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Powerline celebrates diversity
John of Powerline writes about the Powerline-hosted event in New York City Monday night where Norman Podhoretz was given Powerline’s first book award:
Our Power Line book event tonight was great fun. We’ll have much more to say over the next couple of days, but for now a few quick impressions. It was extraordinary to have Henry Kissinger, Norman Podhoretz and Mark Steyn as speakers and panelists. I can’t think when a more impressive or diverse group has been assembled.Wow! A Jewish neoconservative, a half-Jewish neoconservative, and a Jewish foreign policy realist, all of them stars of the Republican establishment and supporters of President Bush’s foreign policy. Like John, I also am scratching my head trying to think of when a more diverse group has ever been assembled. Along with Powerline, the other ardently beating heart of Norman Podhoretz worship is the New York Sun, the editor of which, Seth Lipsky, who is far less intelligent and (as hard as it may be to carry off) far more sycophantic than the Powerline guys, writes in a Monday editorial:
Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative sage, will be honored tonight at a dinner in Manhattan, where his “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” will be given the “Book of the Year” award by Powerline…. It is a time when, more than ever, we need sages like Norman Podhoretz to ask basic questions, and deliver basic answers …So now Stormin’ Norman, the warrior pope, is a sage. In his book and in his encyclical-length articles at Commentary for the last several years, Podhoretz has been demanding that America give itself heart and soul to a non-existent “war” against a non-existent entity, “Islamofascism,” a “war” that consists of promoting elections in the Muslim world, elections that will inevitably bring to power the very misnamed “Islamofascists” whom Podhoretz opposes. And for constructing these ruinous ideological fantasies and drawing in much of the American elite with him, Podhoretz is a sage. The Sun editorial also praises what it calls “the Podhoretz method,” which consists of asking probing questions on basic matters, such as “What’s a Kurd anyway?”, which Podhoretz asked of reporter Jeffrey Goldberg at a banquet five years ago after Goldberg had given a talk on Kurdistan.
Basic questions are what one might call the Podhoretz Method, and we predict that generations from now, journalists will study his knack for—his insistence on—pressing the simplest seeming, most basic questions as if each were fresh and open to new implications.Think of that! Such is Podhoretz’s sage-like wisdom that generations from now (generations!), journalists will be still studying his amazingly original method of asking questions such as “What is a Kurd?” Meanwhile, the sage Podhoretz refuses to ask such basic questions as, “What do the Koran and the Islamic Traditions actually teach and command?”, or “What do Muslims actually believe?”, or “Is it true that Islam is compatible with democracy?”, or “Since free elections in the Muslim world have repeatedly resulted in the election of jihadist parties, is it really true that democracy is the solution to jihadism?” Nope. The eponymous practitioner of the Podhoretz Method never addresses such questions (though occasionally he goes through the barest motions of doing so, as I show here). The editorial continues:
The Podhoretz Method is one for our moment, too, what with our country at a crossroads and in the midst of a presidential election that for the first time in decades appears it will involve neither a presidential nor vice presidential incumbent.Excuse me—it “appears” that the 2008 election will involve neither a presidential nor vice presidential incumbent? My gosh, it’s been known for years that that will be the case. But to Seth Lipsky and the Sun staff, always on the cutting edge of societal evolution, it only appears that this is the case. With their quick wits, they haven’t yet taken in that it is actually so. That’s because, notwithstanding Lipsky’s admiration for the Podhoretz Method, which consists of asking basic questions such as “What is a Kurd?”, he has not yet risen to the level of practicing it himself. So for the last three years Lipsky has never asked—and answered—this basic question: “Is one of the prospective presidential candidates in 2008 a presidential or vice presidential incumbent?” That’s why Lipsky admires the Podhoretz Method so much. He truthfully senses that it is far above his own abilities.
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