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The ever Odious Reed | 29.03.08 | What is for me far more disturbing than Jewish leftist politics is the silly kissing-up to American Jews and, even more obviously, to neoconservative benefactors that Republican operatives and the neoconservatives’ employees engage in. The most ludicrous example of this I’ve encountered to date occurred when Michael Novak who came to our college as a speaker explained: “I hate Hollywood because it’s so anti-Semitic.”
Changing Course | 25.03.08 | There are strategic reasons why networks that once drooled over Obama are now his enemies. But here one must qualify: Not all of his onetime Republican fans are denouncing this senator in response to some central command post. But those at the top, directing publications and televised commentary for the GOP and the neoconservative establishment, are dropping bombs on him, and in far more reckless manner than his critics on the old right ever did. One primary consideration here is that it is Obama, not Hillary, who looks like the probable Democratic candidate; and so Republican loyalists are taking off their jackets and getting to work on the Democratic frontrunner.
Changing Course | 25.03.08 | There are strategic reasons why networks that once drooled over Obama are now his enemies. But here one must qualify: Not all of his onetime Republican fans are denouncing this senator in response to some central command post. But those at the top, directing publications and televised commentary for the GOP and the neoconservative establishment, are dropping bombs on him, and in far more reckless manner than his critics on the old right ever did. One primary consideration here is that it is Obama, not Hillary, who looks like the probable Democratic candidate; and so Republican loyalists are taking off their jackets and getting to work on the Democratic frontrunner.
Doing the PC Cringe | 21.03.08 | When O’Reilly asked Bush’s former grey eminence whether Obama had benefited from the speech given in Philadelphia, which failed to condemn the racist pastor Jeremiah Wright unequivocally, Rove showed why the American Right is justified to view him with loathing.
Revenge of the Mutterites | 20.03.08 | One point that we Mutterites (that is, members of an only recently discovered remnant of a long lost Reformation sect) discussed after the session is whether academics in high place “really believe the garbage we had listened to.”
Only In America | 17.03.08 | Of all the misdeeds that should have ended Spitzer’s career, his dalliance with a prostitute seems at the very bottom of the list.
Alas, WFB one More Time | 09.03.08 | Since I take Buckley’s critics more seriously than those who have praised him dishonestly or on the basis of invincible ignorance, like the perpetually clueless Jay Nordlinger, I would like to caution his despisers against excess.
Rewriting History | 28.02.08 | In the twisted world of neoconservative letters most Germans are Nazis, most Russians are anti-Semites, and most white Southerners fascistoid racists.
Some Responses | 21.02.08 | Once again I feel impelled to respond to my critics, and particularly to those who criticize me as a “Zionist,” and as someone who worships at the altar of America the “superpower,” and endorses “unconstitutional wars,” being carried out against the will of the American people.
Beau Geste | 14.02.08 | For anyone who doubts what the media power of the neoconservatives has contributed to, the FOXites have much to teach. The neoconservatives’ control over the “conservative movement” and their access to the media, assets that no one on the real right presently enjoys, has allowed them to help reshape political debate in the US.
The Dream team | 09.02.08 | It has been years since such self-identified conservatives showed any kind of mettle, and that occurred when a numerically insignificant minority walked out of the movement at the time the neocons and Republican hacks took it over. Let’s face it. These clowns have nowhere to go but to stay with the GOP, even if McCain chooses to have Joe Lieberman, who is the clear neocon favorite, as his running mate.
Spartiatai | 05.02.08 | Needless to say, as Aeschylus reminds us in The Persians, the Greeks were fighting for thekas ton progonon (the tombs of their ancestors) and not for some global democratic gibberish devised in Midtown Manhattan. But what they defended was also the cradle of a later glorious civilization.
Jonah one More Time | 31.01.08 | Although I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Jonah praised my scholarship on NRO (Thursday, January 24, http:/liberalism.nationalreview. com/post/?) and that he considers me a paleo “who knows a lot about a lot,” there was one part of his message that troubles me. Jonah is apparently upset that The American Conservative, a magazine for which I have written, did not select me to review his book.
A Worthwhile Book | 22.01.08 | The newest book by Robert J. Stove, who has written for this website, A Student’s Guide to Music History, is a compact study of great composers prepared for ISI Press.
One Cheer for Hil | 18.01.08 | What explains the unwillingness of blacks to appreciate state power in this case is their reluctance to share the credit for constructing a “racially sensitive” society with white administrators. But it was indeed white and black administrators who were delighted to enforce what the black activists wanted. Within sixteen months of the enactment of the Civil Rights bill, public administrators had used it to push affirmative action programs, in violation of the bill’s apparent race-neutral principles.
Defending the Israelis (Against AIPAC, the Lobby, and a Few Paleos) | 15.01.08 | Although there are Palestinians living in camps in Jordan and elsewhere, some Palestinians have left these camps, with the permission of the host countries, and gone to work. Those who have stayed in the camps would be returning to Israel at the price of generating a perpetual security nightmare.
“No Enemies on the Right?” Reconsidered | 12.01.08 | Then there are the more difficult questions, at least for me. Do we extend the ban to all white nationalists, even to those who are known advocates of small-government? If not all, then which members of this category should fall under the ban? What about those who express sympathy for the Confederacy? Such types typically come up for criticism in the neocon and liberal press as being indistinguishable from the Nazi sympathizers, whom we would agree to stay clear of. Even more importantly, do we take our cue about keeping suitable company by looking at our enemies’ classifications?
My Gentle Readers | 01.01.08 | Sid is correct to call attention to the often dishonest application of “right” and “left” categories in describing an American political situation in which traditional ideological labels are less and less useful. In the US the “right”-“left” labels are applied to two parties, dripping with public funds, which organize periodic elections legitimating a centralized managerial state. In recent years these national parties have also peddled Political Correctness in the form of anti-discrimination laws and congressional and state agencies empowered to enforce behavioral control.
Why the Right Moves Left | 31.12.07 | My own view, which can be found in Conservatism in America, is markedly different from Adriana’s. Let me begin by noting that center-right parties here and more dramatically in Germany and in other European countries began their journeys toward the left decades ago. The leaders of these groups often lunged leftward out of ideological conviction and not merely to survive in a radicalized cultural environment. Already by the 1960s the Republicans were taking positions that were farther on the left than those held by many Democrats.
They Can’t Even Wait. | 25.12.07 | They Can’t Even Wait! Although I consider myself second to none in loathing the Democratic Party, as an ingathering of bureaucratic parasites and self-described victim groups (yelping for set-asides and public funding), there is one Democratic characteristic that Republicans would do well to emulate. Democrats do not exert themselves kissing up to constituencies that they have too much ideological self-respect to court.
Submitting Cheerfully | 18.12.07 | Last week one got to watch and hear various face-saving gestures by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who was discovered to have taken politically incorrect positions on a signature issue. As a senatorial candidate from Arkansas in 1992, Huckabee had dared to state that he opposed sending women into combat because it jarred with their “dignity.”
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