Response to Contributors

Abstract

At the outset I would like to thank the contributors to this symposium for their incisive comments and the editor for the opportunity to respond. The commentators should understand that I did not write an “authorized” study; nor was my book intended to curry favor with the rich and powerful. The facts that it came out in a very limited edition and enjoyed neither media favor nor gratifying sales should indicate my intellectual independence—or else my lack of professional smarts. In this study I try to prove something that David Frisk pointedly denies, namely that there is no significant “conservative movement” in our country. Instead we have lavishly funded enterprises that appropriate for themselves the questionable label “conservative.”