Sunday, November 09, 2008
Hah! Palin is AI Turgidson's Fault!
I respect Lilla. He has written brilliantly before. I don't agree with him that Palin has no brain. I note also that he has not mentioned Reagan in his piece. Hmmm. I always thought Reagan was the right dolt at the right time...
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Most are well-educated and many have attended Ivy League universities; in fact, one of the masterminds of the Palin nomination was once a Harvard professor. But their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages.
But "populist chic" is just the inversion of "radical chic," and is no less absurd, comical or ominous.
David Brooks noted correctly (if belatedly) that conservatives' "disdain for liberal intellectuals" had slipped into "disdain for the educated class as a whole," and worried that the Republican Party was alienating educated voters.
The tent is too big, says JJ, let's make it smaller. Right. So who'll be left in there?
I thought you were for the big tent to include religiously unpopular candidates. Have I misinterpreted you?
What's "religiously unpopular"? And, I thought politicians should be judged by their programs and deeds, not by their religion affiliation, non?
AI, perhaps that "once Harvard Professor" has good reasons? Perhaps he is in fact "once" precisely because he had good reasons which a far too near monolithic and near naricissistic elite has become too intolerant to listen to? Anyway, think over those points you quoted:
[1] "They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders".
That is true. And there may very well be excellent reasons for it. Paul Krugman is now a Nobel Prize Winning economist. Joe is just a plumber. I bet you all the coin this earth has granted me that if both Paul and Joe were given, say, 200,000$ to start up a business, "may the best economist win", without the use or assistance of anything but their own wits and grasp of how a business works, that in 5 years Paul's would have gone belly up and Joe would be enjoying a fine beer at a nice bourgoeis steak house. And I bet Reagan would have made the same bet I'd make.
[2] " They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages."
Lilla really goes whole hog in that "elite reasoning" game with this one. You buy this? Say it ain't so, AI?
First, who is "jingoistic"? Is patriotism now to fall into the Ayer categorization of political thought? In that case, I'll take that jingoist Abe Lincoln and you can have that sophisticated Versaillean Jefferson Davis.
Second, how many today have never been abroad and have not had exposure to some foreign language right here in the USA [Quieres ejemplos, Pinche cholos?]? Or is the requirement to go do the Hajj to Versailles?
Is Lilla saying that anyone who has written something, doesn't speak that slithering language of Versailles, and loves this country, belongs to a class so base that any criticism of diplomats and ambassadors is, perforce, "ridiculous"?? Like Victor David Hanson or Iowahawk or the late great Ronald Reagan?
If so, that is simply stupid. Stupid to the bone.
Third, our diplomatic ranks [the State department] have been long rich terrain for spies, traitors, and those who have gone all "Lawrence of Arabia" over some swath of this benighted planet. I would claim that any student of the State department, in the last 60 years or so, would see a chunk of our "Elite" that has gotten a huge percentage of the big questions wrong. From Albania to Zimbabwe, with all the China's and Soviet's and Ummah's in between. In this regard they have been rivalled, perhaps, only by our CIA. It is downright a sign of sanity to ridicule the fey bastards.
Fourth, our "Ambassadors"???? Any "Friend of the Prez" who offered up enough Jack during his rise to power can be gifted an ambassadorship. Joe the Plumber and Ronald Reagan the Actor, and Victor David Hanson the Farmer, had to prove their chops. But a bribe, and by any other name it is yet a bribe, is sufficient to make any jerk Ambassador to Andouillvania. Is Lilla smoking crack?
The Republican Party is not "alienating educated voters". Unless those voters buy into the basic assumption of Versailles: that it is Versailles, and not the people, who should rule.
AA, you said it better than I could. Maybe it's because you know more languages and had a passport when you were two. Of course with that passport you just crossed borders to get putas, but that's a different story.
Though I respect Lilla, I think he's gone the way of other Columbia types and decided there's no mind outside the Ivies.
AA: You offer a very sharp critique of Lilla -- much more so than JJ, who simply harrumphs. I agree locally with most of what you say -- eg, that Joe the Plumber would make much better use of $200K starting a business than Krugman. And of course, VDH or Iowahawk are great, while Ronnie was tops.
But, but, there is flip side to all this, which, if left unchecked, would validate Lilla's critique of the conservative movement. Eg, what attracted me to it in the first instance when I landed on these shores with literally only $50 in my pocket was the superior intellectual firepower of movement conservatives (such as W.F. Buckley), compared to the stultified, left-leaning liberal ideology. If conservatism were to rely only on the likes of Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, we're doomed to irrelevancy in short order. And, if well-founded distrust of pinko intelligentsia were to morph into global distrust of anything having to do with intellectual pursuit, or learned elites, etc -- well, that would be a tragedy of first order.
AI, religiously unpopular.
Remember the B Hussein Obama thing you pulled up as a valid 'argument' against electing this cunt we'll have soon, AI?
What's so bad about the name 'Hussein'? The two Ss in the middle remind of Hitler? It sounds like 'hussy'?
I'm so perplexed.
Like I said before, the evangelicals are out of fashion. Huckabee is a creationist and even at LGF he's mocked for that.
Get it?
AI said: " what attracted me to it in the first instance when I landed on these shores with literally only $50 in my pocket was the superior intellectual firepower of movement conservatives "
So... where's the beef, AI? The tent is, or should be, big enough for a Palin, or a Reagan, as well as for a Hanson, or a Buckley, or a Sowell, or a Milton Friedman, or a Lilla, etc...
Note, also, that except for Buckley's misadventurous run for NT City Mayor, those who fill the role of "intellectual" are not those who are asked [nor should they be, in general] to fill the role of "political leader".
The problem today is that we have too many"intellectual leaders" on the right who have bought into the Versaillean paradigm. They seek, in effect, to resurrect that "Rockefeller Republicanism" which Reagan overthrew. Rock. Rep. is a recipe for irrelevancy and political death. As Bill Buckley, before his dotage, realized when he decided to cast his lot with Reagan rather than Bush [who was very much a Rock..R ].
By the way, do you think that the intellectual firepower of the American Left is superior today? This the party which sees the leadership of ACORN as its guiding council for economic "reform"? The murderous residue of the Weathermen as its guides to educational "reform"? Canada and Britain as models for Health "reform"? Soros as the sage of internatial relations? Berkeley/Versailles as models of how to nurture "diversity" of thought? The Rev. Wright as spiritual advisor?.....
It's a Ship of Fools on the Left that, by comparison, sees Palin as a bonafide genius.
Thank you for mentioning Rockefeller and Bush, Sr., AA. Two good reasons that the Right has to have a populist angle or die.
Obama's genius is that as a schwartze, he's automatically populist and gets the 'downtrodden' vote. Then he acts intellectual for the folks like AI that go in for that kind of thing.
Remember the B Hussein Obama thing you pulled up as a valid 'argument' against electing this cunt we'll have soon, AI?
JJ, that's an invidious thing to say. What I objected to was Jean-Francois Mac forbidding his supporters from using BHO's full name, as if that were a no-no. Of course, it's OK for Friedman to brag now about it (see the post above), but it was not OK for McCain supporters? Be that as it may, please let's not twist one another's words.
Huck: I don't really care what LGF thinks of him. He's not my favorite guy (for several reasons), but I don't form an opinion about someone based on his popularity (or lack thereof) on some blog. And again, casting aside broad swaths of the electorate such as Evangelicals or Mormons is not right (besides not being good politics).
WF Buckley: Whatever, man.
AA: I don't think the Left has a tremendous amount of intellectual firepower -- how can they, with such a stupid ideology to build upon? Nevertheless, the relative balance is what counts -- and I think the Conservative side of the policy arguments were much, much stronger in late 1970s-early 1980s than they are now. The last politician who had any new idea idea on the Right was Newt Gingrich -- but that was in 1994. Rather sad state of affairs.
AI, if I misinterpreted you, it was in good faith. I didn't learn the ouzo bullshit from anyone but you.
I think you consistently went for a daisycutter approach to the campaigning. You advocated McCain bring up Jeremiah and you approved of Palin's bringing up Ayers.
I think a bare-knuckles approach is good when it's appropriate, but this time around it wasn't. It was absolutely right for McCain to dissociate himself from rabblerousers this time because getting confused with a bigot in the country, right now, is suicide.
I am sure there was a side call to the SC guys calling Hussein Hussein explaining why it had to go the way it did. Don't worry about their feelings; they're grown men.
Friedman can Hussein all he wants. He's being inclusive in invoking the name of the beast and so faces no threat of begin labeled a bigot.
As to simply harrumphing, you want to explain that one? Did I not post Lilla's article in the first goddam place? Do I agree with him? Maybe I posted it to back up your side of the Palin-hating from a very sharp writer? That's harrumphing? I need a new dictionary.
About LGF, these guys are no big deal, I agree. I do think that if you go so evangelical that you're nominating a candidate that denies Darwin, then you're doomed. That is what Lilla would say and I can't disagree. Everyone thinks these 15% of the population are a joke and will not elect them. I have nothing against Christians or Mormons or anyone else. I am talking about how a candidate plays to the whole electorate. Smooth Leninist Obama will play better than anyone with t_0 = 4004 BC. Period.
WFB: Put your money where your mouth is. I think he was a bloviator and nothing else. Let's see a good piece he wrote. Post your favorite and let's pick it to bits.
He's no Milton Friedman, Leo Strauss, Edmund Burke, or Karl Popper. So what was he, anyway? Just some topsider Catholic with 5 syllables each that could outdebate Jesse Jackson. Boring.
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