DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME: A REVIEW OF KEVIN ROBERTS’ DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT: TAKING BACK WASHINGTON TO SAVE AMERICA

            Last August Kevin Roberts delayed the publication of his Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America until after the election. His publisher had originally scheduled the book to be published in September and had sent out advance copies. For some reason these advance copies were considered controversial enough to be a threat to Donald Trump’s campaign. Unless the issue was that JD Vance had written the forward to a book that is truly awful, I honestly don’t see what the fuss was all about.

            First, I don’t condemn books written by conservatives simply because they’re written by conservatives. I’ve read and reviewed books such as Patrick J. Deneen’s 2018 Why Liberalism Failed and Rod Dreher’s 2017 The Benedict Option and found in them points I could agree with, especially Dreher’s proposal that people who feel uncomfortable in a society they find too permissive join together and form communities with those who are similarly inclined. I find that preferable to the current inclination of those who find society too permissive to impose their views on those of us who are just fine with our permissive society. Sadly, I found little to agree with in Kevin Roberts’ book.

            Beginning about page 17, Mr. Roberts constantly looks to Virgil’s Aeneid for inspiration and seems to believe the poem is a historical record of the founding of Rome when in fact it was an invented origin story ripped off from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. By page 19 he’s proposing that men and women should marry for life “and do so younger than most do today” and bring children into the world “more than most do today.” He says American society is rooted in the Christian faith and favors policies that encourage religious observance such as Sabbath laws. As we might expect from someone inclined to impose his views on others, Mr. Roberts takes a Manichean view of his opponents. While he never explicitly says he’s referring to Democrats, he constantly refers to the “party of destruction” while at the same time proposes a “forest management” approach to our political system—burn down what is offensive so something new can replace it. As many who have followed this path before have found, and I’m thinking of the Russian Revolution, when we destroy something, there’s no guarantee we’ll find its replacement is an improvement. But, Mr. Roberts is in favor of throwing caution to the wind—he even refers to conservatives who want to do what conservatives used to want to do—conserve—as “wax museum conservatives.”

            Mr. Roberts favors doing away with contraceptives, IVF, and certainly abortion. As I mentioned above, he favors having a lot of children and believes families (presumably the right kind of families) should make the sacrifices necessary to raise these families with a stay-at-home mother. Oh, and big-screen TVs should be considered a contraceptive, since it might prevent people from, uh, “doin’ what comes natur'lly.”

            As we get further into the book, we find that Mr. Roberts’ father was an alcoholic, his parents divorced, and his brother committed suicide. Sadly, Mr. Roberts blames this on what ‘60s radicals used to call “the system.” He says, “the suicide of my brother, Doug, was the product of years and years of cultural decay, lies, and neglect. So many of the authority figures who should have sheltered and formed him passed the buck. Or they assumed it was someone else’s job. Or they were obsessed with their own problems. It took a village of institutions losing their way to make his death possible.”

            There are way too many grievances aired in this book to mention them all, but a few stand out. Mr. Roberts bemoans a dog park near him that allows the dogs to roam free while children are provided a presumably large fenced yard to play in--most likely to protect the children from the dogs and vice versa. (What is it with conservatives and pets? JD Vance had his “childless cat ladies;” Roberts bemoans “dog moms.”) Another is the state of Louisiana approved textbooks only in English. Now, you’d think a party that is as xenophobic as his party—and this administration—is would celebrate this fact. Alas, in Mr. Roberts’ part of Louisiana, there are many Cajuns, and Mr. Roberts believes Louisiana textbooks should accommodate these folks.

            As do most conservatives, Mr. Roberts plays fast and loose with facts. He bemoans the loss of families’ sitting down to dinner together. I’m not convinced this is actually happening, but for the sake of argument let’s say it is. Mr. Roberts then goes on to say that between 2018 and 2023 the average size of new homes shrunk by 10%, and much of this loss was the elimination of dining rooms. A quick Google check confirms the average size of a new home in 2018 was 2,486 square feet compare with 2,286 square feet in 2023. So far, so good, but…

            My parents built a new house in 1958. It was 1,650 square feet and housed my parents and four children. The dining area was part of a large family room. The house I’ve lived in for more than a quarter century was built in 1927 and has just over 1,600 square feet; it has a dining room. Going back further, let’s take a look at what was available just after World War II. Here is the floor plan of the iconic Levitt Cape Cod. There are thousands of these on Long Island and in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In the 1970s I went to an open house at one that had not been modified. These houses are 750 square feet, have no dining rooms, and managed to accommodate the generation that produced us Baby Boomers. As you can see there are stairs in the floor plan. These went to an attic entrance and were there in the event a family might want to expand into the attic at a future date.

        So, contrary to Mr. Roberts’ implication that home builders are nefariously building cramped houses and depriving families of eating space, we can see that historically, the average home being built today is quite spacious. (Mr. Roberts has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas; they might want to consider repossessing it.) In fact, I would propose that if builders were willing to build and people were willing to live in Levitt-size houses, more people might be able to afford a piece of the American Dream. Further, Mr. Roberts’ belief that large homes are necessary to a family kind of makes his assertion that America needs large families with a stay-at-home mother living in a large house with a dining room a bit preposterous. Why, that would require… well, the kind of money Mr. Roberts brings home as President of the American Heritage Foundation.

            As I was reading through this tedious book, I began to wonder if the real reason the publication date was delayed was the book is just… terrible.