Posted on 11/07/2020 6:04:57 PM PST by Jamestown1630
“Hanson is a great thinker”
I’ll pass. I agree with what Paul Gottfried and the Chronicles crowd have said about VDH for years. VDH is a sloppy historian and a neocon hack. Even people who know his specialty, ancient Greece, say he gets away with all sorts of errors because the majority of us don’t know any better and just accept what he says at face value.
I don’t know anything about his specialties or his expertise in them, but I’ve found his commentary on current events and social issues thoughtful and compelling.
VDH is a lot like Mondale speechwriter Charles Krauthammer. Although I don’t know that Hanson ever tried to defeat Ronald Reagan the way that Krauthammer did.
Anyway both of them came from the liberal wing that flies under the name neoconservative, and many freepers find that soothing. Bushism. They at least aren’t leftists, but they will take pot shots at conservatives who want nothing to do with the liberal pieties that neocons love to embrace. Other than his recognizing the disaster that illegal immigration wrought on California I don’t find VDH interesting.
Dennis Prager is another of this same camp. I knew Dennis when he still corrected callers who kept insisting that he was a conservative. He’d tell them no, he’s a Gene McCarthy RFK Scoop Jackson liberal. Which he really still is. They just started calling themselves neoconservatives during Reagan. Rush and Hannity helped popularize the confusion, not knowing there was any difference.
The great Clyde Wilson nicely summed up what happened to the conservative camp during the ‘80s, which is how we arrived where we are today:
“The offensives of radicalism have driven vast herds of liberals across the border into our territories. These refugees now speak in our name, but the language they speak is the same one they always spoke. We have grown familiar with it, have learned to tolerate it, but it is tolerable only by contrast to the harsh syllables of the barbarians over the border. It contains no words for the things that we value. Our estate has been taken over by an impostor, just as we were about to inherit.”
If you scratch VDH and Prager, who else? Please surprise me with a conservative who isn’t already dead or smoking a pipe in a tweed suit.
Paul Gottfried. Pat Buchanan. Chilton Williamson. Clyde Wilson. Tom Fleming. Peter Brimelow.
bump
The purist is a gnostic. They are interesting when they are going in the right direction.
I’ve never heard of Patrick Reardon.
VDH etc may be going in your direction, and you’re welcome to them.
Ah, you get the point.
This reminds me of the silly Calvinist John Piper going after Trump.
Too often the dogmatist is only interested in himself.
“Ah, you get the point.”
No, and I wasn’t looking for one. You seem to be holding a dialogue with yourself that doesn’t require my attention.
So much for being a gentleman.
Exactly, wardaddy. Too much NR has seeped into his thinking at critical points, unfortunately. Trump’s tweets weren’t relevant to the 2020 election fraud story.
Why shouldn’t one? Decent chap. Not a Savior, but a decent man.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.