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Via Ross, I see that it’s become Gerson-bashing week. It’s nice to be a trend-setter. If his latest column is any indication of what his book has to offer, I don’t think “heroic conservatism” is going to take off. For instance, saying things like this naturally open him up to withering criticism from all sides:
Traditional conservatism […]
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Ross writes:
However, something like the reverse is also true: Just because the initial invasion was almost certainly a mistake doesn’t necessarily mean that the continued presence of U.S. troops is a mistake as well. And I detect some goalpost-shifting here among the partisans of immediate withdrawal.
And:
But given that only six weeks ago he [Yglesias] was throwing […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
I have given Chuck Hagel a lot of grief over the past year, but today I’m willing to give him a lot of credit. Via Steve Clemons, I see that Hagel has apparently called on the President to consider “direct, unconditional, and comprehensive talks with the Government of Iran.” Common sense is infiltrating the Washington Iran policy debate! No […]
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So Karen Hughes has had enough and is going home. (Mark down another departure, James.) It has been easy to give Karen Hughes a hard time, and it hasn’t really been fair to her. The administration has made an art form out of cronyism, and the President has chosen some of the most inappropriate people for fairly important […]
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The notion that somehow changing the tone means simply that we let them say whatever they want to say or that there are no disagreements and that we’re all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ is obviously not what I had in mind and not how I function. And anybody who thinks I have, hasn’t been […]
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And on yet another level, that issue highlights the way the West, including the U.S., has been preoccupied with the killing of 1.5 million Christian Armenians by mostly Muslim Turks and Kurds. ~Leon Hadar
Certainly, there has been some attention drawn to the genocide in the West over the last 90 years, though the attention tended […]
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Filed under: politics, history, foreign policy, Armenia
Ron Paul once again reframes the idea of “isolationism” in his discussion of Cuba policy:
Our isolationist policies with regard to Cuba, meanwhile, have hardly won the hearts and minds of Cubans or Cuban-Americans, many of whom are isolated from families because [of] this political animosity.
This echoes his statements in his response to the Union-Leader’s attack on […]
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But every time you are somewhere that means you are not somewhere else. ~Fred Thompson
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Filed under: miscellaneous
David Kirkpatrick’s article on the politics of modern evangelicals has some interesting details, including a general souring of many evangelicals on the war. Then there was this:
“The first time I voted was for Carter,” Scarborough recalled. “The second time was for ‘anybody but Carter,’ because he had betrayed everything I hold dear.
“Unfortunately,” Scarborough concluded, “there […]
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Kagan manages to put together an entire column in which he never once shows that he understands the difference between “liberal autocracy” a la Singapore and illiberal democracy. For the truncated democratist imagination in which there is liberal democracy and everything else lumped under “tyranny,” this oversight is typical. No one, or at least no one of any […]
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Something very strange has happened. Christopher Hitchens writes about the Armenian genocide resolution and actually makes sense:
If the Turks wish to continue lying officially about what happened to the Armenians, then we cannot be expected to oblige them by doing the same (and should certainly resent and repudiate any threats against ourselves or our allies that […]
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Filed under: politics, history, foreign policy, Armenia
George Ajjan attended the recent Arab-American Institute’s National Leadership Conference and has some early remarks on one of the panels. He spoke with Ron Paul while there, and promises to fill us in on their conversation, so keep checking back for an update.
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On a similar theme, Michael Crowley writes in response to this LA Times article on Obama:
I sympathize with Obama’s desire to “elevate” politics but unfortunately I just don’t think it generally works. Certainly not the way he’s been doing it. Readers of, say, Matt Yglesias may thrill over swipes at the “conventional” DC foreign policy […]
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In The Audacity of Hope, he describes calling Michelle to crow about a legislative victory and being told to pick up some ant traps on the way home: “I hung up the receiver, wondering if Ted Kennedy or John McCain bought ant traps on the way home from work.” He knows the answer, though, and […]
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Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me:
Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial, ubiquitous Iraqi politician and one-time Bush administration favorite, has re-emerged as a central figure in the latest U.S. strategy for Iraq.
His latest job: To press Iraq’s central government to use early security gains from the surge to deliver better electricity, health, education and local security services to […]
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Here are two of Ron Paul’s new television ads.
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My Scene colleague Matt Frost has had some fun at Michael Gerson’s expense, as have I, on account of this column. Matt also notes that Gerson’s taste in coffeehouses has changed a bit. When Gerson was “writing” the Second Inaugural and doing other such “work,” he was allegedly at a Starbucks, but now he supposedly hangs out […]
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There were a few bank robbers and counterfeiters. But more than anything, Thompson took on the state’s moonshiners and a local culture, rooted in Tennessee’s hills and hollows, that celebrated the independent whiskey maker’s battle against the government’s revenue agents. ~The Los Angeles Times
Via Alex Massie
In a just and fair world, this would be the death […]
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I have no excuse. There were warnings that the Elizabeth sequel was terrible, but I made the mistake of seeing for myself. This is a perfect example of why movie reviewers are necessary. You really should take Chris Orr’s word for it: it’s bad! If anyone is tempted to go see it, just don’t.
When it isn’t painfully boring […]
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Filed under: history, film
Before it became a tourist trap for lunatics and sci-fi geeks, I used to live in Roswell when I was very young. Unfortunately, after the “incident” became fodder for crackpots Roswell eventually decided to capitalise on its odd reputation, and a “museum” was opened up (followed by a painfully non-New Mexican show on the WB that […]
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Filed under: politics, miscellaneous
Via Djerejian, I see that Kakutani of The New York Times reviews Podhoretz’s World War IV:
Instead of trying to produce a reasoned argument for a forward-leaning foreign policy, he has served up a hectoring, often illogical screed based on cherry-picked facts and blustering assertions (often made without any supporting evidence), a book that furiously hurls […]
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Looking at the relationship between the GOP and Arab-Americans, it is remarkable how much has changed in just seven years. The time was when Candidate Bush was the one opposed to “secret evidence,” and he actually ended up getting 44.5% of the Arab-American vote in 2000. He had Spence Abraham in his Cabinet. The appeal to Arab-Americans was actually […]
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The notion that somehow changing the tone means simply that we let them say whatever they want to say or that there are no disagreements and that we’re all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ is obviously not what I had in mind and not how I function. And anybody who thinks I have, hasn’t been […]
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On Thursday, a suicide car bomber hit a truck carrying Frontier Constabulary troops through a crowded area of Mingora, killing 19 soldiers and a civilian, and wounding 35.
The devastating attack underlined the worsening security situation in Pakistan, particularly in the conservative region near the border with Afghanistan where militants linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida […]
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Another blow to the imagined Giuliani-Huckabee juggernaut: Club for Growth President Pat Toomey draws a line in the sand and declares Huckabee totally unacceptable as a veep nominee. So a certain claim that Huckabee was ”acceptable to all factions” wasn’t strictly accurate.
It must be gratifying for the head of an organisation that doesn’t actually win many primary contests to throw […]
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