http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/maturity-deferred-the-death-of-the-grown-up?f=puball
This book review was originally written in 2008 for another publication, some time after Diana West’s book debuted. The editor of that publication – who shall remain nameless, as well as the publication itself – had the hubris to edit my original review out of recognition. I withdrew the submission and am belatedly publishing it now.
The trouble with most conservatives who write cultural critiques is that invariably they get it only half right, or just backwards. Diana West’s The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization is not a salutary instance of that failing. West is not your typical “conservative.” She has analytical and observational skills that surpass those of the typical conservative. She is acutely intelligent and a superb writer. Most average “conservatives” I have dubbed “CINOs” – Conservatives in Name Only – because like many political conservatives, they invariably endorse or side with the liberal/left welfare statists, in spite of their religious bent or allegiance to “traditions.”
For example, Speaker of the House John Boehner is a CINO, because other than being well-dressed, and wearing an American flag pin on his lapel, he is a closet liberal. Being well-dressed and flaunting a flag pin are traditions, not principles.
By half right I mean that Boehner, for example, will make a trenchant observation with which one can agree, but then, either explicitly or implicitly, his observation will be grounded on a religious norm or premise, or on tradition, or custom, or just an established and wholly secondary, often arbitrary “social rule,” and not on any rational criterion. In short, on a non-fundamental. Boehner said, about the bill sent to the Senate that would delay implementation of Obamacare for one year:
