Now conservative offerings come with diagrams of farting cows—bless Glenn Beck. No one is likely to have his worldview rocked by Sean Hannity’s Deliver Us From Evil or his political eyes opened by Michelle Malkin’s Unhinged. Laura Ingraham’s Shut Up and Sing slides easily down the memory hole. But permanence isn’t their intent. Conservatism has shifted from a modest cast of mind to a playground contest of insults. Millions can play along.

This isn’t to say that bestselling conservative authors don’t manage to pack arguments into their books or buttress those arguments with facts and footnotes. But they do not aim to challenge the faithful or change the minds of their opponents—to turn moderates into conservatives or shake liberals from their delusions. Conservative readers are looking for how-to manuals — an easy way to beat that liberal sister-in-law in a dinner-table debate. Thus Beck’s latest blockbuster offers “the secret formula to winning arguments against people with big mouths but small minds.”