As How the Left Was Won was working its way up my "must-read" list on its own, the author, Richard Mgrdechian, offered to send me a copy of the book. "This," I thought, "must be how the real pundits live. I'll bet Rush Limbaugh has to move every six months, just to escape the truckloads of free books that authors send his way." Still, having seen the book advertised on the web, I already looked forward to reading it. And I found that if I had no room on my bookshelves for this book, it would be worth the effort to make some.

Early in the book, the author states, "Liberalism is the single most destructive force in our society, and I can prove it." And prove it he does. Mgrdechian exposes the means by which the Left undermines America's deepest foundations with all the skill of a surgeon in an operating theater, examining human anatomy for the benefit of eager students. From the way Liberals use divisiveness to gain power, to the way they cozy up to hostile governments that are the antithesis of everything in which they pretend to believe, How the Left Was Won unmasks Liberalism for all to see. It's exactly what Conservatives have been trying to say for years, distilled, refined and indexed.

In Chapter 2, for instance, Mgrdechian discusses Good (or, as I refer to it, constructive) Competition versus Bad (destructive) Competition. Some seek to compete by becoming better than the rest: refining their ideas, selling better products, training to run faster, etc. Liberals, as he points out, only compete by tearing their opponents down without improving their own message or product at all. We can see the latter strategy in operation every single day, as Democratic politicians, Hollywood half-wits and members of the mainstream media spend all their time trying to undermine Conservatism instead of beating it fairly. Perhaps that's because they know it isn't possible. Maybe it's because they're just plain lazy.

I have to admit that Chapter 13 is perhaps my favorite chapter. Mgrdechian likens Liberals to the titular swarm of ants, each with only a tiny impact, but willing to swarm all over the opposition until we give way, if only to still the endless chanting. The image of those who dare excel being crushed under millions of little ant feet is evocative. "The ants have swarmed all over you," he writes, "until there was nothing left. Until a man didn't have any fight left in him. Until a company was on the verge of bankruptcy. Until the military was gutted, the police emasculated, the borders broken and the country overrun by terrorists and perverts." Right there is the essence of the Liberal "game plan," in my opinion: the attack on all our traditional values until we're paralysed by self-doubt and second-guessing, incapable of making any judgments, about anything.

If How the Left Was Won has any flaw, it's that the author exposes Liberal methodologies without discussing ways to counter them. Then again, we're Americans, and need no such hand-holding. By helping us identify the tactics used by Liberals, this book gives us tools we can use to craft arguments with which to defeat them. All we need is an informed, free competition of ideas, of values, of ways to look at the world. And that's precisely what the Left cannot allow.