Up From Conservatism.

• Author: Kaye, Harvey J.

The title of Michael Lind's book, Up From Conservatism, refers to both Michael Lind's defection from the political right and his anxious hope that America, too, can be rescued from rightwing dominance.

Working first for the Heritage Foundation and William F. Buckley Jr., and then for Irving Kristol at National Interest, Lind was a rising star of the New Right.

Then, just when you would least have expected it, in the wake of the 1994 elections, he turned his back on his mentors and, in quick succession, took up senior editorial positions at Harper's and The New Republic.

Lind's surprise defection made him a celebrity, and afforded liberals and leftists some welcome news in tough times. However, even if Lind has become an antagonist of today's right--which we should appreciate--we must be careful about treating the enemy of our enemy as our friend.

The distance from neoconservatism to The New Republic is not great, but Lind created a grand canyon when he proceeded to author several articles directly attacking the movement that had nurtured him.

In The New Review of Books, he revealed the grand-conspiratorial and anti-Semitic thinking in the writings of Christian Coalition godfather Pat Robertson. In Dissent, he argued that intellectual conservatism was dead, showing how it had been done in by its own elite's corrupt, hypocritical, and opportunistic deference to creationists, homophobes, racists, and public-policy kooks. And in The New Republic, Lind, a Texan, decried how rich Southern reactionaries had taken over the Republican Party in a coup and were now promising to refashion the nation in the image of the old South, with its culture of racism and political economy of low taxes and lower wages.

Up From Conservatism expands upon these essays with an account of Lind's own sojourn in the ranks of the right. Calling for the Republicans to be stopped in 1996, Lind provides a devastating critique of their pseudo-populist "culture wars," showing how they serve to obscure their far more insidious class war. Lind also gives a clear warning of the menace represented by conservatives' willingness to truck with, succor, and legitimize the far right. Although Lind's work is not as original as he purports, his alarms should be heeded.

Given Lind's trajectory, should we expect him to turn up next in the pages of The Progressive or The Nation? There are moments when one can imagine it. Both in his first book, The Next American Nation, and here in the new...