A review of *The Reactionary Mind*<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/books/review/the-reactionary-mind-by-corey-robin-book-review.html> appears in the Sunday *New York Times Book Review*. It’s by Sheri Berman, a respected political scientist at Barnard<https://polisci.barnard.edu/profiles/sheri-berman> and author of an important book on the origins and triumph of social democracy<http://www.amazon.com/Primacy-Politics-Democracy-Europes-Twentieth/dp/0521521106/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1317697685&sr=1-1-catcorr>. It’s a negative review—which is unfortunate and unpleasant. But beyond matters of fortune and feelings, there is substance, and that calls for at least a provisional response.
In her opening paragraph, Berman writes:
A book documenting the wreckage and continually tracing the links between right-wing ideas, policies and outcomes would be a significant contribution to public debate. Unfortunately, Corey Robin’s “Reactionary Mind” is not that book.
My goal in writing *The Reactionary Mind* was to understand the right—not to criticize it or to show why it’s wrong, but to get inside its head, to examine its leading ideas and bring its sense and sensibility into focus. I did not aim to “document the wreckage” of the right or to trace the linkages between its “ideas, policies, and outcomes.” Nor did I intend, as Berman later writes, to “reveal the ideology’s flaws” or to provide an account “of the right’s role in contemporary American political dysfunction.” Least of all was I trying to explain why my “own side is on balance more deserving.”