My interview of Norman Podheretz : "Obama cannot win the White House"

My interview of Podhoretz ^ | 05 17 2008 | drzz

[drzz]

"Frankly, I can be wrong, but I do not think that America can carry to the presidency a candidate as on the left as Barack Obama."

Norman Podhoretz, May 14, 2008

Check the link for the complete interview on Iraq, Iran, the WoT, neoconservatism and US presidential elections.

[drzz]

The interview was made originally in English by phone, then transcripted and translated into French.

Linked is a not so bad Google translation.

Privided to you by “le blog drzz”, the first conservative website of France.

Enjoy

[Signalman]

This is what I’ve been thinking. I’m old enough to remember the 1972 election when George McGovern, the darling of the far-left loons who had taken over the Democratic Party at the time, was nominated. Then, in the election, he was crushed by Nixon. Nixon got 520 electoral votes, McGovern got 17.

Now the situation is similar, with the Dems about to nominate another far-left candidate, Obama. Even considering the changing demographics that have occurred in the past 36 years this is still, essentially, a center-right country. I think Obama is going lose, probably not as badly as McGovern, but lose none-the-less.

[livius]

I hope he’s right, but I actually do believe there’s enough loons in this country to elect him. Well, that combined with massive Dem vote fraud.

[drzz]

I don’t.
But as a pro-israeli, I know how far Obama could damage Israel’s security and endanger the country like nobody did before.

[aposiopetic]

Politics is hard work, unlike looking for isolated individuals to do unlawful and wrong things in a vain and misguided attempt to remake the world to one's liking.

I can't see how the security of Israel, a nation that to all appearances believes in the rule of law, is enhanced by an appeal to lawlessness.

[wardaddy]

Contrary to prancing hippies and yippies at the time in 1972 (I was there at 15), today the nation is probably more liberal than ever before culturally.

I blame academia, feminism and uncontrolled immigration.

But I agree that Obama will have a hard time.

[x]

The “neoconservatism” is defined by its prefix “néo”, for “new”. We were a relatively small group of intellectuals affiliated to the left which, at the end of the Sixties, passed on the right because he revolted against the rotting of the ideas progressists.

Hard to believe it is, that with so poor command of English Poddy had, such influence attain he could.

[Ukiapah Heep]

Strong the force is with JediMaster MittRomney. Screwed we all will be if DarthObama wins the election.

[Excellence]

The interview was in English, translated to French, then back again?

[x]

Contrary to prancing hippies and yippies at the time in 1972 (I was there at 15), today the nation is probably more liberal than ever before culturally.

Change takes a while to spread across space and through different layers of society, but when it does, people come to take it for granted.

The first time avowed homosexuals or transvestites appeared on television to talk about their lives it looked like the whole world was crumbling. Now people take it for granted. Maybe that makes us more liberal and maybe people are wrong in being so blase, but it also means that society may have found a way to cope with something that looked like the end of the world (maybe it will be the end of the world, but people aren't as worried about it any more).

You'll find a lot more illegitimacy in the US than there was thirty years ago, but are attitudes towards adultery or abortion really more liberal than they were in some parts of the upper middle class thirty years ago? The median age in the country's gotten higher since the 60s and 70s, so there's less thinking one ought to live the way college kids do.

Morals in the country as a whole are looser and more lax, but people who say that we need more abortion or more divorce or more indiscriminate copulation or more drug-usage aren't likely to get much of an audience now. Those changes came and most people don't want to go further in that direction.

Obama does go too far into "lifestyle liberalism" for most people. But the election may be closer than it looks now. If it starts to look like a blowout for McCain, a lot of people might figure that they can stick it to Bush one last time (by voting for Obama) without it really mattering.

[Godwin1]

Since McGovern's massive defeat, millions of foreign legal immigrants have been admitted to our country. Many have not assimilated in the same way as earlier waves of immigrants. They have no particular loyalty or love for this country, a trait they share with left wing home grown democrats. They believe government's role is to be a sugar daddy, like many home grown democrats. Many of them adhere to anti-democratic belief systems—there were almost no Muslims here in the early seventies. But Muslim votes gave a US Senate seat to surrender-to-Al-Quaeda advocate Webb in Virginia. The liberal professoriate has had another 30 years to twist the minds of our naive and ignorant undergrads, and the disloyal scum in Hollywood and the TV industry another 30 years to preach that America is the Source of All Evil.This is not the same country it was 30 years ago. Let's not be overconfident.

[wardaddy]

How old are you X, I’m 50?

[x]

How old are you X, I’m 50?

Younger than that. I do remember a little of the crazy talk of the 70s.

Some of the changes set in motion back then had a major effect in the country over the past 30 years, but I don't think you have all the "Summer of Love"/"Days of Rage" madness now that you had back then.

If you want to say the country's more liberal than back then, go ahead. If you want to say it's crazier or more likely to fall into the abyss, I'd argue with that.

Maybe it's a glass half-empty/glass half-full thing. From what I can gather you didn't have teachers talking about multiculturalism or homosexuality in the schools forty years ago, but the fact that kids hear that from teachers may make them less likely to believe it.

[wardaddy]

I figured you to be younger than I ...maybe around 27 or so. We and our perspectives are all a product of our ages and there is little we can do to change it.

Being younger you've had to make do with the media's rendition of the 60s and 70s.

Being someone who lived it I can attest that all that summer of love and yippie and fembot and black panther and stonewall riots vanguard movement stuff was just the periphery that got a lot of media attention.

The average college student even at Madison or New Haven was not a rioting radical.

Back then we had a silent majority that was very socially conservative and supported Vietnam up until Nixon's faux Peace with Dignity crap which they shifted towards.

Socially we were markedly more conservative and freer. Very few gun laws, abortion didn't start off till 1973, little racial preference stuff, no inkling of homo-marriage, none of the intrusive confiscatory laws, no hate crimes laws, almost no intrusion on free speech contrary to the media.

Back then the status quo was a staid establishment that grated against the colorful Age of Aquarius and lots of reasonable folks may have thought that yes ..just like loosening up Jim Crow regs that maybe the culture ought to be a little more live and let live but that is as far as it went in the mainstream on social evolution.

The insane crap we now deal with is what those who resisted all that breakdown warned against and they were right.

[Clemenza]

They believe government's role is to be a sugar daddy, like many home grown democrats.

If you look at the wealthiest racial/ethnic groups in the US, you will see that they include Koreans, Chinese, Persians, East Indians, and (yes) Arabs. Japanese Americans are the wealthiest, but most were born in this country.

I agree that many, if not most, of the legal immigrants tend to stick with their own (don't we all) and support the Party of Evil, but not all are poor or looking for uncle sugar. The illegals (and their children) are a whole 'nother issue, to say nothing of the natives who depend on gubmint jobs/connections to rape the taxpayers of New Jersey and other states.