Book Review: Demonic by Ann Coulter
All summer I meant to read Ann Coulter’s Demonic but kept getting sidetracked by life. I finally finished it just as the Occupy Wall Street stuff hoopla started taking off.
O. M. G.
No kidding, those OWS guys are writing my review for me because Demonic is all about mob rule. Despite Edmond Burke’s warning that “those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it,” when you see the mobs congregating in OWS and in countries throughout the world it would seem that the failings of mob rule throughout time hasn’t made an impact at all.
In fascinating detail, Coulter writes of all of the historical ways mob rule has NEVER worked. Her brilliant chapter on the French Revolution was eye-opening for me and was nothing like the whitewashed version I learned in high school and college.
In her usual sarcastic, biting-humor way Coulter manages to sum everything up in perfectly classic summations. Some of my favorites:
“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.” — P.141
“Unable to win elections by appealing to the racist mob, the anti-civil rights wing of the Democratic Party disappeared virtually overnight. In the blink of an eye, the Democrats went from being the Party of Bull Connor to being the Party of Al Sharpton. The Democrats simply traded one mob constituency for a new one. You might say they traded their white robes for a track suit and a giant medallion.” — P.15
“Democrats spent a hundred years enforcing legal discrimination against blacks, or — at best — dragging their heels on enforcing black civil rights, but then turned around and crowed for fifty years about a friendly call to Mrs. King. With a few symbolic gestures, the Democrats grabbed the civil rights mantle in 1960 and never let it go.” — P.186
“If Charles Manson’s followers hadn’t killed Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, Clinton would have pardoned him, too, and he’d probably be teaching at Northwestern University.” — P.171
“Inasmuch as blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic, you wouldn’t expect to see a lot of them at Tea Parties. Still, the Tea Parties are not as white as Chris Matthews’s staff. They’re not as white as a Jon Stewart audience. They are not as white as Janeane Garofalo’s fans.” — P.190
“But [Timothy]McVeigh was neither conservative nor Christian. This alleged right-winger was a drug taking self-proclaimed agnostic, who was thrown out of the Michigan militia and who declared, “Science is my religion,” sounding more like Janeane Garofalo than Wayne LaPierre.” — P.197
“The liberal rule is: Any criminal act committed by white men with guns is a right-wing conspiracy, whereas any criminal act committed by nonwhites with guns is the government violating someone’s civil liberties. (If a black man ever shot an abortionist, liberal brains would explode.)” — P.220
I’ll stop there but I could show you amazing quotes from Demonic all day.
Maybe if the useful idiots at OWS would read Demonic they’d realize that if they were maybe trying to emulate the heroic American Revolution instead of the barbaric bloodbath of the French then maybe people who know better would take them seriously. Instead, they are coming across as the useful idiots Stalin claimed—or the angry mobs Coulter ridiculed—and they are falling right into the hands of the elitist puppet masters they claim to despise.
So if you haven’t already read Demonic—even if you’re like me and have a very busy life—I strongly encourage you to get a copy and read it as soon as possible. It’s that important.
You can buy it here.
