Is Rod Dreher the last honest conservative?
Are you the last honest conservative?
His leftist commenters today overwhelmingly seem to think so for his bravely taking on a Megyn Kelly broadcast probing whether George Bush was not in fact right all along about leaving Iraq too soon.
Dreher doesn't deny he was ferociously for the Iraq war himself when he was taking NRO's checks and that was the popular thing to do, before subsequently being against it when the political weathervane swung around one-eighty and threatened to clock him in the head. And because Rod lives in TAC CEO Wick Allison's Obamacon lap these days, Barack's has now become Dreher's master's voice as well.
But we don't have to drop back through too many conservative posts on cooking and American Girl dolls to find the honest conservative shaking his booty on the right side of his stage this time, swaggering fashionably tough on ISIS, albeit using liberal Christian foils as his ostrich feather dancing fans in doing so.
When we finally wade through the typical obfuscating clutter there we find ourselves face to face with the honest conservative: loudly exhorting everyone while strategically committed to nothing at all himself. By all means, somebody should do something about ISIS. He's just not sure it would be prudent to advocate it should be him, or rather, the service men and women of his country acting on his behalf. Better to blog from behind.
Someone should stop those ISIS field trip bullies from pulling Rod's pants down, but we can't possibly expect the honest conservative himself to be the one to do the stopping, can we? Grownups! Grownups! Listen to Rod's cries of calculated, reader-maximizing ambivalence and quit stepping over him in indifference!
Protect this honest conservative Rod Dreher from ever having to take a stand - on anything.
What else should you expect from someone who opposed the Iraqi war from his house and hotel room.
ReplyDeleteI noticed this post yesterday from "The Young Fogey" which contains some strong Dreher criticism, albeit awkwardly couched with a typical disclaimer, "[Dreher is] a smart man I have no grudge against but misgivings about a possible agenda". But good for The Young Fogey, who has many different political beliefs than I, for taking Dreher to task.
ReplyDeleteThe response I give to the question "Why do you attack Dreher's ideas so much?" is most usually the question "Why are people -- esp. Catholics -- so afraid to attack Dreher's ideas?"
People are hesitant to attack Dreher's ideas because he is the master of passive-aggressiveness.
DeleteIf you attack his ideas you "hate" him, you bully him, you persecute him, don't you know he suffers? don't you know he has health issues?, etc., etc.
Meanwhile from behind this protective slime coating he's cocooned himself within he launches passive-aggressive attack after passive-aggressive attack upon anything that offends him, from teenage girls and their sexuality which tempts him to the Catholic Church.
People may criticize me for mocking and criticizing Dreher personally, but to my eyes the medium (Dreher) is the message (Dreher) and vice versa.
If he wants to put himself out there as the helpless (attacking) worm, I'm happy to oblige him by stepping on him as the helpless (attacking) worm. I feel no obligation whatsoever to dutifully play my assigned role in his passive-aggressive game. Others obviously do.
I disagree with a lot of stuff John (Young Fogey) writes -- that manosphere stuff, for instance -- and I think he's too cynical about VCII and Pope Francis. But he's a really good, decent guy who has received a lot of flak from his former coreligionists (and others) since returning to the Catholic Church. His heart is definitely in the right place. And he posts some really interesting stuff at his blog. I should comment there more, but I'm always rushing from one task or deadline to the next these days.
DeleteIf Rod Dreher is indeed an "honest" "conservative", then I certainly hope he is the last one.
ReplyDeleteRegarding that honesty, Dreher said that Bush's prophecy (that Iraq would be run over by Islamist terrorists if the US left too early) was wrong for three reasons:
1) Bush was wrong in his earlier prediction (really Cheney's "greeted as liberators" interview response) that the Iraq project would be quick and successful;
2) Bush negotiated the last SOFA to expire on Dec. 31, 2012; and
3) 3 out of 4 Americans wanted the troops out in 2011.
Unfortunately, none of these assertions show that Bush's prophecy was wrong. Actually, #1 proves it right -- Bush had learned from experience by the time of the "prophecy" that AQ et al. would join and intensify the fight, and that they would indeed step into the vacuum once the US bailed out.
Points #2 and #3 of course have nothing to do with the accuracy of the "prophecy", but rather illustrate that Obama was unwilling to renegotiate the SOFA in the four years that he had, and led the citizenry to clamor for what Obama himself was selling.
Our Cub Reporter should stick to inaccurate reporting rather than attempt analysis. He's in way over his head.
And lest we forget, today is the anniversary of The Day Rod Dreher was There:
ReplyDeleteWe were New Yorkers on 9/11. Because I was a newspaper reporter, and because the last words I said to my wife before running across the Brooklyn Bridge to the burning towers was, “I’m going to get as close as I can,” and because she could not reach me by mobile phone after the first tower collapsed, so she thought I was dead, and because like every other New Yorker we lived through that horrible autumn of smoke and stench and funerals, and missing posters on every public surface, and PTSD, and anger, constant anger, and fear, and conversations about whether or not it would be worth living if a dirty bomb went off in Manhattan — because of all these things, it is a blessing that 9/11 feels like just another day now.
Ouch. I'm sorry, but, if nothing else, that is just really bad writing. Maudlin, manipulative, over-written, over the top. Painful to read, frankly. Tell me again why everyone thinks this guy is such a sharp writer?
DeleteYeah, but he used a really long sentence to express intensity, just like Hemingway, so that makes it awesome.
DeleteLOL. It was precisely that Really Long Sentence that made me want to barf,
DeleteEven as we remember our fellow citizens who died on 9/11, today would be the perfect day for Pauli or whoever's got it to repost that anthology of the many ways Rod was there on that one same day back in 2001.
DeleteMaybe even make it one of those archive pages so that when Rod starts sockpuppeting himself through anonymous email fans taking the words right out of his mouth we can measure it against our benchmark for truthful Dreher reporting on an unforgettable day.