Max Boot

As a liberal Democrat, I will say that this book was an unexpected pleasure to read. Boot’s analysis of the Republican Party is spot on. I have the impression that he hopes the party will eventually regain its sanity, but I feel certain that the hard right ideology of his former party is so baked in that it will take a miracle to resurrect it.
I enjoyed reading about his youth, college and graduate school years, and his love of history. Boot was not your typical right-winger, although he was a true believer...until he wasn’t.
Boot emigrated from the USSR to America as a child. He grew up in Southern California (a State very unlike the Deep South State of Alabama where I was raised). In a sense, California is more of a bubble than Washington, DC. It is a true laboratory of Democracy, whereas Washington is and has been a massive contradiction of competing ideologies for years. This is not to say that there aren’t extremes in California, but it is difficult to to imagine that an immigrant child growing up in Reagan’s California would not have been awestruck by the Gipper. Max Boot did not witness the hate-mongering of George Wallace, Bull Connor, Ross Barnett, and Lester Maddox and apparently was never exposed to modern Southern History as part of his studies. This is less a criticism than a recognition that his revulsion to Soviet communism may have resulted in a natural tendency to conservatism and a youthful rejection of the Democratic Party.
Boot has left the Republican Party and now considers himself to be an independent. That is a nice position that a lot of people find themselves in. I don’t especially love today’s Democratic Party and agree with Will Rogers: “I belong to no organized party. I’m a Democrat.”
Boot’s book should be on everyone’s reading list. While I disagree with some/many of his positions, his analysis of our current situation is dead on.… (plus d'informations)