Treason by Ann Coulter
Published November 17, 2003
Another area where Coulter's underlying point is well taken, is the utter idiocy of pundits and politicians. This is where Coulter is at her best. She resurrects the quotes of pundits, academics, and politicians over the last fifty years and reveals just how wrong many of the "best and the brightest" really were. As I stated above, it is a fact that much of the left was tragically wrong about communism and its ramifications. Coulter's quotes also reveal that all too often liberals defended their own no matter what the circumstances and that their idealism rarely had limits.
Even given these strengths, the book fails to make its case. It does so for a number of reasons: it is sophomoric, it is overly simplistic, and it is imprecise. With a subject matter this controversial and emotional those are fatal flaws; unless of course you are only seeking to preach to the choir and wind up the faithful.
The first problem is one of tone. The book becomes tiresome as the reader is forced to wade through the insulting and smart-ass language. If you expect to be taken seriously you need to write with a certain amount of seriousness. Coulter accuses liberals of going into a "diarrhea panic" and describes them as "sniffling pantywaists." She claims that the Iran Contra Affair was "one of the most stirring episodes in U.S. History." She calls actors "sissy-boys who put on little-girls' plays." She describes the accidental bombing of a French Embassy as having been motivated by a "puckish sense of humor" and with "Pow! So sorry, our mistake." The entire book's tone is one of angry superiority and condescension. This can get old very quickly.
Related to her far from serious tone, is the tendency to over-simplify and exaggerate. Coulter starts with the hyperbole right from the top. Her first sentence reads: "Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason." She follows that up closely with: "Everyone says liberals love America, too. No they don't." See how simple history can be? Liberals are treasonous people who don't love their own country. Seeking further explanation, at one point Coulter seems to claim that treason is a natural trait of elite WASPs:
Protecting traitors was part of the bonhomie of the ruling class. It was as if the WASPs had developed some XXY chromosome that led to overt treason. They had ruled magnificently for many years, but there blood had gotten thin. Angry ethnics like Joe McCarthy made much better Americans.
Her love for overly broad and over-the-top statements never ends until you close the book. Here are a few additional quotes:
- Time and again, in all crucial matters of national self-defense, the Democratic Party has shirked the honor of leading this country in war, be it cold or hot. Such a party must not be allowed in the Oval Office.
- Because of Democrat incompetence and moral infirmity, all Americans lived under threat of nuclear annihilation for half a century.
- The only important lesson from the Vietnam War is this: Democrats lose wars.
- It is a fact that the Democrats have been responsible for every unmitigated foreign policy disaster since World War II.
- Conservatives are devastatingly clear, consistent, and logical, while liberals are whirling dervishes of inconsistent positions.
Coulter lives in a black and white world, conservatives are always right and liberals are always wrong.
- Treason by Ann Coulter
- Published: November 17, 2003
- Type:
- Section: Books
- Filed Under: Books: History, Books: News, Books: Nonfiction, Books: Politics and Affairs
- Writer: Kevin Holtsberry
- Kevin Holtsberry's BC Writer page
- Kevin Holtsberry's personal site
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Kevin, you need to retype the mistakes in the Blogcritics edit window. Sometimes, particularly when I copy from Blogger or the Chronicle Lite API client, things don't post right.
The aspect that annoys me most (and the critics, too) about that book is Coulter made up so much of it, including the footnotes. One sees people refuse to do any research in the blogosphere quite often, but the standards for a published writer who wants to be taken seriously are much higher. That is why she will remain a laughingstock to anyone except Far Right fellow travelers. Sure there are legitimate criticisms to be made about liberals and liberalism, but her ilk is incapable of making them.
I have had varying rates of success changing the font to ARIAL in MS Word and then copying it and pasting it. I haven't figured out why it works sometimes and not others. Try Arial though. It seems to copy in the quotes and apostrophes most successfully for me.
I created a fix for this distorted character problem that many of us have experienced, so feel free to bookmark and use: fixchar.
Instructions: Before posting to Movable Type simply cut and paste from your word processor into the form and click "Submit" Next, cut and paste the script generated results into the Movable Type form field. This program will cleanse the distorted output by removing/converting the troubled ASCII characters, if any exist.
This will not strip out HTML and also will display a preview of how the content/html will appear. Optionally you can show the ASCII character value (for the geeks in the audience). It automatically converts carriage returns to < BR > tags in the display.
Please let me know if there are any issues with this script. I tested with this entry above and it fixed the distorted characters. The script is free and if you use it then please consider adding a link to my blog from yours or to my script site tdscripts.com ;)
Damn TDavid, that has dogged us from the beginning, thanks! The problem is that Amazon doesn't recognize non-standard characters, which include smart quotes (turn them off in your word processor), some dashes, some apostrophes. Turning off smart quotes will get rid of most of the problem, sounds like TDavid has come up with an answer for the rest.
If you look through this post, you can see where anything with a curve to it generates the dreaded "A"s
Obviously these problems are the work of commie subversives. Brian Flemming, we're looking at you...
Kevin, the more I think about your point in regard to McCarthy, the more it troubles me. I think the issue is whether there was a big enough problem with domestic spies to justify ruining all the lives McCarthy did, not whether there were any spies (Communist or otherwise) working for the government.
The wretched Smart Quotes from Microsoft are clearly an evil plot by libruls.
Even when the nonstandard characters appear, all you have to do is go back in and change them once you are in Movable Type. I shall edit these out right now as they are making my face hurt.
The questions isn't "whether there was a big enough problem with domestic spies to justify ruining all the lives McCarthy did" but why did the government allow spies at the thighest levels of government? The choice between ruining lives and getting rid of spies is a false choice. McCarthy's tactics were wrong in many ways but the issue he was getting at remains: the elite tolerated spies because they could believe that their social equals would be traitors. Historical documents reveal that in fact FDR's administration was a breeding ground for spies and many of those people continued to influence government policy well into the Cold War.
Eric: The dreaded "A"'s appear as the author intended them if you switch your charset to UTC-8. Maybe we need to switch the template's Content-Type.
Kevin: I don't know if I'm just splitting hairs, but while I agree that espionage at the behest of a foreign power is a crime and not tolerable, I oppose the concept of "thought crimes". The constitution explicitly protects opinion, especially political opinion, even if it is vile or "anti-american".
If McCarthy had reached for a Federal Grand Jury instead of a television camera, his accusations of criminal behavior would have been of more merit.
I saw left-wing folk-singer Billy Bragg on tour a few years ago (prior to "Treason") and he was very up-front about his communist/socialist past. He told us that it was important for the left to acknowledge that Communism, which sounded so very promising, led to oppressive totalitarian regimes.
I'm with Bragg. Communism didn't work. It was no worker's paradise. At the same time, think McCarthy and Hoover compromised the ideals of America from within by attacking freedom of thought and expression.
I think that's about right, Michael.
Coulter's a flash in the pan who shoots from the hip. She likes to stir it up for media attention and she won't last.
She's just going for shock value to sell books, but her propaganda won't stand up in ten years, except maybe in the discount bin at Walmart.
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I am not sure why Blogcritics has trouble with quotation marks. I think it has something to do with Microsoft Word but I can't seem to fix it. I tried saving the text as text only and clearing any formating but nothing seems to work.