Demonic: A Book Review

Demonic:  A Book Review

Ann Coulter’s latest book is titled Demonic (Random House, Inc. 2011) and like the books that preceded it, Ann gives no quarter.  That’s good and bad in my opinion.  Starting with the bad, the problem I have is that she doesn’t define liberals as closely as I would like.  I could do it for her.  What she is talking about is the hard core political liberal leader who has abandoned any semblance of a coherent philosophy or love of freedom and has moved on to brass knuckles liberalism at its worst.  There are, in fact, many degrees of so-called modern liberal thought (as opposed to classical liberal thought personified by Edmund Burke, et. al.).  Much of it is shallow, but genuinely well intentioned.  In fact, most of it is based on anti-intellectual and mushy thought and the arguments made by such individuals won’t stand up to very close scrutiny.  But, in fact, these rather mild mannered liberals would (or should) distance themselves from the hard core leftists who lead today’s Democratic Party.  It is, as I have noted in an earlier blog, not your father’s Democratic Party, nor is it the Party of Truman or John F. Kennedy.

What’s good about Ann’s analysis is that she correctly, I believe, understands the roots of today’s radicals who have captured the modern Democratic Party.  She has also uncovered some very interesting history of the Democratic Party of which I was unaware and I am sure that most Americans are unaware.  Ann, who is an attorney, deserves great credit for doing all her own research, something that is true of all her books. 

The gist of her postulation is that the current leaders of the Democratic Party and today’s progressives/liberals can accurately trace their roots back to the French Revolution.  She spends a great deal of time in her book referencing a book written in 1896 by Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.  Le Bon’s book analyzes the characteristics and driving force behind the bloody and certainly non-democratic French Revolution.  The early chapters run a bit slow as she explains in detail the various observations of Le Bon as to how the modern Democratic Party and their subset of leftist groups act amazingly similar to the leaders of the French Revolution.  In fact, you even see that today in the demonstrations against freedom and capitalism and for anarchy in New York City.  The total disregard by modern “liberals” for the actual meaning of the US Constitution, the abandonment of the Ten Commandments as a guiding rule for moral behavior, the willingness to interpret laws in any way necessary to reach the desired ends, and the justification of the most vile and disagreeable public behavior are all consistent with the attributes of the French Revolution that could be more aptly described as the takeover of government by the mob.  A mob is in essence the best description of today’s Democratic Party.  Total disregard of customs, traditions, good manners, and a government of laws is a fair and accurate picture of Pelosi, Reid and Obama.  They would have felt at home in the French Revolution until the French Razor began chopping off their heads.

The closest thing to a mob in the American Revolution (to which modern conservatives can fairly trace their roots) was the so-called Boston Tea Party.  American defenders in the British Parliament were appalled by this destruction of private property and Edmund Burke refused to continue his defense of the American patriots until they offered to repay the tea company (as they did).

As Ann points out, “This country’s founders were strongly against the mob—as are today’s Tea Party patriots.  Noticeably, modern Tea Partiers haven’t engaged in one iota of property destruction, in contradistinction to nearly any gathering of liberals.”  And on she goes, “Liberals hate the idea of a revolution by gentlemen, which is why they celebrate hairy, foul-smelling revolutionaries like Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Susan Sarandon.”  That last reference is, of course, a typical Coulter jab at leftist heroines.  Speaking of the American Revolution, she writes, “This was a revolution waged by thinkers and debaters constantly prattling about the reasons for the war.”  Indeed, only Jefferson considered himself a Francophile while other American leaders quickly abandoned support for the mob led French Revolution.

Ann also does an excellent job of debunking the silly idea that the American Revolution and those before them who made the Revolution possible were not serious Christians.  To quote Ann, “Fifty-two of the fifty-six signers of the American Declaration were orthodox Christians who believed in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or as they would be known today ‘an extremist Fundamentalist hate group.’”  She also quotes John Adams, “He said, ‘The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.  I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.’”

Tellingly, she writes about the linage of the French Revolution, “Practically overnight, the greatest nation in continental Europe became a human abattoir.  That is why the French Revolution remains an inspiration to liberals everywhere.  France’s revolution-by-mob would be imitated in Germany, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and elsewhere, always with the same bloody consequences.”

The entire section on the involvement of the Democratic Party in keeping down African Americans was an amazing revelation to me.  The great hero of today’s liberals, who have reverted to the name progressives, is Woodrow Wilson.  They can have him.  As Ann documents, it was the Republicans who kept introducing and re-introducing civil rights bills that were (until the bill of 1964) based on the US Constitution.  And it was the Democrats who kept blocking them.

Let’s listen to the situation as portrayed by Ann Coulter, “With a lock on the racist mob vote, Democratic politicians won elections and promptly resegregated the entire South with Jim Crow laws.  In 1913, Progressive Democrat President Woodrow Wilson even instituted segregation in Washington, D.C., bringing Jim Crow to the federal workforce.  Wilson summarily dismissed black officials from their federal jobs in the South and in D.C. ‘Segregation is not a humiliation,’ Wilson explained to a black delegation that came to the White House to complain, ‘but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.’  During Wilson’s first term, Booker T. Washington went to Washington, D.C. and reported, ‘I have never seen the colored people so discouraged and bitter as they are at the present time.’”

I assure you that this is just the tip of the iceberg in regard to the record of the modern Democratic Party’s abuse, neglect, and manipulation of Black Americans for political gain.  There is also the story of how it was the Republican President Eisenhower who actually integrated the military, although Truman gave the order.  In fact, Truman made no effort to implement the order.  The commitment of the Democratic Party to holding down Black Americans was not limited to Southern Senators and Congressmen, it was fully supported by Senators from the West and North as a means to gaining and holding political power.  It was not until they envisioned support of civil rights as good politics that they finally came to the party that the Republicans led.

Ann Coulter’s book, Demonic, is not only well written, chocked full of facts, but also entertaining and enlightening.  I highly recommend that you go out and buy it and read it.  It is certainly an eye-opener as we approach the 2012 election.