Sheri Berman did not like Corey Robin's new book on conservatism:
The twin goals of this collection of previously published essays are to provide a coherent definition of conservatism and reveal the ideology’s flaws through detailed analysis of various conservative thinkers and arguments. The book’s problems lie not in concept, but in execution. Driven to distraction by anger at his subject, Robin ends up reproducing many of the pathologies he is trying to criticize. The result is a diatribe that preaches to the converted rather than offering much to general readers sincerely trying to understand the right’s role in contemporary American political dysfunction.
Robin responds:
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.”
My own response to Robin's blog-post length articulation of his arguments here. This weekend: a broken arm and the book itself.
The Dish 