Ann Coulter’s new release, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter, is a thorough compendium of newspaper columns and magazine articles written by one of America’s most famous politicos.  The individual pieces are grouped thematically with headings like, “This is War, Barbra Streisand Feels Your Pain (According to Her Publicist),” and “Give Us Twenty-two Minutes, We’ll Give Up the Country.”  Many of the columns have been reworked or published without their original third party editing.  The combination of unreleased material alongside greatest hit makes “Coulterpalooza” an ideal way to describe it.

The introduction outlines ten simple rules for arguing with liberals and there is little doubt our author practices what she preaches.  The third rule, that you must outrage the enemy, is an accurate description for the entirety of Coulter’s political career.  It would be hard to imagine that any other conservative is so passionately hated by the left.

Within this Coulter-rama, no bigger enemies are found than Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy. Their names are often mentioned, corrupted, and ridiculed with delight.  More surprisingly, we become aware of her displeasure with magazines like National Review and political organizations like the Connecticut Libertarian Party.

The average reader, should they have been one of the ubiquitous “undecideds” last election cycle, will have little use for the book, as there are few diplomatic or bi-partisan sentences to be found.  Coulter’s is a Manichean world: us vs. them, real men vs. Metrosexuals, good vs. evil, God vs. Satan, Couric vs. Schlafly, and Rush vs. the Clintons.  

Yet if, like the reviewer, you happen to be of the Rightist persuasion, you may greatly enjoy the author’s wit and creativity. You’ll chuckle as Arlen Specter is described as a female Republican Senator and chortle when Ted Kennedy is dubbed “Drunkennedy” and “Senator Kopechne.”  John Kerry, who came very close to being our President, is referred to as “Senator Botox” and ravaged for being a gigolo and the male version of Anna Nicole Smith.  No one will dispute her prediction that Wesley Clark will best be remembered as a Trivial Pursuit question, and also that the best name for the state of California is “job-free zone.”  We further find that Hillary’s memoir “was so deeply personal, it took several ghostwriters to get it right,” and that Bill’s biography should have been entitled, “I am God, and You Are All My Subjects.”  Personally, my favorite quip concerned the mace and vinegar Democratic Party: “when not occupied with abortions or strippers, they busy themselves denouncing the cossacks as ‘the powerful.’”

Unfortunately, my admiration for Coulter’s zeal and vivaciousness is not shared by all conservatives, as some have a tendency to look down their reading glasses at her.  This reviewer grants that she’s irritable, mean, emotional, and aggressive, but ultimately we should value her for the same qualities that Lincoln valued in Grant; “she fights.”  Pugnacious conservatives are hard to come by nowadays, as too many of us lead hermetically sealed lives, causing us to underestimate the toxicity of the left and how much they continue to degrade our nation.  Ann Coulter is worth any twenty tea and crumpet conservatives -- who get along with their tormentors through the tactics of avoidance and non-engagement.  If you want to purge snakes from your garden you must get down in the weeds and hunt them.  Ann Coulter is one of the few conservatives who will.

The last thing that should be addressed is the fashionable, yet absurd, claim that she is our “Michael Moore.”  She certainly is not.  Coulter is not a conspiracy theorist.  Yes, she is a habitual provocateur and one who is occasionally guilty of graphomanic pyrotechnics but she does not believe that wars are fought to obtain cheap oil or that the Saudis are dearer to our president than his own people.  Most of Coulter’s arguments are correct and her central thesis, that liberals are not interested in defending this nation, is absolutely closer to the truth than conventional wisdom.  

Today’s leftists are anything but liberal.  They have been duped into believing a trendy corruption of Marxist theory known as political correctness.  The left views our nation as the embodiment of racism, sexism, and oppression.  That much is obvious, but the real logical leap is that they would ever bother to defend our shores in the first place after holding such views.  This cognitive dissonance is why they voted to defund our military and intelligence agencies in the 1990s and why they are forever offended by the prospects of military action.  In the mind of the leftist, it’s always 1984 and the real name for our country is Engsoc.  In all international situations, we are the ones with the black hats who bring terror down from the hills.  In their eyes, even alongside genocidal murderers, the United States is always the real den of iniquity and the root cause of every bit of evil uncovered. 

Yes, “treason” is far too strong a label.  “Criminal neglect” would be more appropriate.  What else can you say about those who would defer to France or Germany or the UN (including Sudan and China) concerning crises that jeopardize our national defense?  Explaining to a pseudo-liberal why you should be more concerned when the Europeans love our president than when they do not is an impossibility.  They don’t understand danger; even when it is shaking pepper on them and about to place them in the oven.  With today’s left, no past is masterable.   
 
If we surrender to the anti-American left then we will lose all that is good about our country.  We seek to preserve while they seek to uproot and destroy.  To conserve America is to conserve civilization.  We have to work and labor if we wish our land to remain a nation of individuals and not a commune serving a bureaucratic apparatus.  We cannot expect anything to come from hiding out in hermetically sealed cages.  We must battle and Ann Coulter is one of our most brave and tenacious champions.  Read the book.  It won’t teach you how to talk to a liberal but you’ll learn how to clash with them, which is an end in itself. 

Bernard Chapin is a writer living in Chicago.

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