Just for the record, I was reading Gustav Le Bon way before it was cool...
Demonic is the first genuinely modern conservative book that I've read that really gets it.
The populist sentiment that runs through western life, left and right, is along the lines that most people are good and decent, and, presented with the facts, will make the right choice. This general idea lies at the heart of the western love affair with democracy, why we believe in it for ourselves, why we think that a government cannot be legitimate without it. We think that democracy stands a better chance of producing a just society than any other system. Even Ann Coulter is not entirely free from this idea.
However, for the first time in a very long time, an author has chosen to show the true dark side of popular opinion. Ann Coulter has produced perhaps the first work documenting the influence of “the mob” on American life.
The general theory goes something like this; people in groups act differently than they do as individuals. In a mob, or crowd, individuals are more likely to sacrifice their individuality to the collective. Under this influence, they are prone to perform actions, or hold opinions, which they never would have done as individuals.
Following this line, whoever has the skill of inciting and moving a mob can get a large number of people to violate their own consciences and common sense in pursuit of the mob directors aims.
Ann Coulter has produced a work, which, like works before it (not only Gustav Le Bon’s The Crowd, but Menace of the Herd) is well researched, insightful, and passionate without losing clarity.
It is split into four sections that detail the psychology, the historical context, the violent tendencies, and the driving forces behind the behavior of the “liberal”.
While many of these points have been made before, Ms. Coulter draws parallels with the modern liberal world that show a clear connection between historical forces of the left and today. Her final conclusion is downright shocking and compelling.
Now, as much as a love letter to the book as this post is, I still have a few niggles, nothing major.
The populist sentiment that runs through western life, left and right, is along the lines that most people are good and decent, and, presented with the facts, will make the right choice. This general idea lies at the heart of the western love affair with democracy, why we believe in it for ourselves, why we think that a government cannot be legitimate without it. We think that democracy stands a better chance of producing a just society than any other system. Even Ann Coulter is not entirely free from this idea.
Conflating democracies and republics with freedom is a very real mistake. The greatest dictators of the past 100 years did not arise in monarchies, but in republics. Even some of the most tyrannical monarchs of the past did not apply the trade of oppression with such far reaching and thorough destruction as Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein or the Ayatollah Khomeini.
At one point in discussing the French Revolution, she states that the population had a legitimate grievance, since the clergy and the nobility did not pay taxes. When it comes to the clergy, they could say that they shouldn’t pay taxes, because, in a sense, they had no personal income. They also ran schools, poorhouses, and numerous other socially beneficial institutions.
In addition, the power to tax really is the power to destroy. The church’s freedom from taxation was a protection of its own independence. As Hilaire Belloc pointed out regarding Thomas a Becket, freedom from even civil or criminal law was motivated for centuries (I believe) by a desire to avoid being bullied by the state.
Now, regarding the nobility, as I understand it, they provided military service to the king in lieu of taxation.
Most of the few problems I have with this text are along these lines. That being said, check this book out, it really is important.
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