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. ( )

A humble, lucid, remarkably thorough take on the evolution of conservatism in the U.S. The book is a delightful mix of personal and political. The history and policy discussion were straightforward, without ever feeling incomplete or condescending. This is a book full of urgency about the danger American democracy is facing, and yet it never feels angry or alarmist. It feels hopeful. I loved that. I feel well-informed and ready to face tomorrow. ( )

I remember reading with relish, now some years ago, Boot’s “War Made New,” long before I was aware of the “neocon” label, much less those thinkers who bore it. I remember admiring Boot’s grasp of military history, his ability to discern the important developments (and their crystallizing moment/s), and above all his ability to make such information both clear and important to a general audience. Perhaps that is the long way around to simply saying that I enjoyed the book.

Knowing Boot, then, as primarily a military historian, left me a bit ill-prepared for the content of this work. Part memoir, part political commentary, part lament, Boot’s work, I think, will speak both to and for many members of the post-Trump conservative movement in America. However, I’m disappointed to say that I don’t feel that it really spoke to and for ME.

There were parts of the book I really enjoyed, particularly the opening section on Boot’s immigration to America and his introduction to the conservative movement through the likes of William F. Buckley, Jr and Irving Kristol. Here, the book is straightforward and heartfelt, recapturing well for the reader his youthful enthusiasm for those ideas, ideas that still persist as core to his thinking.

However, for me, when Boot then turned his attention to CONTEMPORARY conservatism, the book began to lose its luster. For one thing, I did not appreciate the “‘conservative’ equals ‘Republican’” equation that was the core of this book. In fact, the book would have been much more aptly titled “The Corrosion of the Republican Party.” I feel like I’ve read a good number of opinion pieces and have a good number of friends that fall well within the definition of “conservatism” (perhaps even “far right” in instances) that deeply lament Trump’s election as a sign of the folly and perhaps even madness that is our current political climate. Like Boot, I am appalled at much of the almost “messianic” language I hear coming from key Evangelical leaders. Yes, as an OT scholar, I am well aware that YHWH used the Persian king Cyrus to accomplish His plan to return the children of Israel to their homeland; but those who cite such a “biblical” example tend to forget that Cyrus was ever in Scripture in PAGAN EVIL TYRANT. He was USED not CONVERTED. That’s a big difference.

Chapter 5 is where Boot lays out his case against Trump. This book was published in the throes of ongoing Mueller investigation (which has since concluded), so parts of this section would probably be written much differently now, but the substance of the charges I feel would remain. And I feel that, in the main, some of these charges have merit. Trump HAS used racist language (especially against immigrants) and IS a bully on social media and seemingly CANNOT fact-check statements. Trump is, by all accounts, an amoral cretin.

But—and this is where Boot’s sense of the “big picture” fails him—that is not the real issue here. As convinced as I am that Trump has little or no moral character to speak of, I’m not sure I could say much better about Hillary Clinton (as Boot does). There were about as many scandals related to inappropriate Russian ties in the Clinton campaign as in the Trump campaign, though that seems to have been largely forgotten. The issue is not Trump’s election; the issue is what is passing for “Presidential material” right now. The flaws we see in Trump is a reflection of something in our national character. The solution, then, is not to throw Trump out of office but to revive the morality and integrity of the electoral base so leaders like Trump and Clinton won’t have a chance.
In the concluding section, Boot again lays his finger on the deeper issue…and then, just as quickly, rushes on. Analyzing the rise of Bernie Sanders, he writes: “All of this suggests that the Democratic Party is drifting leftward as the Republican Party is drifting rightward.” Exactly. But why? Boot never ventures a guess, even though he acknowledges that this is “a situation that is increasingly common across the democratic world.”

I, like Boot, feel very much like a “man without a party” in the current political climate. However, when I read Boot’s rundown of his core political convictions: socially liberal (pro-LGBTQ rights/pro-choice), pro-free markets, pro-environment, pro-gun control, anti-identity politics (both minority and majority strains), I’m not sure that I can see myself in, pardon the pun, Boot’s camp. Especially when he appends to his statement on LGBTQ and pro-choice rights: “I am not religious but am respectful of those who are—as long as their beliefs do not impinge on anyone’s individual rights.” I am dying to ask, then, whether Boot would consider it “infringement” for a devoutly Christian baker to refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.

I am saddened that Boot has felt himself “forced out of” the conservative movement by the shifts happening within the Republican Party. However, I am MORE disappointed to consider that Boot’s definition of “centrist” politics as defined above might win the day. It would mean nothing different for me, a strong social conservative, than the current political climate. ( )

I admire Max Boot for changing his mind when the facts did not accord with his opinions. I admire him more because he had the courage to say so, loudly and publicly, at considerable personal cost. But from a liberal perspective, the ideas that he used to believe in were untenable, so his change in view is more a waking to reality than a conversion. I wanted to like this book more than I did. ( )

Max Boot is an ultra-conservative columnist that now writes for the Washington Post. In 2016, he became so appalled by Donald Trump and the toadyism of Republicans that he changed his voter registration from Republican to Independent. This book is a very personal telling of his time working with the most conservative journals and his decision process in leaving the Republican party. Based upon the style of his columns, I expected his book to be just a collection of snarky comments. Instead, I was happy to find it a very personal and respectful story. This book is a must-read for anybody interested in today's political world. ( )