Good review, as a fellow conservative, thanks for the heads up.

Good review! I just received the book from the library and hope that I can get thru it. I have heard from other reviews that it can be struggle to get thru it.

I didn't find it a struggle. There is (as I noted) a section maybe 2/3 of the way through when it seemed to drag a bit. it was because we sort of saw what was going on and I think he belabored some of the story a bit(part of the love story and then things bogged down a little into "a series of events"). But I never really got to the point i wanted to skip parts or anything like that.

You saw my big objection, other than a bit of prejudicial thinking I have no big problem with it. I'll watch to see what you think.

King is a master at creating buildup and then failing at the end. I was curious to read this one but a bit nervous after THE DOME - which was really good...for about 400 pages.

I suspect I'll check it out at some point.

You're one of my favorite conservative thinkers, Mike.

I do my best...but some would probably find the fact that I am a conservative thinker a problem. :)

(As a matter of fact I know they would, I was just called a "Fascist" for my thoughts in the review of another book. LOL.)

Mike (the Paladin) wrote: "I do my best...but some would probably find the fact that I am a conservative thinker a problem. :)

(As a matter of fact I know they would, I was just called a "Fascist" for my thoughts in the rev..."

goodness me Mike "Facist" is rather over the top!

It's as bad as calling all liberal thinkers "Commies". Sometimes the best thing is just to ignore idiots.

I've been meaning to write my review on this book forever (but have been way too involved in the Game of Thrones books!) Honestly, you took the words right out of my mouth on this one!

I picked up five books on iBooks yesterday, including this one. We'll see how it goes.

Hi, Mike-

Thank you for the review.:)

But if I may, I really do not think the novel dragged on or became bogged down. And I certainly didn't see SK's supposed political affiliations, racism, etc...

I frankly don't see how you missed the political views, he even comments on his point of view himself in his closing remarks. But "to each" as they say. I noted it didn't take away from the actual story.

As for dragging I think that will depend on the reader. Once I'd reached the (view spoiler)[ post central love story and we were closing in on the actual attempt to stop Oswald I thought it became a bit draggy. It was much like a series of events. We weren't really that surprised because even if we hadn't put together that the "harmonies" would get to be cumulative and maybe shatter time/space we still knew that "something" was trying to stop the protagonist. I had gotten to the "okay move on" pint , just a little by that time. And I knew that Sadie had to die as soon as she insisted on going with Jake... Just me. (hide spoiler)] As I've said in other reviews a review has to, by definition be somewhat subjective. It's how the book hit me and what I thought of it. I can recommend it or not based on my taste and what I see in a book. Others will always see it differently.

To each his own. Enjoy.

Mike, I haven't read this book and have read a lot less of King's work than you have; but in what I've read of it (and about it), I've also been irked by his tendency to think only in terms of blinkered ideological labels and to gratuitously and unfairly bash anybody who's not a liberal Democrat. And I tend to self-identify more with the political Right than the Left; since I'm not a racist (nor are most of the people I know who identify with the Right) the two things aren't synonymous, and I also resent the leftist tactic of constantly treating them as such.

That said, it's hard to make a convincing categorical case that no "conservatives" are or ever were racist, for two reasons. First, the term itself is somewhat subjective and elastic, with no recognized authority who defines who does or doesn't deserve the label. If we say, "Christianity isn't racist, so a racist who claims to be Christian is a phony one (or very misguided about the teachings of his/her faith)," we have a good basis for saying so; because in the Lord Jesus Christ and the Bible, Christianity has a recognized founder with explicit teachings and an authoritative document, with which any person's belief and practice can be objectively compared to see if it's congruent. Some secular ideologies, like Marxism, can claim something similar. Conservatism, though, has nothing comparable to this (indeed, some thinkers on the Right feel that a defining conservative characteristic is rejection of ideology as such). There's no recognized founder; there's no one document that everybody in the movement accepts as authoritative, and people who use the label often disagree intensely among themselves about their core beliefs. That leads to the second reason.

Historically, there have been a fair number of people who self-identified as "conservative" who have held racist views, to varying degrees. That's especially true in the U.S., where for a long time the movement was also entangled, in the South, with the defense of slavery and later of segregation. (You're right that Democratic party politicians like George Wallace were leading opponents of racial equality in the 60s and before, but it was the self-styled "conservative" wing of the party that was the home for these people.) Granted, for much of its history the Left in the U.S. was equally racist, and many liberals are closeted racists to this day; and granted, not all Southern thinkers and leaders were as racist as people today assume. But the fact remains that there has been a racist strand of thought that's claimed to be conservative, and was also associated with many ideas that you and I probably would recognize as "conservative," and even share (such as a respect for tradition, religious belief and community, a preference for decentralized political power, and a desire for freedom for ordinary people to own property and make their own economic decisions). There are people with racist attitudes who fit that description even today, though most modern self-identified conservatives clearly do not. I don't think we can credibly just dismiss them as phony conservatives. The relationship is probably more like that to a crazy aunt or uncle; we don't share their craziness and might prefer to keep them locked in the attic, but we do share a bloodline and a family name. (The Left, of course, also has its crazy aunts and uncles in the attic --some of whom are real dillies.) It might be more constructive to admit the relationship, acknowledge the mistakes of the past, and make our own non-racist position clear. That won't convince the professional conservative-haters who divide the world into monolithic camps of Leftist Light and Rightist Darkness; but it might open a dialogue with people who have sense enough to relate to others as individuals with unique ideas and perspectives, rather than as walking personified labels. Just a thought! (A long, looong thought --didn't start out to write a book; sorry!)

Note that I said: "Conservatives are not racists (though some who use the title "conservative" may be. Some people commit murder and say they're doing it it God's name, in spite of the whole "love your neighbor", "do unto others as you WOULD HAVE THEM do unto you" thing. We can't control what people call themselves. Just because someone says they're a bird doesn't mean they can fly). "

In the classical 19th century and/or European usage "conservative" usually means to preserve the privileged position/power of a minority, even an elite minority. In modern American usage it has come to mean to preserve (conserve) the rights guaranteed to the individual in the Constitution. (See my review of The Road to Serfdom where this dichotomy of meaning is very important, http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...)

King never actually stops and has his character give a speech accusing modern conservatives as being the same as mid twentieth century racists, it's simply implied in the narrative.

I have discussed this at length with people. Some will bring up the "Jim Crow" laws, but I point out that if the Constitution had been read as a strict constructionist would read it those laws would always have been overturned.

I know there are people and groups who use the title conservative and are racist. But as noted there are people who call themselves Christian and are not. They may debate the meaning of the word. That happens a lot because the word "conservative" means different things in different places (in Russia a "conservative" is someone who believes in the Soviet communist system.) and different times (if I lived in 1776 and believed as I do now I'd be the progressive liberal and the Tories would be the "conservatives".) My statements are based on modern day American usage where a "conservative" is someone who believes in equality and equal rights.

King does one time in the book use the term "Dixiecrat", this to specify that "southern Democrats" were obstructing the Civil Rights movement, and that's true as far as it goes. It doesn't however account for the trouble that was had in congress, all those Democrats weren't southern. It's a black-eye that the Democrat party wants to forget, and that's cool. The problem is that many on the left are very quick to try and smear anyone who disagrees with them using the term racist.

So, I agree that there are those who call themselves conservative and are racist, but as I said in the review, "Just because someone says they're a bird doesn't mean they can fly)." If we accept that the word "conservative" can have a definition in it's usage as a modern American political term, then a racist isn't a conservative.

My opinion throughout, of course. :)

Mike, well thought-out post with good points, as usual! We're coming from pretty much the same place, holding a right-of-center orientation and wanting to make sure others distinguish us (and people like us) from anyone who's racist. That task is complicated by the built-in semantic problem (which we work at in slightly different ways) caused by the fact that "conservative" has historically been a term with such conflicting and shifting meanings, as you explain in your review of the Hayek book. (Great review, BTW; I just "liked" it!)

You're right that the term in Europe in the 19th century and earlier meant those seeking to preserve the power/privileges of a minority, specifically the titled nobility, who in European parliaments sat on the king's right-hand side (hence "the Right"). The representatives of the wealthy commoners, who wanted political power commensurate with their economic power, sat on the king's left (hence "the Left"). In many cases (and more so as the centuries went on), they tended to be suspicious of tradition and of appeals to religion as an authority for social life, to exalt "Reason" as a supposed counter-authority, and to favor any policy that bolstered the economic interests of wealthy commoners. (The terms "Left/ liberal" and "Right/conservative" are more apt to still have this meaning in Europe today than in the U.S.) Today, liberal historians portray this classical liberal group as noble apostles of freedom and democracy, but it's important to recognize that they were as class conscious and as narrowly selfish as most of the nobility. In the U.S., which never had a titled nobility and where the forces of traditional conservativism were always very weak, the classical liberals were dominant from the get-go, as the book The Conservative Tradition in America by Allen Guttmann brings out. They gradually adopted the "conservative" label for themselves (earlier in the South, where the planter class consciously copied the European landed nobility in many respects, than in the North), and that change of terminology became pretty much finalized in the days of the New Deal. At that time, the section of the Left that kept the "liberal" terminology was the one that had evolved, from a more extreme and skewed application of some of the common liberal roots, into what we now recognize as statist liberalism (and its more hard-core Left cousins, Socialism and Communism).

That classical liberal, pro-Big Money type of "conservatism" is one important strand of the movement in modern America, but not the only one. Those who believe strongly in defending the authority of the Constitution, including its guarantees of individual rights and equality, are another strand, in which I'd definitely place myself. But I don't think that's a generally-agreed definition of the term in "modern-day American usage" outside of the conservative movement. The average American who gets his/her news and political definitions exclusively from the "mainstream" media has no clue what the Constitution says, let alone using it to define things. They've all been told, by the nice smooth-talking folks on TV, that "conservative" DOES mean racist (not to mention stupid, bigoted, selfish, and sexist, etc.). That's the definitional problem we're up against. And if we're depending on the media to clarify the historical and present-day complexities of the whole "conservative-liberal" terminology, and the fact that neither tradition is monolithic, I wouldn't hold my breath. :-(

Sometimes I think we'd be well off to just throw both words out the window, because they polarize, confuse and divide much more than they clarify. But I always come back to the idea that it's good to have a single word that can connote (even if it doesn't always, to everybody) a constellation of ideas that includes a theistic and moral worldview, support for strong face-to-face communities, diversified and decentralized political and economic power, respect for individual rights and freedoms within the scope of moral law, respect for the rule of law and for tradition, and a belief in individual human moral responsibility as a basis for justice. And for me, conservatism (or, if you will, paleo-conservatism) is the most natural term that connotes all of that.

I enjoyed this review and I agree wholeheartedly with your objection re: conservatives. I felt that way when reading the book, but had a different "take" on it - greatly objected to referring to white people as "vanilla". Is that not racism? No need to respond to this comment - just wanted to let you know I appreciated your review.