Replies

Ironic thing about Sobran is that, around 1985 or 1986, he published a massive article called "Pensées" (spell?) in National Review. Buckely hailed it as the Conservative Manifesto, as the culmination and summary of all of conservative wisdom and philosophy.

Does anyone remember Sobran's "Pensées"? I subscribed to NR at the time, but didn't read the article in its entirety. My impression, based on what I did read, was: "This is real boring."

And then, just a few years later, conservatism's new "official philosopher" was booted out of the movement.

At first I admit I scanned the article. When I reread it, it is actually more problematic than I thought. He first, very correctly as I pointed out above, criticized the tendency of the Left to make psychological accusations instead of logical arguments. He then turns around and does the exact same thing. The antiwar right is infected with "hate" and surely there is some underlying psychological motivation. Well, while I despise this type of argument, I will join Mr Auster in his hypocrisy and then promise to never do it again. The "mainstream" right is like the middle of the road kid in high school. Neither too popular nor unpopular. But in it's desperate attempt to gain popularity, it discards it long time friends who might be a little quirky or unpopular who are a social drag. If the antiwar folks are angry, the main streamers are craven, opportunist, who will sacrifice any semblance of ideological fidelity for minimal political gain. In other words, weak crowd followers.

I looked on Mr. Auster's blog and saw much to like. He seems generally nonintervention and he is restrictionist on immigration. And he bashed Hugh Hewitt which is always good. Why he is deciding to side with the Front Page Magazine folks is not clear to me. While FPM has some good things to say about political correctness and affirmative action, they proved they were on the wrong side of the great debate when they came out for Lincoln and against DeLorenzo. See the psychology working here. "I'm a conservative, but I'm not one of those disreputable anti-Lincoln conservatives."

The main steam right is obsessed with the concern that somebody, somewhere is going to think they are a kook. They will do anything to maintain "respectability." This means jettisoning anything that smacks of kookiness, but also any ideas that are ideologically outside the mainstream as well. Such as instead of fixing Social Security we ought to abolish it.

Sobran was targeted because he was anti-Isreal but he was getting less and less mainstream as time went on and would have eventually got the ax anyway.

Mr Auster tells us he will have a followup. Well if so, I hope he avoids the psychobabble and hope he publishes in a real conservative publication. But I think his time would be better spent exposing the big government pro-wars and explaining just what he believes the anti-federalist were wrong about.