American Marxism is an embarrassment. Not to the political left, which has nothing to fear from yet another right-wing diatribe about cancel culture, antifa, and the Frankfurt School. But rather to conservatives, since I imagine any thinking person on the political right could only shudder at the thought of having to say nice things about a book so lacking in merit.

The very existence of American Marxism suggests that the United States’ most prominent conservative thinkers — Mark Levin is a “seven-time #1 New York Times best-selling author,” his publisher page boasts — have so little respect for their intended audience, they don’t even write books anymore. They simply sling together copied and pasted quotes into a veritable postmodern pastiche of exhausted cliches, recycled slogans, and fevered nightmares that seem to channel slasher movie tropes (the Left is everywhere).

If American Marxism is, as the book jacket proclaims, the great conservative take on the political left, then the only conclusion one can make is that intellectual conservatism isn’t even dead. It’s mummified.