Director Blue Smells a Rat
Director Blue notices "The" "American" "Conservative". RTWT, excerpt:
I recently stumbled across a website that purports to represent a center-right point-of-view called The American Conservative. Initially intrigued -- considering that Americans can always use compelling conservative opinion sites -- I perused the site and quickly noticed something a bit, well, off.
No fewer than five articles on the front page alone represented attacks on Sen. Ted Cruz — the brilliant Constitutional conservative from Texas — and many more attacked Israel and "Islamophobia". The ludicrous crackpot Stephen M. Walt, a notorious purveyor of anti-semitism, is linked as are pseudo-conservatives like Conor Friedersdorf.
We smelled the rat too, Doug. I don't know if TAC "purports to represent a center-right point-of-view". I think they purport to represent something they would call traditional conservatism or authentic conservatism.
It's interesting to read other takes on TAC, and I like Director Blue (Doug Ross) with whom I'm pretty much in agreement. I try to stay away from terms like "false flag", but I agree with and rather like the characterization of TAC as "internet chewing gum" and "honeypot".
Most importantly, Mr. Ross points us to a must-read exposé of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer as the kings of leftist academic antisemitism.
Oh, c'mon Pauli. That's just because:
ReplyDeleteTAC is that very rare journal of opinion that is more interested in exploring and developing ideas than in promoting them, more interested in getting people to think well than in getting them to think “correctly.” ...
...But realism, before it narrowed to mean a particular theory of politics and foreign affairs, meant seeing reality with open eyes, and analyzing it with an open mind. And reform, before it was corrupted to mean progress in a politically predetermined direction, meant the restoration of form to what had fallen into chaos, the restoration of peace after a period of conflict. These are not really liberal or conservative concepts, because they are not about what to think. They are about how to think.
See? The reason that the front page of TAC has five attacks on Cruz at the same time is because those contributors are "think[ing] well", and are showing us "how to think" rather than "what to think".
AAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....
DeleteI see.
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ReplyDeleteTAC is what I've begun to call "Moralistic Therapeutic Conservatism", the sort of conservatism you wouldn't be ashamed to bring to the table at Washington Week in Review.
ReplyDeleteBy thus making conservatism accessible to all comers - liberals, gays, foodies, guys who can't get either tenure or chicks at their universities but that's because of the rotting culture around them - no one feels left out, and so everyone is able to click and contribute. This is therapeutic because they feel they've just taken a moral stand against atavism and uncoolness in general, and moral because feeling that way is, by definition, a good thing.
TAC's MTC is the most conservative of conservatism because it's constantly evolving to be the most inclusive. What was conservative in the rigid old days of Pat Buchanan is not enough to be conservative today, particularly when the internet provides far more nuanced ways to reach people able to pay, thus yesterday's morning show skillet dish of tomatoes and okra becomes today's conservatism, because if eating food isn't the most conservative of perspectives and activities, what is?
By becoming all things to all people, TAC's MTC truly universalizes conservatism in a way that previous generations, bound by such limits as principle, national sovereignty, biological determination, and so forth were never able to. Thus, TAC's MTC, having broken free of such earthbound limitations into the fuller, richer, far more nuanced realm of sensibilities, finally frees the human spirit itself to become conservative in every way the market will bear.
Yeah, I clicked through, and calling TAC a leftist site in disguise misses something important, IMO, namely that, on the internet content, is increasingly happy to have no married parents, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteTAC says it's conservative because that sells better than saying it's a ham sandwich. What it really is is more like the "jungle juice" frat guys would mix up for parties, staffed with writers Wick Allison could scoop up cheap because nobody would pay them more elsewhere. Then, because the label says "conservative", what they write there thus becomes, by definition, conservative. Whatever-we-can-get-our-hands-on ingredients in, "conservative" vomit smoothie product out the door - and have you considered making a tax-deductible contribution?
In many ways, yes TAC is jungle juice. OTOH, there are some constants, such as the daily Two-Minute Hate of actual American Conservatives and Putin love.
DeleteFor a sick example of the latter, we turn to our Cub Reporter who vicariously shouts "Scoreboard!" and gloats like a 40-something frat boy alumnus over how things turned out for Putin vs. Saakashvili from last decade's Russian occupation.
Of course, the anarcho-tyranny experienced by the Georgians under the boot heel of Russia goes unmentioned. Because ultimately it's all about the statists over at TAC.