Melanie Phillips: The need for a new enlightenment.

Melanie Phillips:

The fact that genocidal Nazism had arisen in Germany, the very heartland of high European culture, dealt a shattering blow to the West’s conception of itself as enlightened. At the same time, Britain became demoralised as a result of its post-war bankruptcy and loss of empire.

Such fundamental loss of self-belief made the West vulnerable to the idea spread by Marxist intellectuals that it was rotten at its core. A new culture was planned that would eradicate division, bigotry and war.

The ideas at the heart of this can be traced back to the 17th century Enlightenment and its great fallacy: the worship of reason that certain powerful European thinkers of the time placed in opposition to Christianity.

Today’s most influential secularists are squarely in that tradition. ...

We need nothing less than a new Enlightenment which conserves and builds rather than destroys.

Go to the link for the whole thing, which is excerpted from a longer (paid access) piece in The Times.

I won't get into the whole "good Enlightenment / bad Enlightenment" debate that is being argued by people much smarter and more knowledgeable than I am, but I do think this piece nails the central weakness of contemporary Western society: a loss of core values, and a self-destructive fear of making any intellectual or moral judgements at all.

Related: Here is Joseph Loconte on the need for a revival of Lockean Liberalism.

Locke’s critics have blinded themselves to the bracing nature of his democratic vision: “But those whose doctrine is peaceable, and whose manners are pure and blameless, ought to be upon equal terms with their fellow-subjects.” Here is the only tenable solution to the challenge of religious diversity: equal justice under the law for people of all faith traditions.

No political doctrine has been more integral to the success of the United States, for no nation has been so determined to regard religious pluralism as a source of cultural strength. America’s experiment in human liberty and equality is profoundly Lockean. It is also, in some important respects, deeply Christian. Locke believed that the gospel message of divine mercy — intended for all — implied political liberalism. The founder of Christianity, he wrote, “opened the kingdom of heaven to all equally, who believed in him, without any the least distinction of nation, blood, profession, or religion.”

The problem with reforms.

Sometimes it happens that there's an injustice in society, and some people see it, and they organize to try to make things better. So far so good, but there's certain things that are gonna happen whether you want them to or not.

(1) People want to hear about what they're going to get, but not about what will be expected of them. So, "You won't be discriminated against anymore!" sounds great. Everybody's fine with getting rights and entitlements. But as for "Equality means equal responsibilities - you'll have to work like everybody else, follow the law like everybody else, no freebies and no favoritism" - nobody wants to hear that part.

(2) People get caught up in the romance of the struggle and can't let go. They look to it for both internal fulfillment and external validation. They get a charge out of marching with signs and chanting slogans, and they bond with others that way. And some become professional activists and actually depend on the struggle for a paycheck. So people become both emotionally and materially invested in it.

(3) The most sinister part is that there will always be people who join the movement caring nothing about the cause or about justice. They don't want to fix things; they want to tear everything down and build a new order on the rubble, with themselves at the top of the pyramid.

If you had explained all this to me when I was younger, I probably would have halfway believed it. Now that I've lived long enough to see it play out, I understand just how inevitable it is.

That doesn't mean don't work for reform. It does mean you need to know what you're getting into.

WalkAway

My post in the #WalkAway campaign.

I grew up in Connecticut, in a liberal home; but the word meant something different then. My parents were old-school liberals - Kennedy Democrats. Mom in particular had no use for Communism, and admired Soviet dissidents like Solzhenitsyn. (Another Soviet dissident of the day - a Jewish activist - would later play an important role in my own thinking.) Our family didn't follow an organized religion, although we were nominally Unitarians.

We were book-lovers and intellectuals, and Mom and Dad instilled a love of learning in my sister and me. But we were also a very troubled family. As a kid I had a love of science and a nerdy bent. (This was in the 1970s, before the computer revolution made geekiness cool. In those days, "nerd" was definitely not a compliment.) I didn't want to spend the rest of my life hiding in books, like in the Simon and Garfunkel song "I Am a Rock."

I joined the military after high school and served 10 years active duty in two branches - the Air Force and the Marines. It was a great challenge and an opportunity to grow as a person. Surrounded by all different kinds of people from very different backgrounds, I learned more than I ever would have learned in a classroom.

I was still independent and unconventional in my thinking, though, including my politics. I spent about seven years as an active member of the Green Party in California and Oregon (where it's known as the Pacific Green Party for historical reasons). This was in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I liked the camaraderie and the sense of engagement. Even then, though, I probably would have identified my politics as "classical liberal" (rather than "progressive" or "leftist") - which put me firmly to the right-of-center among my fellow Greens!

As a young adult I had started to gravitate toward religion, first learning Hebrew (so as to understand the Bible better) and eventually attending synagogue services on a regular basis. The party chapter I belonged to was not anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic as far as I could tell, but I realized with growing unease that this could not be said of many of our comrades on the Left. I also noticed a strange affinity for radical Islam in some corners. The local "progressive" newspaper (oh, how I wish I'd saved that copy) ran a glowing article on the role of Islam in western Asia. That issue was published in the summer of 2001.

The September 11 attacks forced me to re-think a lot of things, but it wasn't until 2003, I think, that I officially left the Greens and joined the Democratic Party. The primaries were underway, and one of the early Democratic hopefuls was an Orthodox Jewish Senator from my home state, who struck me as a decent man and a principled liberal of the old style. I got to hear him speak once at my synagogue.

Senator Joe Lieberman dropped out of the primary on February 3, 2004, and that was my #WalkAway moment. It was clear that the Democratic Party and I were headed in different directions. I changed my registration to Republican the next day.

In the following months I began following Republican politics and learning more about conservatism. I avidly followed the freewheeling debates in National Review Online's 'The Corner'. I discovered that conservatism had nothing in common with the caricatured image presented in the news media and in TV shows like 'All in the Family'. I came to understand the importance of small government, individual liberty, and free markets. I also started to understand the role of social institutions - churches, fraternities, and even families - in a healthy, functioning Republic. And I also started to see the media bias more and more clearly.

Fast forward through the Obama years (please!) and to the recent elections. I was a Ted Cruz guy in the primaries, and did not know what to make of this Donald Trump character. I thought his supporters seemed like zealots, and a little bit unhinged. I followed the debates in the news, on the blogs, on YouTube and Facebook. And I noticed something strange: as crazy as the pro-Trump people sometimes sounded, the anti-Trump people were worse. Even among supposed Republicans and conservatives.

So I voted for Trump in the general election, not knowing what to expect, but knowing for darn sure I wasn't going to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Obama years had convinced me that the people at the helm of the Democratic Party were not simply misguided or over-zealous reformers - they were anti-American. The deaths at Benghazi, and the untimely demise of numerous persons inconvenient to the Clintons, convinced me that something very dark and sinister was afoot.

When I started listening to what Trump was actually saying - instead of what the media were telling me he was saying - I started to like what I was hearing. Grow the economy, fight illegal immigration, move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem - sounds great! But would a President Trump actually do any of those things?

Now we are getting our answer. In retrospect I realize that my fellow Republican voters called it right.

Our Nation - our Republic - is something unique and precious in the world. We are blessed with freedoms few other nations enjoy (even the so-called "democratic" nations of Europe), and with a rich intellectual and spiritual heritage. But we live in a difficult world, where totalitarian forces would like to see us defeated. Our security and our liberty depend on our strength as a nation.

It's good to be independent in your thinking, but it's also good to understand where other folks are coming from, and to understand the importance of traditions and of institutions. We need freedom, but we also need purpose. ("Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life." - Viktor Frankl, 'Man's Search for Meaning') We need to be individuals, but we draw strength from a larger identity. ("The enemy's will is strong because his identity is strong. And we must match his strength of purpose with strong identities of our own." - Natan Sharansky, 'Defending Identity')

The ancient Israelites walked away from slavery in Egypt, not knowing where they were headed. They wandered in the wilderness for weeks before receiving the Torah that gave their lives meaning, and years more before settling in the homeland where they would build a national identity.

The search for meaning and identity is the work of a lifetime - but the first step is to #WalkAway.

.

Andy Ngo: Racism disguised as anti-racism.

Andy Ngo at Quillette:

When I started my graduate education at Portland State in 2015 after a long hiatus from academe, I attended an event titled, “Students of Color Speak Out.” The university president encouraged all students, staff and faculty to attend the event, organized in reaction to alleged racial tensions on campus. As a student of color and the gay son of refugee immigrants, the event’s premise interested me.

As I sat in the front, I listened to students detail their daily trauma of existing on a campus that was majority white. Students representing many ethnicities repeatedly shared feeling unsafe. I was confounded because their anecdotes spoke of an experience that sounded similar to those who lived in apartheid-era South Africa or Jim Crow Mississippi — not something I remotely recognized in ultra-progressive Portland. Still, I was sympathetic and recognized that my personal experiences may not be shared by others.

My optimism was challenged once I began to pick up on the theme connecting the speeches. ...

Read the rest at the link.

Jonathan Krohn: Beyond Conservatism

The Blaze interviews the young "ex-conservative" Jonathan Krohn, CPAC's poster child from the 2008 campaign:

“I’m not transitioned to another ideology,” he says from his mother‘s silver car parked outside his grandma’s retirement home. “I keep saying I really want to be myself. I don‘t’ want to be identified as this ideology or that ideology.”

Either way, he embraces Obamacare, gay marriage, and abortion — his social conservatism, he says, was the first thing to go.

He throws out sentences such as “when I was conservative,“ and says ”my views are a lot more liberal than they are conservative.“ He slips in phrases like ”the ideological anger that comes from the right.” And if you point that out, he admits that it’s hard to describe his story without using widely-accepted terms.

“I see that, and I agree,” the 17-year-old, with black plastic glasses and slightly disheveled hair, admits. “My problem with calling myself something is I’ve had bad experiences labeling myself. And I feel that the problem is that if you label yourself you get locked into an ideology with all the trappings. You have every little thing you have to agree to to be a part of an ideology, you know?”

Do I ever. This is why I resist calling myself a "conservative" or "ex-liberal", even though most of my left-leaning friends would undoubtedly call me a "right-winger". (I use the term "neoconservative" in my blog header with a healthy dose of irony.) As I mentioned in my previous post, I think a responsible liberalism has an important part to play. And when your position is perceived as changing, people - especially in the media - want to read all kinds of things into it.

Go read all of Jonathan Krohn's interview at The Blaze. According to a certain narrative, Jonathan shifted "from right to left"; according to another narrative, I went "from left to right". But I think the truth is that Jonathan and I both went in a new direction - and we're not really all that far apart.

On Culture

I'm not going to bore you by recapitulating the debate over "multiculturalism", but I do want to link this excellent article from my old friends at Psychology Today:

My ancestors are from the violent, improverished part of Sicily. This gave me a dash of realism when teachers taught me to celebrate other cultures and sneer at everything American. I embraced this "multicultural view" for a long time, and even taught it to innocent youth. But I could not continue the dishonesty of excusing huge flaws in other cultures, while erasing all the good in American culture.

For exampel, a recent PT post Lets Eat, Drink and Grow Old Together, described the health benefits of the Sicilian diet and social system. This is true if you overlook the centuries of starvation and in-group murder produced by the Sicilian culture. I speak frankly because this my heritage. ...

By starting an argument with a Sicilian, PT made one of the classic blunders. But more importantly, Loretta Graziano Breuning reminds us that "the rush to idealize other cultures often leads Americans to a self-hate that is bad for our health."

I was shocked to hear the ways people from that culture rationalize and normalize child abuse, spousal abuse, and violent strategies for making your way in the world.

"Our society is like that too" you may rush to say. That's what was taught in school, and I absorbed it because I wanted to be "educated." But I always knew that life was more complicated. I was beaten by my mother, and I could see that "our society" treated me better than I was treated at home. I knew that we do not live in the nightmarish police state suggested by my college professors, who may not have experienced any direct violence. ...

She's talking about what some commentators have labeled "oikophobia" (if your Greek is rusty, that's "fear of the house"):

The adolescent rejection of home and its iterations (ethnic group/tribe/religion) is composed of many different strands; it is nearly, though not completely, universal. Adolescents in more traditional cultures and subcultures typically navigate through a more limited rejection of their parents and culture. The vast majority of adolescents come to terms with the compromises and limitations of their own culture and become full members by the time they have become young adults.

The Oikophobes have now established their own subculture in which adolescent angst and the repudiation of limitations is not only accepted but celebrated; imperfections in America are then the objects of Utopian inspired rage. ...

It's essential to recognize the difference between a reasoned, responsible, constructive critique of one's native culture (which liberalism, at its best, aspires to provide) and an irrational rejection of even the best aspects of one's heritage simply because it is not "foreign" enough. Knowing this difference matters, whether we are ordering lunch, or a land war in Asia.

Eric Allen Bell, Global Infidel

If you're just tuning in, let me introduce liberal filmmaker Eric Allen Bell, who's the author of the blog Global One TV: A Blog for Mystics. In 2010, he started working on a film covering the protests against a large mosque under construction in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Eric initially took the side of the Muslims - but then something happened.

Eric Allen Bell, once a strong supporter of the controversial mega-mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, has reportedly switched positions on the matter after learning more about terrorist attacks overseas, and reading books on Islam.

A fixture at court hearings and protests in 2010, the California native and self-described liberal even started making a movie about the situation called “Not Welcome,“ where he depicted mosque critics as ”southern Christian bigots,” in the words of the Huffington Post, before making the switch.

“Of course, Muslim Americans making up less than 1 percent of the total population in this country, the idea that 1 percent will arm themselves and take over is nothing short of paranoid and psychotic nonsense…” he said at the time. Now, he says the mosque is built on a “foundation of lies,“ and maintains there is both ”mysterious money” and a suspicious motive people need to be aware of.

Now Eric has a new site ... it's called Global Infidel TV. Go check it out.

Eric Allen Bell on Murfreesboro Mosque

Enlightenment and Its Discontents

In thus projecting a doctrine of human dignity, Rassvyet [published 1907-1934] did not only confront the Czarist regime and Russian society. It threw down the gauntlet to the Jewish liberals, socialists and assimilationists whose conventional policy was one of apology and self justification, accepting by implication the notion that if the Jews were not ultra-virtuous, not ultra-talented, and not ultra-blessed with ultra-civilized ancestors, they would not be entitled to the ordinary rights enjoyed or striven for by their non-Jewish fellow citizens. They thus openly accepted the double standard which was (and has remained) one of the hallmarks of anti-semitism throughout the world.

Standing alone among the organs of Jewish opinion, the Rassvyet editors applied their extraordinary intellectual resources to warn the Jewish community against the illusion that the "emancipation", which all demanded, would solve the essential Jewish problem. Emancipation had come to progressive Western Europe and what had been achieved? Virulent German anti-semitism, "scientific" Austrian anti-semitism were as alive as ever. Most dramatically of all, its monstrous face had appeared in France precisely in the age of vaunted liberalism: Dreyfus languishing on Devil's Island was a very recent memory. The idea that precisely in Russia, Russia of the pogroms, an emancipatory sun would melt the hearts of the endemic Jew-haters was a snare and an illusion: those who preached it were leading their people to the edge of despair.

- Shmuel Katz. Lone Wolf: A biography of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky.

When the winds of Emancipation began to blow through Europe, Jews were presented with a choice. They could become equal citizens but only by keeping their Jewish identity restricted to private life. Many Jews, understandably eager to break free of generations of persecution, embraced the offer. Judaism was reformed to meet the demands of this civic invisibility, with the German Reform movement leading the way. By instituting a number of significant changes, from translating the Hebrew liturgy into German to celebrating the Jewish Sabbath on Sunday rather than Saturday to abolishing traditional dietary restrictions, Reform leaders hoped to help the Jews become full partners in German life, to be what one Enlightenment thinker would later call "a Jew at home and a man on the street." Significantly, the German Reform movement did not see Jews as a separate nation but rather considered themselves to be "Germans of Mosaic persuasion."

But the Enlightenment strategy of fading out of view was deeply and tragically unsuccessful. Enlightenment and emancipation promised to treat Jews as equal citizens provided they remained invisible as Jews. But what started with eliminating Jewishness from the public square culminated in an attempt to eliminate Jews altogether. The country where Reform was born would also be the country that would condemn the Jews to extermination.

Europe's democratic ideals would leave no room for Jewish identity. On this point, there was little that separated the philosophical ends and ideologies associated with the Right or the Left. Each had a dream of sameness and unity, whether it entailed a fascistic single identity or imagined the dissolution of all identity.

- Natan Sharansky. Defending identity.

In Europe, and not just there, a new kind of politics did seem to be stirring, which sometimes called itself left-wing and sometimes right-wing -- a demagogic politics, irrational, authoritarian, and insanely murderous, a politics of mass mobilization for unachievable ends. Mussolini had embraced the word "totalitarian" to describe his own movement; and "totalitarian" in its stuttery sharp syllables seemed to fit the new kind of politics in each of its versions, right-wing and left-wing alike. The implications did seem fairly obvious. During the whole of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth, a great many enlightened and progressive thinkers had supposed that a main danger, perhaps the principal danger, to modern civilization came from a single political tendency, which was the extreme right, and mostly from a single country, which was Germany, the sworn foe of the French Revolution. But that sort of outlook seemed hopelessly antique by 1950. In the new era, no one doubted that political movements on the extreme right could still make you worry. No one felt much confidence in Germany and its political traditions.

But the midcentury writers saw all too plainly that a danger to civilization had meanwhile cropped up in Russia and among the hard-bitten Stalinists, and among other people, too. The writers worried about the many mush-headed liberals and fellow travelers all over the world who, without being Stalinists themselves, managed to admire the Stalinist enterprise. ...

- Paul Berman. Terror and liberalism.

Cross-posted at DiL - TypePad.

The New Republican: Where do we go from here?

What kinds of compromises should liberalism make? Must advocates of domestic reform and liberty join foces with foreign entities that oppose those things, simply because they see "the Government" - our government - as a common enemy?

Harking back to the days of the Americans for Democratic Action (renamed from the Union for Democratic action) Peter Beinart's very fine article in the December 13, 2004 print issue of The New Republic provides a postmortem for the Kerry candidacy and a sobering assessment of American liberalism's future. Quoting ADA member Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (who attended the seminal 1947 Willard Hotel conference to "save American liberalism"):

Free society and totalitarianism today struggle for the minds and hearts of men. ... If we believe in free society hard enough to keep on fighting for it, we are pledged to a permanent crisis which will test the moral, political and very possibly the military strength of each side. A "permanent" crisis? Well, a generation or two anyway, permanent in one's own lifetime."

Beinart contrasts these words from The Vital Center with the ideology of today's MoveOn: "Like the [soft liberals] of the early cold war, MoveOn sees threats to liberalism only on the right. And thus, it makes common cause with the most deeply illiberal elements on the international left."

He also makes the important point - again drawing from the lessons of the Cold War - that "while in a narrow sense the struggle against totalitarianism may divert resources from domestic causes, it also provides a powerful rationale for a more just society at home. During the early cold war, liberals repeatedly argued that the denial of African American civil rights undermined America's anti-communist efforts in the Third World. This linkage between freedom at home and freedom abroad was particularly important in the debate over civil liberties."

The cold-war-era debate lies at the root of the split between the very different liberalisms of TNR and The Nation: following the 1948 defeat of the leftist (and Communist sympathizer) Henry Wallace, "The New Republic broke with Wallace, its former editor."

Michael J. Totten covers this article, citing a letter published in Andrew Sullivan and advising today's liberals to take a strong stand against terrorism and fascism.

Every conflict involves compromises. In prosecuting the war on terrorism, for example, our Government must sometimes make pacts with such unsavory players as Pakistan, Syria, and even France. And on the home front, we must sometimes strike deals with parties we don't especially care for, in order to obtain a greater benefit to our cause.

Even magazine editors must make such trade-offs. Back in May 2000, Heather A. Findlay, editor-in-chief of Girlfriends, announced to her readers: "In the eyes of some, Girlfriends sold its soul. Last year, we sold advertising space for the first time to a tobacco company ..." Findlay, who had "watched five queer publications go out of business just since January", had to make a difficult decision between a "pure" magazine and one that could pay its bills; she chose the latter. I can't fault her for that.

The New Republic, too, has made some interesting choices in the advertising it hosts. For some months now, they've been hosting an occasional feature called "TNR/ON", administered by one Joan Daly and billed as a "symposium on public policy". (For you non-classicists, "symposium" is a Greco-Latin word meaning "advertising supplement".) Past installments of TNR/ON have featured analyses on "America's Energy Crisis" (brought to you by the Nuclear Energy Institute) and "Securing the Nation's Energy Supply" (courtesy of the American Gas Association).

But by far the most important topic of debate in these forums is Saudi Arabia - sponsored, the magazine drolly informs us, by "The People of Saudi Arabia". And so it happens that you cannot read Peter Beinart's article without flipping past a four-page special on "The Future of the U.S. - Saudi Partnership" ... sponsored by, well, you know who. For good measure, there's also a two-page testament to that same Kingdom's "Ongoing Progress, Enduring Change" on pages 20 and 21.

Now the case of TNR advertising for Saudi Arabia is not like the case of Girlfriends advertising for RJ Reynolds. It is more like Girlfriends carrying an ad for the Family Research Council. In fact, it is worse than that, because the "panel" featured in the Saudis' propaganda piece includes two of TNR's most distinguished editors, Lawrence Kaplan and Leon Wieseltier.

There is something viscerally repulsive about the spectacle of Jewish intellectuals whoring themselves for the Saudi princes. There is something revolting about a liberal, Washington-based magazine playing host to representatives of the same regime that furnished the West with Osama bin Laden and the majority of his psychopathic murderers.

To be sure, Wieseltier poses some tough challenges, both to the Saudi regime and to his fellow liberals: "I think that the President has got it essentially right when he believes that freedom is not just a matter of American morality, but also a matter of American security. ... I warn you that when I hear phrases like 'Islamic liberalism' or 'Islamic democracy,' the adjective makes me nervous, because Islamic liberalism to me sounds like 'Islamic algebra' or 'Islamic physics'. There is no such thing. There is only physics. There is only algebra. There is only democracy."

Even in this vile setting, Wieseltier manages to shine. But of course it is the voice of "realism" that must have the last word: "... that transformation is occurring rather gradually, but that it need occur; and finally, that America's role in this process, like it or not, will be a minimal one."

At the risk of stating the obvious, let me state the obvious.

Wieseltier, Kaplan, Lippman and the others have obviously managed to retain some of their integrity here, as the foregoing Wieseltier quotes (and others) abundantly demonstrate. But it is impossible to know what they did not say, or could not say, or said without being quoted in the "edited transcript" published in the pages of The New Republic. It is similarly impossible to know what effect those Saudi dollars are having on the content of the magazine.

We do know that the Saudi regime is actively involved in a propaganda campaign directed at the West, and specifically at the United States. As reported earlier at Dreams Into Lightning, the Saudi regime has employed a public relations firm called Qorvis - which is now under FBI scrutiny - to burnish its image in the US.

The indispensable Little Green Footballs covered Qorvis back in 2002, here, and here in 2003. And finally, Judith's post at Kesher Talk provides this interesting little detail about one Qorvis contract:

Qorvis' representation agreement that it filed with Ambassador Prince Bandar has an interesting wrinkle. The firm agrees to tell the Saudis about any foreign client that approaches it for representation during the contract period. QC also agrees that for two years following termination of the Arab account, QC "will not accept any engagement with any client that would be deemed adverse to the interests of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."

I don't know, and I don't really care, which PR firm abetted the Saudis in their usurpation of the once hallowed pages of The New Republic. Once, strong liberals might have had in TNR a forum to challenge - rightly or wrongly - some of the Bush administration's more questionable policies, such as its accommodationist stance toward Saudi Arabia. But not now.

I began writing The New Republican because I saw that my favorite liberal magazine, like American liberalism itself, was heading down the wrong track. Now, I fear, that process is irreversible. I've just received a notice in the mail that my subscription to TNR is about to run out; I will let it. The New Republic has nothing more to say to me, and I have nothing more to say to them. This will be the last installment of The New Republican.

"The New Republican" - complete series

The New Republican: Ipse Dixit

The liberal magazine The New Republic has come up with a new reason for voting against Bush: he's not a good conservative.

Well, any port in a storm. Of course, it's not a new observation either. Back in August, a liberal friend e-mailed me an article from the New York Press by William Bryk, titled The Conservative Case Against Bush.

Now The New Republic takes its turn (October 25, 2004 print issue: "Conscientious Objector" by Michael A. George, p. 20.) The tactic is a pretty familiar one: "See, one of THEM doesn't like him either." You give your case more impact (the thinking goes) by bringing out a real live one of whatever group it is you're targeting. If you want to attack Israel, you bring out a real live Jew to condemn the Jewish state (a ploy that too many real live Jews are willing to go along with). And if you want to attack Bush, what better way than to produce a real live conservative who will come out and say ... what?

He'll say that Bush is no conservative.

Well, hell, I coulda told you that.

The New Republic could have told you that, too, and in fact they did. Back in March of 2003, TNR published a magnificent issue on the topic of "Liberalism and American Power" (March 3), which included Lawrence F. Kaplan's piece on p. 21, titled "Bush, closet liberal." Now Robert George discovers that "initiating a war to 'liberate' an entire region far from our shores can hardly be called a conservative cause." (Mr. George might want to review Leon Wieseltier's helpful guide to political debate in the November 1 TNR, where Wieseltier explains, "you do not refute a proposition by putting inverted commas around it." But I digress.)

The conservative case against Bush is fair enough (if a bit familiar, by now, to anyone who's actually been awake for the last couple of years): he's certainly no fiscal conservative; the Patriot Act scarcely qualifies as "small government"; and, oh yes, conservatives don't launch wars of liberation (or "liberation" if you prefer). Well, for the sake of argument, let us agree that Bush stands guilty as charged.

So what does this real live, real conservative do, now that he's realized he cannot vote for Bush? He doesn't say whether he's voting for Kerry, or staying home. "Of course," he adds, "a conservative can still cast a libertarian vote on principle."

This business of voting "on principle" is a fine bit of chutzpah from the magazine that rails, yet again, against the "irresponsible" Ralph Nader on p. 12 of the very same issue (Ryan Lizza, "Sole Influence"). The Nader article is unitntentionally revealing: Lizza writes that "From Moveon.org to the Howard Dean campaign to the liberal blogosphere to Air America radio to new think tanks sprouting up around Washington, D.C., an entire network of exactly the kind of activists that Nader has long praised is suddenly being born. Their singular goal is to defeat Bush." Exactly: they lack a coherent vision, unifying principles, or any positive ideology; their singular goal is "to defeat Bush."

President Bush has succeeded in retaining as much popular support as he has - despite some highly controversial decisions - precisely because he appeals to a wide variety of Americans: traditional conservatives, neoconservatives, centrists, and even liberals. Bush's supporters may differ on a host of less important issues, but they are united, both in principle and in practice, on the things that matter most. His opponents are united only in the fact of their opposition to Bush; so it is inevitable that the single uniting symbol for them is their presidential candidate: that perfect vacuum of a man known as John Kerry.

The New Republican: Columbia Flashback

Are you a fan of the print media? I know I am. I love the internet, but it will never replace the ease, reliability, authority, and permanence of traditional publishing. Just yesterday I lovingly unpacked my 1973 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; it's now sitting on the shelf right above my OED. I expect to use both on a daily basis.

And magazines! If you're a magazine lover, you know what I mean: the only thing harder than schlepping around a lot of old magazines, is throwing them out.

So it was quite a pleasure, last week, to unearth some old copies of The New Republic, some going back ten years. ("CNN Wrecked Television News"? Who knew?) And sitting before me now is the June 3, 2002 print issue, open to Michael Crowley's illuminating article "The Makeover". Back in the summer of 2002, in the heat of primary season, two rivals for the Democratic nomination crossed paths in Columbia, South Carolina - and, for one magic moment, shared the spotlight:

"... As they stand side by side beneath a dreary exit sign, Kerry looms over Edwards by several inches. He also overwhelms his adversary rhetorically. After Edwards delivers some brief and subdued words to the crowd, Kerry whips them up with a furiously ideological stem-winder that makes Edwards grimace as if he were suffering a sudden migraine. Afterward there is much speculation that Edwards was irked at having to share the stage with Kerry, not least because of their striking height difference - a difference Kerry's backers love to dwell on.

It's a small, perhaps petty, triumph. But these days the Kerry camp will take whatever it can get. For, in a sense, Kerry is the anti-Edwards. Where Edwards has become the darling of the national media, Kerry can't seem to catch a break. His press clippings record 18 years of journalistic wisecracks about his ego, his looks, and his self-promotion."

Crowley explains that the goal of Kerry's makeover is to dispel his image as an aloof, narcissistic aristocrat. The candidate himself allows that "I haven't really reached out to or met a lot of people in the press until the last couple of years." But his very aggressiveness highlights "a degree of personal manifest destiny and self-love rare even among politicians. Indeed, his biography suggests an almost liofelong grooming for power."

Crowley notes that Kerry is aware of his image problem - but, as with everything else about himself, a little too aware of it, and we get the impression he's trying just a little too hard to prove he's a regular guy. As an unnamed Democratic activist says, "It's the rebranding of John Kerry ... that arrogant jerk you've heard so much about is really just a regular guy."

Ah, but John Forbes Kerry has a secret weapon. And what, you ask, might that be? I'll give you a hint: It starts with a V and ends with "nam."

When I asked Kerry whether he worries that Republicans might find a way to use that old footage of Michael Dukakis riding absurdly in a tank against him, he grew defiant. "If they want to put up an image of Mike Dukakis in a tank," Kerry replied, his eyes narrowing, "I'll put up an image of me on a boat in Vietnam."

And Vietnam isn't only an answer to Kerry's ideological vulnerabilities; it's an answer to his characterological ones as well: Out-of-touch, selfish rich kids didn't risk their lives in the jungles of Vietnam. ...

Indeed.

The New Republican: Mirror Image

Continuing its valiant attempt to portray the Democratic party as viable and relevant, The New Republic offers us a glimpse inside the Democratic National Convention in the August 2 and August 9, 2004, print issues.

In the August 2 issue (TRB, p. 6), Peter Beinart offers his thoughts in advance of the Democratic and Republican conventions. "The two parties' conclaves are shaping up as mirror images of one another", he writes. Citing the lineup of moderate and even liberal Republicans slated to speak in New York (John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, Rod Paige, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Zell Miller - oh, wait, he isn't even a Republican), Beinart explains that this is evidence of the GOP's "ideological insecurity".

This is quite interesting, because it was Beinart who told us just two weeks earlier that John Kerry displayed "true self-confidence" by choosing the sharply contrasting Edwards for a runningmate. (Edwards, to whom the party's left wing, "represented by groups like MoveOn.org", "gave their hearts" once bereft of Howard Dean.)

But if Beinart can manage a wry sneer at the Republican convention, he can't conceal his outright worry over the prospect of this year's Democratic event. "If Bush Republicans lack ideological self-confidence, the Kerry Democrats may have too much of it," he says uneasily of a "shockingly realistic picture of what the Democratic Party really is. And that means liberalism is on tap virtually every night."

"I doubt the Kerry campaign tried to stock the podium with liberals. They simply chose the people in the party with mass appeal, great promise, or both. ... And, unsurprisingly, it produced a convention roster that looks - and sounds - like the Democratic Party." That, Beinart says, is the problem: he contrasts this year's convention with earlier events in which "each [speaker] represented the party not as it was, but as it might have been had liberal interest groups not exercised such control over the nominating process."

If Peter Beinart wrote in blogspeak, he'd say: "What's up with all these f***ing moonbats?" Or something like that.

The DNC will present an "admirably honest" picture of today's Democrats. "But just because it's honest doesn't make it wise." So Beinart says of the Democratic Party; but looking at the GOP, Beinart discerns a left-of-Republican-center lineup that can only mean "a party unwilling to reveal its true face to the nation." So which is it, Peter?

What really worries the Democrats is that the upcoming Republican convention just might be the "true face" of the Republican Party: one that values principled individuals and inclusive organizations; one that sees tolerance and responsibility not as opposing, but as complementary; one in which unity is born of diversity. This is why so many former Democrats are now Republicans.

Are the two conventions - and by extension, the two parties - really "mirror images" of one another? In some ways, yes: the Republicans have become the party of responsible change, progress, and human rights; while the Democrats have become the reactionary, anti-democratic party, now reduced to defending third-rate dictators.

But the symmetry is not complete. Many of the positive changes that liberals of the last generation fought for have become part of the mainstream. Other battles, like gay rights, have yet to be won, but now enjoy support within the Republican party, where conversation on such issues is most meaningful. What do the Democrats have left to offer? Very little - only the rhetoric of dissatisfaction.

The New Republican: "Edwards for Vice-President!" - TNR

Hey, guys, whatever works.

Unable to come up with a single solid reason for supporting John Kerry as a candidate for President, the editors of The New Republic have taken to extolling the virtues of a putative Vice President Edwards. Peter Beinart (July 19, 2004 print issue, p. 6) opines that Kerry's choice of Edwards shows "a trait rare among politicians: true self-confidence". In passing over lesser-known candidates, Kerry shows courage: "If Gephardt and Vilsack would have obscured Kerry's deficiencies, Edwards exposes them: He's a better speaker than Kerry; he's got a more compelling life story; he has a more powerful critique of the president. Unlike Gephardt, he clearly would use the vice presidency as a stepping stone. Unlike Vilsack, he enjoys an independent base in the party."

Edwards is a better speaker than Kerry ... hmmm, that's not saying much. Heck, Kerry is a better speaker than GWB, but Bush is funnier. Of course, maybe it's time someone took the spotlight off Kerry's own "compelling life story", especially as we find out that more and more of it is just that - a story.

But Beinart has to admit that Kerry's "confident" choice was really born of necessity: every poll indicated that Edwards as a running-mate represented Kerry's ONLY hope of launching a viable opposition to the incumbent George W. Bush. So in a sense, the Democratic Party is running Kerry and Kerry is running Edwards. Hence, "it is Kerry who is shifting his message in response to Edwards". This, according to Beinart, is further evidence of Kerry's invaluable "flexibility".

But the fact remains that the Democrats picked Kerry, not Edwards, to represent them in the contest for the highest office in the land; and in the coming general election, it is Kerry, not Edwards, whom the American electorate will be weighing against President Bush. The picture Beinart gives us isn't one of a strong yet broad-minded candidate who prides himself on an inclusive decision-making style; rather, it's one of a cynical attempt by a desperate Democratic Party to wrest political power away from its ever-more-restless rabble. As the gap between the DNC intelligentsia and the DU mob grows wider, the relevance of a Kerry-Edwards ticket will dwindle. A great vice-presidential candidate does not necessarily create a great presidential candidate - or a successful one.

Beinart ends with the curious claim that Bush's "vision of national security didn't change, even after September 11". Huh? That must be why all the political commentators have noted GWB's dramatic shift away from isolationist policy. As Big Pharaoh wrote, "I don't care about the past. Bush was born on September 11, 2001."

The New Republican: TNR Discovers Sudan

"Do something," the editors implore in the July 8/12 issue, referring to the Sudan crisis.

Well, some of us have been. I've just gone through all my back copies of TNR since April, and it appears the Sudan crisis has only just popped up on the magazine's radar. The editorial criricizes the Bush administration's alleged passivity during the past year, but does not cite any instances of TNR's voice being raised in outrage during that period.

The piece admits that "in recent weeks, the Bush administration has taken modest steps in the right direction," which may account for the editorial's timing. TNR has to say something, fast, before Bush steals the show altogether.

The editorial offers a number of strategies that might help: "To make sanctions effective, the United States should coordinate with its European allies" - hope springs eternal - "the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank." And while our own combat strength is fully committed elsewhere, "logistical and airlift support" might encourage some of those other nations to come on board with peacekeeping troops. (Well, it can't hurt to ask.)

The magazine suggests that a transfer of "even a fraction of the 2,000 American troops currently stationed in nearby Djibouti" could have a "dramatic psychological impact". And shortly after a gratuitous suggestion that "few in the Bush administration have ever shown much enthusiasm for using the US military to save African lives," the editors remember that "some 200 American ground troops helped end the violence in Liberia last summer."

"If President Bush wants to show the world that his moral rhetoric was sincere in Iraq, he now has his chance, in Sudan." I couldn't agree more. It's nice to know that The New Republic is finally catching up with President Bush.