An intriguing but lazily written article

Richard W. writes:

I found this article by Daniel Greenfield, “The Graveyard of Neo-Conservatism,” interesting and thought you might as well.

LA replies:

Thanks for sending. He has interesting and original insights, and I thought of posting and commenting on it. But the article is also sloppily written, with unexplained references, mixed metaphors, jumbled overlong sentence that contain an unintelligible hash of ideas, and so on. It’s a draft that needs more work.

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September 21

Paul Nachman writes:

I think you’re too hard on Daniel Greenfield, or, anyway, not appreciative enough. It’s a muscular article, with passages like this:

If Muslims can’t be taught to be nice people and won’t leave us alone, then there are two alternatives. Give them what they want or give them hell. Obama has tried the former with the expected results. The window on giving them hell is slowly starting to creak open, though I wouldn’t expect many prominent Republican politicians to start talking like Patton any time soon.

And apart from not explicitly saying that it’s time to end, and then reverse, Muslim immigration, how is this …

It is time for a new way, a way in which Muslims will no longer have to learn about America and Americans will no longer have to learn about Islam, where we will give up on winning each other’s hearts and minds, and stick to watching each other’s property lines. That is the argument that needs to be advanced in the face of Obama’s catastrophic Arab Spring failures and the alternative to it is four more years of terror and appeasement …

… different from separationism?

(I concede that I have difficulty following early parts of the articles, consistent with the fact that I’ve never gotten into neoconservatism.)

LA replies:

I agree. There were strong passages in the article that I wanted to praise and comment on, but, by the time I finished the article, the badly written parts had given me mental indigestion. There are paragraphs so jumbled that I have no idea what he’s saying. There is no excuse for such sloppy writing, especially when one has the ability to write better and one is dealing with such a serious issue, as Greenfield was here.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 20, 2012 03:08 PM | Send