To the Editors:

Somebody once asked me for a definition of “paleoconservative,” a term occasionally used in right-wing political circles. I said I didn’t know what it meant exactly, but I offered a definition based on what I had witnessed: “A paleoconservative is a conservative who’s been mugged by a neoconservative.”

That exchange has come to mind as I’ve watched the concerted and apparently endless attack on Diana West and her Cold War book, American Betrayal. Ms. West isn’t a self-identified “paleoconservative” in any sense that I’m aware of, and doesn’t qualify for the title anyway, because it mostly pertains to an older generation. She is, however, certainly a conservative, and has certainly been mugged, intellectually speaking, by people who are “neoconservatives,” according to their own description.

As evidence of such mugging, I note the invective used against Ms. West in a score of hostile essays: “Unhinged,” “right-wing loopy,” “incompetent,” not “house-trained,” “conspiracy theorist,” “paranoid,” leader of a “kook army,” and so on in many variations. This is a type of discourse that, until now, I haven’t seen much of in conservative intramural quarrels (though there have been a few examples) but have seen all too often elsewhere. It’s the well-known rhetorical style of the radical left, on a mission to isolate, demonize, and destroy an opponent.

Which brings me to Andrew C. McCarthy’s wrap-up of the dispute about American Betrayal appearing in these pages. With some differences as to points of fact,