The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Human Sacrifice! Dogs and Cats Living Together! Mass Hysteria!’

Posted on | June 26, 2010 | 9 Comments

Inspired by a Tweet from Conor Friedersdorf. When he agrees with me, this could be a sign that the Apocalypse is upon us.

UPDATE: Maybe this whole thing is part of a secret conspiracy to destroy my right-wing grassroots street cred?

Yeah. I’m totally screwed. Now I’m forced to admit that David Frum is actually making sense here:

A lot of crazy things are happening inside the conservative world today. . . . This is a movement in moral and intellectual crisis. Yet it’s very difficult and even dangerous for a committed conservative to acknowledge that crisis or to write about the crisis without excuse or apologetics. Weigel did just that, and very successfully. He is no Max Blumenthal, a self-identified ideological counter-warrior bent on harassing and humiliating those who disagree with him. He is a sympathetic and skeptical outsider, as the best reporters almost always are.

“He is no Max Blumenthal” = damning with faint praise . . .

What I’m trying to say in this American Spectator piece is that some people now seem to be demanding that conservative journalists like myself — Philip Klein, Matt Vadum, J.P. Freire, et al. — must choose between being conservatives or being journalists.

To surrender to that demand would be to give credence  to Matthew Yglesias’ oft-iterated and counterfactual assertion that conservatives are incapable of doing “real journalism.” And it is especially infuriating when these demands are delivered as part of a More Right-Wing Than Thou message, as if failure to join the Dave Weigel high-tech lynching indicates that I am ideologically unsound and must therefore be shunned.

Acceding to that mentality is to turn the conservative movement into a clique, a gaggle of schoolgirls on the third-grade playground: “I hate Suzy because she’s nasty. You can’t be my friend if you’re friends with Nasty Suzy.”

Frum’s great sin was his attempt t0 purge paleoconservatives — among them some of my friends — from the movement. In that purge, Frum was sufficiently successful that by 2002 there were no dissidents in the Bush White House to say, “Hey, chief, how about we slow down and double-check this Weapons of Mass Destruction angle before we start ginning up the jingos for the conquest of Mesopotamia?”

As I have often remarked, I’d love to write a history of the neocon/paleocon feud titled, First, They Came for Mel Bradford. The ascendancy of what might be called “Claremont conservatism” can be traced to that one episode nearly 30 years ago. Combine that with Ronald Reagan’s ill-advised choice of GHW Bush as his running mate (rather than Paul Laxalt) and you have the two basic ingredients of nearly all that has gone wrong for the conservative cause ever since.

Frum is therefore accountable for what I deem harmful mischief, which he has stubbornly refused to recant. Yet I suspect there may some day come a moment of crisis — and perhaps some day soon — when an important conservative gets hit with the “anti-Semite” smear, and Frum will stand up to defend our guy, bringing to bear the credibility on that subject he garnered by calling it like he saw it back in the day.

Even though I think he called it wrong.

Again I remind readers of  the moral of Androcles and the Lion: Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.

Category: Blogging, Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

Comments

9 Responses to “‘Human Sacrifice! Dogs and Cats Living Together! Mass Hysteria!’”

  1. Joe
    June 26th, 2010 @ 5:07 pm

    No it will be the Apocalypse when Charles Johnson tweets something good about you.

  2. Joe
    June 26th, 2010 @ 1:07 pm

    No it will be the Apocalypse when Charles Johnson tweets something good about you.

  3. ‘The Written Word Is Forever’ : The Other McCain
    June 26th, 2010 @ 1:33 pm

    […] Two previous posts get the ‘Lanche, while I ponder the significance of praise from . . . Conor Friedersdorf?After a few hours’ sleep, I’ve returned to find still more commenters telling me […]

  4. jefferson101
    June 26th, 2010 @ 7:12 pm

    Regarding the whole Weigel thing, can we perhaps move on to something else someday?

    I realize that to you folks who do this “media” thing for a living it’s a fairly huge big deal. I’m not even suggesting that the rest of us are totally and completely disinterested.

    OTOH, even those of us who don’t mind watching some sausage being made don’t want to spend all of our time doing so. It’s becoming way too much “Inside Baseball” to keep my attention.

    We have not had any huge and destructive Bills pass the Senate lately, have we? Has Obama or one of his Cabinet not said anything controversial? Isn’t there another Soccer game coming up on the radar, for heaven’s sake?

    OK. Having beaten my point to death with a shovel, I’ll quit now. You can wake me up when something interesting happens.

  5. jefferson101
    June 26th, 2010 @ 3:12 pm

    Regarding the whole Weigel thing, can we perhaps move on to something else someday?

    I realize that to you folks who do this “media” thing for a living it’s a fairly huge big deal. I’m not even suggesting that the rest of us are totally and completely disinterested.

    OTOH, even those of us who don’t mind watching some sausage being made don’t want to spend all of our time doing so. It’s becoming way too much “Inside Baseball” to keep my attention.

    We have not had any huge and destructive Bills pass the Senate lately, have we? Has Obama or one of his Cabinet not said anything controversial? Isn’t there another Soccer game coming up on the radar, for heaven’s sake?

    OK. Having beaten my point to death with a shovel, I’ll quit now. You can wake me up when something interesting happens.

  6. Richard McEnroe
    June 26th, 2010 @ 10:11 pm

    This David Frum?

  7. Richard McEnroe
    June 26th, 2010 @ 6:11 pm

    This David Frum?

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