Words don’t matter, says conservative editor

Richard Lowry, the Beltway reporter who has been the editor of America’s flagship conservative magazine for the last nine years, has just resolved the important and vexing question of what to call our enemies: it doesn’t matter. He writes:

NAMING THE ENEMY—JUST NOT THAT IMPORTANT [Rich Lowry]
I hate to say it, but I don’t think it’s too important what we call our enemy. Yes, “the war on terror” is flawed, but everyone knows what we’re talking about. And I don’t think when President Bush says (or said) “Islamo-fascists” light bulbs go off for most Americans who sit up and think, “Oh, now I know who we are fighting.” My view is the whole naming debate is “much ado,” and although it’s very interesting, its contribution to actually winning this war will be nil.

Lowry is saying that it is of no practical significance whether we call our enemy “terror,” or “fascists,” or the “heartbreak of psoriasis,” because everyone already knows who our enemy is, anyway. Really? Does the president, who is the main focus of this debate (since the debate is mainly over what terms the president uses and should use) know who our enemy is? He thinks our enemy is a handful of extremists who “hate our freedoms” and who have nothing to do with Islam, which is a religion of love and peace. Since that’s what the leader of our side thinks the enemy is, why should Lowry think that everybody else on our side knows better?

Lowry’s mindless dismissal of the effort to find words that accurately describe reality is further evidence that the conservative movement, married to a mindless president, has lost the desire, and perhaps the ability, to think.

Carl Simpson writes:

Lowry thus proves the point of my earlier joke:

“This is your brain …… this is your brain on Dubya.”

Hey Rich! Put down the crack pipe! A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

If Mr. Simpson can recycle his jokes, I can recycle mine. Bush is the anti-Falstaff:

Just as Falstaff was the cause of wit in other men, Bush is the cause of witlessness, a one-man national stupefaction machine.

Of course, this description applies mainly to the right half of America. The left half of America is stupefied, not as a result of blind identification with Bush, but as a result of blind hatred of Bush. One way or another, Bush stupefies everyone.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 05, 2006 04:51 PM | Send