On Tuesday I provided a peek at the first three essays in the new, Mary Eberstadt edited anthology, Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys. “Political Journeys, Part 1” covered P.J. O’Rourke, Richard Starr, and David Brooks. I’ll continue today with a preview of pieces by Dinesh D’Souza, Heather Mac Donald, and Joseph Bottum.

Dinesh D’Souza’s contribution to Why I Turned Right comes at a good time. I’ve criticized D’Souza of late. But I also believe that, contrary to what quite a few others have suggested, D’Souza’s controversial argument in The Enemy at Home is sincerely held. It all makes sense once you read D’Souza’s piece in Why I Turned Right. D’Souza came to America from India as a high school senior. The social liberalism he encountered at Dartmouth ran smack up against his Indian upbringing, and this would appear to be the germ out of which grew D’Souza’s idea of forming an alliance between American conservatives and traditionalists across the globe. The Enemy at Home synthesizes the culture war rabble rousing D’Souza helped invent at Dartmouth with his sense of being part of a world-wide traditionalist fraternity. Again, I have my differences with D’Souza, but if you want to see where he’s coming from, just read this book. It’s obvious that the man is sincere. He’s also darned smart, and a great writer. This is another one of several flat out funny essays in a volume filled with humor. I’ve been an admirer of D’Souza since his important book, Illiberal Education, helped kick off a national effort to do something about the leftist takeover of the academy. Differences of approach notwithstanding, it’s good to be reminded of all that. This is vintage D’Souza.

I don’t so much want to comment on Heather Mac Donald’s piece as to genuflect before it. If you’ve ever found it difficult to explain to someone of just how stark-raving-mad the post-modern academy has gone, your worries are over. Hand them Heather Mac Donald’s piece and they will believe. Keep extra oxygen on hand. The writing here will take your breath away, as will the story’s extremism. Because Mac Donald lived for a time at the heart of one of the most influential–and seriously looney–intellectual movements of the past few decades, her testimony has real historic significance. Mac Donald is a one-time post-modern mobster who’s turned state’s evidence. I promise, you, the jury, will vote to convict. I myself have seen shock waves from the Yale Mac Donald describes wash up on the shores of Harvard. (I cringe at the memory.) Mac Donald’s piece casts her wonderful investigative reporting for City Journal in a whole new light. Agree or disagree with Mac Donald in her recent criticisms of religion, that too will make sense as part of her own remarkable intellectual-political journey. A friend of mine claims to have laughed out loud on every page of this essay. I laughed not once. Instead, I sat in mute silence, my mouth agape. Read it.

As the editor of First Things, America’s premiere journal of religion and public life, Joseph Bottum gives us a true conversion narrative–religious and political at once. Appropriately, Bottum’s religio-political road-to-Damascus moment was occasioned by a vision. And logically following from that instant of conversion (you’ll see how), Bottum’s essay pivots around the abortion issue, in its narrowest and broadest implications. This is a deeply felt–and deeply thought–statement from someone at the heart of America’s pro-life movement. It is also an excellent piece of sociology (religious folks are often the best sociologists). Watch for what Bottum calls contemporary America’s “two great commandments” (not included in the old ten). Bottum puts his finger on some fundamental questions about the relationship between liberalism and religion. Yet as Bottum unpacks the big-picture issues, we feel the concrete tensions kicked up by the pro-life movement from within the life of a man. How do you tolerate the intolerable? How do those who can’t abide your moral principles tolerate you? How does democracy accommodate itself to radically opposed moralities–and they to democracy?

More next week.