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The end of debate
(Note: In the below discussion of the Commentary symposium, I should also have mentioned John Bolton who is more thoughtful and reality based than the other symposiasts; however, as I see it, he also fails to go outside the terribly constrained parameters of the discussion to ask what is this war, who is the enemy, how do we defeat him?) After noting in passing the departure of John Podhoretz from The Corner, an event that, according to Corner watchers, has transpired without a single goodbye uttered on either side (no surprise, given that not a single minimalist “congrats,” other than from K-Lo, was offered by anyone at NRO to J-Pod for his grotesque appointment as editor of Commentary), Jim Geraghty confesses to the unhappy realization that Hillary Clinton is never held accountable for anything. This is something I’ve been saying for a long time. In her first run for the U.S. Senate, she was never subjected to normal press questioning. And she never will be. She is the walking, breathing abolition of politics. Unfortunately, after six years without any intelligent public debate in this country on President Bush’s “war on terror,” the abolition of politics no longer seems like such a strange and inconceivable thing. Thank you, left-wingers, for your destructiveness that has made discussion impossible. Thank you, neocons and Bush supporters, for turning so much of the conservative movement into a mass of mindless hoplites. Speaking of the end of debate, the November Commentary has a symposium on the “war on terror” as seen through the lens of Norman Podhoretz’s book World War IV. (If interested in reading it, you should save it to your computer now while it’s free online.) Fifteen neocons (with the exception of Andrew McCarthy, who declines the title and takes a somewhat different position), all sharing exactly the same assumptions, jargon, and world view, talk about a policy they all agree on, without a single participant dissenting from the Great Norman—who is referenced and praised constantly, as the whole symposium is about his book—on any essential point. Yes, a couple of them gently question whether democratization is the way to go, and some doubt that “World War IV” is the right term, but all accept the idea that we are in a “war” against Islamic extremism that we are waging by staying the course in Iraq and (according to a clear majority) spreading democracy, whatever that means. None of them asks the most basic questions, such as How can democratization be the answer, since many Muslims who have immigrated into the democratic West or have been born of such immigrants are becoming jihadists, and, Is our adversary just Islamic extremists, or all of Islam, and, What would winning this war against Islamic extremism actually entail? They don’t have to address such fundamental issues or even wonder if what they’re saying makes any sense or connects with external reality, since they all live inside same self-enclosed mental, social, and professional bubble. The result is 15 elite members of the Western intelligentsia babbling about absolutely nothing. Commentary is a whited sepulchre of the intellect, magisterial on the outside, but within full of dead men’s bones. And if that’s what Commentary has become under Neil Kozodoy, imagine what it will be like under J-Pod.
Paul Gottfried writes:
You’ve begun to sound like me in engaging the neocon problem. I wish they would have stayed at their former level of dangerous stupidity and disfiguring mishegas and would not have continued to slide downward. The goyim are so much their moral as well as professional captives that no matter what John and Norman do, they will find a multitude of fellow travelers. Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 05, 2007 08:56 PM | Send Email entry |