Another Book Rick Perry Would Prefer You Didn't Read

No, not Fed Up, Perry’s 2010 manifesto, which Romney has been busily (and successfully) mining for discrediting material. It’s his previous book, the heartfelt tribute to the Boy Scouts that he took time away from his gubernatorial duties to publish in 2008, that provides the real key to understanding Perry’s Manichean temperament.

Where Fed Up was a feat of opportunism, an attempt to pander to the newly-founded Tea Party, his earlier book was both a true labor of love (he received no advance and donated all proceeds to the Scouts’ legal defense fund) and a stirring call to protect the integrity of the nation’s traditions. For the Perry of On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For “culture war” is no mere euphemism: He not only thinks of military siege as an apt metaphor for the state of American culture—he’d like to enlist Boy Scouts as his preferred ground troops.

In that way, On My Honor’s odd mix of autobiography and polemic underscores what truly animates Perry—and, needless to say, it isn’t tax policy. His real political passion is the protection of traditional American institutions against elitist attacks. It’s no accident that even though Perry’s campaign is supposed to be founded on his economic record as governor of Texas, he’s been having trouble staying on message.

In making his book-length indictment, Perry paints with a startlingly wide brush. “Student campus unrest, rejection of authority, the ‘self-esteem’ movement, moral relativism, and the demands of secularists all gradually fused into a series of attacks on American institutions,” he writes in the book. We learn that he disdains “secular humanism,” the “self-esteem movement,” and youth sports leagues that don't keep score. For good measure, he compares homosexuality to alcoholism, and supports corporal punishment of children.

More.

"Student campus unrest." It is to laugh, then it is to vomit.

Even more from TNR on the absolute horror that is moral relativism, in case you miss it on the TNR sidebar.