How the Right Lost Its Mind

In March 2016, Wisconsin’s #1 conservative talk-radio host Charles Sykes did the unthinkable: He ferociously challenged the then Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump in a live interview. Afterward, Sykes alone among conservative media figures continued to denounce Trump, and extended his attack to include the larger right-wing media and other politicians that enabled his rise.

Now, in How the Right Lost Its Mind, Sykes presents an impassioned, regretful, and deeply thoughtful account of how the American conservative movement came to lose its values. How did a movement that was defined by its belief in limited government, individual liberty, free markets, traditional values, and civility find itself embracing bigotry, political intransigence, demagoguery, and outright falsehood? Mainstream conservatives now find themselves in need of a broad and introspective evaluation of what went wrong—and how to move forward and regain their core principles. How the Right Lost its Mind addresses:

*Why are so many voters so credulous and immune to factual information reported by responsible media?
*Why did conservatives decide to overlook, even embrace, so many of Trump’s outrages, gaffes, conspiracy theories, falsehoods, and smears?
*Can conservatives govern? Or are they content to merely rage?
*How can the right recover its traditional values and persuade a new generation of their worth?

Charles J. Sykes is the author of eight books on current affairs and education, including Fail U., A Nation of Victims, and Profscam. He has written pieces for the Wall Street Journal and Time.com among others, and in 2016 was featured for his critiques of Donald Trump and conservative media in articles on the front page of The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and NPR. A longtime host of the #1 conservative talk-radio show in Wisconsin, he resigned that position and is now a regular contributor to MSNBC.