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The self-banned paleocons
The unending victimological whine from the paleoconservatives—that no criticism of Bush and the neoconservative war strategy is allowed—is disproved by the energetic indictments of Bush’s war policy that have come from the contributors of the Claremont Review over the last couple of years. Angelo Codevilla and Mark Helrpin have ruthlessly torn Bush apart over his failed and inadequate policies in the Iraq war and the war on terror. Charles Kesler has also criticized Bush, though more gently. Yet these men have not been banned or attacked. In the fall of 2002, Norman Podhoretz engaged in a debate with Codevilla, as discussed at VFR. In his article, “The War Against World War IV,” in the February 2004 Commentary, Podhoretz criticized the arguments of Codevilla, Helprin, and Kesler, he didn’t attack them, he just said they were wrong. When the paleocons complain about being despised and excluded, they don’t mean that reasonable arguments are despised and excluded, they mean that paleocon bigotry is despised and excluded. No one has excluded the paleocons. They’ve excluded themselves.
This is not to say that political debate is healthy in this country. I’ve written repeatedly of my frustration at the way political debate has shut down in recent years. But a big reason for that shut down of debate, as I’ve also said, has been that reasoned discourse coming from a loyal opposition to the administration, has been replaced by bigoted attacks coming from self-declared enemies of the administration. Email entry |