I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican! - Book 12

So I've been fighting a nasty cold this week and as a result I couldn't sleep well. I spent my time reading How I Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (And Found Inner Peace) and then as a follow up, this book. I was very curious to see what the author, Harry Stein was thinking during the whole Bush vs. Obama thing but I didn't enjoy this book as much as the first. While Stein still made many good points, he was a lot angrier and, well, basically it is just a long litany of complaints about how conservatives just can't get a fair shake these days. I think he must feel very, very isolated in the New York City publishing/journalism world and he says as much. His changing views have alienated him from his neighbors, long time good friends, even his own father. The book lists different careers or geographical locations where conservatives have been isolated: journalism, publishing, social work, academia and the public school system, Hollywood, Madison, WI, and of course his own part of the world, New York City, and even San Francisco. There's 11,000 registered Republicans in San Francisco! Poor things!

I do agree that the ascendency of Left ideology has brought about a general decline in many areas of society. And I do think that Lefties have behaved in more and more thuggish ways; to wit, the recent Susan G. Komen debacle. Stein uses behavior he witnessed during the Obama campaign as his example. He does tend to rant about how they are all illogical and think with their emotions. I think this tends to be true as well. However, Stein is not a good critic here in this particular book. He delights in taking jabs and to me seems a little hysterical himself. For example, at one point he mentions a contestant on Jeopardy (who happened to have come from the town I currently reside in) and how in the interview portion of the show she told Alex Tribec how she was a social studies teacher who had fasted for Ramadan just to see what it was like. Stein says something really cutting about her. I was baffled until I realized that he was just knee-jerk reacting to her 'political correctness.' Huh? Do we have to judge everything everybody does in terms of whether they match our notion of what is politically correct? Why can't a teacher, who by the way, teaches about other cultures for a living, and who probably has Muslims in her classroom (My next door neighbors are Muslim) who might want to see what living through Ramadan is like? I simply see nothing wrong in that whatsoever. It made me feel like Stein's version of reality would be just as oppressive as the Leftists are. And frankly, the Right has no monopoly on manners or measured discussion. They can get pretty darn rabid too!

The other thing that rankled me about this book is Stein's constant amazement at how knee-jerk liberals were about the Iraq War. He went on and on, yet he never once even mentions possible reasons why the war was a good idea. I guess he's assuming only people in favor of the war will read his book so he doesn't need to explain, but if you are going to complain about how irrational the other side is, it might be a good idea to shore up your version of things with some reasoning.

I think that Stein's writing has changed a bit from his first book on this topic (he's written other books too on other topics) and this I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican (a line someone once said to him at a party, as they visibly backed away from him!). I think Stein unfortunately was influenced by the likes of Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. While every once in a while one of those two will say something on the mark, to me they are pretty hateful. I always feel like I need to take a shower after listening to them (usually inadvertently! I'll be stuck somewhere with someone who is a regular listener). So Stein's writing takes on a nastier edge in this book. I think he kept things much lighter and more genuinely humorous in his first book.

I still agree with Stein's take on Feminism and its effects on society. He did a nice bit about homeschooling and how returning to the classics and traditional education is the direction we need to move in. It was very interesting getting the inside scoop on just how biased the media really is, biased to an absurd degree. And Stein does a great job of searching out those plucky conservatives who in spite of the cards being stacked against them, manage to carve out careers in Hollywood or are brazen enough to start a local conservative talk radio show in Madison, Wisconsin. I found the letter from his friend who has been living in France for years chilling, as he (the friend) checks off all the things wrong with France currently and predicts that this is the road Obama wants to lead this nation down. His friend says something like, I don't have to predict failure, I'm living with failure right now, when he talks about the heavy tax burden (that creates black markets), the lousy healthcare, the fact that France has to import workers because of its low population growth, etc.

Stein ends with the rise in independent, conservative publishing houses that have proven to be very successful as a sign of hope that there can be a free exchange of ideas, though the general environment might be very inhospitable.

This book helped me sort out some ambivalent feelings. I discovered I am not a Republican. I started out as a pro-life Democrat but that party betrayed me and my ilk a long time ago. So, I am politically homeless. But you know what? I think I like it that way!

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