TNR’s Jonathan Chait has just read the new, Mary Eberstadt edited anthology, Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys, and he’s loaded for bear. Chait’s claim is that the book’s stories of conversion from left to right don’t involve rejections of mainstream American liberalism, but only of crazy radical leftism. So according to Chait, these conservatives haven’t turned against the reasonable liberalism of the Brookings Institution, they’re just mimicking their radical pasts by adopting right-wing versions of their own youthful extremism.

This is an interesting attack. It’s certainly more impressive than Russell Jacoby’s knock (the book is so well written, it must be superficial). But I think Chait gets it wrong. He cherry picks examples, ignoring plenty of instances throughout the book (including examples in the essays he concentrates on), where mainstream liberal positions on the Cold War, abortion, welfare, and lots of other issues are considered and rejected. Chait is also wrong to claim that of all the authors who turned from left to right, only David Brooks began as a moderate liberal. But, hey, why not read Why I Turned Right and decide for yourself?