Sunday, November 3, 2013

In a world where Charles Krauthammer's not conservative enough...

Yeah, you should probably read that subject line in the voice of Don LaFontaine.

While the original post that this one's spinning off of was originally intended only to contrast a true conservative writer with a pretentious scrunchy con clown, it turns out, news to me, that Bubba and Kathleen and so probably others - Bubba linked Andrew McCarthy - don't think Charles Krauhammer is conservative enough, or is the wrong kind of conservative, or in some major wholesale way doesn't serve the conservative cause well or even at all.

Let me right now distinguish the wholesale standard or non-standard I just described from just disagreeing with Krauthammer periodically on different points or statements he may make. For example, I strongly disagree with his sympathies toward amnesty, but I think he probably settles there in what is probably just academic naivete simply because he doesn't know enough working class black and white and legal Hispanic people displaced from potential jobs in construction or hospitality by the illegal aliens which took those jobs and depressed the wages they used to pay. If that's the only sort of dispute any of the people named above have with him - just occasional disagreements on points - say so now and consider that my retraction of what I claimed above.

However, anyone, McCarthy included, who is taking a disagreement on particular isolated points or statements and extrapolating them to generally define Krauthammer's conservatism as a whole, if that's what it turns out they're doing, is leaving rationality behind in pursuit of a more subjective, purely personal disregard for him.

Speaking of which, it could also be that someone just straightforwardly dislikes Krauthammer personally - that haughty little nose, for example - for reasons ultimately having nothing to do with his writings. I'm the same way, just not with Krauthammer. In that case, they might agree perfectly well with many of the things Krauthammer actually writes but find he somehow puts a stink on them they just can't abide.

There is also the possibility that Krauthammer is being measured in some quasi-religious way against some sort of idealized potential conservative savior who will not only perfectly embody all conservative principles but will also unilaterally bestow some sort of conservative salvation on everyone else as a matter of grace without them having to do very much themselves. If that sort of perception is out there, I'm sorry, but, unlike Christianity, I just don't think politics, any politics, has ever worked that way or ever will. If someone is waiting for someone to act conservatively on their behalf, the person they're really waiting for is probably themselves. Unlike in Christianity, in politics there are no saviors, and there is nothing and no one involved in politics which is not to some degree incomplete, broken, impure, or dirty.

Which brings me back to my original point. In a world where Charles Krauthammer with his canon of writing as a conservative is not considered conservative enough - what sort of world, exactly, do those who feel that way imagine they're really living in? What are their realistic expectations for the present and the future, of conservatism, and particularly for conservatism to actually shape the world they and their children inhabit in ways it's not doing now?

Let me point out that, if they're in fact not doing anything less than repudiating Krauthammer in that wholesale way I first described above, then what they're effectively doing is repudiating everything that's only Krauthammer-type-and-degree conservative and below and accepting only that more complete, more fully realized, more pure, more intense, or more whatever conservatism cream that is somehow better or richer or more intensely pure than the mere Krauthammer-type-and-degree conservatism they reject.

If so, given what I and a number of others find as Krauthammer's sufficient conservatism, I can see only two alternatives.

First, if their view is conservatively incorrect, their view of the world may be, to use a term from Krauthammer's psychiatry, "cognitively dissonant": their view of how they want the world to be is so realistically out of joint with the way the world will necessarily be that it will never serve them well.

Second, if their view is in fact the only true conservatively correct one, they may find that they're in fact able to practice it themselves in some ways in the world, but just not in any way that has any noticeable effects on the world beyond them and those particular co-conservatives who share that same rarefied vision with them. In other words, they might be confining themselves to permanemtly limited and circumscribed, impotent academic cult status. Conservative, perhaps, but permanemtly limited and circumscribed, impotent academic conservative cult status nevertheless.

Finally, here's Krauthammer's most recent column, Obamacare Laid Bare and his take on the

three pillars of Obamacare: (a) mendacity, (b) paternalism and (c) subterfuge.

Read it - or not - and decide for yourself.

Charles Krauthammer seems conservative enough for me.

20 comments:

  1. Krauthammer goes on TV and spouts off about how the original opponents of the New Deal were "anti-government" anarchists but modern conservatives accept the New Deal / Great Society status quo as a glorious achievement, and that's okay: it's just show business.

    Krauthammer's been wrong on supporting amnesty, and that's okay, too: it's just academic naivete, and it is surely just a random, one-off mistake, having no implications for the rest of his beliefs and having no impact on the trustworthiness of his writing.

    But if you disagree about these conclusions, it must be because of personal animus, cognitive dissonance, quasi-religious fanaticism, or a demand for purity that renders conservatism negligible.

    Where can a nobody like me go to get the benefit of the doubt that Keith showers on Krauthammer?

    --

    For myself, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect conservatives to advance conservatism even in hostile venues. The title, cover art, and central premise of the book would have made it difficult to do otherwise, but Jonah Goldberg stood his ground even while sitting across from Jon Stewart, and it doesn't appear his book sales suffered.

    And it's not unreasonable to expect a prominent conservative writer to be a little less naive on an issue this important. Steyn elegantly dismantled the amnesty position by writing that he gives Dr. K the benefit of the doubt, that "once America assumes the demographics of California, the Republican party will be unstoppable."

    Is Krauthammer a conservative? Sure, and when he's on, his writing can be very effective indeed, but I think it's a mistake to point to him as a kind of epitome of conservatism, as if his position stakes out the farthest right that polite society permits conservatism to go -- y''know, with comments about how nutso some people are by suggesting that EVEN Krauthammer is insufficiently conservative.

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    1. But if you disagree about these conclusions, it must be because of personal animus, cognitive dissonance, quasi-religious fanaticism, or a demand for purity that renders conservatism negligible.

      But that's not what I said Bubba. Even though what I said is printed plainly above, I'll repeat it here

      Let me right now distinguish the wholesale standard or non-standard I just described from just disagreeing with Krauthammer periodically on different points or statements he may make. For example, I strongly disagree with his sympathies toward amnesty, but I think he probably settles there in what is probably just academic naivete simply because he doesn't know enough working class black and white and legal Hispanic people displaced from potential jobs in construction or hospitality by the illegal aliens which took those jobs and depressed the wages they used to pay. If that's the only sort of dispute any of the people named above have with him - just occasional disagreements on points - say so now and consider that my retraction of what I claimed above.

      So let me clarify: if you, Bubba, are only disagreeing with Krauthammer on this point or that one, or on what he said on Jon Stewart's show that was different from what you'll say when you get invited, then I am not talking about you. However, if what you are doing is somehow claiming that Krauthammer is across the board not in fact a major, internationally important A-list conservative who advances the principles of conservatism better than few others do, then I am talking about you, and pick whichever reason for your misunderstanding of reality fits you best. You tell me which camp you're in.

      but I think it's a mistake to point to him as a kind of epitome of conservatism, as if his position stakes out the farthest right that polite society permits conservatism to go -- y''know, with comments about how nutso some people are by suggesting that EVEN Krauthammer is insufficiently conservative.

      And a plain reading of what I wrote above shows that I did no such thing either.

      But let's ask this: which other people than ourselves should be exactly as purely conservative as we ourselves, who nobody beyond our immediate circle gives the time of day to, and nobody invites on any shows to do anything, and nobody holds to any standard of conservatism at all somehow feel we are entitled that they be, and why? In case you didn't notice, that mindset isn't any different from the psychological cultism of Hollywood celebrity fandom: "Oh, you lame Pretty Boy or Girl Actor, you don't embody my vicarious fantasies on the screen exactly as I want them portrayed; that Other Pretty Boy or Girl serves me so much better".

      It's a free market out there in conservative punditry, Bubba. If you think you can do a better job than Krauthammer overall as a public conservative that anybody at all even knows exists, go for it* - or instead explain why Krauthammer somehow owes you or me, or even conservatism itself, anything at all in the first place.

      Me, I'm grateful for everything Krauthammer does do out there, even his occasional f'ups, because he's doing 99.9% better than anything I could possibly do, and he didn't have to do it, to shelve an impossibly hard to come by medical practice to do it, but he did it anyway.

      Keith

      *First you get your medical degree while lying flat on your back in a hospital bed, then you start shopping your thoughts free-lance out there in competition with everyone else. Who knows, maybe you'll get lucky.

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    2. Oh my goodness, what would we DO without conservative pundits on Fox! They have saved the day time and time again. They are so *charitable* in the way they deign to agree with us (sometimes) on national TV! All hail the great conservative pundits that have led the way to a quasi-Marxist soft tyranny! I'm getting teary eyed. Can we get a bunch of North Korean children to do a massive staged dance of celebration of Krauthammer's life? especially his *earning of his medical degree flat on his back*. Does he also make the sun rise in the East?

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    3. Do you also have a shrine to the Dynamic Davids, i.e. Frum and Brooks, Keith? How about Andrew Sullivan?

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  2. Krauthammer, he don't like guns neither. Yee haw!

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  3. Keith, I DO think there are quite a few professional writers whose conservative principles are more reliable than Krauthammer's and who I'd readily uphold as conservative bulwarks -- Mark Steyn, Mark Levin, Andrew McCarthy, and Thomas Sowell being the first that spring to mind -- so I'm not insisting on some impossibly pure standard.

    For now the second time, you've implied that I have no place to criticize Krauthammer because I'm some nobody who isn't being paid for his punditry. Did I miss where you prefaced your criticism of Rod Dreher with your own CV of work for daily newspapers and opinion magazines?

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    1. For now the second time, you've implied that I have no place to criticize Krauthammer because I'm some nobody who isn't being paid for his punditry.

      No, Bubba, I didn't. I explicitly claimed outright that you would have no place to dismiss a conservative of Krauthammer's stature - if that's what you're claiming to be doing - having never bothered to achieve anything as a conservative yourself.

      But in your defense, if that's what it is, everything you've said indicates you're not in the camp I was criticizing, but for some reason I haven't yet grasped you continue to try to defend yourself using these ineffectual straw man arguments as if you wished you were in that camp.

      Frankly, I don't see anything remotely analogous between the things we're discussing here and a purely opportunistic narcissist like Rod Dreher.

      Keith

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    2. Because there is a universe of difference between "dismiss' and "criticize". Anyway, I'll take the fall here, since Keith doesn't deign to respond to me and I'm clearly off the reservation: I hereby "dismiss" Charles Krauthammer. boom!

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  4. I guess I don't quite see the argument here. The question for me comes down to "conservative enough for what?". After all, he's a columnist, so we can each agree or disagree with his particular positions (I'm probably 80% with him), but there is no further decision that is asked from us about him. He's not running for election.

    The only question seems to be whether he is conservative enough to read, and he is certainly that, anyway.

    The point that he is a "toady" or "insider" falls short for me. There is no indication that Dr. K doesn't believe what he is saying (unlike Dreher) or is otherwise phony about his positions, for example because of affinity for cocktail parties etc. Lacking that, I'd say it just comes down to whether we agree or disagree with him on particular issues.

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    1. Whether or not Obama could be identified as a rabid lefty in the months preceding the November 2008 election is not merely a "particular issue", although that's exactly how Krauthammer would like you to see it. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.

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  5. Is the suggestion that the Gospel itself is a blood libel against Jews also just another "particular issue" for you?

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  6. Keith, it's not that I desire to be in the category of people you dismiss for their fanaticism or cognitive dissonance, it's that you're not being clear about when criticism and skepticism puts you in that category.

    Perhaps instead of generalizing about groups, you should directly address whoever it is whose comments you oppose.

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    1. Bubba, I did directly address you, Kathleen, and Andrew McCarthy. I also reconsidered whether I had understood you correctly, which is why I differentiated the two different camps I was speaking about - those who had episodic disagreements with the meaningfully conservative Krauthammer and those who dismissed Krauthammer wholesale as meaningfully conservative - and left those I addressed to explicitly define themselves.

      My posts have been

      #1 - Krauthammer as what a conservative author looked like instead of the poseur Dreher

      #2 - What sort of world reality one is left with if one dismisses Krauthammer as meaningfully conservative

      #3 - Pin the conservative on the inreach-outreach spectrum

      Keith

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  7. Kathleen, I finally got around to reading that piece by Krauthammer on Gibson's Passion of the Christ, and in order to dismiss the conclusion you draw, I'd have to conclude that Krauthammer is either woefully uninformed about the subject OR much less precise a writer as he's proclaimed to be.

    Krauthammer mentions Muslims and their story and Jews and their story, only to claim that Christians' story is "different from other stories" because "it is not a family affair of coreligionists."

    That's an absolutely crazy claim to make considering how frequently the Koran disparages Jews and Christians.

    Krauthammer doesn't just write that a particular interpretation of the Gospel message is anti-semtic, he unmistakably attributes the blood libel to the Gospel message itself.

    "Vatican II did not question the Gospels. It did not disavow its own central story. It took responsibility for it, and for the baleful history it had spawned. Recognizing that all words, even God's words, are necessarily subject to human interpretation, it ordered an understanding of those words that was most conducive to recognizing the humanity and innocence of the Jewish people.

    "The Vatican did that for good reason. The blood libel that this story affixed upon the Jewish people had led to countless Christian massacres of Jews and prepared Europe for the ultimate massacre -- 6 million Jews systematically murdered in six years -- in the heart, alas, of a Christian continent. It is no accident Vatican II occurred just two decades after the Holocaust, indeed in its shadow.
    " [emphasis mine]

    There has been a blood libel affixed upon the Jewish people -- but by what? Misguided devotees? NO, the "story" itself affixed that blood libel upon them.

    Never mind that Jesus Himself is Jewish, that every one of His hand-picked Apostles were Jewish, and that every author of the New Testament was Jewish with the sole exception of Luke the Gentile physician.

    Krauthammer continues by placing particular blame on Gibson for his artistic choices as a director, the most "revolting" choice being the addition of the character Satan in the crowd shots.

    "Gibson's camera follows close up, documentary style, as Satan glides among them, his face popping up among theirs -- merging with, indeed, defining the murderous Jewish crowd. After all, a perfect match: Satan's own people."

    I wonder if Krauthammer has ever read John 8:44, because the logic of his invective goes even beyond denouncing the Christian message as anti-Semtic: to be consistent, he would also have to condemn its Founder.

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    1. I'll leave you and Kathleen to whatever interpretation of Krauthammer you desire.

      From my history of reading him as a scrupulously precise writer I read him as meaning the Gospel when he uses the word "Gospel" and meaning the historical Christian narrative of Jewish deicide when he uses the less specific term "story", particularly in the specific context he places them in within that particular column.

      I don't find it surprising that the Jewish Krauthammer holds the vocally anti-Semitic Gibson and his cinematic choices with respect to the deicide of Christ in less regard than some others might.

      Keith

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    2. I see, so it's just a matter of interpretation . Krauthammer's article is like the Constitution -- it's a living document. Totally.

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    3. Hey Keith, since when is the Gospel not a story? What the heck is it anyway? I'm all ears. I can't wait for your answer.

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    4. Is it also open to "interpretation" whether or not Obama said people could keep their health insurance? You'd fit right in at the White House, Keith.

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  8. Or he is as precise a writer as claimed and is just a hateful bigot.

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