AND I QUOTE / What Political Books Are Saying : BACKWARD AND UPWARD: The New Conservative Writing,<i> Edited by David Brooks (Vintage Books: $13, paper; 352 pp.)</i>

Rolling Stone writer P.J. O’Rourke, on liberty:

“No nonsense about secondhand smoke or hurtful, insensitive language, please. . . . There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business, and keep your hands to yourself.”

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Former Dan Quayle speech writer Lisa Schiffren, on ex-Sen. Bob Packwood:

“Our paradox here is that those of our public men who have mastered the art of seduction . . . are blameless. The inept, the less attractive and therefore unsuccessful, however, are guilty of a new crime--sexual harassment.”

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Manhattan Institute’s Kay S. Hymowitz, on passion:

“The feminist view . . . of love contained a curious, counterproductive misreading of history. For if love served to subjugate the women, it did no less to men. . . . A man in love was a man subdued.”

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The Evening editor David Brooks, on the new conservative writers:

“In the melodrama of American politics, conservatives are the heavies. . . . The driving force behind the ’94 election was said to be angry white males; a spirit of meanness was abroad in the land. Well, I’ve been around conservatives, and ‘angry’ is the wrong word to describe them. Lately ‘giddy’ might be more accurate.”

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Novelist Mark Helprin, on ducking the war in Vietnam:

“I am absolutely certain that in not serving I was wrong.”

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It used to be that conservatives formed their ideas and wrote their books in reaction to liberals. Hence, reactionaries. This anthology of 35 writers, some more convincing than others, turns the tables. Exuberant, irreverent, fresh, it invites reaction. And, libs, prepare yourselves. There is more here than puritanical, hard-shell, sitting-duck politics of the average GOP platform plank.

You might also ask: How long since a gang of lefties showed this much zeal?