What is Rod Dreher's Benedict Option good for?

Academic Christian logrolling, of course.

Let's imagine you're Rod Dreher's close friend Patrick Deneen and you establish something called the Tocqueville Forum at your university, Georgetown, in order to raise your profile and prestige above that of the other academics employed there. Helpful come salary review time, true, but there's also a cost: now you have to feed your new pet, and it eats content.

On the other hand, let's imagine you're Rod Dreher, also seeking to raise your profile and prestige by trying to montgolfier a phrase called the Benedict Option into The Religious Question of Our Time but, above all else, into a book you desperately hope might sell this time. You, in turn, need a friendly forum to act as if your idea had intellectual importance so a publisher, any publisher, will take you seriously this time.

Academic Christian forum needs content-fodder to legitimize and justify its existence. Vaporous Christian-sounding phrase needs academic Christian forum to legitimize and justify its existence.

Academic Christian means meets academic Christian ends meets...

This is the reciprocal, mutually referential push-pull marketing of the business of academic Christianity.

Patrick, Rod. Rod, Patrick.

Tocqueville Forum, Benedict Option. Benedict Option, Toqueville Forum.

Excellent. Now, who will be discussing Rod Dreher's Benedict Option at the Tocqueville Forum?

Who cares? Just as who cares that the Benedict Option itself is a no more than a completely elastic, indeterminate, all-inclusive tabula rasa? Both are entirely secondary concerns. The one and only important thing is that each serves as the mutually beneficial means to the ends of the other.

We anticipate including some thoughtful, constructive critics of the Benedict Option as well.

Of course we do.

But first, let's review our Christian priorities in play here. An indeterminate academic Christian forum of as yet non-existent panelists is already set for an all day discussion of an inchoate phrase of indeterminate intellectual and practical dimension.

What's important is that both parties are gainfully employed in support of one another. All the rest, including any Christianity involved, is merely detail filler. Have your disciples contact my disciples.

Mark Perkins says:
July 19, 2015 at 12:42 pm

Intriguing. Alan Jacobs or Ken Myers speaking?

[NFR: We haven’t nailed down the line-up yet. Watch this space. — RD]

Yes, we know that. We already understand the line-up is only of trivial, derivative importance relative to the joyful, transcending congress of forum-to-be-filled and filler-to-be-forumed.

Guess who won't be in the line-up?

Rod Dreher's TAC colleague Noah Millman.

His "Three Questions"? Not only is that piece still dead, deliberately deleted and suppressed by TAC for being thoughtfully and constructively critical far above and beyond the call of duty to Rod Dreher, but now TAC has deliberately contacted Google and had Google's previously cached version wiped as well.

So much for TAC's cover story of just a little "technical turbulence". And, obviously Georgetown, Patrick Deneen, and his Tocqueville Forum have no problem with a little TAC wet work of that sort in service of the greater cause outlined above.

John Zmirak Nope, neither thoughtful nor constructive. Obviously not enough tongue. Definitely not.

Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille Nada. Too thoughtful and constructive.

Alasdair MacIntyre, author of After Virtue, whose prestige and utterance of the term "Benedict" is the only concrete element in this whole charade.

You're joking, right?

Patrick Deneen, far right, and Rod Dreher exercising a strategic Benedict Option withdrawal at New Orleans' legendary Galatoire's

This is how the ends-in-themselves links of academic Christian sausage are made these days, and this is the nature of the hygiene employed in their manufacture, including both the unclean hands and the diligent scrubbing of all wrongthinking.

Still, with any luck, both Dreher and Deneen will successfully manipulate your angst about the times you live in into another wonderful meal at Galatoire's like the one they enjoyed above this past March.

You, of course, won't be invited, nor would you expect to be, huddling in your own strategic retreat from life, nibbling a Ritz cracker, and grateful to the both of them for showing you the Way.

What happened to Noah Millman's "Three More Benedict Option Questions"?

Yesterday Rod Dreher's The American Conservative colleague Noah Millman published a probing critique of Dreher's Benedict Option entitled "Three More Benedict Option Questions" which, unfortunately, you can now only read by way of Google's cached version; a screen capture of the cached version may also be found here.

This morning, after Rod Dreher had awakened from a customary long nap, Millman's article had mysteriously disappeared.

Perhaps TAC has simply misplaced Millman's post from yesterday critical of Rod Dreher's Benedict Option and written without Dreher's editorial guidance or prior approval and it will re-emerge some time in the future.

In the meantime, if you happen to be one of those hapless bloggers who linked to Millman's piece and are having to deal with a 404 today, again:

Google's cached version.

Our screen capture of Google's cached version, in the event the latter swan dives into the memory hole as well.

Oh, you're quite welcome.

UPDATE (as they say): In fast-breaking Benedict Option news, this just in: Noah Millman's piece critical of the Benedict Option has been superseded by Rod Dreher's piece controlling the narrative from both sides:

While I was away in Italy and France these past nine days, there has been lots of talk, much of it critical, about the Benedict Option. I think I’ll answer these critics by interviewing myself.

As I explained above, whatever Rod Dreher does in fact defines the Benedict Option, so this sort of narrative control and revisionism is not only perfectly understandable but perfectly consistent as well. Moreover, if you find yourself in a Rod Dreher Benedict Option community, this is the sort of control you should look forward to embracing as your defense against the forces of cultural darkness.

Although I think the Clintons have always done this sort of narrative thing more elegantly, don't you?

TAC's Wick Allison blames American Freedom Defense Initiative for Garland shooting

Nothing goes public from Wick Allison's D Empire without his express approval, so when one of his bloggers asks "Who Can We Blame for This Garland Shooting?", we know what Wick Allison wants the world to think, that the shooting was the fault of the "hate group" American Freedom Defense Initiative rather than the Muslims who pulled the trigger.

Wick Allison doesn't live in Garland, Texas, by the way, or even in Dallas, Texas. He lives in Highland Park, Texas, a little town exclusively for the very wealthy near Southern Methodist University, a place usually referred to with well-deserved contempt as "The Bubble". The Bubble is ferociously protected by its own well-manned police force, even to the extent that if you appear to be Hispanic and your truck doesn't contain at least one lawn mower and leaf blower, you can expect to be stopped and questioned. Within the cocoon of their Bubble, Wick and Christine Allison have little to worry from either ISIS-inspired jihadists or even any other humans at all not of their hue and station.

Wick Allison, the Obamacon money man and CEO behind both TAC's pro-Putin Daniel Larison and anti-Catholic Rod Dreher and the jihadi apologist FrontBurner blog. William F. Buckley must be sneering.

Is Rod Dreher really only Wick Allison's Erin Manning?

That is, in the final analysis only a useful tool kept, like all useful tools, strictly at arm's length only for its utility?

Here's why I ask.

As Jonathan Carpenter had originally mentioned, Dreher was in his old Texas stomping grounds yesterday on various business, attending a secretive TAC meeting, doing a book signing for TLWORL, working his own DIY publicity tour for his Dante book, all of which writing efforts Dreher credits as originally having been birthed at TAC.

Here's the promotion Wick Allison provided Dreher for all those things on his primary D Magazine FrontBurner blog. No, your eyes do not deceive you, there's nothing there. And by all means, if I've foolishly missed something obvious somewhere, call me out on it so I can make amends.

In fact, this is the last I recall of Allison's FrontBurner acknowledging Dreher was even still alive. At least his old newspaper pals celebrate his keen journalistic skills when using his position to expose unsatisfying vendors.

But we also learn that TAC is a sponsor of Dreher's Walker Percy Weekend.

So why is Wick Allison so reticent to directly acknowledge the Allison-Dreher connection on Allison's own home turf? Dreher certainly has a history in Dallas, and the two are far closer than just remote publisher and hired writer. Allison's promoting Dreher's appearance locally in Dallas would certainly raise much broader awareness of Dreher's visit, and thus attendance at Dreher's events, and thus potentially more eyes on Dreher back at TAC in turn. Similarly with Dreher's WPW.

What seems one obvious precipitate from all this to me is that Dreher is far more a liability for Allison if seen to be connected to Allison's primary D Empire (which even boasts its own Academy) than he is an asset for Allison as the little engine that could still keep TAC alive and useful as a tax shelter if nothing else. Manning's unshakeable belief in her Catholic faith may play an analogous role with Dreher.

The other obvious takeaway is that giving Dreher the tax-deductible blog space in TAC to advertise his doings while contributing to Dreher's also tax-deductible WPW is cheaper than raising his salary.

But as much as Dreher does to promote Allison's take home revenue through TAC, one would think that Allison would at least publicly give him the time of day in Dallas rather than treating him ultimately as a potential embarrassment. I'm sure Erin Manning could commiserate.

The Writings of Sistah Raccoon

I have completed the recovery of The Writings of Sistah Raccoon so you may read them once again. No one was killed by those offended by the Topix post, thank God, but it does put me in mind of my Charlie Hebdo post because now it's possible that more people will become familiar with this new ingenious pillorying of Rod Dreher's TAC blog posts than had been before.

There was another bit of good stuff on the disappeared post. Countrylad stated this in defense of our continuing criticism:

Pauli clearly has a bone to pick with Rod and is relentless in pursuing it.

Both Sistah Raccoon and Pauli have a right to say whatever they want on here, as do you. You have the same privilege with regard to their posts as you do to the daily newspaper - If you don't like what they have to say, you don't have to read it.

I responded:

Yes, you are correct. Rod Dreher and I actually have a lot of things in common. We were both born in the same year so we grew up with a lot of the same TV shows. We both grew up in small towns, went to college, became more conservative after college and converted to the Catholic faith in the nineties.

Rod Dreher has many bones to pick and he has been relentless over the years in pursuing these. One is the Catholic Church, one is mainstream conservatives — or what he has called the "mongoloid right"  — and one is the way normal people in American life view everyday life, food and architecture.

The internet not only helps you find something you like, it also helps you find things you detest. Thus I have found Rod, a person who is almost a mirror image of myself — amazingly alike in some ways, drastically different in others. I used to read his blog every day, but over the years I have it less and less because other kindred spirits have found my blog and have done a lot of the research for me, emailing me passages which they know will arouse my ire as it has theirs. But now I probably only react on my blog to these around 1 out of every 5 times, if that.

I have always taken the approach that the best treatment of speech or writing which you believe represents bad ideas is good ideas communicated in speech and writing, correcting what you think is wrong with the other. The exchange allows people to read each and decide.

Sometimes this comes in the way of clownish parodies and ridicule. It is probably the case that I have resorted to these methods too often and, if so, it has no doubt weakened the strength of my own arguments. Insofar as they have affected Rod Dreher at all, the few people who read my amateur copy may be more critical of his ideas when they read them. I have no idea what Mr. Dreher thinks about me or if he thinks about me at all. But certainly no real harm comes to him from anything my friends and I write. It has been reported that hits from his articles and blog posts on the American Conservative are really what keeps the website afloat, so it should be noted that he has both fans and job security galore.

I am highly amused that this post was removed from Topix and I am somewhat curious about the details. It is possible that someone complained that Sistah Raccoon's writings are racist. That might have been the magic word used for the why of the banning. But I'm more interested in the who. Dante book publishing company? Wick Allison? Bueller?

TAC publisher's Anonymous pet given 63 months, $890,000 in restitution

Barrett Brown, the Anonymous spokesman who threatened the family of FBI agent Robert Smith, has just been sentenced to 63 months in prison and ordered to pay $890,000 in restitution.

Championing Brown over the last two years (see further "Free Barrett Brown" links there if interested) has proved a click bonanza from young supporters of Brown for Wick Allison, publisher of The American Conservative.

The full details of Brown's relationship with Anonymous and its assaults on Stratfor and other organizations is widely available on the internet. Below is the link to an NSFW F-bomb-filled Part Three of Brown's threats against Agent Smith.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOW7GOrXNZI

Even though a punk is involved, there's no music, so I decided not to embed it.

UPDATE (as they say): More what-can-you-do-for-me-today? journalism

"Alt-conservative"* publisher's purse dog pees on American Sniper for the team

By the way, "alt-conservatism" is the ideological equivalent of hermaphrodism or transgenderism, the gambit that some creature somewhere - a marmot, a penguin - will still be available to date you on Saturday night. Or, as in the case of this and TAC, that at least someone will buy your product.

Anyway, go here for the golden shower. If you don't already know who Chris Kyle is, educate yourself.

As usual, there is a wrapper and a payload.

The wrapper is two "niggling" gripes about the movie: an insufficiently realistic baby and a scene where it appears to be daylight in two distantly separated places simultaneously. The latter of these "goofs" as they are commonly known in IMDB leads to the payload:

If a filmmaker takes that kind of liberty with astronomy, one wonders what other details he has twisted.

Taking that kind of liberty with astronomy. Positively Ptolemaic. Best we flee while we still can.

Well, wonder no more, marmot. Skip the movie and instead either read "Peter [giving] it a B+ over on FrontRow", or better yet, read a story about "strange lies" Chris Kyle allegedly told someone. Alas, no Page 3 girl, penguin.

This is what Chris Kyle's heroic life and tragic murder are to alt-conservatives: product, in this case lipstick for a chihuahua, at best.

Give the purse dog a call, marmots and penguins; he's obviously lonely.

UPDATE (as they say): Contra pursedog (r), Paul Rieckhoff.

Kim Jong-Workingboy

TAC's Dear Thought Leader, Kim Jong-Workingboy

Do those glasses make me look fat? Discuss, but let's be civil to one another here north of the 38th parallel, gang!

Nothing more perfectly exemplifies TAC's hypocritically cynical flea market approach to selling off whatever contemporary culture it can lay its paws on than it's own premiere special snowflake, the one writer there who brings the eyeballs to everything else. Yes, I'm talking about our own favorite Kim Jong-Workingboy, moderator of all civilly appropriate thought.

The richness of this irony reached a frothy boil recently when Our Working Jong threw down a snappy series of posts bemoaning "special snowflakes" on various college campuses. Not that the targets may not easily have deserved the criticism.

No, the irony was who was pointing the finger: the most fragile, delicate snowflake to ever drift from the heavens to moisten the blogosphere with his inescapable woundedness.

Anyone who has wasted more than two or three attempts at posting anything more than the spongiest of softball critiques of KJW's aesthetic sophistries already knows the criterion used to silence criticism of Dear Working Jong is seldom "civility", the excuse de la maison at TAC.

But that's the beauty of the comment you can never see: you'll never know what it really was, so all you do get to read are those comments selected by Dear Working Jong himself to best pair up with the post he has graciously prepared for your carefully curated consumption.

One can best think of this as the subtle, nuanced gourmet cooking of a fine meal - made with people!

And never a dissonant flavor note to spoil the happy meal.

So, before we bitch and moan about some petulant special snowflake from the Hermit Kingdom intimidating us into stopping ourselves from watching even a sophomoric Franco-Rogen comedy, let's not forget the many little Hermit Kingdoms we already build for ourselves to inhabit everyday.

We far too often compete to become the geese we ourselves eagerly stuff with the liver-fattening grain of humble obedience for chefs like Kim Jong-Workingboy to work their magic on.

How the faux-conservative marketplace works

 At the risk of inducing Dreher Fatigue™, my little mini-series on TAC's year-end fundraising would be incomplete without this little gem courtesy of one of the rubes herself. A commenter calling herself grumpy realist tells us:

Rod, even though I’m totally on the other side from you I just donated as well. If I had more available would donate more. Mainly because I’m a cranky old bitch that appreciates great writing and thinks that we need to have good thinkers on all sides.

 I’m skeptical about conservatism because I see it used far too often as justification used by privileged people to keep themselves on top and not share the goodies. But if I argue with conservatives, I’d rather argue with conservatives who use reason and logic, rather than some screaming talk-show host who flails around and calls me a “feminazi”.

How iconoclastic! A dedicated liberal donates to a "conservative" blog! And what does she get for her donation?

Why, the faux-conservative Dreher immediately sells the watch she has just paid him to take right back to her again:

Best motivation for a TAC donor ever! From a reader of this here blog:

Rod, even though I’m totally on the other side from you I just donated as well. If I had more available would donate more. Mainly because I’m a cranky old bitch that appreciates great writing and thinks that we need to have good thinkers on all sides.

I’m skeptical about conservatism because I see it used far too often as justification used by privileged people to keep themselves on top and not share the goodies. But if I argue with conservatives, I’d rather argue with conservatives who use reason and logic, rather than some screaming talk-show host who flails around and calls me a “feminazi”.

Bless you, COB. You complete me. I know this was Beatrice Arthur from beyond the grave.

Oh - she does get an additional gift: he characterizes her as the dead Bea Arthur.

So let's break down the mechanics of the ideological daisy chain we've just witnessed:

• A liberal - here grumpy realist - wants to feel she is being diverse by engaging with conservatives.

• But the porridge served at true conservative sites is too hot and burns her lips.

• So she searches until she finds a site with the word "conservative" in it that conforms perfectly to her liberal needs and sensibilities - TAC, "The" "American" "Conservative".

• And gives them money, thus validating her perceptions with meaningful action. Certainly grumpy realist wouldn't donate money to a counterfeit conservative site, now would she. Of course not. As a critically discerning liberal she's just too smart for that.

• And as if her own donation were not proof enough for her, her "conservative" host further legitimizes her decision by selling her comment right back to her. Diversity and reason in action, head to tail!

So, here's how to make money online as a faux-conservative:

• Find out what your liberal and fellow faux-conservative marks want to hear - maybe something about "the arrogance of Seth Rogen" in not being sensitive enough to Sony Corp.'s potential bullying by Kim Jong-un. All good liberals and faux-conservatives always appreciate a bullying narrative anyway.

• Give them some resistance to overcome: in addition to making their commenting a hard-won privilege, frequently say stupid things deliberately so they will feel compelled to correct you. Let them comment, but shoot a Jew behind them in the field from your balcony every now and then both to keep them on their toes and to further validate their experience.

• Regularly sell their comments back to them as posts they or someone else has to pay for. As we've already noted, this has the mutually useful effect of making them feel their time has been well spent and validating your faux-conservative credentials as genuine - because you made them feel their time had been well spent, and only a fool would feel that way if the site were not genuinely conservative to begin with.

• Finally, urinate on their heads a little bit when you're finished - compare them to Bea Arthur - to keep them in their place. Because their whole underlying impulse to begin with is actually to serve you, they will never fell properly satisfied if they themselves are the finally or completely victorious parties in the engagement.

That's the way you do it: money for nothing and your clicks for free.

This Way to the Egress! =>

Localism Remains Laughable

I could call localism "loco" to take advantage of the alliterative effect, but I think it's more important to highlight the hilarity of its constructs. The latest essay we have from Gracy Olmstead in TAC once again proves the total irrelevance and complete lack of self-awareness of the localist movement.

You have to look at the title first, "Wendell Berry’s cure for partisanship", and ask yourself why we are suddenly hearing about partisanship in a negative way. Is it because a certain party won a bunch of election races? I'm not sure that partisanship is as bad as some people, i.e., the losers, make it out to be. At any rate partisanship is as American as apple pie, and that shouldn't be forgotten.

What is “localism”? It’s a vision of civic involvement and community that, at root, is summed up in one phrase: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” As Katherine Dalton, a senior editor for the Front Porch Republic (FPR), puts it: “Our love of country is a very little, very local thing. You can’t love something or someone without knowing it well.”

I think we all agree with the second statement. Loving America doesn't mean loving 50 states in equal measure. I know more about Ohio and Pennsylvania than I do about Tennessee, so I love those states more. But her first statement, "Our love of country is a very little, very local thing," is one of those remarks that leaves me scratching my head as to the exact meaning. Certainly one can love America by taking care of the little plot of America which you own and treating with respect the Americans you run into each day. But perhaps more certainly, one can learn to love the Founding Fathers and the nation they framed through reading history and study even if one has never known them personally nor had the opportunity to visit Philadelphia or any one the other great American landmarks. They made your plot possible, after all.

I think these people suffer from a lack of "both/and" thinking, being rather stuck in the world of "either/or". Perhaps they are reacting to elite operatives in Washington who are the other side of that coin and dismiss them as "those people in flyover country." So their brand of politics is an over-reaction based on wounded pride. One gets the feeling that when they see, for example, a picture of an abortion protester holding a sign and shouting in Washington during the January march they cannot imagine that person visiting a sick person or attending a townhall meeting. But in my experience they are the same people more often than not.

“Knowledge of a place is multi-generational, passed down through families and communities,” says Jeff Polet, editor-in-chief of FPR and a professor at Hope College in Michigan. “In destroying regional community, we are asked to love a body”—that is, a country—“that has grown cold.” Simple things like cultivating relationships with local businesses are important politically, Mitchell says: good politics grow out of “civic friendships,” common affections that supersede rancorous partisanship. These foster a “political context” that is healthier and fuller than the “red-meat politics” we see on television.

Here's my main problem with the argument. The "red-meat politics" affects everyone in the country. You aren't going to be able to avoid the effects of Obamacare simply because you prefer local politics to national. Or name any of the other big, hot-button issues in the news: cap and trade, amnesty, how tough the US decides to fight terrorism, what policies the Federal Reserve enacts, etc. All of these things affect everyone in their communities wherever they are across the fruited plain.

Wendell Berry is an example of the way localists defy party structures and schismatic divides: he’s an outspoken environmentalist who often lambasts capitalists for their ruthless treatment of land and resources, yet he also upholds traditional family values and principles of conservation that are decidedly conservative.

Wait... what? Wendell Berry "upholds traditional family values"? I don't think so. Besides, it is pretty ridiculous to suggest that he angers people on the left. I will believe that when I see the evidence.

Rather than dealing in abstractions and global efforts, localism is about concrete realities and particular circumstances. [Wendell] Berry himself rarely leaves Kentucky: he’s grounded himself so fully in his farm and local community he doesn’t like to leave. His example answers the question of just what localism ought to be.

"[H]e’s grounded himself so fully in his farm and local community he doesn't like to leave." But it would be wrong to think that has always been the case. Wendell Berry is 80 years old so, and that enough to explain why he isn't traveling like he used to, except to ironically deliver lectures at prestigious national conferences as Ms. Olmstead mentions. Berry was quite the globe-trotter in his early days before settling down; this has always struck me as funny and ironic as I mention in that post.

This article is mischaracterizes Wendell Berry's true nature as being some sort of enigmatic non-partisan genius when he is actually a left-leaning environmentalist scold who made his money from a tobacco plantation. This article also makes dubious assertions about the political priorities of normal Americans in an attempt to portray one part of national politics as more important than the other parts. The use of the boogieman of partisanship right after the Republican sweep of a nationalized midterm election tips the ideological hand of this particular "Front Porcher", Gracy Olmstead. If this is the best she can do to attract people to the localist cause, I can describe it using the language of my kids: epic fail.

Details, schmetails.

So here we are, discussing such things as "Ideological purity versus principled victory", and why small-L libertarians should vote for Republicans.  All good discussions to have.  But we actual conservatives are obviously getting lost in the details, and not thinking about what it means to be a "Big-C" Conservative.  As in what "The" "American" "Conservative" considers to fall within its big tent.

To wit, consider this piece that they published last week (and which I missed until today), entitled "Obama is a Republican".  As "proof" of that characterization, the author offers such things as Obama following through on W's commitment to pull the troops out of Iraq in 2011(!) and initiating the 2014 campaign against ISIS, the awesome budget austerity and deficit reduction on Obama's watch, Obamacare copying Romneycare (and we all know how conservative that was), Obama doing nothing to improve the economic conditions of blacks (IMO, that's as Democrat as it gets), and that Obama had to be pressured into coming out for SSM (like Brer Rabbit, I guess).  Here's the pull quote from that piece, AFAIAC:

I don't expect any conservatives to recognize the truth of Obama's fundamental conservatism for at least a couple of decades -- perhaps only after a real progressive presidency.

Either that guy is writing in NewSpeak, or he's overdrawn his account at Wick Allison's company store and is gunning for a bonus.   I sure hope there aren't many people who are wondering what it is that American Conservatives think, and who think they might find out from a 'zine named The American Conservative.

Then I guess this is like Nixon going to China.

My Upcoming Decision

I wanted to highlight an extended comment made recently by commenter Art Deco.

The American Conservative and the dispositions and remarks of its editor, Daniel McCarthy, are the purest source of all that renders the 'alt-right' project problematic. The ongoing conceit is that they represent something true and authentic and sublime in contrast to the vulgarities of 'movement conservatives'. Really? 

There's nothing that's published in Chronicles by anyone not named Fleming, Rockwell, or Francis that might not find a home in some other publication. (As for the stuff published by these men, do you really want recycled copy from the Radovan Karadzic press agency or the White Citizens' Council?). The v Mises Institute is a collecting pool for purveyors of fringe (read crank) social theory and research ("Austrian" economics and neo-confederate historiography). The Rockford Institute is a remnant, just a corporate shell for Chronicles, the "National Humanities Institute" has two salaried employees (Claes Ryn and one other) and issues an absolutely soporific annual. The Unz Review is issued by amateurs whose big idea is that social research is reducible to psychology and anthropology which is reducible in turn to biology and that Science demonstrates this but ideologically driven social researches are dedicated to Not Noticing things. They collect as their acolytes a mess of disagreeable people who are obsessed with blacks and Jews and despise both. (Who also seem to enjoy Steve Sailer's gig as volunteer press secretary for Vladimir Putin and his minions). Their idea of a popular movement is Ron Paul - a conceited goof who trades in historical fabulism (and goldbuggery).

And Daniel McCarthy is a fine example of a type that Samuel Francis and Stephen Tonsor took to task, the 'career conservative'. Except, in his case, he presides over a publication that's always been a cesspool of idiosyncracies: Philip Giraldi's hatred of Jews, Andrew Bacevich's resentments of his former employer and military officers more accomplished than he (Petraeus in particular), Steve Sailer's obsession with a tests-and-measurements psychology that he never studied in an academic setting, Conor Friedersdorf's Miss Manners campaign, and Scott McConnell's sundry aperçus (and contempt for Jews). The whole thing was a train wreck from the get go, and yet they persist in this illusion that they are the 'legitimate' heirs to Robert Taft (who manifested a dispensation in the Republican Party that was non-existent from 1959 to 1990 and has only Russell Kirk as a thin filament of genealogy between then and now).

Then Mr. Deco ends with "rant off". Which caught me by surprise. I think that it's probably a feature of someone who is conservative but not an alt-conservative that they are sensitive to ranting. Antithetically, many alt-con pundits don't realize they are ranting as a normal course of their alt-con punditry. That can be problematic for your argument and your readership numbers. I mused long ago that Dan Larison was king of the exclamation point, and although he has settled down over the years, he still blurts multiple invectives (insane, deranged, ridiculous, absurd, etc.) whenever dealing with mainstream conservatives in his writing when they espouse the slightest hints of hawkishness. And, of course, the Ted Cruz kerfuffle is a great recent example of an alt-con hive-mind rant.

I rather thought the characterizations in his comment were commonsensical and to the point. They were meant to be summaries, obviously. Ron Paul is a historical fabulist; the lily needs no more paint. The von Mises institute is fringy and cranky, and related to that, the word "Austrian" belongs in scare-quotes when modifying economics. Steve Sailer is so obsessed with, well, what he is obsessed with that they should change the saying to "one-note Stevie". (No doubt he would then immediately respond with a long article about why George Shearing wasn't as famous as this blind guy since he had a higher IQ.)

I like summaries when they save me time. I've got a lot of stuff to get done. They might also save me money. Explanation: I was toying with the idea of subscribing to Chronicles Magazine which, as far as I can tell, is much more sensible than TAC and is $45 for a year, 75% of TAC's subscription price. This idea came to me while talking to one of the editors at the Chesterton event I went to last Sunday. He is a pretty good friend of a pretty good friend, and I've appreciated his blog posts in the past.

So maybe Mr. Deco can further weigh in on the proposed decision. It seems that he respects the publication more than TAC from the comments in his "rant". Someone recently reminded me that Aristotle said "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." So although I'm more of a Weekly Standard type of conservative, I think it might be good to imbibe some sensible material from other perspectives. Thomas Meehan is welcome to weigh in also, or any of the regular commenters.

Oh, this is completely insane!

$25,000 Scores Invite to American Conservative Editorial Meeting, Dinner

According to the latest letter, donors who give over $1,000 to the magazine will receive an invitation to a “semi-annual, invitation-only editorial briefing” phone call with The Little Way of Ruthie Leming author Rod Dreher, the American Conservative’s “theater critic and a solo blogger” Noah Millman, and political science professor Patrick Deneen.

I get to meet Rod Dreher! Like, I suppose you could do better than that. No way! Because it seems to me that he would be a pretty decent guy, I must say. What if we became best friends -- best friends in the so I would just like, phone his house up, and say, "Is Rod there? Just tell him it's me!" sense, now that I think of it. Like, I suppose Rod Dreher doesn't have, like, over a million friends, probably. But then again, maybe he doesn't. It's difficult to say. Oh, this is completely insane!

But, wait! There's more!

Top contributors who give over $25,000 will receive an invitation to the magazine’s annual board dinner.

The annual board dinner! What do you suppose they'll have to eat? With Rod Dreher there it has to be pretty decent, I must say. Maybe he'll even cook for us himself! But $25,000! I could sell my car...yes, and take the bus! And then I could be the one who paid Rod's salary for the year! We'd be sure to become best friends after that! But what to wear? They all sound like they dress just like me, I must say. So I'll fit right in!

But is there more?

“By aggressively utilizing online formats and social media, the American Conservative is reaching younger readers exceedingly well,” wrote Allison.

Social media! Younger readers! That means there'll be girls there! Alt-conservative girls who would be sure to find me a decent fellow, I must say. And I could introduce them to my best friends Rod and Noah and Patrick! And we could all smoke pipes together! With Wick! But does he smoke a pipe? It's difficult to say. He must! They're all intellectuals there...they all smoke pipes - even the girls! But I'll bring an extra one, just to be sure.

Best friends with TAC! Oh, this is completely insane!

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.

How to be the most successful TAC blogger in history

Suggest while never actually saying so that there's no side of any issue that you don't ultimately support.

That way, no matter what someone feels or believes, they will applaud you for speaking for them. That's how you build blogosphere market share, by becoming the rhetorical form that will embrace not only whatever content happens to be trending at any given moment, but, most importantly, all sides of it simultaneously.

That guy: he said what you were thinking. And what that other guy who was arguing against you yesterday was thinking, too. And what that woman who disagrees with both of you was thinking. Why, if it didn't look on the surface like a thoughtful, passionate opinion, you might have confused it for a Friday NPR news roundup.

What is TAC's "alt-conservatism"? Well, what would you like it to be? What alt-conservative values would make you like TAC the most? Exactly: just what you suggested, that's exactly what TAC stands for, too, and why you should become a subscriber today.

That ain't working, that's the way you do it. Money for nothing and your clicks for free.

On Cruz control, Dreher, as usual, drives into a ditch

Russian Orthodox convert Rod Dreher, currently studying Russian history (why will make more sense in a bit), managed to get in a little fundraising of his own around posts bashing Ted Cruz' reception at a recent In Defense of Christians event. But because Rod is more skilled as TAC's fundraising clickbait pimp than as a reporter, his most recent streetwalker simply gets it all wrong:

Corrected: Cruz fundraising site was not referring to this week's controversial speech

A fundraising page highlighted on Friday by Rod Dreher at The American Conservative contained a similar but different quotation – "Christians in the Middle East have no greater friend than Israel." This led many, including this author, to believe that a political arm of the Texas senator was cashing in his recent pro-Israel speech.

But here's the thing: The line cited in the supposedly questionable ad is something Cruz has actually used for several months.

Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier told The Washington Examiner that the online fundraising page was generated by search terms involving the senator, his speech and Wednesday's event.

“The ad is something that’s completely separate from his remarks and his speech the other night,” she said. She said the ad started to appear recently on various social media platforms because of news-cycle-related search terms.

“The ad was made separate from the event. The reason it went up is because it was relevant to very high-ranking search terms that were related to Ted Cruz’s name," she added.

We know Dreher is a committed anti-Republican Obamacon, and we know he has not long ago shifted his Eastern Orthodox affiliation from the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), the American branch of the historically anti-Semitic Russian Orthodox Church, effectively the state church of Vladimir Putin's Russia.

What we don't know is why Dreher objects so vociferously to what Cruz actually had to say (that is, assuming Dreher even knows what Cruz said and wasn't, as is more likely, just using the Cruz brouhaha to snag some opportunistic blog hits for TAC).

Here's what Ted Cruz actually had to say:

“Tonight, we are all united in defense of Christians,” Cruz said. “Tonight, we are all united in defense of Jews. Tonight, we are all united in defense of people of good faith, who are standing together against those who would persecute and murder those who dare disagree with their religious teachings.”

But Cruz continued even as the boos got louder: “Those who hate Israel hate America. Those who hate Jews hate Christians. If those in this room will not recognize that, then my heart weeps. If you hate the Jewish people you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ. And the very same people who persecute and murder Christians right now, who crucify Christians, who behead children, are the very same people who target Jews for their faith, for the same reason.”

and finally, tired of being booed for denouncing the religious bigotry of jihadist animals who behead their non-combatant captives

“If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you,” Cruz said. “Good night, and God bless.”

What a vile snake, that Cruz. And unlike Dreher, Cruz has that rude tendency to talk straight out of the front side of his mouth.

Among Rod Dreher's persecuted Christians Cruz supposedly holds in contempt are these:

But the gathering became wrapped in controversy on Wednesday when the conservative Washington Free Beacon reported that “the roster of speakers includes some of the Assad regime’s most vocal Christian supporters, as well as religious leaders allied with the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.” It said the “Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Bechara Raï, who was scheduled to speak during the same keynote slot as Cruz on Wednesday evening, has called Israel an ‘enemy state that is occupying Lebanese territory’ and defended Hezbollah’s right to attack the Jewish state.”

Oh...:

In Defense of Christians’ president, Toufic Baaklini, blamed a “few politically motivated opportunists” for the furor and said they were “made no longer welcome,” according to Politico.

So while IDC's president Baaklini stands with Cruz and against those who booed him, ROCOR Rod knows better for some reason.

And, as usual, Rod's approved commenters say for him what he is practiced enough not to say directly himself:

Colonel Bogey says:

Who is a better friend of Arab Christians than Israel? That’s an easy question; the answer is “Russia”.

Hector_St_Clare says:

Re: Anyway, who else could be a greater candidate for the ally of mid-East Christians?

Um, Russia?

Well, of course. Why didn't I think of that? Sign me up for the history of the Motherland today. And let's all consider donating to The American Conservative while we're at it. After all, they're the only ones speaking out against America's blundering urges to disrupt Putin's and Assad's heroic work saving Arab Christians.

Do the folks in St. Francisville know the patriotic Christian opportunity they're missing out on here?

UPDATE (as they say): Given, as this post leads in pointing out, that dimwits like Dreher can't even grasp the hoodoo magic of search engine-sensitive advertising-serving algorithms which served up the Cruz ad in response to the blogosphere babble about the speech line used, I almost despair of also pointing out that Cruz' exit line in response to being booed by some partisan religious bigots

“If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you,” Cruz said. “Good night, and God bless.”

after giving an entire speech denouncing the persecution of Arab Christians - was literally a line about leaving the stage and nothing more.

For pimps like Dreher though, the plight of the Arab Christians is merely another tool he can use to promote his own anti-Republican, pro-Russian interests and those of his handlers, which is probably why In Defense of Christians wisely decided to have nothing to do with Dreher as a speaker in any capacity.

UPDATE 2 (all the cool kids are doing Updates these days): Katie Gorka is alleging that Ted Cruz knew exactly what he was doing when he drew out the response he did from the Hezbollah backing sponsors of the IDC event:

But what I discovered the next day is that Cruz had known exactly what he was doing. Indeed, he had read the article that had been published about the event just that day and which essentially repeated Frank Ghadry’s allegation that the conference organizers were close to Hezbollah.

Whether Cruz ever contemplated withdrawing from the event is not certain, but what is clear is that he was keenly aware of the alleged links between the organizers of the event and Hezbollah, and he was not going to let that go untested.

This raises the question now of who the true useful idiot really is.

Certainly Dreher's blog commenters, who, unlike Dreher, didn't understand that the ads served on Ted Cruz' web site were automatically context-triggered - just like the ads on Gmail and a thousand other places.

Which leaves me in an obvious contradiction and a quandary: is Dreher a dimwit for not knowing about such ads either as I originally suggested, or, as a professional blog editor himself who has been playing inside blog baseball for decades now, a cynical manipulator who knowingly lied about Cruz' fundraising to his web site-naive readership? I just can't decide.

UDATE 3: And now, behold the martyr Dreher. My emphases:

When someone like Ted Cruz, son of a fundamentalist Christian pastor, has the unspeakable arrogance to go into this group of Orthodox, Catholic, and Coptic Christians who are facing the martyrdom of their entire communities and expect them to recite the gospel of American neoconservatism — that is, not simply to denounce anti-Semitism, which the people in that audience were willing to do, but to affirm the goodness of the state of Israel, even if doing so would put their own lives in danger once they return home – he forces the rest of us Christians to make a choice. Which is more important to them: the fate of Israel, or the fate of the Church?

Again, I support the right of the state of Israel to exist, and the right of the ancient Christian churches of the Middle East to exist. But if circumstances force us to make a choice, Christians must ordinarily choose the Church, just as I would expect Jewish Americans in most circumstances to choose Israel, and would not for a second hold that against them. If you will not be for your own people, what kind of person are you?

That choice implies a second choice: which is more important to conservative American Christians, their Christianity, or their conservatism?

If that is the choice, I know which side I am on. And if that makes me anathema to American movement conservatism, I’ll wear that badge with honor.

But here Dreher is just baldly lying, as is his habit.

Ted Cruz didn't ask anyone to swear a loyalty oath to Israel. He didn't ask anything of his audience at all, not even that they applaud him. He did nothing more than deliver declarative sentences. Anything that was wrought on the IDC members the IDC elected to do to them themselves, even if just by inviting Ted Cruz in the first place. The IDC wanted the legitimization that came from having Ted Cruz (instead of Rod Dreher) as a keynote speaker.

No, once again, this pathetic worm Dreher is only using Mideast Christians in peril as a cynical tool to promote the magazine that pays him, nothing more. Most of his time and money is actually spent filling his belly with delectable things, not doing anything to genuinely relieve their plight.

The problem is not you knowing what side you're on, Rod. The problem is anyone else knowing what side you're on, on anything you write about, no matter what it is.

And I doubt it is this suggestive but, as usual, unspecified final straw man choice you pose that makes you anathema to anyone, Rod. BTW, do you stand with the Christians who back Assad and Hezbollah? Why? Please do explain your choice in underwriting their Christian moral courage of self-preservation, as it were, at the expense of Israeli children killed by Hezbollah-supplied rockets.

No, what makes you anathema to just about anyone, Rod, is that there is apparently nothing more to you than a hollow, parasitic, sanctimonious hustler who will sell any topic, even your own dead sister, the way Offer Schlomi hawks a ShamWow.

Crunchy TAC

The conservatism every thirteen-year-old girl can love.


Can't say we haven't seen the marriage of these two blog grooms barreling down the SERP aisle for some time now. Sully must feel so left out. I can't wait for the Instagram page.

Brought to you by the publisher of "The" "American" "Conservative"

We have some fun here, from time to time, chatting about the dyed-in-the-wool conservative chops of Wick Allison, publisher of The American Conservative.  Which, in the same manner that a roundtable is neither round nor a table, is neither "American" nor "Conservative".  (For a refresher, here's Allison's Cub Reporter discussing the boss's renewed support for Obama in 2012, and chiming in his view that Obama was better choice than Romney on foreign policy and economic issues -- quite the oracle, given recent events.)

Anyhoo, Wick Allison's other vehicle is D Magazine, which is one of those print and online rags about what is trendy and cool in a particular city.  D is of course about Dallas.  In the recent issue, D published an online ranking (don't know if it's in the print version) of the various suburbs in the Dallas area.  The city of Rockwall, TX was ranked #16 out of 63 (yes, we have a lot of suburbs here).  But it is the six-paragraph story accompanying the ranking that raised a bit of a foo-fraw on local AM talk radio today.  The story noted that Rockwall is the hometown of US Congressman Ralph Hall, who is 91 years young and who was recently beaten in the GOP primary by a Tea Partier, and then quoted a local barber thusly:

 “I’ve been cutting Ralph Hall’s hair for 20 years, his kinfolk’s even longer,” he says, pointing to a framed picture of the congressman. “He’s a gentleman. That guy who beat him? He’s an asshole. All these assholes have moved in here. I had a better clientele 20 years ago, no assholes.” 

So there you go.  According to D Magazine, a city loaded with Tea Party "assholes" makes it into the top quartile of suburbs.

And yes, they're hiding behind the "we're not saying that, it's just what we heard" defense.  But it seems an odd paragraph for the publisher of The American Conservative to have in a six-paragraph blurb.

Pimping out a child

Now what in the world kind of American Conservatism do we have here?

Could it be a release from the Tea Party looking for some kinder and gentler press from all sides?

Maybe it's an early draft of The Road to Serfdom scrawled by a toddling Friedrich Hayek after observing a servant doing what they do best.

Nah, as it turns out, this is what your tax-deductible dollars buy at The American Ideas Institute's The American Conservative blog by Rod Dreher: otherwise mommy blog-typical content filched from his unsuspecting 7-year-old daughter Nora, a frequent contributor of such child labor, and pimped out as his own cheap and easy post-filler. Not only your tax-deductible dollars, by the way, mine as well, because who do you think has to pay more now to cover your tax deductibility?

And yet not only does a child's stolen refrigerator art (it's highly unlikely Nora received a proportionate cut of Dreher's pay for this effort as an allowance bonus this month) qualify as a legitimate government tax expenditure these days, it apparently also qualifies as some sort of example of conservative "culture" - in some Downton Abbey conservative-cultury sort of way.

Yep, that's what conservatism has now been reduced and degraded to in some quarters: the government-subsidized pimping out of someone's 7-year-old daughter's labor in order to earn their own daily bread.

Hey-ey, I, oh, oh I'm still alive...

I'm still alive, just on a new project and up to my neck. Props to Keith and all y'all for keeping stuff going on EQE.

Thought this was an insightful comment from an admitted liberal anonymous commenter (LibAnon) regarding why Rod Dreher rubs him/her the wrong way. The comment continues in the following section here. I'll remark on several excerpts, then I have to bolt.

....I was bullied pretty mercilessly for a while as a kid - in a Catholic school. But I've largely moved on with life. Sure, I despise bullies and authoritarians in general, but I tend to function decently well.

Rod doesn't. Rod's a perpetually aggrieved teenager in a pushing-50-something's body. Rod keeps an enemies' list far longer than Nixon's and nurses his grudges like precious children. The world has failed Rod, and Rod is going to make the world pay. It's all about Rod.

Most people who are bullied do move on with life. That's why I wonder if the new emphasis on bullying isn't caused somewhat by a fixation on it. It might be even more important to get over bullying episodes in the long run than "standing up" to the bully. I always imagine the kids who bullied me in school as working as lackeys in quick oil change garages and as farmhands in the middle of Bum-fudge-egypt. And I'm sure I'm right.

Think about the trajectory of his life since he's been online (which, thanks to his ridiculous personal oversharing, one can get a good sense of). He went to Dallas to do editorial work, but the newspaper industry started to go belly-up. This is the age of his Crunchy Con blog on Beliefnet. Irritating to some, I found it fascinating. Sure, he was a little touchy, but seemed somewhat well-adjusted.

Then he goes to Philadelphia to edit the Templeton Foundation's new online magazine. He immediately runs into trouble because, shockingly, the Templeton people don't seem to appreciate a stream of posts about loose women rather than, you know, WHAT THEY WERE ALL ABOUT. Also, the OCA Orthodox churches (Religion Number 3, for those keeping score) don't fit Rod's standards. So, he passive-aggressively manages to get himself fired from his supposed dream job editing a magazine about the mysteries of the universe because he can't stop being snarky online (this time over some church dispute).

I think the man's peak was the Templeton Foundation gig. The guy had arrived and he didn't realize it. His pessimism got the better of him and all he could see were the things which were wrong with it.

You notice less and less about Rod's blissful family life (which he wrote a lot about in Dallas, which makes its absence all the more noticeable). The good Mrs. Dreher barely appears at all anymore.

Everyone keeps failing Rod. His idol, Wendell Berry, fails him earlier this year, and he turns upon him with a fury that makes me think Rod was looking for an excuse to unburden himself of that old man (who is far more influential than Rod will ever be). He goes the Mel Gibson route and founds the Church of Rod (affiliated with ROCOR, but pretty much Rod's personal kingdom) because the Orthodox churches in Baton Rouge aren't pure enough for him - Religion Number 4. His triumphant return to the town of his birth does not seem to be regarded so triumphantly by those he left behind - they're not lining up to kiss his posterior the way he imagines they should. He gets testier and testier, to the point that commenters on his own blog start posting their concern for Rod's emotional state.

I pointed out at the time that Wendell Berry's attack on Christian morality should not have surprised anyone. But I think Liberal Anonymous is correct to point out that Dreher's response to Berry's betrayal has has a "you-have-failed-me" tinge to it.

As we always like to say, read the whole thing. I don't necessarily agree with the characterization 100%; I think everyone tends to feel more like they've been failed by public figures than admitting their folly in trusting them to be their spokespeople. That's why our friend, Tom, is always quoting the Bible with "Put not your trust in Princes." Plus pointing fingers gets easier the more you do it. But it does seem like Dreher may be "failed" more often than most due to the remarkably bad judgment with regard to those with whom he throws in his lot, e.g., Abp. Gandalf, Met. Jonah, Wendell Berry and Wick Allison and his crazy crew at The American Conservative, which LibAnon rightly terms a "sinking ship".

One more insightful observation I will point out that LibAnon makes is the blogging less and less about "blissful family life". It does seem like this feature has fallen off as of late. But this is not necessarily due to a decline in bliss. Maybe the man is just wising up about the dangers of oversharing.