Guilty by Ann Coulter

Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and their Assault on America
by Ann Coulter

Guilty is Ann Coulter's seventh book, and her most recent bestseller. This book is loosely organized around the theme of liberal 'victims' and covers a number of recent political controversies.

The first chapter outlines Coulter's thesis. Victimhood has become bizarrely fashionable in contemporary America. People can achieve a higher social status the worse off they are, or are perceived to be. This has led to the bizarre spectacle of people fabricating hardships to make themselves appear worse off.

In earlier times, success and achievement was admired. Today's victims would simply have been seen as losers or worse. People would better backgrounds and achievements, not worse.

Liberalism is not only part of the cause of this phenomenon, but it has exploited it for its own agenda. There are certainly real victims who deserve our sympathy. But liberals laud 'victims' who are not only phony, but actually create real victims in largely unrecognized ways. Liberals use victims to advance their political agenda and stifle debate, as Coulter previously showed in Godless.

Coulter cites a number of examples, including a string of phony 'hate crimes' on college campuses that were actually committed by the purported 'victims' themselves. Such controversies are trumpeted by the media. The media also has very different standards for homosexuals, lauding those whose politics they like while outing and attacking those with whom they disagree.

The second chapter of Guilty received the most media attention, and for good reason, as it is the most significant. Its topic is single motherhood.

By 'single mother', Coulter specifies women who choose to have children out of Wedlock. Coulter details the evidence that single motherhood is terrible for children. Around 60-70% of prison inmates, juvenile murders, rapists, "teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents, and child murderers" come from single mothers. The primary cause of poverty is single motherhood, but government welfare programs have actually encouraged both. The alternative to single motherhood, aside from monogamy, is adoption. Adopted kids don't have the same list of social problems.

Liberals have glamorized single motherhood in movies and television. Dan Quayle was severely attacked for criticizing Murphy Brown for having a child out of wedlock. (Coulter doesn't mention that the child soon disappeared from the show. Apparently even taking care of a fictional child was too much work. After Quayle was safely out of office, there were a string of 'Dan Quayle was right' articles in the media.)

Coulter cites feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich, who has explicitly advocated single motherhood and attacked the family. She also cites a string out court decisions weakening the family. Courts broke up adoptive families in favor of lowlife unwed fathers who suddenly wanted their biological children years after conception, and they did it in the name of 'the interests of the child'. Incredibly, in 1989, the Supreme Court came within one vote of ruling that adulterers would have rights to children conceived under adultery.

Coulter advocates returning to the standard that worked, and that liberal judges dismantled. Namely, unwed fathers have no right to their children, and unwed mothers have no right to child support. Instead, rewarding single motherhood has led to lots more of it.

Coulter makes a powerful and compelling case for socially discouraging single motherhood rather than rewarding it with praise.

The rest of the book is less important, but still entertaining. Coulter debunks a number of liberal myths, particularly those created or promoted by the liberal media. One of the biggest is the 'Republican attack machine', which essentially doesn't exist. The only real 'attack machine' is the media. When liberals attack each other, they often do so by purporting to fear what the 'Republican attack machine' will say about their opponent. Coulter covers the media treatment of Obama during the campaign, particularly his political alliances with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. She tells the truth about the Swift Boat Veterans and the media's attacks on them.

Coulter documents the phenomenon of Republicans who seek fame and fortune by denouncing their party. She considers the case of former Bush spokesmen Scott McClellan. She shows how presidential biographies treat Republicans and democrats, including one by former southwest Michigan congressman and Reagan budget director David Stockman attacking Reagan. (Years later Stockman's former aide and current 6th district congressman would run for office as a 'Reagan Republican'.) She reviews the raft of books by Bush administration officials and bureaucrats attacking Bush.

One point that Coulter fails to make is that most, if not all of the turncoats were not movement conservatives, they were just hacks who were working for Bush because it was the best job they could get at the time. When a better opportunity came along, they took it and denounced him. Hiring conservatives who actually believe in something would do a lot to ameliorate this problem.

Coulter contrasts the media's treatment of Republican and democrat 'sex scandals' and claims of privacy. The media investigated every detail of Sarah Palin's family life. The media had earlier managed to unseal the divorce records of both of Barack Obama's opponents in his 2004 senate race. The media did the best it could to cover up John Edwards' affair. It created a phony controversy over George Allen's 'macaca' statement while ignoring real anti-Semitic flyers made by his opponent, Jim Webb.

Coulter reviews the many serious scandals of the Clinton administration with the phony scandals of the Bush administration. Finally, Coulter documents the media fawning over liberals for everything from 'beauty' and 'eloquence' to 'courage'.

Critics of the liberal media will never run out of material. But Coulter makes her points persuasively and effectively. Guilty is well worth reading.

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Godless: A Review