Ann Coulter didn't expect to win any friends or defenders on the Left, considering the title of her new book, Treason; Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. But her hysterical rhetoric now has even conservatives saying "Enough!"
When you're being compared to Maureen Dowd and Michael Moore by conservative writers, that should signal trouble. Dorothy Rabinowitz of the WSJ focuses on Coulter's "all-out effort" to rehabilitate the reputation of Joseph McCarthy with her selective use of some facts, and her omission of others.
And Andrew Sullivan just asks for a little perspective. Here's his "money quote":
...part of the frustration of reading Coulter is that her basic causes are the right ones: the American media truly is biased to the left; some liberals and Democrats were bona fide traitors during the Cold War; many on the far left today are essentially anti-American and hope for the defeat of their country in foreign wars.But by making huge and sweeping generalizations about all liberals, Coulter undermines her own arguments and comes close to making them meaningless. If you condemn good and bad liberals alike, how can you be trusted to make any moral distinctions of any kind?
Read the whole Sullivan piece, if only for the quotes from Ron Radosh, a true Cold War historian and scholar, who laments the damage done to the cause of real anti-communism by Coulter's defense of McCarthy.
UPDATE 7/8: David Horowitz pens an excellent critique of Coulter's book
Posted by dan at July 7, 2003 07:19 PM