The Trouble With “Treason”

by David Horowitz - July 8th, 2007 - Front Page Magazine

I have always admired Ann Coulter’s satiric skewering of liberal pieties and her bravery under fire. Not many conservatives can fight back with as much verve and venom as she can, and if politics is war conducted by other means, Ann is someone I definitely want on my side.

I began running Coulter columns on Frontpagemag.com shortly after she came up with her most infamous line, which urged America to put jihadists to the sword and convert them to Christianity. Liberals were horrified; I was not. I thought to myself, this is a perfect send-up of what our Islamo-fascist enemies believe – that as infidels we should be put to the sword and converted to Islam. I regarded Coulter’s phillipic as a Swiftian commentary on liberal illusions of multi-cultural outreach to people who want to rip out our hearts.

Another reason I have enjoyed Ann’s attacks on liberals is because they have been so richly deserved. No one wields the verbal knife more ruthlessly than so-called liberal pundits like Joe Conason, to cite but one example. I have been the subject of many below-the-belt Conason attacks. If people Joe Conason admired were the objects of acid Coulterisms, so much the better. If Conason was outraged, I was confident that justice had been done.

But now to my dismay, I find myself unable to find such satisfaction in Conason’s reaction to Ann’s new book Treason, or in the responses of other liberals like The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen (who has also attacked me in the past). In a review in the Post, Cohen dismisses Ann’s book as “Crackpot Conservatism,” reflecting the fact that their responses are not so much yelps of outrage as cackles over what they view as an argument so over the top that only true believers will take it seriously. It is distressing when someone you admire gives credibility to liberal attacks. But that, unfortunately, is what this book has done

A close friend has expressed similar unease with Ann Coulter's more recent books like Godless and did not seem comforted by my belief that her radicalization had been forced on her by the extreme attacks of those on the left.

Today, while doing a Google search to defend my view of Ann, I came upon this nearly month old article from one of the more realiably fervent conservatives around, David Horowitz. David echoes the same theme of my friend here in the Inner Banks and does so with a carefully researched article that takes apart some of Ann's worst excesses in an analytical and historically accurate fashion.

After reading this article I must concede that the criticism of Ann has validity. I still believe that she is funny, but it is clear from this article there is also a strong case that she is hurting the cause by going too far in attacking the socialists / liberals / progressives of the democrat party.

In general I find David Horowitz more conservative than I, and rarely read his Front Page web site because it is a touch too far for me. I am more Townhall.com / Libertarian in my views. To find David Horowitz agrees with my friend surprised me. To read his article made it clear I was not being fair in evaluating the criticism of Ann.

This is an excellent article that both suggests where Ann has gone too far, and still documents the need to recognize those elements of the left that are supporting the communist and socialist agenda. This is an agenda that we must fear . . . . and oppose. However we cannot become our enemies and lie. I think that is what Ann has started to do, something that both David and my friend, two men of widely different political views, have recognized.