Last week, here and here I provided previews of the first six essays in the new Mary Eberstadt edited anthology, Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys. Having covered P.J. O’Rourke, Richard Starr, David Brooks, Dinesh D’Souza, Heather Mac Donald, and Joseph Bottum, I’m moving on today to Danielle Crittenden, Tod Lindberg, and Sally Satel.

As a long-time admirer of Danielle Crittenden’s powerful critique of feminism, this piece was a special treat for me. Here we get to see how Crittenden’s take on feminism grew directly out of her life experience. Russell Jacoby’s absurd knock on Why I Turned Right is that such well written essays cannot also be thoughtful and substantive. Yet it’s tough to imagine a more beautiful blend of story and substance than Crittenden’s piece. A number of other contributors to this volume speak about the Burkean stream of conservatism–the dangers of trying to reinvent society’s rules yourself, from scratch. Well, that’s exactly what the feminist revolution attempted. Crittenden’s piece is an object lesson in the limitations of that kind of radicalism. Her personal story is a deep, embodied (and entertainingly told) instantiation of conservatism’s core theoretical insights.

Oh those nasty neocons. What would a book about turning right be without the story of a “card carrying neoconservative” who earned his club membership in the heyday of the movement’s influence. Policy Review editor, Tod Lindberg, is that neocon man. Lindberg was a student of that famous teacher, and author of The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom, about whom we hear plenty in Lindberg’s piece. What’s more, The Corner’s own John Podhoretz vies here with Bloom for best supporting actor in a neocon conversion story. Apparently, even before it existed, The Corner was winning recruits to the movement.

Sally Satel made her name as a psychiatrist willing to advocate limited and reasonable forms of coercion for those homeless mentally ill who pose serious physical dangers to themselves, and to ordinary citizens. Dubbed “the most dangerous psychiatrist in America,” Satel’s story is fascinating example of how moderate and reasonable professionals who refuse to bow to the pressures of political correctness somehow find themselves standing on the right side of the political spectrum–without ever having moved a step. A strong point of Why I Turned Right (and of the Republican coalition, if we can keep it) is that you can find deeply committed pro-life activists, like Joseph Bottum, as well as pro-choicers, like Satel, within its pages. Yet it’s too simple to call Satel a libertarian, since she stresses personal liberty for the competent while insisting on supervision for the dangerously incompetent. (Come to think of it, do contemporary libertarians have a position on laws for the mentally ill?) Satel’s story will acquaint you with a whole new axis of issues through which to think out the meanings of conservatism and liberalism. And Satel’s inside account of life on Capital Hill is a revelation. This political conversion was cemented by an eye-opening stint at the very center of America’s political life. Wait till you see what Satel found there.