The Skimmer

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism

By John Derbyshire

Crown Forum; 272 pages

Yes we can: Those are fighting words to John Derbyshire, a proud pessimist crusading against America's penchant for smiley-faced self-deception. The National Review writer and self-described "conservative gloominary" leads readers on a bleak tour of modern life, bemoaning the state of our society and culture (the '00s are the first decade without a living novelist featured on TIME's cover, he laments). Derbyshire's no fan of liberalism, but his main targets are the utopian fantasies of both parties and the notion that humanity can patch the flaws that led us to this woeful state to begin with. Embracing hard truths would better prepare us for the real world, he writes--and might have helped us avoid the mortgage meltdown to boot. The native Englishman's guiltily enjoyable diatribe makes keen arguments--why do Ivy League schools charge so much when their endowments averaged $1.5 million per undergraduate last year?--though his repellent racial and gender stereotyping and can't-do spirit eventually grow tiresome. Say this for pessimists, though: they're rarely disappointed.

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