Ramesh Ponnuru is a nice guy, but I have to agree with Andrew Sullivan about Ponnuru’s new book The Party of Death:

I haven’t yet read Ramesh Ponnuru’s book, “The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life.” Ponnuru is a highly intelligent and reasonable writer, although his
religious fundamentalism alarms me, and I’ve no doubt he has some interesting things to say. I may even agree with some of it. But this much I can say: the title of the book is reprehensible. To call half the country “a party of death” and to assign that label to one’s partisan political opponents is not, whatever else it is, an invitation to dialogue. It’s demagoguic abuse. It’s worthy of Ann Coulter (who, tellingly, has a blurb on the cover). It is one thing to argue that you are pro-life, to use the positive aspects of language to persuade. It is another to assert that people who differ from you are somehow “pro-death,” (especially when they may merely be differing with you on the moral status of a zygote or the intricacies of end-of-life care). To smear an entire political party, and equate only one party with something as fundamental as life, is a new low in the descent of intellectual conservatism from Russell Kirk to Sean Hannity.

I’ve already received two disturbing emails promoting it from Regnery Publishing and the Human Events Book Service. (PDFs).

Here’s what Regnery’s email says:

Are Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean leading a “Party of Death”? National Review Senior Editor Ramesh Ponnuru warns Red State America that the 2006 elections could empower the “Party of Death.”

“The Democratic Party used to try to protect the weak. But too many of today’s Democrats have become part of a ‘party of death,’” charges Ponnuru in his revealing new book, The Party of Death.

While these same liberal Democrats demand the protection of the rights of criminals, terrorists, animals, and even the trees in the rain forest, they have simultaneously created a subgroup of “human unpersons” with no rights whatsoever.

And here’s Human Events going even further:

They celebrate abortion on demand as a fundamental human right. They advocate euthanasia, and work energetically for embryo-killing research. They explicitly deny that all human beings are equal in having a right to life, and unblushingly propose the creation of a category of “human non-persons” who can be treated as expendable. In line with that, some of them have already begun calling for the killing of sick infants — for their own good, of course. They are the party of death, and they are becoming increasingly powerful in America today, as well as in the world at large. Now, in The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru provides an unflinching exposé of their past successes, present activities, and future plans, showing why their principles are so harmful – and how they can be defeated before they destroy our society altogether.

Update 4/27 9:28 AM: The Human Events ad for Ponnuru’s book current running on Drudge refers to Democrats’ “War Against Humanity.” A tip for aspiring authors out there: When your PR copy starts to sound like alien invasion science fiction, perhaps you’ve gone a bit too far.