Keith Burgess-Jackson

I leave you this fine evening with a column by Pat Buchanan, who is neither a libertarian nor a neoconservative.

If anyone is going to stand up to Chris Matthews, it’ll be Fred Thompson. See here. Will Nehs and I don’t understand why the Republican candidates aren’t portraying the Democrat candidates as the egalitarians, cosmopolitans, and pacifists they are. Are they afraid that if they attack Hillary Clinton, it will be perceived as ungentlemanly? If so, then I have news for them: They’re not going to win the nomination, much less the general election. She needs to be attacked relentlessly and mercilessly, starting now. This is politics, not ballroom dancing.

Yankee fans probably thought I was kidding when I said—16 days ago—that the Cleveland Indians are relentless. I wasn’t kidding. To repeat: Day after day, since the season began, I watched the Indians on the ESPN scoreboard as I sat at my computer. My beloved Detroit Tigers were contending with them for the American League Central Division title. Day after day, the Indians came from behind to win. After a while, I came to expect it. Tonight, in Cleveland, the Indians came back from a 1-0 deficit to beat the New York Yankees, 2-1, in 11 innings. It’s all but over for the high-spending, underachieving, superannuated Yankees, who continue to falter when it counts most. Alex Rodriguez went 0-4 with three strikeouts and three runners left on base. He earns $25,200,000 per year. I’ll be interested to see when Yankee fans turn on him. He is a high-paid bust.

Did I mention that it’s a great time to be a Yankee hater? “Go Yankees!” indeed.

Here is Peggy Noonan’s latest column. Here is Peg Kaplan’s latest post.

Here.

Memo to Paul Krugman*: What conservatives find humorous is not the fact that some people have less than others, but what progressives propose to do about it. Progressives think that having the right feelings is enough. It’s not. One must use one’s brain.

* “Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults” (Daniel Okrent, “13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did,” The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

Here is a review of two new books about conservatism. Key paragraph:

The contributors mostly agree that “American conservatism has become middle-aged,” as the historian George H. Nash observes, and that with middle age has come a midlife crisis. Nash identifies four braided but distinct strands of modern American conservatism. Traditionalists value continuity, order and hierarchy; libertarians prize personal freedom and social spontaneity; neoconservatives blend the New Deal’s idealistic spirit with conservatism’s muscular nationalism; and religious conservatives fight relativism, secularism and immorality. Given their differences, the surprise is that these four heads ever joined atop one political beast. Yet Ronald Reagan, Soviet Communism and hostility to the excesses of the 1960s brought together a vibrant coalition.

To which of the four strands—traditionalism, libertarianism, neoconservatism, religious conservatism—do I belong, in your view? To which, if any, do you belong, and why?

Addendum: David Brooks makes the same distinctions in this wonderfully insightful op-ed column.

Addendum 2: I don’t understand why libertarianism, neoconservatism, and religious conservatism count as conservatism. Only traditionalism counts as conservatism. It makes sense that the Republican Party appeals to all of these groups, but a party is not a political morality. Parties are sites in which political moralities are contested. The central value of conservatives is tradition. The central value of libertarians is liberty. The central value of neoconservatives is democracy. The central value of religious conservatives is virtue. The central value of progressives is equality.

Addendum 3: Here is an essay on neoconservatism by Gary North.

The passage from common sense to science is not a passage to a new kind of thinking, but a refining of processes already at work. So is the passage from science to philosophy. It is a grave mistake to set up science and philosophy as rivals of each other; they are continuous with each other. A philosophy that ignores science will probably build castles in the air, and a science that ignores philosophy will be dogmatic or myopic or both. Philosophy, as I view it, is so bound up with science, so integral a part of the same enterprise, that I have here insisted on winding into it through the avenue of science.

(Brand Blanshard, “The Philosophic Enterprise,” chap. 10 in The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy, ed. Charles J. Bontempo and S. Jack Odell [New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1975], 163-77, at 170)

To the Editor:

President Bush showed his stinginess when he vetoed a bill to expand health care provision for the poorest children in the United States, and then condescendingly added that if they needed a “little more money,” he might agree to a mere $5 billion over five years. Yet he has no qualms about spending billions every month for death and destruction in Iraq.

That money could have enhanced the life of every person in the United States by financing free health care for everyone, not just children, and Social Security for years to come. The money is our money; where do we want it to be spent?

Carol Delaney
Providence, R.I., Oct. 4, 2007

Note from KBJ: What really burns the asses of progressives is that the money being spent in Iraq could be spent in ways of which they approve. By the way, I doubt that President Bush or his supporters would accept the description of his actions as “spending billions every month for death and destruction in Iraq.” During World War II, was the United States spending billions for death and destruction in Europe? Do these letter writers not realize that, by being tendentious, they undermine both their credibility and their persuasiveness? Then again, maybe their aim is not to persuade but to vent.

Is it just me, or is all this stuff about “General Betray Us” and “phony soldiers” so much silliness? The routine is getting old. Somebody says or does something; the other side expresses mock outrage, designed to rally the troops and raise money; politicians leap into or out of the fray as seems most calculated to benefit them. Remember: Political operatives and journalists/entertainers need material. If nothing important is happening, they must write about unimportant stuff and make it seem important. No wonder so many Americans tune out politics until election day (and some even then).

Here.