> So it’s no great surprise that the New York Times–that great bastion
> of spineless bourgeois liberalism–hates Corey Robin’s new book The
> Reactionary Mind. So much so that the author, Sheri Berman, dubs Robin
> the left-wing Ann Coulter. But we can forgive Berman. If her crowd was
> to actually accept Robin’s arguments, they’d be faced with two
> options: 1. accept that they are little more than chumps basking in
> the same cushy privileges forged by the long conservative
> counterrevolution or 2. tip over the dinner table and drive a salad
> fork into David Brooks’s eye-socket.
I read the book after Doug's interview with Robin a few weeks ago, and found it convincing. Berman's review is really unfair. The book is not a shrill Manichean denunciation of conservatism. It's a collection of essays with different arguments, but the main thread is a demonstration that historically self-identifying conservatives have generally not sought to defend the status quo but to radically change society, and that they have usually been motivated by resentment of democratic/left-wing success or challenges.
Corey Robin replied to Berman here:
http://coreyrobin.com/2011/10/07/the-new-york-times-review-of-the-reactionary-mind-my-response/
Mike