In 2007, conservative humorist Evan Sayet gave a deadly serious speech to the Heritage Foundation that became one of the five most talked about political speeches of the past decade.
I had a chance to talk to Evan via email about his new book — The KinderGarden of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Thinks (And Why He’s Convinced That Ignorance is Bliss) — and in reply to my questions, he wrote:
I wrote the book because I was blessed with an understanding of how the Modern Liberal thinks that was not being articulated by others as well and as clearly as I was able to do it. The vast majority of books that address Modern Liberalism seek to chronicle the wrongs of the Left, but they don’t address how the Modern Liberal comes to support these wrongful positions. How does he think he’s making a better world by siding with all that is evil, failed and wrong and against all that is good, right and successful. My book explains the ideology and somebody had to write it.
The process was terribly disjointed, with a fair number of starts and stops. Much of the thinking was developed, tested and honed in speeches to Republican and conservative organizations. For the longest time I had this giant “block of ice” — the overall concept — and what I had to do was chisel out the swan.
I went back and forth as to “tone” all the way to the end. Should I make the book funny? Ultimately I decided that, because some of the major claims I make are so hard to accept vicersally — come on, how can these people really be morally and intellectually retarded at the level of the five-year-old child??? — that I decided to argue the case scientifically rather than to risk confusion by being humorous.
I began the book by listing the Four Laws of my Unified Field Theory of Liberalism and then three corollaries. The first of those corollaries is that “The Modern Liberal may have personal standards but he must deny them and militate against them and those who employ them in the public arena.” The truth is that the vast majority of successful Modern Liberals LIVE a conservative life but will not support and publicly promote the values and the practices that led to their success. Dennis Prager has more than once said “How much better the world would be if only they (the Modern Liberals) would preach what they practice.”
The KinderGarden of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Thinks (And Why He’s Convinced That Ignorance is Bliss) is being compared to the works of Thomas Sowell, Allan Bloom, Ayn Rand and Mark Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny.” It’s available for download at my website, evansayet.com, and in print via either my website or Amazon.com.
