Category: The Dish

It’s twenty years since the publication of "The Closing of the American Mind" – a book that, with the exception of its introduction (which is all that most people read), was for me an exhilarating insight into what it means to be a philosopher. Once you get past the cranky splutterings of the intro, you get to see one of America’s greatest intellectuals talk about some of the West’s greatest minds. It remains a classic in my book – something every curious young conservative-inclined student should read, and read again. Here’s a gloomy paleocon take. What a decline – from the days when Bloom sold millions to the days when Coulter rules.

Dinesh all but accuses Johnson of being a racist in his New Criterion review. Money quote:

Voluntarily, I came to America and became a citizen. So if I have "gone native," I have gone native in America. I have assimilated to the American way of life, not by osmosis, but deliberately and deliberatively, and I have given the reasons for my change of heart in my book What’s So Great About America. Since I have a good knowledge of both Western and non-Western cultures, I approached the leading thinkers of radical Islam in an attempt to study what their ideas are, and why they are winning so many converts to their nefarious cause. My objective is to understand the enemy, so that we can fight him better.

Unable to grapple with a guy who actually knows other cultures from within, who has a real knowledge of the Muslim world, and who doesn’t succumb to the rabid Islamophobia characteristic of Johnson and some others on the right, my philistine fellow blogger can do no better than accusing me of "going native." Next time remind me to bring my prayer rug.

Romney, McCain and Giuliani all put some distance between their campaigns and the woman from under the Republican rock.

Steve Sailer suggests a theory:

The key is that African husbands tend to be more tolerant of their wives having a long term lover or two than is the norm elsewhere. The thought of one’s wife becoming pregnant by another man is intolerable to most husbands around the world, but tends to be less infuriating in Africa.

That probably stems from women doing most of the farm work in rural Africa. (That’s why you are always hearing about men in Africa working away from home in mines or wherever for months — the men aren’t often needed around the farm because most of the work is just hoeing weeds, which women can do at least as well as men.)

So, the husbands don’t have as much leverage over their wives’ behavior as in places where husbands are work-a-daddies bringing home the bacon. And African husbands don’t have as much motivation to enforce fidelity on their wives since they won’t be investing as much money in their wives’ children’s upbringing as they would elsewhere.

Another contributor to the high rates of AIDS in Southern/Eastern Africa besides multiple concurrent partners and lack of circumcision is the bizarre fetish for "dry sex," which I would guess doesn’t exist among West Africans because (thankfully) you never hear about it among their African-American cousins.

Dry sex?

It’s America. And your one minute and 48 seconds are up.

"I have said it before and I’ll say it again: social conservatives have taken over the Republican party. Fiscal conservatives have allowed social conservatives to not just take over their party, but even to determine the meaning of conservatism. If the Republican party, however, wants to win in 08, they’d better break with the social conservative movement/religious right," – Michael van der Galien.

I make a similar case in "The Conservative Soul," which last year prompted some critics to say I was over-stating the influence of the Christianist right in redefining conservatism away from its roots in skepticism, limited government and individual freedom. But I’ve noticed a slight uptick in interest in the book lately, as some Republicans have headed toward new extremes. Even Derb says he may re-read it. Try Chapters 5 and 6, Derb. I bet you find more there to agree with than you might expect.

Lincoln, Nebraska, 6.30 am.

One thing that emerges from reality-television. It is now simply de rigueur always and everywhere to proclaim one’s own talents publicly, to boast about doing a great job always, to predict one’s own imminent triumph – and never to engage in self-criticism. I see it on Top Chef, Project Runway, and American Idol (my three faves). I find it unappealing and wonder if the producers demand it. But the epidemic of self-esteem seems to be growing more generally among the young, according to this piece from the Detroit Free Press.

US General David Petraeus talks with an Iraqi man in the Shorja market area while on foot patrol to meet shopkeepers and other Iraqis March 3, 2007 in the downtown area of Baghdad, Iraq. General Petraeus is implementing a new plan for the American effort in Iraq, which relies heavily on frequent contact with normal Iraqis in the streets. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

Here’s Senator Clinton’s speech to Human Rights Campaign volunteers yesterday. Money quote on HRC’s talk to HRC:

"I love the fact that it’s my initials. Have you ever noticed that?"

There was no press coverage of this speech, and HRC kept it very hush-hush, which is weird, defensive, suspicious – but that’s HRC, sucking money out of gay pockets to finance an insider, velvet-rope elite of D.C. hacks. But the speech is significant in one respect, it seems to me. HRC, the organization, is now fully integrated into HRC, the campaign. It is the Clinton campaign. Clinton calls HRC’s executive director, Joe Solmonese a "colleague." She talks of a future "relationship" with HRC in a Clinton administration: "You will have an open door to the White House". Among HRC’s victories, she cites the 2006 election turn-out campaign … for the Democrats.

To her credit, she forthrightly backs gay adoption. And she backs ENDA and hate crimes. But no mention of marriage. She’s against it. She also makes no commitment to passing ENDA (the Employment Non-Discrimination Act) or hate-crimes laws in the current Congress. That’s also significant. I have a feeling that they’ve run the numbers (that’s what HRC does when it’s not fund-raising for the Dems), figure that employment discrimination could actually be the first gay wedge issue to work against Republicans, and are going to hold off to use it in the presidential campaign. What matters is what’s in the best interest of the Clintons and the Democrats. It’s 1992 all over again: