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What made The Weekly Standard great
The Week ^ | 12/14/2018 | Matthew Miller

Posted on 12/16/2018 2:12:57 PM PST by Widget Jr

When it was announced on Friday that The Weekly Standard would print its last issue after nearly a quarter of a century, I was astonished. Who would ever have guessed that The American Conservative, the upstart anti-war magazine founded by Pat Buchanan and Scott McConnell in 2002, would outlast Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes' neoconservative colossus? If you had asked me five years ago, I would have said it was about as likely as the star of Celebrity Apprentice winning the White House on a reactionary populist platform.

It's worth saying at the outset that I and millions of other Americans of all political tendencies disagreed with the editors of The Weekly Standard about the Iraq war. We were right and they were wrong. I will return later to this issue, which is more complicated than some critics of intervention have ever made it sound. But there are other points worth making first.

The most obvious one is that the Standard was, for more than two decades, the best right-of-center periodical published in the United States. This was true for the very simple reason that it hired the best writers and let them write about the topics that interested them...

(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: kristol; neocons; weeklystandadrd
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To: bigbob
Deputy Dumbshit Stephen Hayes...

Any non-pricks write for them? It's like being a prime a**hole was a job requirement.

41 posted on 12/16/2018 4:55:35 PM PST by AAABEST (NY/DC/LA media/political industrial complex DELENDA EST)
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To: Widget Jr

The Weekly Srandard is like the 0bama Presidency, it’s finally over.


42 posted on 12/16/2018 5:05:35 PM PST by wjcsux (The hyperventilating of the left means we are winning! (Tagline courtesy of Laz.))
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To: Widget Jr
What made The Weekly Standard great

It's demise.

43 posted on 12/16/2018 5:56:55 PM PST by Pelham (Secure Voter ID. Mexico has it, because unlike us they take voting seriously)
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To: grey_whiskers

You beat me to it. GMTA


44 posted on 12/16/2018 5:57:47 PM PST by Pelham (Secure Voter ID. Mexico has it, because unlike us they take voting seriously)
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To: alloysteel

It was from the very beginning a chamber of amnesty open borders megaphone.

When Trump ran on border security the mask dissolved.


45 posted on 12/16/2018 6:01:04 PM PST by MrEdd (Caveat Emptor)
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To: SpaceBar

Kristol’s father Irving embraced the term “the Godfather of Neoconservatism”. He even included Neoconservative in the title of several of his books.


46 posted on 12/16/2018 6:01:42 PM PST by Pelham (Secure Voter ID. Mexico has it, because unlike us they take voting seriously)
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To: DaxtonBrown

Neoconservative treachery against paleos and traditional conservatives began as early as the Reagan years. It was a mistake to trust them.

True to their origins on the Left they were all about power.


47 posted on 12/16/2018 6:09:43 PM PST by Pelham (Secure Voter ID. Mexico has it, because unlike us they take voting seriously)
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To: Widget Jr

The Weakly Substandard? Oh yes, a crappy magazine for NeverTrumpers. Bye Kristol...don’t let the door hit you in the ass...


48 posted on 12/16/2018 6:27:52 PM PST by ConservaTeen (Islam is Not the Religion of Peace, but The religion of Pedophilia...)
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To: The people have spoken
C’mon. The Week Is a tabloid-quality compendium of progressive spew.
49 posted on 12/16/2018 8:00:28 PM PST by hinckley buzzard (Power is more often surrendered than seized.)
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To: MuttTheHoople
Never fear. The B-team at Salem is going to keep the cruise ships happy.
50 posted on 12/16/2018 8:04:18 PM PST by hinckley buzzard (Power is more often surrendered than seized.)
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To: goldstategop
he has a stronger Republican Party to work with

Oh for crying out loud.

51 posted on 12/16/2018 8:10:07 PM PST by M. Thatcher
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To: Widget Jr
The emergence of Donald Trump has exposed numerous self indulgent back stabbers who have played both sides against the middle to get rich off politics in the swamp. Bill Kristol has joined the casualty list headed by McCain, Flake, Corker, Ryan and plenty more who are hiding in the shadows working against our pursuit of happiness.

I believe in my heart that Americans are waking up (as Lindsey Graham seems to have done). The 2016 election was our pep rally, but we still have a game to win.

52 posted on 12/17/2018 9:19:38 AM PST by Baynative ("A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams." - John Barrymore)
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To: Widget Jr
It wasn't horrible.

It wasn't great.

This guy is building up the Standard to tear down the rest of the right.

Case in point:

In domestic politics the Standard always stood for a more humane, less libertarian vision of conservatism. It owed this to the intellectual legacy of neoconservatism: Daniel Patrick Moynihan's policy acumen, Irving Kristol's Two Cheers for Capitalism, and Christopher Lasch's more radical Tory Marxism. This did not always translate into the sort of open dissent from the atomizing consensus of the post-Goldwater GOP, but it did mean that the Standard's editorial pages stood for principles loftier than the almighty dollar.

53 posted on 12/17/2018 5:48:26 PM PST by x
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To: Widget Jr
And this:

For many years on the American right there has been an interest in shoring up the legacy of so-called "realists" in foreign policy. This has meant, among other things, the lionization of creeps, such as the openly eugenicist George F. Kennan, on the grounds that they pursued the national interests of the United States unblinded by such wimpy considerations as human rights.

54 posted on 12/17/2018 5:49:27 PM PST by x
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To: x

Thanks for the summary.

The text you quoted revealed exactly why it was a publication to be avoided, denounced.

What is amusing is that their “radical Tory Marxism” (pul-eeze!) and even more so the “principles loftier than the almighty dollar” meant that in the end they didn’t have any.

Principles or dollars.


55 posted on 12/17/2018 5:56:34 PM PST by Fightin Whitey
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To: Widget Jr

I used to read it sometimes 10-15 years ago. It was never that great.


56 posted on 12/17/2018 10:05:24 PM PST by Impy (I have no virtue to signal.)
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