Toryism Lives!

Derb tries to keep the flame alive in America:

We must revive the fine tradition of conservative pessimism. In this age, optimism is for children and fools.  And liberals.

Some children will be left behind. You cannot "remake the Middle East" or "defeat evil." The poor will always be with us. Black and white will never mingle together in unselfconscious harmony. Corporations will not research and explore without hope of profit. Russia will not become Sweden. Forty million immigrants speaking a single language will not assimilate.

Conservatives used to know all this.  Some — the infallibly sapient Roger Kimball, for example — still do.  The smiley-faces are leading us to perdition.  They must be shouted down.

Yes, we can!

No, you can’t, you bloody fools.

       

Young Conservatives Unplugged

Culture 11, touted as a more conservative Slate, just launched. It’s headed by David Kuo and staffed by Conor Friedersdorf (a Dish alum), James Poulos, and Peter Suderman – among others. It cannot but be a good sign that so many lively, open-minded, humane and brilliant young right-of-center writers have pulled together to chart a new path. Know hope. And check it out.

In The Name Of Journalism

Dave Barry attempts a historic feat – getting across the convention floor:

7:48 — Through intense effort I manage to surge maybe eight feet, where the path is blocked by a TV network that has set up a platform on the floor so its reporters can report on the convention by talking to each other with their backs to the actual convention. There is huge excitement in the surge as people catch glimpses of both Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer, who are, in this environment, the Beatles. The surgers all stop, whip out cellphones, and take pictures of the backs of the heads of people who are taking pictures of the backs of the heads of people who might actually be getting direct visual shots of Anderson and Wolf. It is a lifetime convention memory.

7:53 — I keep fighting my way forward. As I squeeze past a group of men in suits, I have strong and direct buttular contact, lasting a good seven seconds, with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. At least it was good for me.

7:58 — I finally reach my destination: the Florida delegates. I was concerned that they might get confused and wind up in, say, New Orleans, but there they were, and as a Floridian I am proud to report that they were wearing pink flamingo sunglasses that expressed the clear message: "Hey, we’re dorks!"

8:02 — After trying without success to score a pair of dork sunglasses, I realize I have only eight minutes to return my floor pass. Desperately fighting my way back, I find my path blocked by a mass of people taking pictures of the backs of the heads of people trying to take pictures of Spike Lee. He’s trying to take a picture of the podium, but it looks like he’s mainly getting the backs of heads.

8:04 — The convention floor erupts as the big TV screen shows … OHMIGOD … JOE BIDEN! He’s HERE!

Another Bush Bungle

Dr. iRack at Abu Muqawama on Bush wanting us to stay in Iraq until 2015, Maliki wanting us out in 2010, and the two settling on 2011:

The date is not finalized, and it is not clear what if any U.S. presence there might be after 2011 (since, even under Maliki’s recent formulation, the Iraqis could ask us to stay longer in a support role after that.) But if you want to know why our leverage has gone down, you now know. Because Bush was begging to let us stay longer than the Iraqis wanted, we had to give the Iraqis concessions instead of vice versa to let us do so. This whole thing should have been crafted to get the Iraqis to convince us we shouldn’t leave sooner and convince us we should provide them with residual support (counter-terrorism assistance, training and advising, deterrence against external foes, etc.)–but instead we begged to stay longer.

Isolationists They Aren’t

Michael Flynn is scared by this line from the official Democratic platform:

We believe we must also be willing to consider using military force in circumstances beyond self defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability-to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities.