Wicked Idiots
Over at NRO, Richard Brookhiser predicted that Ron Paul would do better than expected in Iowa, because all the "wicked idiots" would vote for him. John Derbyshire then challenged Brookhiser to name one of Ron Paul's positions that was wicked and another that was idiotic. Brookhiser couldn't, emoting instead about uncouth behavior by some Ron Paul supporters.
What is astonishing is the vehemence of Brookhiser's denunciation of Ron Paul. This is a man who—as Sam Francis quipped—has been writing for National Review since he was a teenager and has never written a memorable sentence. He certainly has never used such vivid language in denouncing the left, and Brookhiser is currently thumping for a candidate who is pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage, who turned New York City into a "sanctuary city" for illegal aliens, and who also appears to have used taxpayer money to facilitate his adultery. But Ron Paul has made the mistake of taking seriously George Washington's Farewell Address, and anyone who does that is liable to be slandered by those hoping to finagle Americans into fighting and dying for their favorite foreign country or pet cause. And NRO is chock full of such warmongers. If Ron Paul is drawing their wrath, he must be doing something right.
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Richard Brookhiser is a rather effete fellow with New York City sensibilities, a good fit for a Louis Auchincloss novel fast-forwarded to 2000. What sort of man marries a woman of the Left who is pro-abortion, won't take her husband's last name, and stridently won't bear children? Answer- Rick Brookhiser. Supinely, Brookhiser seems to accept the West's demographic and civilizational collapse much like Walter Laquer. In the past, he has seemed amused to think of himself as some last New York City WASP just as he seemed to relish calling the Yankees of Massachusetts a "tiny and despised minority" way back in the early 80s in one of his earliest NATIONAL REVIEW writings. How can you respect a man who seems delighted by the demise of his own kind?
As for his attack on Ron Paul, Brookhiser is in bed with the neo-conservatives. Whether he has absorbed their arguments in favor of a muscular, Wilsonian foreign policy or he just wants to remain relevant in the neo-conservative salons of Manhattan is hard to judge. It is probably a little bit of both. The amusing thing is that Brookhiser continues to hold fast to the neo-conservative line in Iraq despite William F. Buckley's misgivings over the whole escapade. When he had much more hair long ago, Brookhiser mooned over Buckley like a schoolgirl with a crush on the star quarterback. But now that Buckley is effectively on the sidelines, Brookhiser has proven to be unfaithful.
"and stridently won’t bear children?"
When did they marry? She's 60 and, he's 52 (according to Wikipedia articles) so children would have been out of the question for a couple of decades.
As for his disgust with Ron Paul, it sounds much like the disgust that Northeastern elites had for Andrew Jackson's followers. His "flys on waste" comments were telling.
NEOCONS have no use for Ron Paul..........They chose their cluster of "Likud Party" puppets at the "7th Herzliya Conference" in January 2007.........A true conservative, non interventionist, is a nightmare to a Globalist/Jacobin philosophy of "Democracy at the point of a gun foreign policy", when your trying to make a lot of money with a military industrial complex!........Hell, the $3.5 billion in foreign aid, is like a tip, compared to CONTROLING American foreign policy!
David Frum had a piece on Public Radio excoriating Ron Paul's position on the FED and putting us back on the Gold Standard.
Frum, yet another neo-con who is supposedly "from the right" gets a gig on NPR?
Face it friends, neo-cons and liberals are two sub-wings of the establishment. The only way to get em' out is to vote em' out.
Anybody except Guiliani, McCain, Huckabee, Hillary, or Obama.............................................
Ron Paul sounds like a guy who has read his Chalmers Johnson, and that is a great thing to me. But what's this stuff about abolishing the FBI and the CIA? Is he just being deliberately flamboyant--not a great idea in a presidential candidate--or is he actually flirting with looney libertarianism?
Tom is SO right, except that Brookhiser's book on Washington is pretty good. Dr. Paul, for all his good annoying qualities--and they are many--is unfortunately not even much of a distraction to the frontrunning crowd. Since there isn't a conservative in the race, I suggest we ignore it and from now on talk about interesting things.
#5 Ken,
Relax, it probably won't happen anytime soon. But to keep it all in perspective, remember that President Clinton had no use for them either after his dating Monica in the Oval Office coffee rooom, and our current "Leader" has blamed them for a bum steer on the way to Iraq, and ignoring Mahomedans who wanted to learn how to fly, but not land, airplanes. As Hamlet said about Denmark, "there is something rotten" in ..... D.C. ? Maybe Ron Paul is right about less being more.
My thanks to Tom Piatak for continually running these scoundrels to ground.
Mr. Zaretzke: Where did Ron Paul say he wanted to abolish the FBI or CIA or both?
Ron Paul is the closest thing to a "traditional" conservative Republican in the race. He is clearly in the lineage of Ronald Reagan, and even moreso of Barry Goldwater and Bob Taft Sr. I'm a retired military officer, andagree with foreign policy views, his views on the need to give priority to securing our borders and nation against illegal immigration and smuggling, and even his views on some of our less than successful / efficient security and intelligence agencies like CIA and FBI. This is because I am also in agreement with Rep. Paul's belief that the Constitution is clearly understandable law, and not some quaint suggestions that can be reinterpreted into meaningless nonsense by statists (however patriotic and well-intentioned they may be, and however much they believe in democratic elections, they are still fascists).
"Ron Paul sounds like a guy who has read his Chalmers Johnson"...
C'mon! Chalmers Johnson must have learned a thing or two--at least--from Ron Paul.
Back in 1984 Brookhiser wrote an essay for NR just before the election in which he lamented that there wasn’t a conservative third party candidate to vote for and register a protest against the left wing trend of the Reagan administration. Well, we can see how far Brookhiser has moved to the left since then. In 1991, Brookhiser wrote a book entitled The Way of the Wasp, and it contained a few good points. But there is no way that Brookhiser would write such a book today. In the 50th anniversary issue of NR Brookhiser repudiated Evelyn Waugh for his jaundiced view of the possibility of democratic reform in Africa and the rest of the third world (no doubt Brookhiser was thinking of the Middle East). Compare Brookhiser’s weak effort with the great essay Joe Sobran wrote for the 30th anniversary issue of NR. Sobran contrasted the “alienist” mentality of the left with the conservative spirit of “enjoyment” and the appreciation of the past.
For Brookhiser “everything changed” on 911 (that was his response to Buchanan’s Death of the West), which translated into English means that Brookhiser has moved over to the left for good.
"What sort of man marries a woman of the Left who is pro-abortion, won’t take her husband’s last name, and stridently won’t bear children? Answer- Rick Brookhiser."
Darn! I guessed Barry Goldwater.
How did the US ever get along before the FBI and CIA were invented?
Brookhiser has made an entire career out of shilling for the arch-Federalist among the Founders. Washington probably does not deserve the title of arch-federalist, but Hamilton and Adams do. He is also a staunch defender of Lincoln and called Davis an "unhung traitor."
He is no reluctant warrior. He has drunk deeply from the neocon Kool-Aid.
"David Frum had a piece on Public Radio excoriating Ron Paul’s position on the FED and putting us back on the Gold Standard."
Do you have a link?
Yes they struggle over at NRO and in the effete social circles in n.y. with the wisdom thing. Some with the budding wisdom, like venture capitalist and pacific coast technology boy tom perkins, to at least admit it - even if he is shackeld invisibly to Danielle Steel. That's cute in a way...two alligators, wrestling. He's venture which is clean like his new clipper ship - & not wall street which is dirty like nuclear energy. Let's face it america is a place where the 'wisdom thing' isn't valued much. That's because it takes tradition to get to wisdom, and america is always a sucker for what's new even if it ain't exaclty built on tradition and so therefore isn't yet what's legitimately next. On a strictly business level that may be the definitive difference between wall street, and venture capital. In fact on a so-called 'conservative' level culturally it may be the definitive difference between National Review & Chronicles.
Tom Perkins ought to give - to chronicles (if he's actually smart enough with his budding wisdom to know the difference?)
As for Ron Paul give to him too... Why Yes you Can trust a man with two first names!! Vote Ron Paul!! Shucks - if his last name was only St. Paul ... That has a better ring to it: Vote - Ron St. Paul!
There's what we need in these days - President St. Paul -
_____________________
Red,
I dont have a link to Frum, althought there might be one in cyberspace. I heard a little of it while getting a milkshake at a Sonic. I turned the station almost immediately. I wasn't going to let that slimy Frum ruin my jalepeno poppers and milk shake.
miles,
They posted a link to it at Lew Rockwell.
And Sonic rules!
Ron Paul is the only culturist candidate in that he does not want to change other cultures and wants to protect ours.
The media and the people are always leagues away. If we could make Ron "two first names, neither St." Paul the victimized poster child for media bias it would help.
Most people want the borders sealed. Most people want out of Iraq. Guliani is 2000 times nutier. His life, his connections, his politics . . And so which strings get RP portrayed as a whacko and Guliani as acceptable? Why isn't he even a distraction?
Perhaps his campaign is not the place to focus our attention. Rather we should analyze why media outlets generally, including but not limited to Brookhiser, are so out of touch.
http://www.culturism.us
C.;
They are not "out-of-touch" and it would be wise for paleo's to cease this game of pretend.
Rather they are employing the only political tactics they are educated in, the political art of the smear, mostly developed in the modern world by Commies and their fellow travelers, but not without a long history of American political discourse.
They are protecting their positions in society as any class that perceives a threat would respond--and not without merit considering that Paul (or Buchanan before him)) does represent and end to the Beltway Right and those cushy position of power and income, if not a complete political 'revolution' as I have made the case he is not as threatening to Establishment rule as Guiliani.
A brief note on Buchanan, he did attempt to unite the proletariat with the 'Republican Party' which never really made sense compared to Paul's worthy and just argument to keep the Middle Class represented in the Republican Party not with welfare bennies, but with political consensus on the issues of our moment.
"Perhaps his campaign is not the place to focus our attention. Rather we should analyze why media outlets generally, including but not limited to Brookhiser, are so out of touch."
posted above - http://www.culturism.us
Response above: "They are not “out-of-touch” and ***it would be wise for paleo’s to cease this game of pretend.
"Rather they are employing the only political tactics they are educated in, the political art of the smear, mostly developed in the modern world by Commies and their fellow travelers, but not without a long history of American political discourse." -Bowen
EXACTLY ! And why at least in that regard - do paleo's yet insist on 'pretend' - when they are always right-on or hard right (approrpriately) when it's difficult as well as easy, in so many other regards?
because - guess who-?-has the media? [judaism...in Effect - whether of the secular or 'religious' stripe, kids. and they OPPOSED to you Christians, kids - get it?]
this is where paleos "traditionally" go belly-up in writhing agony and sensible people-pleasing and as a 'cultural' matter - BECAUSE :
they don't want to admit that they too have Inevitably as conceptual creatures ALSO been brainwashed by the MEDIA.
They can't admit the truth in this case because - well, That couldn't be the case - in their cultural-mindSet - because they're 'above' that.
But they're NOT above that... and that belly-Up "sensible" people-pleasing 'writhing' ... has also and understandably gotten them nowhere and NOTHING for it. It's just comical to witness.
Brainwashed, at the end of the day they too (god forbid) don't want to be 'anti-semitic' ... or read about it in the papers.
CONTEXT kids... ya'll been brainwashed, sadly.
anyone trembling in their boots about being 'anti-Xian'?
And so I draw my sword my xian sword and hold it straight Up to God Almightly and ask - with what shall I do with this, sir? ... hey, i'm cool - i listen... i'm a pacifist at heart - 'with what shall i do with this, sir?' ... i'm xian - so if he's xian more than less, he ain't gonna say 'fall on it...' ? he ain't gonna say turn the other cheek for the billionth time? ? i've never been contacted directly, so i don't know. i try to keep a low profile and not be noticed, less'i'm in Church.
i'm tellin'ya, it's comical.
___
#8 Chris Collins:
I think Mona Charen quoted Paul to that effect in a recent column. True, she writes for NR, but surely she wouldn't make that one up.
good post #20
For the life of me, I can't understand how anyone who thinks of themself as a conservative would not embrace Ron Paul's positions on: the Gold Standard, less government, less foreign entanglements and a smaller military, etc. And he is absolutely correct in trying to get us back to being a nation with its law based on the Constitution and not the Declaration of Independance.
As Albert Jay Nock pointed out, what lies before us today, is the result of events that occured 30-50 years earlier and beyond. I don't remember hearing Ron Paul talk about his first 100 days in office and a "List of Accomplishments". Ron Paul is talking about realigning our country with the constitution and recharting a true course for our Republic.
Today, we have a bunch of demogogues running for President and only one true conservative, Ron Paul. And much like the Romans, when given the chance, we give our ear to the Mark Anthonys and not to the Ciceros.
Richard Brookhiser has been stronly criticized for his use of the unpleasant "WASP" on the one hand, and for his refusal to use "WEJ" (white European Jew) on the other hand.
I'm not so sure he is attacking his "own" people as one poster seemed to suggest, because he has largely embraced the ideas, sensibilities, and guidance of his wife, no WASP.
It's kind of funny that one of the keys that unlocks the mysteries of Richard Bookhiser is unmentioned and, indeed, unmentionable on this site.
Just as Brookhiser can call us "WASPs," so we too can call his wife a "WEJ" and speculate about her intellectual and emotional influences on him. Without this knowledge, you are all just spinning your wheels and generating mystery in the minds of most readers whom you should be enlightening about all the forces in today's world that shape ideas, publish smears, enhance hatreds, and promote political choices.