'Barack Obama is manufacturing conservatives at a clip unparalled in history'

This post is for Liz, a commenter who asked me today for an easy way to keep track of books I recommend, which I am providing by creating a new category and tag, “Books I recommend.”

Here’s how I think Liz came by her request:

Roger Simon published a post on January 1 about a book entitled The Death of Conservatism by Sam Tanenhaus, in which Roger pointed out how very much the worm had turned between the time the author wrote the book and now.

I commented:

Roger, I laughed out loud when I read these lines in your post:

I feel sorry for Tanenhaus, in a way. How could he have known (well, maybe he should have) when writing his book nine or ten months ago that Barack Obama would now be manufacturing conservatives at a clip unparalleled in history? Our President is a veritable conservative mass production factory.

I am one of the new conservatives Obama has created! My “Hell, no!” moment was the revelations about Rev. Wright and my “last straw” was the choice of Biden over Hillary for VP. Then I had to read up to be able to explain my choice to my liberal friends — stop laughing, yes, it WAS just like spitting into the wind — and poof! I saw the point of becoming a fiscal conservative.

But since reading was so fundamental in my transformation, and we are talking about books, the ones that I think provide the most insight into Leftism/liberalism are Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer and the new book that applies Hoffer’s insights to our current era, Jamie Glazov’s United in Hate. Glazov is particularly insightful about the Left’s rage against capitalism and once you understand what he’s saying, then you’ve got a lever, a fulcrum and a place to stand: you can move the world.

The books that best explain Obama are therapist Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door and Sandy Hotchkiss’s Why Is It Always About You?: The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism.

For the bonus reading list, to understand Michelle Obama and Rahm Emanuel, I suspect the best book is Randi Kreger’s Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder. An excellent introduction to Kreger’s work is Dr. Helen’s recent interview with her on Pajamas TV.

I want to thank you and the commenters for my first belly laughs of 2010!

Here are links to all the books mentioned in this post — Amazon pays me a small commission if you buy a book linked from this blog but you do not pay extra: