Book of the Month/May 2014

These are the best of times and the worst of times, to coin a phrase. For conservatives, I mean. These are the worst of times because a dedicated band of people is doing quite a demolition job on the republic, and it really takes a lot of work to get that much damage done. Impressive, after it’s own fashion, but it is still kind of dreary to watch. These are the best of times because if your job is to fight lunacy, we live in a time when there is apparently a lot of job security. Kind of like being the first logger west of the Cascades.

Rules for Patriots is a very bracing take on the whole business, with a subtitle “How Conservatives Can Win Again.” Steve Deace is a conservative radio talk show host located in Iowa, which means that he has a choice spot on the curb for the periodic elephant parade. The Iowa caucuses mean that all the presidential wannabes and about three straggling extras make regular pilgrimages to Iowa in order to wow the populace, and this means that Steve Deace has seen the sausage made.

The book is an energetic explanation of why conservatives routinely get their shirts pulled over their heads, and their socks rolled down to meet the tops of their shoes. Deace distinguishes principled conservatives/libertarians from what he calls Republicrats — people whose specialty is losing, and explaining afterward, while we all sit there agape, that it must have happened because the candidate wasn’t mushy enough at the center.

First, I really liked the fact that Deace is a decided Christian, and doesn’t hide that fact in any out-of-the-way places. The tag line for his web site says a lot, and I think is calculated to ruffle all the right feathers. That tag line is “Fear God. Tell the Truth. Make Money.” Far from being someone who advocates a generic American civic religion, this is someone who prays in the name of Jesus.

Second, he deals with principles and not with methods. Like Alinsky’s work for the hard left, Deace is giving us instruction that is timely in this election cycle, but would also likely be timely twenty years from now. His chapters are dedicated to the development of different principles, and I will give you just a few. Chapter 3 is dedicated to “never attack what you are not willing to kill.” Chapter 8 is “define your opponent before he defines himself, and define yourself before your opponent defines you.” Chapter 4 is “never accept the premise of your opponent’s argument.” There is a lot of really good stuff here.

And last, he knows that politics is not beanbag. We are not running people for student council president so that we might have someone to organize the class parties. Deace knows that politics is a stand-in for civil war, and is a variation of it. The stakes are high, and very real. I was talking to a friend on the phone today, and he told me the story of a boxing coach who believed that it was his task to teach his boxers a very basic truth. He wanted to disabuse them of the idea, when they got in the ring, that “if they didn’t hit their opponent really hard, then their opponent might not hit them really hard.” Doesn’t work that way.

Politics being the way they are, I would expect to find disagreements with this book here and there. But these did not have to do with the principles themselves, but rather with applications to particular candidates and personalities, men like Gingrich and Trump, say. Because this is a book crammed full of principles, and so that doesn’t really matter. I learned a lot from Alinsky too, and he was a commie.

Anyone who is directly or peripherally engaged in politics needs to get this book, particularly as we approach the gaudy show of the 2014 congressional elections.