November
18th 2008
Posted under Conservatism & Media & NeoCons
I guess National Review is getting too “conservative” and hoi polloi for Frum’s growing elitist centrism. He must no longer be comfortable with those grubby Palin supporting “conservatives” at NR.
I say good riddance. Hopefully National Review will bring in someone to replace him who is … oh I don’t know … perhaps … maybe … actually conservative. A man can dream can’t he?
Via Daniel McCarthy at the AmConMag blog.
Weaver on 18 Nov 2008 at 6:53 am #
Frum will be a neoneoconservative in 2012, ha!
Weaver on 18 Nov 2008 at 6:56 am #
I’d hoped National Review would go left… It appears it’s trying to cater to its target audience instead of sticking with its Marxist principles.
It can’t control an Obama reaction completely though.
RonL on 18 Nov 2008 at 9:51 am #
I’d hoped National Review would go left… It appears it’s trying to cater to its target audience instead of sticking with its Marxist principles.
Buckley, Meyers, and Chodorov were Marxists at NR?
I missed something.
Weaver on 18 Nov 2008 at 2:00 pm #
Well, they might as well have been… Vehemently anti-USSR, sure, but so were the Trotskyites who were more pure Marxists. Stalin was hated by some of the left, including many Marxists. National Review today is neocon territory, and that indisputably has some Marxist roots.
Buckley sure didn’t like talk on immigration.
Frank Meyers was a libertarian – they might as well be Marxist. He certainly was no trad.
Some of the early writers were good, but I don’t read anything there now – and wasn’t reading political magazines when it was good.
I like Burnham a lot, though he was mistaken in applying his principles. Kendall is good too, and of course Kirk. Weaver wrote for NR, but I dunno if he was officially with it. I’ve only read about the early NR, because like you I’m not old enough to have experienced its somewhat conservative years.
It seems like Buckley controlled and channeled the right. It’s probably an example of how “the good is the enemy of the better”. Buckley was with the CIA you know – Burnham was too, but Burnham’s thinking remains valuable – did Buckley produce anything of value? If it was ever legitimately conservative, then it went corrupt and sought out sales.
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I’m less familiar with Chodorov, but he was a libertarian right?
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You take a magazine like Chronicles – that’s the mirror opposite of National Review. I don’t agree with Dr. Fleming on everything, but that magazine has substance and yet manages to chase away readers, while NR doesn’t have right wing substance and yet attracts readers. The true core of the American right was for a long time at Chronicles. It probably still is there, though smaller cores are arising elsewhere I think, which is good and needed.
Andrew T. on 18 Nov 2008 at 3:02 pm #
You are pathetic in your sophistry. Marxism and libertarianism couldn’t be any more different. Frank Meyer was a good man, a defender of all of our American values. Could you have blamed him for wanting to find the happy middle between his cultural conservatism and a libertarian political theory, even if the attempt was a sort of failure?
Frank Chodorov was another man of the old right, and a prime opponent of the warfare and welfare state.
Weaver on 18 Nov 2008 at 5:10 pm #
Sophistry? I’m simply stating the trad divide. You classical liberals have a different divide… You can’t expect those with different views to agree with you on everything. Fusionism was trads getting in line behind libertarians, as we discussed before.
What did Meyers think of Burnham’s warmongering btw? On applying his principles, Burnham was very much in the wrong. Burnham’s not a neocon as Raimondo likes to pretend, but he was wrong.
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Anyway, what’s the most damaging event of the American right this decade? 9/11. It vaporised the right, leaving few survivors. Post 9/11 the right was radicalised into loyalty to the American state in reaction to the perceived threat from Islam.
This happened previously with the anti-communism craze. The right supposedly solidified behind the American government in fighting communism. But what it really did was focus its energies on defeating a largely nonexistent threat while being eaten by its allies at home. It is said outside wars are often fought against enemies within, and this is just the purpose the Cold War and 9/11 served, whether or not this was intentional.
Kristol I think it was famously told Buchanan that the culture war had already been fought and lost by his side. Where was the right during the culture war? It was wasting its time fighting communism.
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Today with Obama there’s hope of a new right wing reaction against him. God willing, there’ll be no outside threat to unify us behind Obama, and so some progress, or rather I should say regression, might actually be possible.
However, I no longer put any faith in movements. There’s need of resilient nexuses guided by their own compasses and influencing the formless masses. Movements are fickle and oft disappear as quickly as they form.
Sean Scallon on 18 Nov 2008 at 5:51 pm #
Although weâ€re all allowed the celebrate the demise of the arch-fiend Frum, don’t think that NR is going to calling up Chilton Williamson Jr. or Joe Sobran and ask if they want their old jobs back. Frum is leaving NR (one way or the other) because he knows conservatism as an ideology and as governing philosophy are screwed up, but those over NR believe “More green eggs and more green ham!†to coin a Frum phrase. In other words, Lowry believes “there’s nothing wrong with us and ain’t it great! Obama is going to be President and our circulation is going back up!†David Brooks is right that is a factional battle. The problem is he got the factions all wrong. It’s a battle within the conservative establishment or as Bramwell would call the “inner party†or an old Soviet style Politburo battle between reformers and stand patters. Technically Grover Norquist or Sean Hannity are traditionalists only in the sense that they still think its 1980. Frum is a reformer only in the sense he and Brooks can’t hide their elitism anymore behind a populist facade because Sarah Palin exploded that fascade.
I still have Dead Right on my bookshelf and much of it is pretty dead on in its writing except for those parts where he treats Chronicles writers as if though they writing for Der Sturmer instead of people with ideas worthy to consider. It’s not that Frum is incapable of independent thought, it’s that he never hints at when he’s thinking independently and when he’s taking the party line, thus leaving his changes in directions as more bewildering 180 degree, opportunistic turnabouts instead the product of pondering.
Of course, those at NR should be wary of Frum because he likes to treat his enemies to the right as enemies of the state. Perhaps his next piece will be on the Upatriotic Conservatives of the National Review.
Andrew T. on 18 Nov 2008 at 6:46 pm #
I’m completely aware that there is a trad/liberal divide. In fact, it’s one that cuts quite deep. Every time we have a discussion, you like to pretend that I’m not well aware it exists.
But I strive for a great deal of honesty, so I’m not going to pretend you’re not well aware that libertarianism is extremely different and completely unrelated to Marxism, because I know you are.
Andrew T. on 18 Nov 2008 at 6:52 pm #
Btw, I am still hopeful about the prospect of a movement. For example, Ron Paul’s campaign planted the seeds of a pretty amazing movement that continue onward beyond the campaign, that I continue to see myself as being a part of. I’m going to fight for what I know is right, not be the sorry sonovagun that voted for Hunter.
Movement, not ideology.
Bede on 18 Nov 2008 at 7:19 pm #
Andrew T: Marxism and libertarianism are philosophically similar in that they both entail economic reductionism.
Andrew T. on 18 Nov 2008 at 8:10 pm #
Economic reductionism is totally intrinsic to Marxism. The form that Marxism’s reductionism takes is collectivist and hyper-egalitarian, of course.
Libertarianism doesn’t entail economic reduction. Many Ron Paul libertarians are not ideological people at all, and those that are familiar with economics are just that. And even libertarians that view all individuals as atomic beings possessing only rights and no duties are not generally egalitarian even in preference (left-libertarians make a pathetic, convoluted attempt to reconcile a hard-core political ideology with their left-wing cultural preferences, though).
There’s no similarity.
Andrew T. on 18 Nov 2008 at 8:13 pm #
My larger point is, even if both Marxism and libertarianism reduce living, breathing people to economic cogs (only true of SOME libertarians), even the way in which they do so and the reasons are totally different.
roho on 18 Nov 2008 at 10:20 pm #
Night after night in the early eighties, Patrick Buchanan destroyed liberal ideology on the show “Crossfire”. The Cold War was a way of life, and we had little involvement in the crazy Middleast.(Reagan retreated the marine barracks in Lebanon, and jap-slapped Khadaffi in Lybia with a token bombing.)………..He was focused on “Communism” in Europe.
The conservative movement was united against “Intitlement Programs” and any legislation that expanded Government spending. And NR and Buckley was out front and on board……..But, Marxist-Israel Firsters needed to reinvent themselves inorder to seize the conservative movement, and get the focus on the middleast. (Oh, how they missed the days of LBJ and JFK.)……….so, they infiltrated, called themselves Neocons, and started cutting deals with the liberals to expand the “Nanny State”, if they could just intervene more in the middleast.
Has it worked?……..Not counting the War, Government Spending increased 55% from 2000-2008…….(And the GOP can only say “We came to Washington to change Washington, but Washington changed us.”?)…………In “Dubya” they found a “Classic Useful Idiot.”
Weaver on 19 Nov 2008 at 2:07 am #
Andrew,
my original intent wasn’t to insult liberals or the early NR. I meant to attack the neocons who seem to be in charge of NR.
When I said “they might as well be Marxists”, I was thinking with regard to certain issues.
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And where I said “Chronicles chases away readers”, I meant largely because it has substance and publishes a variety. For whatever reason, I often run into people who should still be reading it, but are furious at it.
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Hopefully that clears up any trouble my grumpiness got me into.
Weaver on 19 Nov 2008 at 10:32 pm #
Regarding my being a sophist: Andrew,
nothing I’ve written on politics has ever been more than common sense and simple. I’m not an expert, though I am I think sane in an unusually insane time.
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The trad divide:
Those who wish to preserve a people and its ways v. those who threaten a people and its ways.
I’m certain you know of the origin of the left v. right dichotomy, so you shouldn’t have trouble grasping liberals as on the left and trads on the right. And no more than 2 days ago I was telling you one way: how libertarians wish to tear down trade barriers, thus promoting globalism. And you’ve read Mises, so you’re fully aware that free trade is thought to encourage interdependence.
Add to this that NR was pro-Cold War rather than focusing on defeating the enemy within America.
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The libertarian divide:
Individualists v. Socialists.
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That’s all I meant. So, no it’s not sophistry.
You have an incredible gift of annoyance, and then when someone answers your attacks like I have here you often accuse them of being a bore… How is one to interact with you?
roho on 20 Nov 2008 at 12:34 am #
Go get him Weaver! I got your back!………………..Ha-Ha………Death to the NEOCONS!……………………………………………………………;)
Weaver on 20 Nov 2008 at 1:31 am #
Roho,
are these debates between you and I on the one side and Andrew on the other consumption or investment? haha.
Andrew T. on 23 Nov 2008 at 4:01 pm #
“Death to the NEOCONS!”
Which I’m not.
I’m not averse to interdependence and peaceful communication with other nations. No xenophobia here.
Weaver on 24 Nov 2008 at 11:10 pm #
I’m xenophobic
I don’t even trust strangers from South Carolina haha.