The Kristol Method
Comments(0) “By the end of the Clinton administration, I was content to celebrate the triumph of conservatism as I understood it, and had no desire for other than incremental changes in the economic and social structure of the United States. I saw no need for the estate tax to be abolished, marginal personal-income tax rates further reduced, the government shrunk, pragmatism in constitutional law jettisoned in favor of “originalism,” the rights of gun owners enlarged, our military posture strengthened, the rise of homosexual rights resisted, or the role of religion in the public sphere expanded. All these became causes embraced by the new conservatism that crested with the reelection of Bush in 2004,” – Richard Posner
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/quote-for-the-day-ii-2.html#more
“Given how often Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and other right-wing populist rabble-rousers make coarser versions of the same argument today, it’s important to note that Kristol and his colleagues initially refused to propose a political response to the rise of new class. Adopting Trilling’s ambivalent stance toward the adversary culture of the intellectuals, Kristol explicitly rejected a “populist perspective” that portrayed new class elites as “usurp[ing] control of our media” and using “their strategic positions to launch an assault on our traditions and institutions.” Such a simple-minded view was, for Kristol, “misleading and ultimately self-defeating.” The rise of the new class and the adversary culture could not simply be willed or wished away, since they had emerged out of and had their roots in the extraordinarily complicated dynamics of modern, urban civilization itself. The appropriate response to recent troubling trends was thus careful study and reflection on the complexities of contemporary American life–not futile and destructive calls to stamp them out through political action.
“But Kristol’s moderation and detachment would soon come to an end…. Two years later, Kristol would assert that defending the American way of life against foreign and domestic enemies required that citizens develop a “religious attachment” to their country. In future years he would go even further, to claim that modern conservatism should be based on a synthesis of religion, nationalism, and economic growth–and that Republicans should give up their resistance to the transformation of their party into an explicitly religious organization–all for the sake of banishing liberalism, now flatly described as the “enemy,” from American political life.”
http://www.tnr.com/blog/damon-linker/irving-kristols-other-journey?page=0,1
“Among the core social scientists around The Public Interest there were no economists…. This explains my own rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems. The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority – so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government…”
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/movement-conservatism-and-debt.html
“David has the righteous answer,” Mattera said, “because he is taking pride in his Christian beliefs.” No matter that Mattera didn’t accurately grasp David’s biography or the biblical timeline. In conserva-land, David, a character from the Old Testament, was a Christian even before Christ was born. “Anyone who came against his God,” Mattera said, “David would take it personally.”
…
During the panel, Mattera took the David and Goliath metaphor another perverse step: If conservatives (David) smite liberals (Goliath), they will be rewarded with the hot conservative women, just like King Saul promised his daughter to the warrior who slew the evil giant. “You know his daughter must have been beautiful because there’s no guy whose gonna die for an ugly girl,” Mattera chortled. “Our women are hot. We have Michelle Malkin. Who does the left have, Rachel Maddow? Sorry, I prefer that my women not look like dudes.”
http://www.campusprogress.org/fieldreport/4585/taking-it-personally
