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The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right Audiobook
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Warning that the Trump presidency presages America's decline, the political commentator recounts his extraordinary journey from lifelong Republican to vehement Trump opponent. As nativism, xenophobia, vile racism, and assaults on the rule of law threaten the very fabric of our nation, The Corrosion of Conservatism presents an urgent defense of American democracy. Pronouncing Mexican immigrants to be "rapists," Donald Trump announced his 2015 presidential bid, causing Max Boot to think he was watching a dystopian science-fiction movie. The respected conservative historian couldn't fathom that the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan could endorse such an unqualified reality-TV star. Yet the Twilight Zone episode that Boot believed he was watching created an ideological dislocation so shattering that Boot's transformation from Republican foreign policy adviser to celebrated anti-Trump columnist becomes the dramatic story of The Corrosion of Conservatism. No longer a Republican, but also not a Democrat, Boot here records his ideological journey from a "movement" conservative to a man without a party, beginning with his political coming-of-age as a young emigre from the Soviet Union, enthralled with the National Review and the conservative intellectual tradition of Russell Kirk and F. A. Hayek. Against this personal odyssey, Boot simultaneously traces the evolution of modern American conservatism, jump-started by Barry Goldwater's canonical The Conscience of a Conservative, to the rise of Trumpism and its gradual corrosion of what was once the Republican Party. While 90 percent of his fellow Republicans became political "toadies" in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Boot stood his ground, enduring the vitriol of his erstwhile conservative colleagues, trolled on Twitter by a white supremacist who depicted his "execution" in a gas chamber by a smiling, Nazi-clad Trump. And yet, Boot nevertheless remains a villain to some partisan circles for his enduring commitment to conservative fiscal and national security principles. It is from this isolated position, then, that Boot launches this bold declaration of dissent and its urgent plea for true, bipartisan cooperation. With uncompromising insights, The Corrosion of Conservatism evokes both a president who has traduced every norm and the rise of a nascent centrist movement to counter Trump's assault on democracy.
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“One of the most impressive and unflinching diagnoses of the pathologies in Republican politics…Boot is making an astonishing break in his suggestion that the Republicanism of Eisenhower was actually good, and that the conservative alternative of McCarthy, Buckley, and Goldwater was misguided…The truly radical act in The Corrosion of Conservatism is its clear-eyed excavation of the movement’s history.”
— New York
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“In a lively memoir and acidic anti-Trump polemic, a longtime Republican and adviser to several of the party’s leaders explains why he has become an independent. The heroes of his narrative are those like him who have rejected Donald Trump in the name of genuine conservative ideals.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“This is a significant book, and an elegantly written and enjoyable one…This book will stand as a clear-eyed look at our times, and as part of the effort to find a better way forward.”
— Atlantic -
“I found Boot’s book to be a valuable and provocative dissection of the things we had glossed over, rationalized, or ignored. He has sparked a debate that we need to have: to what extent does Trump retrospectively discredit the modern conservative movement?”-
— Weekly Standard
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
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About Max Boot
Max Boot is an author, military historian, and foreign-policy analyst who has been called one of the “world’s leading authorities on armed conflict” by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He has been called “a master historian” by the New York Times and a “a penetrating writer and thinker” by the Wall Street Journal. He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam. His previous books were widely acclaimed and include The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power; War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today; and Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present.