Category Archives: Book review

by James A. Bacon

David Shephard, publisher of The Virginia Gentleman blog, has followed politics in the Old Dominion for many years, and he has long admired the Garrett Epps novel, The Shad Treatment, a fictional rendering of the 1973 gubernatorial contest between Mills Godwin and Henry Howell. Shephard’s recently published book, Elections Have Consequences, is his effort to follow in the Epps tradition.

Set circa 2021, the election Shephard recounts is a contest between Democrat Ronnie Norton and Republican Angela Parrish. It’s not a spoiler to tell the reader that Norton wins, for Shephard devotes the second half of his tale to what follows: the newly-elected governor is engulfed in scandal — a yearbook photo surfaces of Norton in blackface standing next to someone in Nazi regalia. To survive politically, he capitulates to the militant left wing of the Democratic Party and presides over a wave of social-justice legislation.

In his preface, Shephard swears that Ronnie Norton (initials R.N.) is purely a figment of his fertile imagination, thus waving off any comparisons with Ralph Northam (initials R.N.). He makes the same claim of his dean of the capitol press corps, Steve Cohen, who bears passing similarities to the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Jeff Schapiro. Presumably, we are to view as no more than coincidental resemblance his introduction of Republican campaign consultant Mark S. Boyd, whose name bears a remarkable resemblance to Republican campaign consultant Boyd Marcus.

But the deliberate similarities — mixed with innumerable references to real governors such as Jerry Baliles and George Allen; to real Virginia cities, towns and places; to real Virginia higher-ed institutions from Hollins and Mary Baldwin to the University of Virginia; and to uniquely Virginia effluvia from the Ask the Governor radio show to the burial of Stonewall Jackson — are all part of the fun. Continue reading →

by James A. Bacon

As Wokeism plays an increasingly dominant role in our society, conservatives and even  liberals have begun subjecting the ideology to close scrutiny. Perhaps the most brilliant dissection comes from John McWhorter, an African-American and an old-school liberal. In Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, McWhorter makes the case that Woke doctrine is an unfalsifiable, philosophical jumble that is embraced as a matter of secular (godless) religious faith.

Other indispensable readings are the Madness of Crowds and The War on the West, by gay English journalist Douglas Murray. In the latter volume, Murray argues that wokeism is part of a larger assault on reason, the Enlightenment, indeed all of Western Civilization. The movement to topple Confederate statues morphed into a movement to demonize and de-memorialize slave holders, and then anyone else (which includes just about everyone before the mid-2oth century) who held views on race that are now regarded as retrograde, all the while giving a pass to genocides and mass murders committed by Marxists and non-Westerners.

If you have an interest in the intellectual forces tearing our society apart, I recommend those works highly. While reading McWhorter and Murray, you might consider also a slender volume, The Dreadful Frauds: Critical Race Theory and Identity Politics, by Philip Leigh. Where McWhorter and Murray delve deeply into the ideology of wokeism, Leigh provides a useful survey of its application in the United States. Continue reading →