Not the book I expected, but good none the less. It was essentially Medved’s autobiography with his views on culture, politics and religion mixed in liberally. He grew up in a conservative Jewish family with left-wing politics, went to Yale where he mixed with Hillary Rodham, John Kerry and that sort, and was heavily involved in political campaigns and anti-Vietnam War protests.

As he began to embrace orthodox Jewish beliefs, he also began noticing the inherent contradictions and stupidity in liberal thought. He wrote a few books on movies which got him a job as a movie critic on Sneak Previews on PBS. This, in turn, displayed his right-wing politics and got him national notice which eventually gave him opportunities as substitute host for Rush Limbaugh and others. In the mid 1990s he began is still-running afternoon talk show which I often listen to on the way home from work.

What follows are three interesting, unrelated quotes:

• Regarding Vietnam — The sense of approaching apocalypse intensified enormously with the Selective Service System’s announcement that students would no longer receive draft deferments for graduate and professional school. This changed everything for the students of the era, forcing us to confront the war more personally, more painfully than before. The traditional student deferment policy had protected the ivory tower atmosphere of the university, keeping us far removed from the raging conflict in Southeast Asia and other unpleasant aspects of the “real world.” The new rules meant that we could not blithely move on to one graduate program or another after graduation to keep the military at a distance. Only medical students and divinity students would remain exempt from their armed forces obligations. Naturally, tens of thousands of applicants discovered new enthusiasm for healing or holy careers. (Most historians of religion in America trace the sharp leftward tilt in most denominations to the draft-avoidance strategies that soon filled seminaries and divinity schools beyond capacity.)

• On voting for minority candidates — As both a youthful liberal and grown-up conservative, I’ve felt ferociously frustrated at arrogant ideologues who prefer gestures and poses to practical progress. Insisting on “voting their conscience,” some throw away the sacred franchise on one irrelevant third (or fourth) party or another. During the breathlessly close presidential contest of 2000, for instance, 98,004 presumably sound conservatives voted for Howard Phillips of the Constitution Party (known on my radio show as the Constipation Party). What difference would it have made to the history of the Republic had the portly Mr. Phillips received, say, 68,004 votes or, for that matter, 128,004? Meanwhile, a few hundred ballots in Florida (or in desperately close New Mexico, Iowa, Oregon, New Hampshire and Wisconsin) decided the outcome in the Electoral College. Stubborn, holier-than-thou ideologues love to cite the famous sound bite by Henry Clay (“I would rather be right than be president”) without recognizing that this trimming politician (known, after all, as “The Great Compromiser”) offered these words as the ultimate sour grapes long after he’d lost his third presidential contest. Anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with history or common sense understands that you advance your political cause by winning, rather than losing, elections. This simple recalcitrance in 1968 — and continues to trump the illogic of puffed-up purists among the Naderites, Buchananites, and Losertarians of our own day.

• On society — One of the symptoms of the corruption and collapse of our national culture is the insistence that we examine only the surface of any work of art. The Politically correct, properly liberal notion is that we should never dig deeper — to consider whether a given work is true, or good, or spiritually nourishing — or to evaluate its impact on society at large. Contemporary culture is obsessed with superficial skill and slick salesmanship while ignoring the more important issues of soul and substance …Everywhere around us, in every realm of artistic endeavor we see evidence of the rejection of traditional standards of beauty and worth. In the visual arts, in literature, in film, in music of both popular and classical varieties, ugliness has been enshrined as a new standard, as we accept the ability to shock as a replacement for the old ability to inspire.

The book was well-written and interesting throughout and I came away liking Michael Medved as a person and somewhat sad that he, as devoutly religious as he is, has rejected Jesus Christ.