Month: March 2010

Yglesias zeroes in on one aspect of the termination:

The most surprising thing about David Frum’s apparent parting of ways with the American Enterprise Institute is the extremely mild nature of Frum’s heterodoxy. What he’s been doing for the past week has been to primarily offer a tactical critique of congressional Republicans’ approach to health reform. And if you can’t offer a tactical critique in the wake of an unequivocal defeat then what can you do? I don’t really expect people to welcome sharp disagreement about matters of principle, but when you adopt an approach to blocking a piece of legislation, and then the legislation doesn’t get blocked how are you not going to engage in some spirited disagreement about what went wrong?

TNC compares Frum with me:

It's worth contrasting Frum with Andrew, who I think differs with the right on core goals. Andrew doesn't simply believe the GOP should compromise he thinks the current health care bill is a good idea. Whereas Frum endorsed John McCain (though he was sharply critical of Sarah Palin), Andrew endorsed Barack Obama. Frum coined the term "Axis of Evil" and wrote a book defending the Iraq War. Andrew supported the war, but now regards his support with regret.

But here's where David and I agree: we both grew up when conservatism was intellectually sharp and interesting. Its current brutal anti-intellectualism, its open hostility to moderation in any form; its substitution of purer and purer ideology for actual, pragmatic ideas: these are trends that have left a lot of us on the center right marooned. I think David may well be glad he is now formally ostracized. It will liberate him and his formidable mind. Serious thinking conservatives know that these are times for real re-thinking, not more positioning. Julian Sanchez:

One of the more striking features of the contemporary conservative movement is the extent to which it has been moving toward epistemic closure. Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!)  This epistemic closure can be a source of solidarity and energy, but it also renders the conservative media ecosystem fragile.

John Aloysius Farrell:

If AEI was not punishing Frum for his apostasy, then its timing was at the very least awful, and the episode  handled with a clumsiness that Larry, Moe, and Curly would admire. Machiavelli would tell us: If you are going to be labeled as intolerant anyway, you might as well be feared. No one in Washington will respect an institution that failed to foresee how this would play out.

Tunku Varadarajan is vicious:

David is a man I’ve known professionally for almost a decade, and with whom my social interaction has always been very genial. He is a good and energetic man, and has, in the years since he left service at the White House, dedicated himself to being what I call a “polite-company conservative” (or PCC), much like David Brooks and Sam Tanenhaus at the New York Times (where the precocious Ross Douthat is shaping up to be a baby version of the species). A PCC is a conservative who yearns for the goodwill of the liberal elite in the media and in the Beltway—who wishes, always, to have their ear, to be at their dinner parties, to be comforted by a sense that liberal interlocutors believe that they are not like other conservatives, with their intolerance and boorishness, their shrillness and their talk radio. The PCC, in fact, distinguishes himself from other conservatives not so much ideologically—though there is an element of that—as aesthetically.

Tristero:

None of the bozos who require purity tests in liberal and leftwing circles are anywhere remotely as powerful or as influential as the fanatical psychopaths who both fund and staff the conservative think tanks. Nor are they likely to become influential anytime in the forseeable future. I can't think of even a moderately liberal group, let alone a genuinely leftwing group, that funnels staff that have been ideologically vetted into the government at anything close to the level at which the AEI and the Federalist Society pack presidential administrations with the politically correct. Nor does any liberal-leaning group – say, CEIP or CAP – require anything close to the purity of ideology the right does.

Jonah Goldberg:

It seems like the day before yesterday Frum was putting steel in the spine of the GOP on immigration, gay marriage, etc. If he really believed those things then and he believes his new analysis about the GOP now, then he should at least be remorseful about the changing times and the need for the party and movement to moderate. He should be saying things like “I wish I was wrong, but we have to face reality.” He should be celebrating when his thesis has been disproved (as it was, to one extent or another, in every off-year election of the last 12 months). He should be saying, “As much as I disagree with how Rush says X, I have to concede on the merits he’s right about X.” And he should both cheer and revisit his thesis when serious social conservatives win without compromising their beliefs (as happened in the McDonnell election).

Josh Green:

Watching the David Frum saga unfold, culminating with his being fired from the American Enterprise Institute yesterday and essentially purged from the respectable conservative movement, I'm reminded more and more of my old boss, Charlie Peters. Charlie founded The Washington Monthly magazine in 1969, and undertook to reorient a liberal movement that he felt had become hopelessly lost and inward looking. Charlie believed in a liberal vision for society–just not the means by which the Democrats of the 1970s and '80s were pursuing it. His philosophy became known as neoliberalism. It's a measure of how out of step Democrats at the time were with popular sentiment that a 1976 Washington Monthly cover story titled "Criminals Belong in Jail" was controversial.

The conservative reaction to Frum's suggestion that health-care reform is a Republican Waterloo feels uncannily similar.

A reader writes:

You're starting to get the emotional tunnel-vision people sometimes accuse you of.  (It is sometimes a very good thing – such as the passionate way you went about digging for information on Iran last June – but sometimes you seem to dive headfirst into the pool before checking the water level.)  To wit: the "new" documentary on the BBC that seemingly implicates the current Pope in covering up child abuse scandals aired four years ago. Yes, the article about the documentary (from September 2006) was reposted today, but likely only because it is relevant to current events.

It did not receive much attention then because its claims are dubious.

The incredibly "secret" document "Crimen Sollicitationis" and its subsequent update by Ratzinger are surprisingly public information. Indeed, "Crimen Sollicitationis" – including the updated version – does not call for secrecy of the allegations or prohibit the involvement of the criminal justice system; it calls for the secrecy of the Vatican court's procedure, which is highly common. Also, your favorite Catholic reporter John Allen has a 2003 rebuttal to the charge that "Crimen Sollicitationis" contains instructions on how to commit child rape and get away with it. Finally, criminal charges were brought against the clergyman who raped the maker of the documentary when he was 14 (the priest committed suicide before the trial began), so the claims that the Vatican is set up as a protection for child rapists is somewhat undercut again.

The dubious nature of the article probably explains why it is in the Entertainment section of the London Evening Standard and not the News section. The writer even calls him Thomas Ratzinger!

Friedersdorf is trying to get to the bottom of the controversy. Bartlett responds:

If it turns out that I misheard or misunderstood what David told me I promise a full retraction and public apology to AEI. In the meantime, my inclination is to believe anything David tells me and treat with deep skepticism anything I hear from AEI to the contrary. The organization has lost an enormous amount of credibility by firing him and hiring Republican political hacks like Marc Thiessen. That’s a statement I will never need to retract.

Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, 11.44 am

A reader writes:

My life as a survivor of sexual abuse has been horrific. But at least some light is finally being shone on the criminal deception. My story is found here. Another way the Church has hidden these priests from justice is allowing them to go to poorer countries where the local bishop does not even check the priest's background. My abuser is still hiding in Mexico and since today is his birthday, I share this with hopes that it will call for international outrage and cooperation in bringing these rapists to justice.

Another writes:

I’m guessing that the reason why Amy Davidson is

outraged is that she didn’t go to Catholic school.

I went to Catholic school in the 1960’s and 1970’s and some of the stuff I either incurred or witnessed would make your hair curl.  But more amazing was the attitude of parents and other adults with regards to the actions of Nuns (and they were just as bad) and priests. 

I would come home with bruises and my mother’s attitude was that I deserved it, that the priests and nuns were always right.  If a priest got “funny” with you once you started to develop (they hit on girls as well), you were just lying or over-reacting (we had one priest at the Catholic school I attended nick-named “Father Feel you Up.”) 

So Amy Davidson is outraged that no one paid attention to deaf kids?   Adult Catholics back then were just so in awe of the sanctity of the church, they let a lot of things slide.

Ethan Bronner today:

“Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition, anchored by his Likud Party, views Jerusalem, west and east, as the undivided, eternal capital of the Jewish people, where it can build where it wants. The Palestinians and their supporters throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds view East Jerusalem as holy and as rightfully under Palestinian sovereignty.”

Not false, but surely misleading. The entire world, including the US, has never accepted the legality of the occupation and settlements over the 1967 line. As the WaPo puts it today:

“The United States, like the rest of the world, has never recognized Israel's sovereignty over territory occupied in the 1967 war.”

It isn't Likud vs the Arab world; it's Likud vs the rest of the world.

The National Catholic Reporter gets the importance of this moment:

We now face the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history.

Its editorial demands a personal response from the pontiff to clear evidence of his own personal complicity in cases of child rape and abuse and their subsequent cover-up:

The Holy Father needs to directly answer questions, in a credible forum, about his role — as archbishop of Munich (1977-82), as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1982-2005), and as pope (2005-present) — in the mismanagement of the clergy sex abuse crisis.

We urge this not primarily as journalists seeking a story, but as Catholics who appreciate that extraordinary circumstances require an extraordinary response. Nothing less than a full, personal and public accounting will begin to address the crisis that is engulfing the worldwide church. It is that serious.

I think it's that serious too. But this Pope could not face such a press conference or even a more dignified "credible forum". The entire edifice could crumble to dust.

Heartbreaking – and unintentionally revealing – details from Milwaukee's paper:

Budzinski, whose sign language was spoken by his daughter GiGi, said Murphy would come into their dorm at night, take them into a closet and molest them. Budzinski, who detailed abuse at the hands of Murphy to the Journal Sentinel in 2006, said he told Archbishop William E. Cousins and other officials about the abuse in 1974 when he was 26. The archbishop yelled at Budzinski, he said. He left the meeting crying.

From that 2006 two-part series:

Murphy, who was fluent in sign language, became a key link to the hearing world for the many deaf children who, like Budzinski, were unable to talk with their hearing parents.

"Back then there was no way to communicate," said his mother, Irene Budzinski, 89. "I never learned sign language. When you had a deaf

child, the public health nurse would say, 'Send them to some school.'

We were looking for a good place.

"Who would think any harm would come to a young child?"

Steve Geier, 55, of Madison, who became deaf after a high fever, remembered being left at St. John's at age 8 as his mother and father walked back to the car. His mother, he said, had tears running down her face.

"Here is my mom and dad, talk, talk, talk, talk, and I am looking at them," he said. "My suitcase gets put down, and my mom and dad said we have to go home. So I go running after them. They said 'No, you stay here.' It was confusing and I cried."

Murphy would console him.

"[A]sk yourself why Catholics like Ms Lopez simply cannot or will not engage with it in any way whatsoever. It's distressing in the extreme. The church deserves its defenders (as even the guiltiest parties do). It is a dark day when its usual stalwarts will say nothing," – Democracy In America.