Month: January 2007

I don’t really know Rod Dreher very well. Our friendship has been entirely via email, and for a while back, it seemed he was none too fond of my work. But I always found in him, even when I disagreed with him, a passionate honesty, especially about the big things in life (faith, life, death, justice). So I’m not surprised that Rod has been driven to a moment of political catharsis by the last few years. He has already been condescended to by Jonah Goldberg, a man for whom the mention of "conscience’ is greeted with a scoff. But Rod’s honest words about what has been done by Bush ring true to me. They do not deserve to be dismissed as some kind of reversion to a cliche-ridden hippiedom. They deserve to be seen as the honest attempt of a conservative to ask himself: what were those people, for all their extremes and failures, actually trying to say? Is there any merit to it? Have we re-learned a lesson some of them artlessly may have tried to convey forty years ago?

Here’s a section of Rod’s NPR cri de coeur that Glenn Greenwald has also noticed:

As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.

But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool. In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.

The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government’s conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me. It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican President.

I turn 40 next month – middle aged at last – a time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed so painfully. I did not expect Vietnam. As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.

I had a heretical thought for a conservative – that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word – that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot – that they have to question authority.

On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?

Will my children, too small now to understand Iraq, take me seriously when I tell them one day what powerful men, whom their father once believed in, did to this country? Heavy thoughts for someone who is still a conservative despite it all. It was a long drive home.

I had dinner recently with a former Bush official. I was taken aback by the horror now felt even by those who once worked for Bush at the consequence of his recklessness. For my part, this experience has shaken me too to my roots, which is why I felt the need just to clarify for myself why I was once so proud to be a conservative, and why I am now so deeply conflicted to be called one.

Fish Island, London, 4.08 pm.

They’ve never really gotten along, have they? But the more you think about it, the threats of a Pentagon official, Cully Stimson, against lawyers doing a constitutional duty defending terror suspects speaks volumes about the core malice of this administration. Sources among the heroic community of pro bono lawyers who are defending some of the innocent and some of the guilty at Gitmo tell me that Stimson’s comments are not isolated, that there has been a full program dedicated to the harassment of Gitmo lawyers – surveillance, pettty harassment, pressure on their law firms. Now ask yourself: why would a government that has competently captured and detained dangerous terrorists not want good legal defenses for them to show beyond a doubt that they have been fairly detained? The Bush administration acts and sounds like a defensive police state when it comes to terrorism detainees. Maybe that’s because, in many cases of competely unfair detention, they are.

Of course, there’s one way to make amends: fire Stimson and end the campaign of harassment.

The National Interest has a constantly expanding symposium. Check it out.

A reader writes:

I’m behind on my reading and am just now getting through The Conservative Soul.  I’m only about 60 pages into it now, in the midst of your dissection of fundamentalism, and I have to say – as someone raised in a fundamentalist home, as someone who at one time was among the most fundamental of fundamentalists, believing the Bible to be inerrant, and so on – I don’t think I’ve read a more clear, honest, understandable assessment of fundamentalism, its logic, its allure, and its dangers.

There’s a semi-obscure quotation from Sir Francis Bacon that has become a motto of sorts for me, in my middle years:

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."

The fundamentalist will never understand the beauty of that statement; conservatives must, if they wish to "get back" the "soul" they have "lost."

Thank you for capturing what so many conservatives are thinking but have not yet had the forum or talent to articulate.

A reader writes:

This discussion about "who is more condescending" is silly.

In the first place, there are many of us who opposed the war from the outset who didn’t attend rallies b/c we, as you say, didn’t hear our arguments being presented there. We met in churches, living rooms and coffee shops – writing letters to editors, to our elected representatives and our loved ones asking them to oppose the war. All I can do is speak for myself in knowing that I doubted the case made for the war, recognized the myopia that was Wolfowitz’s description of how the war would be prosecuted and saw clearly that those who opposed the war were told they were anti-American, unpatriotic and otherwise assaulted by ad hominem’s.

While I’m glad you have changed your mind about the war, I think you do many people a disservice by suggesting that those who were right initially were right for the wrong reasons.

My father served in the US Army for 22 years, I lived on and was eduated on army bases, I am a first-generation American on my mothers side (she is a WW2 refugee), I have owned several small business and I am active in my community and my kids schools. I am not a member of ANSWER nor are the people I worked with to oppose the war. We are Americans who love our country, the liberties it offers us and in turn the hope it offers others around the world.

I hold no position of moral superiority over you because I opposed this war before you. I hold no sanctimony that I was right before you were.

A reader writes:

Your bear video has its daft charms – love the hefty dude lip-syncing to that girlish hip-hop number. As someone who used to be a "Chelsea Boy" type and is now a big old bear, I’m excited to see that the whole 90’s clone movement is over – and you called it way ahead of time, Andrew.

As you’ve noted, one of the best things to happen to the "gay scene" lately is the emergence of the Scissor Sisters, who make it totally OK and, well, hot, to be a big bear (Babydaddy), skinny fag (Jake,) or freaky Creature of the Night (side-burn-heavy Del.)  Don’t even get me started on the gorgeousness of Ana who is so not a size 0 and so much sexier for it.

Anyway, are we seeing a shift in what "gay" can mean to the wider public? I gave up on all of the "queer" glossy magazines because they promote one type of guy – chiseled, hot, white, and massively buff. Don’t get me twisted – such dudes are hot. But 90 percent of us are, ahem, bulky, or balding, or have bad skin, or imperfect teeth. Once upon a time, I probably could have posed for Advocate Men – and I was miserable. Now, I weigh thirty pounds "too much", have a beard, back hair – and love life. I’ve got my partner, my friends, my dogs, and a new kitten. I rarely go out at night and rarely miss it. Could I be part of this new army of "regular guy/girl" homos who don’t give a blot for the "scene"? Yes I am! And I’m far from the only one – whether in their twenties or sixties. Let the radical leftist "queers" call you, Camille, Bruce, and Tammy all they like – fact is, you guys speak for, well, OK, most of us!

BabyDaddy is indeed a marvel to behold. My 2005 TNR essay on the end of gay culture can be read here. My 2003 Salon essay on bear culture can be read here.

"I thought it was okay to be single. I thought it was okay to not have children, and I thought you could still make good decisions on behalf of the country if you were single and didn’t have children," – secretary of state Condi Rice.

Good for Rice. She doesn’t have to have kids or family members to understand the gravity of warfare or the arguments about policy in Iraq. No one does. Subjecting her to this kind of cheap shot is completely unnecessary – and counter-productive for Boxer’s case. Her refusal to even contemplate that her statement was loaded with prejudice (even unconscious prejudice) only keeps the insult alive. Apologize, senator – to single women, and childless women – and move on.

(Photo: Ron Edmonds/AP.)

A reader asks a good question:

I need an explanation. The common argument for why we "cannot lose" in Iraq, is that it will result in a breeding ground for terrorists (specifically Al-Qaeda) in Iraq – much like Afghanistan was (is?).  But doesn’t this assumption rely on the same misunderstanding that haunted Congressman Reyes, that there is a significant difference between Shiite and Sunni.  If we leave Iraq, I suspect the civil war would escalate. Who would win?  Almost certainly the Shiite majority.  Why would the Shiites then allow Sunni terrorists such as Al-Qaeda to set up shop there?  I don’t see why they would.  So the result would seem to be a Shiite state and no large-scale Sunni terrorist activity (certinaly none focussed on the US).

I recognize the problems of a possible genocide against the Sunnis and of an Iranian puppet state.  But those problems are wholly different than the argument made by Bush and his supporters that leaving would result in an Al-Qaeda breeding ground.

Where am I wrong?

Give him points for chutzpah.