How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy: And Found Inner Peace

The journey from liberal to conservative chronicled here by Stein is a journey already described by others such as Norman Podhoretz and David Horiwitz. Though thus predictable, Stein's account is nevertheless amusing. He relates personal anecdotes about growing up, raising children and relating to friends and colleagues, but also touches on current events, culminating in the sexual transgressions of Bill Clinton. The light tone and humorous prose eventually wear thin, however, and Stein sets up a straw man in his attacks on the Left. Essentially, Stein paints himself in his liberal days as a man with ideological blinders firmly in place, and he skewers liberals in general as if they all wore the same blinders. For example, in claiming that liberal psychology undermines personal responsibility by abjuring everyone from fault for everything, he presents an extremist position. Stein himself states at one point that extremists on both ends of the ideological spectrum deny ""a fair hearing to alternative views on complex social issues""-yet he is guilty of the same error. (June)