Human Events has a review of Intellectual Morons by Tim Carney. "Any parent worried about liberal indoctrination on the eve of sending his son or daughter off to college ought to require his kid to read Intellectual Morons," Carney writes. Elsewhere in the largely favorable review, he challenges my taking on Leo Strauss, one of the only figures associated with the Right examined in the book. Carney labels Strauss "too big a fish for this book." He's not, but I suppose I'll be hearing this same criticism from folks on the Left about Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault. Yesterday, the Washington Times published "Smart People, Stupid Ideas," an interview of me on issues relating to Intellectual Morons. It's not available online, unfortunately. It covers a lot of ground--Margaret Sanger, Alfred Kinsey, Rigoberta Menchu, and other intellectual morons. Following the pre-publication plug from Time magazine, the Human Events review and the Washington Times interview represent the only print attention this book has, to my knowledge, received. So why is it currently #12 on Amazon.com's non-fiction top-sellers list? Talk radio, the blogosphere, and Internet news and opinion sites have generated a terrific buzz about Intellectual Morons, and clearly, have the power to sell serious books dealing with ideas.

Is Ayn Rand also tackled in the new book?....just curious about any other figure associated with the right in your book.

There is a whole chapter on Rand and Objectivism. Some of those discussed don't always fit into neat Right/Left boxes, but both the Randians and the Straussians are two groups on the Right who are examined in the book. Despite what the most recent Amazon reader review says, the book most definitely takes on ideology--not just left ideology, but all ideology (Right, Left, whatever).

I read your townhall.com article, wherein you said:

"When you're providing earthly deliverance, all
is permitted-the gulag, the gas chamber,
beheadings, etc. After all, ends that glorious
will always justify means that horrific.
Unfortunately, utopian ideologies never
succeed in their ends or spare in their
means. The road to heaven on earth
invariably detours to a dead end more
closely resembling a much hotter place."

(emphasis mine)

However, just a few paragraphs earlier you said:

"Novelist Ayn Rand hated Nazism and Communism, but
this didn't stop her from imitating many of the
unattractive aspects of those ideologies in both
her fiction and in her real life. The high
priestess of Objectivism established a cult of
personality, held show trials against followers,
denied reality (such as the success of Sputnik)
when it didn't conform to her theories, and
demanded the submission of individual judgment to
her own. In Rand's books, she fantasized about the
destruction of the portion of humanity standing in
the way of her ideals. Examples of this include
the holocaust that concludes Atlas Shrugged and
the words of We the Living's heroine: "What are
your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel
to be burned for those who deserve it?" The
damage done by Objectivism, thankfully, rarely
went beyond the movement's ranks."

(emphasis mine)

Do you not see a contradiction in this?

To Howard,

I don't see any contradiction, apparently you need to actually point out what contradiction you see instead of implying one with a question.

I read what Carney wrote about not taking on Strauss b/c apparently since "Strauss spent his life studying and teaching the history of ancient philosophy" his philosophy and worldview are just too sophisticated for you to take on in a chapter of your book. That claim is silly, Carney needs to argue for this assertion. The problem is that Strauss was not a philosopher (and he would have been the first to say that) he was a political theorist/scientist. Moreover, his interpretation of classical thought is completely wrong and has been repeatedly demonstrated as such by actual philosophers and scholars of Greek thought. One of the best critiques of Strauss is by Miles Burnyeat from 1985 in the New York Review of Books called "The Sphinx without a Secret." His work has been undermined, and frankly, dismissed by philosophers for years and it lives on through a network of "apt pupils" and in political science departments only.

Also, most defenders of Strauss do so by being extremely vague about just what exactly the master's worldview was, they tend to just deny charges against him rather than provide a positive, and honest, interpretation of his thought. See for example William Kristol and Stephen Lenzner's "What was Leo Strauss Up To?"
Found here:
http://www.thepublicinterest.com/archives/2003fall/article1.html

When it comes to Ayn Rand, you don't know what you are talking about. Since you don't understand her work, it would probably be a safe bet to say you don't understand Strauss' either. Your intelligence seems to be of the horizontal type common to most university drones. Well, at least you made some money. Money is good.