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This is not a post where I intend to get intensely pro-Palestinian, since I believe it should be a basic maxim of our foreign policy that the squabbling of other peoples over small patches of land in small, relatively unimportant Mediterranean countries should properly have nothing to do with the United States (we are not deeply […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
The newest lefty spin on the USA ”scandal” is that the “improper” political firings of the eight USAs now jeopardises…the prosecution of one of the corrupt Democrats whose alleged criminal activities David Iglesias was slow or inept in leading. That means that the thing that got Iglesias fired was probably related to his ineptitude in handling big corruption […]
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Filed under: politics
He is his own vision. ~David Axelrod on Barack Obama
So, when people complain that Obama’s campaign is mostly just a lot of egocentrism, gauzy sentimentality and meaningless drivel without any strong or coherent policy elements, don’t worry: that’s the master plan!
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Filed under: politics
So I’m thinking of taking intensive Arabic this summer, since facility with that and related Semitic languages has obvious importance for Byzantine studies, and I have been dabbling a little with it so far. My early dabbling reminded me that the Arabic word for ‘right’ or ‘correct’, sahih, was taken into Hindi (presumably by way […]
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Filed under: miscellaneous
On a lighter note, here is where Lebanese pop meets Bollywood: the pop star Nawal al-Zoghbi singing Gharib el-Ray. There are more random foreign locales than in a Yash Raj spectacular (I guess because she is wandering, gharib). Here is a video filled with apparently random scene changes–now she’s in Prague, now she’s surrounded by badly rendered computer-generated helicopters. Perhaps […]
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Filed under: miscellaneous, music
If a Martian came down and read Charles Krauthammer and you asked him whether what he had read made any sense, he would be be baffled and would wonder why you had even asked the question. ”Of course not,” the Martian would say. “How can you earthlings read this junk on a regular basis?”
It seems to me […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
It doesn’t tell us why other people are supporting Obama, but this “diavlog” from bloggingheads featuring the very pro-Obama Rosa Brooks from the Open Society Institute has her saying exactly the sort of nonsense about his transcending the divisions within this country and around the world that is supposedly merely the projection of Obama observers. Instead, […]
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Filed under: politics
Via Poulos, I see that Ron Paul is polling better (3%!) than several of the other better-known, somewhat more-hyped second-tier candidates, such as Hunter, Huckabee and Tancredo. (Poor Tommy Thompson pulls a whopping 1%.) Granted that this is Zogby, and granted that it is a phone poll of adults, but it seems noteworthy that Brownback doesn’t even show up in […]
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Reihan says that he has a problem picking sides between Sullivan and Brooks in a new Sullivan fit over a recent Brooks column, but there really is an easy solution: I think Brooks is wrong, but Sullivan is out of his mind.
Unlike Reihan, I have no qualms about criticising both of them. Brooks starts:
There […]
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Sununu is trailing Shaheen by ten points in an early N.H. Senate poll. It might have been a good idea for Sununu to either vote in support of the anti-”surge” resolution or for the latest supplemental/withdrawal bill. Without something real he can take home to show that he isn’t married to the GOP on the things that are […]
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Bush’s low approval ratings are an illustration. Some experienced GOP campaign strategists believe that there is virtually no chance that a Republican can succeed Bush if his approval ratings remain mired in the 30s. The Democratic strategy of investigating administration scandals and policy blunders is calculated to achieve exactly that goal — and the burgeoning […]
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Filed under: politics
Clark offers his pessimism as an antidote to any excessive optimism experienced at Charlottesville. I do have to confess I share Clark’s puzzlement about Prof. Deneen’s reference to people being “wildly optimistic” about human nature. It is not necessarily true that all or even most people at the conference would share my enthusiasm for active pessimism, but […]
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Filed under: politics, pessimism
One is thrust in the potential position of being un-American, of feeling homeless in America. I once spent a few hours waiting for a flight with a colleague at an airport, and began explaining to him this argument that modernity included both dominant contemporary political camps, and engaged in a critique of presumptions of individualism, rights-based […]
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Filed under: politics
To defend Lockean philosophy in the name of conservatism is to open the back door to the progressive hordes. ~Prof. Patrick Deneen
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Filed under: politics
Much as I enjoyed the fellowship of the past weekend in Charlottesville, there was a persistent and palpable animosity toward politics and government generally held by many of the participants. For all the talk of community, it was a community bereft of the idea that communities require more than just good feeling, but laws and […]
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Filed under: politics, religion, culture, agrarianism, tradition, anarchism
What would I object to? Well, I thought there was an undertone of something in that talk, and this later post by Professor Deneen makes it explicit. He detects “gauzy sentimentality” in the libertarian and generally anti-statist bent of some of the participants, as well as an overvaulting optimism about human nature. To me, it […]
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Filed under: politics
Because you are all dying to know what other words Armenian and Hindi share, I will tell you another one. Reading Namus (yes, I’m still reading Namus ever so slowly), I came across the colloquial expression ghalat chari, which is apparently still used in Armenia today and which is basically an imperative phrase that means, “Don’t do […]
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Filed under: miscellaneous, Armenia, Bollywood
It’s not much of an oversimplification to say that the blue-collar Democrats tend to see elections as an arena for defending their interests, and the upscale voters see them as an opportunity to affirm their values. ~Ron Brownstein
Via Ross Douthat
This would help explain why Obama, whose entire campaign platform as of right now is, “Hope […]
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Filed under: politics
And since Ross and Reihan are finding a Strange New Respect for Buchananism (or whatever passes for “paleoconservatism” these days) I should say that I’m reminded of a point Ramesh made years ago in his article on Buchanan. “Conservatives tend to place a lot of emphasis, maybe too much, on the idea that ideas have […]
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Filed under: politics, populism
If Dr. Francis were ever to be bothered to follow the ins and outs of blog fights, which I imagine he would have considered a waste of time and energy, he would probably be smiling at this one if only because it would have confirmed his low opinion of the modern National Review. Goldberg’s latest certainly does provoke laughter, […]
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Filed under: politics
I hate to sound condescending because I’m a fan of Reihan’s and Ross’s and I’m generally friendly to the new generation of younger bloggers. But, I’m sorry: this is nonsense and it’s a bit representative of what one hears from the super-smart and very young these days. The idea that anyone, anywhere can spot an […]
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Filed under: politics
Even if liberals detest the Crusades, however, there is no good reason for many of today’s Muslims to care about them, and there is no evidence that they think about the subject at all. ~Dinesh D’Souza
No reason not to welcome D’Souza back to the fold if he just forgets that recent nonsense about all our […]
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Filed under: politics, history
I am all for intervening in Darfur any way we can. ~Jonah Goldberg
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
It’s interesting that the absurdity of the Fred Thompson Phenomenon should call to mind the (non-existent) presidential potential of Larry Craig in particular for both Matt Yglesias and myself. Yglesias also asks sarcastically, “Where’s Tommy Thompson?” Tommy is, of course, running as fast as he can all over Iowa attempting to pull off the upset of all upsets in a […]
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Filed under: politics
There are things we need to be afraid of; we need to be afraid of Islamic fascists; we need to afraid of the internal terrors that we face. The fact that many people will go to work this Friday and get a pink slip and be told that the job they’ve been working at 20 […]
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Filed under: politics