, and orderly processes are not our top priorities.

Charles J. Sykes hates the so called alt-right and the like. While I'm not alt-right myself, I know why they have arisen and why populism is on the rise. It's a response to the limpness and ineptitude of the style of politics Mr Sykes favors. People are sick of the Democrats and they're sick of weak Republicans.

Sykes has nothing good to say about the alt right. For a more balanced approach, it's worth reading a book called 'A Fair Hearing.'

It was worth reading Sykes' book, but while he understands a good deal about current politics, he also seems to miss the point about why so many people have "lost their minds."

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I *really* wanted to like this book. I looked forward to it for weeks. Sykes does say a lot of things that needed and need to be said by prominent conservatives, and I give him credit for doing so. But as much as Sykes says things that need saying, he still spends way too much of the book trying to deflect blame. He definitely takes his party to task for Trump - and then spends pages whining that Democrats said mean things and hurt conservatives feelings and thus have much blame for the rise of Donald.

Nope, nope. nope. Donald is on you, Republicans, and Sykes' attempts to spread the blame really detract from his otherwise cogent arguments. Sykes still wants to believe that he personally wasn't one of the proximate and most significant causes of Trumpism. But he was.

[Mike Triggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

For most of my life it was my party. I cried when I read it. #sad

[Brett Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow… Reagan Conservative Charlie Sykes takes a blowtorch to his old tribe (and mine). Sykes leaves no defector uncharred, revealing how Reagan’s conservative GOP was executed by populist insurgents then replaced with Trump’s GOPP (Grand Old Putin Party), beginning with Trump's collusion (not conspiracy) with Putin as shown in the Muller Report and validated by the Republican Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Sykes chronicles how Trump's followers sold their souls, trading morality, principles, and ethics for the corruption of political power at any cost. While they still carry the labels “Republican,” “conservative,” and “Christian,” they’re nothing of the sort. A characteristic of social movements, maintaining the old labels to pull along ignorant masses who assume it’s a stronger version of the same old thing. Occasionally, GOPP sentinels offer quasi-intellectual arguments, pseudo-religious defense, or counts of Supreme Court Justices to cover their betrayal. Magnificently unconvincing; instead, we find this new creation has discovered how easy, thrilling, and powerful it is to lie, with no lightning strikes from Heaven—proud members of the Liars Party and loud about it.

As Montesquieu wrote, democracies cultivate virtue, monarchies cultivate honor, tyrannies cultivate fear. As Bob Woodward detailed in his own book, FEAR, and Sykes reports here (self-validated outside his text), we see the GOPP’s goal is just that. From hit squads of character assassinators, conspiracy theorists, and apocalypse-pushers from Right-wing talk radio or FOX NEWS to their Storm Troopers, the Alt-Right, with its coordinated stalking and death threats of anyone who violates the new orthodoxy. To blaspheme Our Dear Leader, his minions, the Klan, or neo-Nazis (whom our forefathers fought the likes of in WWII) is a disgrace not to be permitted. Since this book was written, we can add QAnon to the GOPP list of favorites. And consent, implicit or explicit, by Trump, Tucker Carlson and others on the propaganda dial, of Right-wing murders in Kenosha, WS, soon to be elsewhere.

From a people who once said Bill Clinton’s character was paramount, their 92% support of an adulterer, draft dodger, and record fined Russian-mafia-money launderer, Sykes shows us the Liar’s Party is, in reality, a cult, 60-million strong (approximately 35% of Germany’s 52M were Nazis in 1940). While suspicious of exaggerations, is this cancer not a lethal threat to the nation? Can this be overstated or unduly dramatized? There’s so much here I’m forced to write a Goodreads blog about it before the November 2020 election. Let’s call it Charley’s Exposé: How America’s Right-Wing Became What it Most Despised.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting work by a longtime Wisconsin conservative radio host, Charlie Sykes. Sykes points out with the first sentence that "This is not a book about Donald Trump", and indeed it isn't. It is a book about the atrophy of conservativism in the late 20th Century US, and how a changing media and political landscape exacerbated that decay and allowed outrage, ignorance and ego to arise in the vacuum, with the rise of Donald Trump as its dark and deranged fruit.

Sykes begins with an overview of the foundations of conservative thought. This is important to remember so we can see how far the movement eventually goes off the rails. He is no fan of liberalism, of course, and that philosophy does not escape this work unscathed. But the main scapegoat is the loss of relevancy of conservativism for the people it was supposed to be supporting, and their turn instead to the politics of outrage and fear.

Combining this decay with the rise in influence of conservative radio, and the efficacy of its hosts continuously trying to out-outrage each other, the seeds are sown for a massive blaming of The Other for all of the country's (or the individual's) problems. As the internet arrives and social media after that, the environment is ripe for the exploitation of man's most base and destructive instincts. This environment is mixed with the lust for viewership and clicks and thus dollars, until the political landscape, and the Republican party in particular, is altered forever. Insert Donald Trump.

Sykes well-documents what are Trump's now well-known deviations from traditional conservative orthodoxy. Along with a section on how it came to be that the Christian Right also lined up behind the pied piper, Sykes pulls no punches in illustrating the general and far-reaching hypocrisy necessary to align with Trump's camp, and the ensuing existential threat it poses to not only the future of conservatism, but also to that of the country.

The final chapter is less a hopeful ending than a proposed recipe for exorcism. As of the writing of this review, said expunging has yet to begin.

I gave four stars for the overall content and thoughts, presented in an engaging narrative and argument. I could have easily docked a half-star for numerous typos throughout the text. I find that kind of carelessness difficult to digest in today's world, and supremely annoying. It is a sure sign of a rush-to-print effort for any book which, like it or not, leaves me with a small measure of wonder whether this is more a coherent treatise on the state of our nation or a mad-dash for cash.

This is the USA - it's probably both.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

It is difficult to argue with the metamorphosis of the current conservative ideology in the United States. Sykes does an excellent job exploring the influence of the alt right media and how winning became more important than upholding one's belief system. This book was difficult to read because it illustrates how social media and our current climate is cultivating an exponential growth in extremism. Can conservatives right the ship? Will there be movement back towards a more traditional conservative agenda? Is this really the endgame conservatives have been striving for all along? Or are we, as a nation, so off the rails already that the current climate is just the tip of the iceberg, and both sides will continue to push to their extremes to undermine the other side? I honestly cannot answer with 100% certainty any of these questions, but hopefully we will see a rise in civil discourse and information seeking in the future that will help restore some sanity, as well as common sense in the political system.

[Sarah Holland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note: I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I found this to be a fascinating book. I wasn't previously familiar with the author, and have never called myself a conservative. I've also been horrified by the vitriol evidenced in the current political climate, and flummoxed by support for Trump by those who you think would know better.

What this book has done is provided more information and context for the changes in the American political climate over the years, the threats of creeping authoritarianism, and more of an underlying philosophy and rationale of conservatism. It speaks to the "need for that careful balancing of their opposition to both elitist autocracy and populist demagoguery".

Highly recommended, to conservatives, liberals, moderates, and anyone with any interest at all in the current American political climate.

[Jonathan Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was very detailed and well researched by a Wisconsin conservative. I must say it is a very eye-opening look that tells you that people put party before country. This also gave me insight to the fact that old rich straight white man did not want to listen to Hillary Clinton talk for four years.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this before you vote!!!

Charles Sykes, a conservative author and radio host, gives an excellent explanation of how the GOP was overtaken by Donald J. Trump and Trumpism. Scary and spot on! This is a must read book before the 2020 election.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

Disclosure

I was provided an advanced copy of the paperback edition in exchange for an honest review. Review cross-posted at my website: PrimmLife

Review

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.

How the Right Lost Its Mind

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 Democrat. (2) 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 RINO. (3) 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 media. (4) 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 conservatives (5) 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 interesting. (6) 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.

Notes

1. All quotes are from the hardcover edition since it is out in print.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wondered while reading this book who it was for. The provocative title entices the sort of casual observer who loves the thought of the Right getting a stern talking to, while repelling a different person who might be more directly edified by a mature investigation of the Right. Thus the title seems oddly engineered to reduce the book's potential impact.

Someone from Wisconsin, or at least the southeast corner of the state, might have greater than average inclination to read based on name recognition. Why on earth is a decades-long resident of AM conservative talk radio shit-talking the right? I suspect that for some "liberals" and "conservatives," pejoratively speaking, this may be the only enticement to learn what this book has to say.

Yet under the cover one finds little illumination and enough equivocating to disappoint both people rubbernecking for a pile-up and ones wishing for a careful autopsy. The book starts and abandons numerous analyses of people and philosophies without cutting deeply into anything. Promising leads are not pursued, as analysis retreats into party-line cliches. Anything that at first seems like tough introspection digresses into "they started it" or "how did they sneak in?" Conclusions are almost all predictable and comforting: whether one agrees or disagrees, it will probably be in a familiar way.

If there is a theme, I think it is the author's desire to relieve himself of faint anxiety that he might hold any measure of responsibility for the current state of the conservative club. In the introduction, there is a patronizing moment where the author says that "perhaps" he had something to do with where the bloc finds itself today. Of course, the rest of the book establishes that he did not: on the contrary, he sounded the alarm over and over, but people wouldn't listen, and meanwhile the celebrity conservatives whom he adored before, he still adores...they are not the problem, either. In the closing pages, he announces his adjusted position as a gatekeeper of true conservatism -- another revival, a new fraternity he wishes to influence.

This book remains deep in the shadows of an American and Protestant culture of tribal loyalty and schismatic purifying rituals. Over and over this book frames issues as combat between ideological gangs. Neither principles nor their outcomes are really examined, they are simply fence posts marking whether a person is In or Out. When trouble arises in paradise, it is solved through a scapegoating exercise (e.g.- Mr. X isn't a true member). None of this is new in American society, in fact these are some of the very tendencies that ought to be illuminated and challenged.

In perhaps the most telling example of how this book seems to shirk its responsibility and decline to really investigate the roots and implications of whatever American society thinks of as conservatism, Sykes mythologizes William F Buckley as the hero who rescued and redefined it in the 1950's and 60's (and to whose ideal, I think the author means to say, modern conservatism needs to be restored). The reader is invited to imagine a movement that rises up like a big tent revival to rescue America from government overreach and social degradation. He discusses the man and his compatriots in glowing terms for almost 15 pages. The reader might be thinking, there is something else about this time period...what is it? Finally, after padding his hero with layer after layer of praise, Sykes confesses that Buckley was opposed to civil rights legislation meant to combat racism. Not only was modern conservatism born at the precise time that the Civil Rights movement was occurring , its patron saint was directly opposed to the movement's political success. One can easily infer that the social degradation element of the platform is code for upstart women and minorities. Could there be a more obvious opportunity for painful self-analysis, or at least painstaking clarification on behalf of readers? But Sykes obscures and then downplays the implications with a sort of uncomfortable shrug. Buckley is quoted as saying, almost 30 years later, that he feels he was wrong then about Civil Rights laws. But what does this mean about the genesis of modern conservatism or its current state? Sykes flirts with the question but once more only goes there to say racists (among other people he finds unpleasant) don't really belong to conservatism.

Throughout the book, an aggressive amount of attention is given to Sykes's discontentment with "the left." Superficially, it perhaps serves as a revelation that he has extended his dissatisfaction to include some branches of the right. Why doesn't Sykes explore the possibility that all (or at least many) of these perspectives, these different tribes, need one another? There is no spirit of unity or synthesis. How have these other American ideas fallen so far out of favor?

How the Right Lost Its Mind seems to really be a lament that a particular cadre on the right lost its command of the stage (a whole separate discussion could be had about the bizarre calculations by which people decide whether they are winning or losing). Self-examination, contrition, reconciliation barely seem to enter the discussion. Finally, finally, in the closing pages, Sykes illuminates such ideas. It is unfortunate that it came so late. A truly transformative book could have been built from those values.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Sykes, a former radio host, is a conservative in the fast-disappearing sense of someone who thinks like William F. Buckley Jr, the late editor of National Review. That is, someone who favors smaller government, a free market, civil liberties, respect for authority, and a more "traditional" lifestyle, whatever that term may mean in any particular era. Along with it, in the Buckley approach, went a respect for reason, knowledge, and intelligent discourse.

Sykes bemoans the fact that, in the era of Trump and Fox News, none of these traits characterize modern conservatism. And as for those conservatives who still share Buckley's vision, they are almost all keeping quiet as timid mice to avoid drawing the Twitter ire of Trump. Sykes is, in short, a member of that dwindling group that arose over the course of the 2016 Presidential campaign who were known as the "never-Trumpers". He is unrepentant and more convinced than ever that the Republican Party has completely gone off the rails, and taken the American conservative movement right along with it. As he puts it, "Trump's acolytes in politics and social media have modelled their behavior on his, combining the worst traits of the schoolyard bully: the thin-skinned nastiness that mimics confidence, the strut and sneer that substitutes for actual strength. For many of us, this has a familiar feel. It is as if we've all been sent back to the sixth-grade playground."

So what does Sykes thinks happened to make possible this transformation? The phenomenon that draws most of his ire is the alternate reality media, centered on Breitbart News and Fox News, and including a constellation of right-wing talk radio hosts in the mold of Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh. Backing it financially was the money of the very wealthy such as the Mercer family and the Koch brothers.

Sykes also fingers the internet, and the way in which it has made it increasingly possible for those partial to an authoritarian, populist, nativist and misogynistic view of the world to live out their lives in a media echo chamber where they don't have to work their confirmation bias very hard -- no need to work it hard because all the news that gets delivered fits the preconceived world view already.

Along the way, Sykes takes a few obligatory swings at the supposed bias of the traditional, reality-based media. However, this book is not a research data-based piece of writing -- tables, charts, graphs and numbers of any kind don't put in much of an appearance. It is difficult to assess on the basis of the few anecdotes provided just how widespread this bias of mainstream media actually is. Some of the examples he cites, such as Dan Rather's unproven accusations against George Bush the younger for shirking his military duties during the Vietnam War era, also demonstrate how the mainstream media deals with such flawed coverage -- it corrects the record, apologizes, disciplines the culprits, and moves on. Dan Rather lost his job. That is not generally the way that Fox News behaves when, for example, a trillion-dollar war it has championed proves to be a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe of gigantic proportions, de-stabilizes the entire Middle East, unleashes hordes of desperate refugees, and leads to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

The author ends the book with a stirring call to return to rational thinking, a reality-based view of the world, and an embrace of conservative values, but I'm not sure that even he thinks that the prospect of such a return is very likely. Not soon, in any event.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone from the left, this book was eye-opening for several reasons: getting a sense of the conservative feeling of being under siege, hearing that the election rhetoric on the right is actually quite similar to that on the left, and watching Sykes’ disappointment grow as the movement he had dedicated his adult life too went in a direction he couldn’t support.

I also thought his “Advice to Fellow Conservatives” section (at the conclusion of the text) was actually pretty good advice for every one, especially his admonition to not become what we hate - that is very applicable to those on the left watching norms of behavior falling by the wayside through-out our political culture.

This book also makes me wistful for a time when conservatives and liberals could debate IDEAS, rather than personalities. I hope we reach such a point again, preferably soon, but that hope is tempered by a fear that we have gone too far down the path of tribalism.

Well worth the time I took to read, and as someone who grew up in Milwaukee, where the author was a radio host and columnist, somewhat surprising.

[J. Alfred · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about how we've lost the ability to communicate with people with different political views and how that's not just a disaster, which is obviously true in a democracy, but it's a self imposed disaster caused by worldview-reinforcing news options and hyperbolic language from politicians. It's a good book about bad things.
This, for me, is the best part:

The essential error of the Christian Right was to give politics primacy over faith. At some point, [Russel] Moore warned, conservative Christians would have to come to grips with the reality that their values were not always going to be politically popular, that they were no longer a "majority." That meant that they must be prepared to choose between the Gospel and winning elections. If they surrendered their values in order to achieve short-term political successes, he said, they would end up with neither values nor political success. Too many evangelicals were confusing means with ends. "Religious liberty is a means to an end," he reminded his listeners, "and the end is not political." Christianity could not allow itself to be bent and warped to win elections, even important ones.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book I needed to get some perspective on what's happening in the Republican Party and, more broadly, the self-described conservative movement. Charles Sykes is no liberal (not even a Neo) but he clearly understands how far off the rails Republicans have gone in worship of authoritarian, racist, misogynist and reality denying "ideas." He claims, rightly I think, that conservative media of the Breitbart/Fox News variety is a dishonest, violence inducing echo chamber that is followed by a lot of people with no real independent knowledge or reasoning ability of their own. Written in the middle of the Trump presidency, this book walks us through how fast once-mainstream politicians and commentators gave in to a low-information, self-regarding authoritarian who cares only about himself and how he is perceived. Objectivity is disdained by the current brand of right-wing fabulists, and only "information" that supports Trump is valued, even if that boomerangs from one opinion to the other, often in the same speech. Sykes claims conservative credentials and has conservative views that I don't necessarily agree with, but his call to restore principle, constitutionalism, ethics and a sense of history to Republicans is on target, though it may be too late.

[Andrew Pratley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listen to Charlie Sykes most days. He has a podcast on the Bulwark a "Never Trumper" site. He often cites his book so I thought I would give it a bash.
Anyway, "How the Right Lost its Mind" is a good well written & clear summation of how the right in the USA has been taken in & used by a demagogue, albeit a rather incompetent one. I am not sure we get to root of problem that besets the right in America but this book provides the reader quite a few pointers. Where it is correct is that its present condition has long antecedents. Middle & Blue Collar America has been under pressure for decades. Since the 1970's in fact. Some of the problem has come abroad since the world has changed. There has also been a failure in the USA to recognize those changes & adapt. There have been too many losers & too little help especially from government both state & federal. I could go on, however, can I suggest spending some time with Charlie since he is an engaging thoughtful voice worth listening to during these troubled times.