Diana West
Diana West | |
---|---|
Born | Hollywood, California, U.S. | November 8, 1961
Education | Yale University (BA) |
Occupation(s) | Author, columnist |
Diana West (born November 8, 1961) is an American conservative author and former columnist. She wrote a weekly column from 1998 until 2014 that was syndicated nationally. Her books include The Death of the Grownup: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization (2007) and American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character (2013).
Early and personal life
West was born and raised in Hollywood, Los Angeles to Elliot West, a conservative novelist and television and screenplay writer, and Barbara Belden, a one-time actress.[1] She moved to the East Coast and graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1983.[1][2] She is married and has twin daughters, and has later lived in Washington, D.C.[1][2]
Career
West was an editor of
As a former CNN contributor, she frequently appeared on Lou Dobbs' shows Lou Dobbs Tonight and Lou Dobbs This Week.[4]
West has also been co-vice president of the International Free Press Society,[4][6] and been described as part of the counter-jihad movement,[7][8] a movement which she has praised in her column, including the blog Gates of Vienna.[9] In 2010 she was a co-author of the Center for Security Policy's Team B II report Shariah: The Threat To America.[4] She has also been a contributor to Breitbart News.[4]
The Death of the Grownup
West published her first book, The Death of the Grownup: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization in 2007.[10] The book argues that "Americans have become overly complacent with the world around us, particularly the ideological conflicts between Islam and the West, as a result of our desire to perpetuate our youth."[2]
Reviews
A
Writing in The New York Times Book Review, William Grimes observed that "West makes a principled, conservative cultural argument unflinchingly" throughout the text. Grimes concluded that "West, in her style of argument, shows herself to be more a child of the 1960s than she might care to admit. In the end the facts matter less than the emotions." He also thought West's discussion about a failure to confront Islam was awkwardly fit for the book's topic.[2][12]
In the
American Betrayal
West's second book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character, was published in 2013. West argues that after the
Reviews and responses
Frank T. Csongos argues that West is right "up to a point." He notes that West rejects the standard narrative that Franklin Roosevelt, like George W. Bush, took drastic steps to "save capitalism." Unlike West, he believes that Roosevelt was merely naive when trusting Joseph Stalin.[17]
A Kirkus review finds that she has a number of valid points but her additional doubtful speculations go too far. It notes that, "Not until the 1990s, with access to the Venona files and Soviet archives, have historians wholly appreciated the scope of Russian spying in this country from the time FDR formally recognized the Soviet Union in 1933. West matches these new revelations to previously known facts and wonders why we’ve neglected to fully adjust the historical record." It ends with the warning: "A frustrating mixture of incontrovertible facts and dubious speculation. Proceed with caution."[14]
Former Canadian newspaper publisher and Franklin D. Roosevelt biographer Conrad Black published a critique of American Betrayal in the conservative journal National Review in late 2013, to which West responded and Black then rejoined. Like Radosh, Black believes West grossly exaggerates Soviet influence in the Roosevelt Administration, whose policies were driven by the extreme social and economic crisis America was going through during the Depression. Black believes the alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II, while driven by realpolitik, was a dire necessity to prevent the victory of Nazi Germany which had already conquered France and was threatening Britain, and finds West's dismissal of the D-Day invasion of Normandy as somehow the result of Soviet subterfuge to shift the strategic thrust from the campaign in Italy to be an absurd and amateurish contention that ignores the realities of logistics and terrain. All these authors also point out that for the first two years of World War 2 during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, widely considered odious among liberals, the policy of the FDR administration was at loggerheads with that of the Soviets in aiding Britain through Lend-Lease and point out the irony that at that time communists allied with isolationists and the America First movement, whose legacy West extols.[18]
Andrew C. McCarthy also came to West's defense in a review-essay in The New Criterion, where he writes West relies on M. Stanton Evans' book that comes to the defense of Senator Joseph McCarthy and cites the "groundbreaking scholarship of John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr" to back up Evans' claims.[16]
Bibliography
- The Death of the Grownup: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization. St. Martin's Griffin. 2007. ISBN 978-0312340490.
- ISBN 978-0982294765. (as part of Team B II)
- American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character. St. Martin's Press. 2013. ISBN 978-0312630782.
- The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' from the Book-Burners. Bravura Books. 2013. ISBN 978-1492884538.
- No Fear: Selected Columns from America's Most Politically Incorrect Journalist. Bravura Books. 2013. ISBN 978-1484180228.
- The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy. Center for Security Policy Press. 2019. ISBN 978-1076939630.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g Lamb, Brian (December 29, 2011). "Q&A with Diana West". C-SPAN.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "West, Diana 1961-". encyclopedia.com. Retrieved December 1, 2023.
- ^ a b c Hays, Charlotte (April 3, 2012). "Champion Women: Diana West". Independent Women's Forum.
- ^ a b c d e "Diana West". MacMillan. Retrieved June 21, 2023.
- ^ a b West, Diana (December 12, 2014). "My Column Ends, But the Questions Don't". Townhall.
- ^ "International counter-jihad organisations". Hope not hate. January 11, 2018.
- ^ Pertwee, Ed (October 2017). 'Green Crescent, Crimson Cross': The Transatlantic 'Counterjihad' and the New Political Theology (PDF). London School of Economics. p. 267.
- ^ "Stakelbeck on Terror: The West and Free Speech". CBN News. October 2, 2012.
- ^ West, Diana (November 21, 2014). "Giving Thanks For The Counter-Jihad Network". Townhall.
- ISBN 9781136473326.
- ^ "The Death of the Grownup: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization". Kirkus Reviews. August 21, 2007.
- ^ Grimes, William (August 29, 2007). "Dress Like Your Child, and the Terrorists Win". The New York Times.
- ^ Beck, Stefan (December 2007). "Mushmouth nation". The New Criterion.
- ^ a b "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character". Kirkus Reviews. April 28, 2013.
- ^ a b Gaffney Jr., Frank J. (August 6, 2013). "Willful blindness, mortal peril: Fantasizing that enemies are friends is a dangerous pastime". The Washington Times.
- ^ a b McCarthy, Andrew C. (December 2013). "Red herrings". The New Criterion. 32 (4).
- ^ Csongos, Frank T. (June 19, 2013). "Book Review: 'American Betrayal'". The Washington Times.
- ^ Black, Conrad (October 30, 2013). "Diana West, Still Wrong". National Review.
- ^ Chait, Jonathan (August 8, 2013). "Conservative Historian Has Interesting Ideas". New York Magazine.
- ^ Klehr, Harvey; Haynes, John Earl (January 2014). "American Betrayal, an exchange: Harvey Klehr & John Earl Haynes". The New Criterion.
External links
- Diana West on X
- Official website (defunct as of 2024)
- Biography and links to syndicated columns at Townhall.com
- Appearances on C-SPAN