Surprising introspection from the Weekly Standard

[Pangloss]

For those who don't know, the Weekly Standard is more or less the rallying point for the neo-conservative movement. Its founder and editor is William Kristol, who also created the Project for the New American Century, one of the neo-con think-tanks and one of the main sources for the development of neo-con political positions over the past decade (membership in PNAC is generally considered to be one of the main indicators of whether a public figure in the administration "is a neo-con"; for example, Senator and former HUD secretary Mel Martinez was not a member of PNAC, but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfled and Vice President Dick Cheney are members). Kristol is a regular contributor at Fox News Channel, and Fox owner Ruppert Murdoch helped fund the Weekly Standard at startup.

 

Andrew Ferguson is the senior editor for the Standard. The new issue, celebrating the 10th anniversary, is interesting in a number of respects, one of which is some rather eye-opening criticism of the current state of the conservative movement.

 

For example:

 

Under the circumstances, it's not much of a surprise that the threshold Buckley tried to maintain has collapsed. I suppose any philosophical tendency, as it acquires power and popularity, will simplify itself, define itself downward. That's democratic politics for you. But something more corrosive is also at work. Marshall McLuhan was righter than anyone ever would have guessed. The medium really is the message. Conservatism nowadays is increasingly a creature of its technology. It is shaped--if I were a Marxist I might even say determined--by cable television and talk radio, with their absurd promotion of caricature and conflict, and by blogs, where the content ranges from Jesuitical disputes among hollow-cheeked obsessives to feats of self-advertisement and professional narcissism (Everyone's been asking what I think about . . . You won't want to miss my appearance tonight on . . . Be sure to click here for my latest . . . ) that would have been unthinkable in polite company as recently as a decade ago. Most conservative books are pseudo-books: ghostwritten pastiches whose primary purpose seems to be the photo of the "author" on the cover. What a tumble! From The Conservative Mind to Savage Nation; from Clifton White to Dick Morris; from Willmoore Kendall and Harry Jaffa to Sean Hannity and Mark Fuhrman--all in little more than a generation's time. Whatever this is, it isn't progress.

 

Interesting, isn't it?

 

If you view neo-cons as simply politically-active citizens with a perfectly reasonable political view, this is perhaps no great shocker. The Standard does criticize the administration from time to time, and is one of the few places where you will find the last vestiges of the pro-entitlement aspect of the movement (i.e. "welfare is okay", normally not a conservative position). Others, who see neo-cons as evil, will no doubt see something nefarious at work here.

 

But either way, I think it's interesting, simply from the perspective of someone who observes politics and the Big Game. So I thought I'd pass it along.

[Skye]

Maybe it's just my view on neo-cons, but I don't find it all that surprising. To me the neo-cons are intellectual elitists, who write on foreign policy in academic journals and lecture at Ivy League schools. Their disdain for the common conservatives, especially the rednecks, is probably greater than for the bookish socialists on the left.

[bascule]

Bill Kristol reminds me an awful lot of Emperor Palpatine

[john5746]

Maybe it's just my view on neo-cons, but I don't find it all that surprising. To me the neo-cons are intellectual elitists, who write on foreign policy in academic journals and lecture at Ivy League schools. Their disdain for the common conservatives, especially the rednecks, is probably greater than for the bookish socialists on the left.

 

Very observant. Many Intellectuals on both sides of the fence have disdain for the common man, unless there is some work to be done or a war to be fought.

[Pangloss]

I think that's an interesting point. The general consensus these days is that it's the Democrats (as exemplified by John Kerry) who are standoffish and removed from "mainstream" America. But there is most definitely a conservative side to that coin.

 

Perhaps another indicator that such stereotypes are never as useful as they seem came out a couple of days ago in the form of a study from Columbia University about the importance of the "family dinner" on a child's development, ability to score good grades, and not get into trouble*. Columbia, of course, is the home of the much feared and loathed Columbia School of Journalism, oft cited as a power base of liberalism by the far right, and yet here they are doing a study that supports families and traditional values.

 

All of which, in my view, just underscores the important of keeping an open mind.

 

 

* http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Health/story?id=1123055&page=1