Category: The Dish

Bits and Bobs

The quote about freedom being the right to decide for oneself the meaning of the universe was officially authored by three Supreme Court Justices, O’Conner, Souter and Kennedy, the real conservatives on the court. But most court observers see Kennedy’s style at work. I am not surprised. And the OED citation for the first use of the word "neoconservative" is from an 1883 edition of the Contemporary Review, in an article called "The Conservative Dilemma" by Henry Dunckley. Alas, I don’t have the full context, so I don’t know whether his meaning comes even faintly close to what we now call "neocons." Macdonald’s reference clearly does. So Dwight still has it, unless any other readers can set us straight.

Yglesias Award Nominees

"Suppose that intellectuals of the left were thinking more clearly about the American nation as (a) a whole and (b) a work in progress? Suppose that ideas about actual American potential proved more appealing on the putatively left-wing campus than sticking up, in code and despair (albeit with flourishes), for all kinds of exotic indeterminacies, theological neo-Marxisms, and third-worldist romantic fancies?" – Todd Gitlin, TPM Cafe.

"There can be no doubt that the left in general, but the campus variety in particular, is profoundly pessimistic and dour in its attitude towards this country. It seems to be built in to the DNA of campus leftist activism to be as over-the-top as possible in describing America as a den of corruption and injustice. It is the luxury of students who by and large have never known what true corruption and injustice look like but who are attracted to the romance of revolutionary thinking," – a reader from TPM Cafe.

Both writers go on to criticize the right, or aspects of the right. Fine. But what we are beginning to see on the honest right and honest left is a genuine attempt to re-think the world after the last five years. It needs rethinking; both "sides" have an internal accounting to do for their positions; and the calcified rhetoric on both extremes is an attempt to stop it.

Bush’s Gift To The Left

The next phase in the Medicare prescription drug entitlement is pretty obvious: the law will be changed soon to ensure that the federal government negotiate with drug companies for the price for the drugs. You can see the logic here at the DailyKos. Once you have laid the groundwork for a new entitlement, the full power of the state is involved. Once you have conceded the principle that all seniors should be able to get the latest drugs by borrowing other people’s money, it’s weird to put any restrictions on demand – it will soon grow exponentially, and the "donut hole" will surely be removed by a future Congress. So we’ll soon shift to a system of fantastically expensive free drugs of all kinds for all seniors and a crippling of the pharmaceutical industry’s research and development arm. The trade-off will be complete: a collapse in research in return for free drugs for the most pampered senior generation in history. Those boomers still have clout! Bush’s mixture of statism and incompetence has already made this inevitable. But a giant leap to the left on healthcare is just poised to occur. That leap is Bush’s legacy. Just watch it unfold.

Fukuyama and Hegel

Gary Rosen fingers a critical turn in Francis Fukuyama’s thought: against Fukyama’s previously neo-Hegelian idea of an inevitable global unfolding of human liberty on the American model:

What’s missing from this, as a reader of the old Fukuyama would know, is the Hegelian twist that gave his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man its peculiar intensity and breadth. Liberal democracy, in that telling, was not only about the desire for pleasure and physical well-being but also about a second, more elevated drive: the individual’s "struggle for recognition," the spirited – and often political – assertion of personal dignity and worth. About this deeply felt human need, Fukuyama is now silent. Yet in today’s Middle East, nothing is so striking as the dearth of channels for its expression.

Sure. And I tend to agree that democracy in the Middle East would help drain the swamp that gives us hordes of mosquito-type terrorists. But a key premise of conservatism, it seems to me, is that history has no direction, that it can go any which way, and has. That’s why Fukuyama’s last book, which was as much Nietzschean as Hegelian, was in places most unconservative. What true-believing neocons had was a true secular belief – in the principles of America, and their inevitable triumph in every part of the world. Perhaps that belief is still worth having, if only to cheer ourselves up. But it surely must now be a deeply chastened belief; and the process of chastening is not a capitulation to the isolationist left. Far from it. It is a belated recognition of the deeper wisdom of the skeptical, culture-focused Right. I think that’s what Frank is aiming for: not an abandonment of America’s ideals and involvement with the world; but a far more prudent, chastened and subtle engagement.

Hair-Whorls and Homos

Is there a connection between the direction of a hair whorl on your head and your sexual orientation? Is homosexuality somehow correlated with left-handedness? Is left-handedness thereby an "objective disorder," as defined by the current pope? Some fascinating data can be found here, in an article in Cerebrum, a journal published by the Dana Foundation. The article is called "Left Hand, Left Brain: The Plot Thickens," and it’s by Carolyn Asbury. Let’s say it’s suggestive, sometimes funny, but definitely suggestive. More research please?

Quote for the Day

This is from an interiew with Eric Haney, a retired command sergeant major of the U.S. Army, and founding member of Delta Force, the U.S.’s crack counter-terrorist unit. I don’t agree with everything he says, but I was struck by this exchange:

"Q: What do you make of the torture debate? Cheney …

A: (Interrupting) That’s Cheney’s pursuit. The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It’s about vengeance, it’s about revenge, or it’s about cover-up. You don’t gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It’s worse than small-minded, and look what it does.

I’ve argued this on Bill O’Reilly and other Fox News shows. I ask, who would you want to pay to be a torturer? Do you want someone that the American public pays to torture? He’s an employee of yours. It’s worse than ridiculous. It’s criminal; it’s utterly criminal. This administration has been masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly. Debating what constitutes torture: Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And (I’m saying this as) a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don’t do it. It’s an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, "Well, they do it to us." Which is a ludicrous argument. … The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers. Christ almighty, we wrote a Constitution saying what’s legal and what we believed in. Now we’re going to throw it away.

Q: As someone who repeatedly put your life on the line, did some of the most hair-raising things to protect your country, and to see your country behave this way, that must be …

A: It’s pretty galling. But ultimately I believe in the good and the decency of the American people, and they’re starting to see what’s happening and the lies that have been told. We’re seeing this current house of cards start to flutter away. The American people come around. They always do."

As Churchill noted, that’s true – eventually.

South Park In Canada

A reader writes:

Just a quick note re South Park in Canada.  While it frustrates me that Canada’s Comedy Network is not yet showing the new South Park episodes (if they follow the pattern of previous years, they won’t start airing them until October), they are currently re-showing the episodes from last season. Your Canadian readers might be interested to know that The Comedy Network (according to my digital receiver TV listings, online TV listings, and the Comedy Network website) is planning to re-air "Trapped In The Closet" on Friday (9:30 pm Eastern/Pacific).
They’ve been re-airing season 9 in order, and this is NOT the episode that should be airing next.  They’ve undoubtedly adjusted their schedule based on the events of the last couple of weeks.  (It’ll be interesting to see if their plans change in the next four days…)

Canada is now ahead of the U.S. in terms of free speech? Maybe Viacom and Tom Cruise don’t get to veto what TV viewers can watch there. My Sunday Times of London column on the cartoon wars can be read here.

The Coining of “Neoconservative”

Who needs Wikipedia when you have a blog? A reader writes:

I’m a professor of American history at Catholic University. We met outside the Danish Embassy and chatted briefly about my book on Whittaker Chambers and Lionel Trilling; and your book on conservatism. It was a pleasure meeting you, and here’s a small service I can render to your blog. The earliest reference to the word neo-conservative, of those that I know, is from Partisan Review, July-August 1943, v. X. no. 4, coined by none other than Dwight MacDonald in an essay titled "The Future of Democratic Values."

It is an essay against pro-war intellectuals and those turning away from progressivism, of which MacDonald seems himself to be a questionable enthusiast:

"The neo-conservatives of our time… reject the propositions on materialism, Human Nature, and Progress."

One example is Jacques Barzun, a "modern obscurantist." He is a new type, the conservative liberal "attempting to combine progressive values and reactionary concepts" (like Mosca, Michels, Pareto and Burnham).
A bit pedantic, I know, but there it is for the record, though quite possibly not the earliest use of the word.

1943. Anyone beat that? If not, let’s place on the record that Dwight MacDonald coined the term.