January 01, 2008
Someone please argue against me...
Jonah Goldberg expresses the same frustration I've felt for years. Yeah, I know, he's flying at a much higher altitude than I am. But the problem is exactly the same.
Not surprisingly Matt Yglesias is vexed by the Times' "kind treatment" of my book. I've gotten into habit of ignoring what Yglesias says about me and I don't see much reason to kick that habit. But I should at least contradict him on one thing. He writes that "The reviewer, David Oshinsky, does concede that Goldberg's main thesis is false but that didn't seem to bother him."
Oshinsky in fact doesn't deal with my "main thesis" at all. As Ramesh notes, Oshinsky actually concedes that fascism is a phenomenon of the left. As for where Oshinsky does disagree with my thesis, it is so poorly supported and so unrelated to what I actually write, I'm still a bit flummoxed as to how to respond to it, save to thank the man for his kind words and hope some other liberal actually reads the book and offers a sustained argument against it. Honestly: I would actually like to read such a review. So far the reaction from Lefty blogs has been simply inane or deranged. I am sincerely interested in a serious liberal's — or leftist's — argument against what I have to say. And if Matt can put aside his animus towards me, maybe he's the guy to do it. But I'm not holding my breath.
I'll bet if I could ask him, Jonah would not be able to point to any occasion when a lefty critic gave him a really good counter-argument. One that caused him to lose sleep worrying about what reply he could make to such a well-reasoned criticism. I've been blogging since 11/2001, and it has yet to happen to me. (My libertarian-type readers do so now and then.)
It's all evidence for my thesis that "liberals" (most of them) aren't liberals at all any more. They are wearing lefty politics like the Invisible Man wore bandages, to give himself some sort of form or shape. They don't really believe any of it. They've been "hollowed-out", like certain church-goers we are all aware of, who recite the Creed every Sunday without believing it. They are nihilists.
(Also evidence for the proposition that political correctness lowers your effective IQ.)
Posted by John Weidner at January 1, 2008 07:27 AMHere's an example of a lefty trying to make a serious critique of conservatives:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20937
It has all the buzzwords -- tax haters, PNAC, etc, and the casual asumption that conservatives are bigots. In one passage the author seems to think it is the job of a president during wartime to keep 'Americans' safer, not America the nation or American interests. This would come as a surprise to any of the American soldiers we send oversees to get shot at. Giuliani's statement "I think we should give our troops a chance to succeed in Iraq. Our goal in Iraq is victory." is considered a black mark against him.
This was published by the NYRB, which considers itself the home of the best literary and social criticism. Not only can't leftists argue properly anymore, they don't even know that they aren't arguing properly.
That's a good example. I read part of it, and I think I could easily fisk the piece, even though the author's "intellectual credentials" probably dwarf mine.
....and reflects instead the central hard truth about the components of the Republican Party today. That is, the party is still in the hands of three main interests: neoconservatives; theo-conservatives, i.e., the groups of the religious right; and radical anti-taxers, clustered around such organizations as the Club for Growth and Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. Each of these groups dominates party policy in its area of interest—the neocons in foreign policy, the theocons in social policy, and the anti-taxers on fiscal and regulatory issues.[2] Each has led the Bush administration to undertake a high-profile failure: the theocons orchestrated the disastrous Terri Schiavo crusade, which put off many moderate Americans; the radical anti-taxers pushed for the failed Social Security privatization initiative; and the neocons, of course, wanted to invade Iraq....
I'd argue that none of these were failures. But what's interesting is that Tomasky does not seem to even realize that there might be a need to provide arguments to support his assertions. I could be wrong, but I'd guess that he doesn't ever socialize with anyone who would disagree with him.
Posted by: John Weidner at January 1, 2008 08:50 AM
