National Review's Anathema Corner

LewRockwell.com ^ | March 26, 2003 | J..P. Zmirik

[The Irishman]

Whats your beef? Frum's not Buchanan, is that the problem? Too Jew for you?

That was uncalled for. I know nothing of his religious background but I have seen him on TV and he is definitely white. Does that make me anti-white if I don't agree with Frum?

[ggekko]

"If the essayist is correct, and he did try to purge more traditional Conservatives, he is a largely disruptive force, who should be given very little encouragement...."

David Frum doesn't have the power to "purge" anyone. What is he going to do put Pat Buchanan in a gulag? Pat still writes books and he still appears on TV; he hardly seems purged.

If anyone is repsonsible for marginalizing himself it is Pat Buchanan himself. Since the end of the Cold War Pat has taken a series of positions on foreign policy, freed trade, and immigartion that have placed him outside the mainstream of conservative thought. He may be right on these issues but his views are not the mainstream views at the moment.

Trent Lott is a politician and should have been more attuned to what he was saying. Frum's critique of Trent Lott's praise of Strom Thurmond was based upon Lott's own apparent ignorgance, based on what on Lott said about it afterwards, of what Thurmond's State's Rights Party advocated in the 1948 election. For a politician such tone deafness and outright ignorance is inexcusable.

Mr Zmiak's article about Frum strikes me as armchair psychoanalysis. It is always better to criticize someone's ideas; it is arrogant to impute motives to someone at such an arms length basis.

[The Irishman]

Yours is a tough one to reply to. Raimondo is guilty of excess and I did not support his comments in the column you mentioned. He was right about the Kosovo War, IMO, and I give him credit for doing what he did then. I do not think I have any reason to think that he hates America. He is a libertarian and an anti-war ideologue and I believe that animates him. It may be fair to say that his libertarianism causes him to "hate" our governments policies.

I won't go into the argument about each of the others though I disagree with you. Suffice it to say that I agree to disagree with you on this but have the highest regard for your point of view and sincerety. I am sure on other issues in the future we will be in full agreement. The day will come when GWB will be deserted by the neocons (remember McCain) and he will need all the help he can get.

Regards.

[The Irishman]

One tries to wash away the taint that your opponents have attached to you by finding someone within your own movement who is more distasteful, more extreme, more socially maladroit, then denouncing him. Best of all if you can lead the chorus of ostracism.Zmirik

Having attended Stanford during the 60's I can verify this phenomenon. The Lott fiasco was a repetiion recently. We saw that right here on this forum.

I read the NRO Frum Diary you referred me to. In my view, he ducked the charges Zmirik made in the article. Interesting....

Regards

[The Irishman]

Sorry, the above post should have been addressed to you.

Regards.

[Ohioan]

While I do not agree with some of your comments, the most striking thing to me is how much your tone appears to differ from that of the man you would defend. There is another Frum piece posted today, an essay by the fellow himself, and his tone is very different than your more reflective one.

I do not know how you can, however, even seek to define the mainstream of "Conservative thought." We have never been a monolithic movement. Different Conservatives will focus more on conserving one thing or another. We need each other, whenever we can get a group of us concentrated on one fight, but the identification with preserving heritage cannot be seen in quite the same tactical light with identification with one of the specific movements bent upon destroying heritage and replacing it with something different.

Pat Buchanan's dissent from the Republican Party after 1996 does not marginalize Pat except from the standpoint of being a likely Republican candidate in the near future. I will grant you that he is not that--not after the fourth party run. Frankly, more Republicans--as well as most Conservative Democrats and independents--are more in agreement with Pat than they are with the Administration on Immigration. Admittedly, his trade policies are those that were discredited in the Depression of the Thirties, and are contrary to the historic views of at least one major body of the American tradition. But that does not mean they cannot be rationally discussed, without acrimony that disrupts our abilities to work together on most of the other issues with which Pat and the rest of us agree.

I think that you are being too kind with Trent, in one sense. He knew exactly what he was saying at the birthday party, and there was nothing wrong with what he was saying. He simply panicked when someone decided to make an issue of it. Had he handled the hoopla with firm good humor, he would not have been shot down. His flip-flopping all over the map was the worst possible response.

But the significant point is, whom is this Frum to suggest that Southernors may not express nostalgia over the past--especially at a birthday party in honor of the man, who probably more than any other, has made the more conservative outlook in Federal politics in recent decades possible. If Frum does not understand what Strom Thurmond did for the Conservative cause between 1964 and his retirement, it is Frum who is ignorant.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site -

[Britton J Wingfield]

Thanks.

[sheltonmac]

BUMP for the truth.

Personally, I think Frum is getting more attention than he deserves.

[ninenot]

Yeah--a better picture than the excerpt printed on the other thread.

With a guy like Frum, there are a few key questions, such as 'what's your thought on the "shall not be infringed" language of the 2nd Amendment--or, better, "what exceptions should be made which will allow legal abortion..."

THEN you'll see if he's actually a conservative or a wine-and-cheese BigGummintRepublican...

Asking about revitalizing the 9th and 10th Amendments might just put him into a dead faint.

[ninenot]

Perhaps.

For one really interesting discussion, let's take PJB's economic protectionism and ask: at what point do the Feds intervene in "free trade" to maintain acceptable standards of living for industrial workers in the USA?

I will admit that one will have to carefully define all the terms, but you get the drift.

A big-time Economist showed up here in Wisconsin and advised a small-business group that in about 30 years Wisconsin would no longer have a business sector in metal fabrication/machining. Zero. Zip. Nada.

"Free trade" will eliminate this sector. We all know that the Red Chinese are paying $10./day to their laborers and Chinese firms don't operate with the same regulatory burden (to say the least) as do US companies. So the conclusion is inevitable...

UNLESS you are the Governor of Wisconsin and have to tell about 25% of the HS/college grads (in year 2033) that there are no jobs for them in Wisconsin.

See what the difficulty is?

SO, you may argue that PJB is right or wrong--but you will have an interesting argument.

[ninenot]

As I posted on another thread, Frum was attacking PJB on behalf of Bush First---a long, long time ago, in the American Spectator. Frum's been a social climber for quite a while, as indicated by Rockwell.

I have no particular sympathy for Rockwell and the Libertarians--they are, essentially, political atheists, and at some point in time, this approach is dangerously close to Marxism.

OTOH, there's room for the debate.

PJB has raised a valid issue: are we confusing American interests with those of Israel? In the present case, I do not think so. But the argument is really larger than that; PJB contends that we MUST not attempt to become Imperial Rome--a sentiment with which most rational Americans will agree.

The question, then, is where do we draw the line? Without PJB and perhaps Novak (I haven't closely followed his writings) would ANYONE ask the question?

[ninenot]

Wrong.

Policy is NOT tactics, and what you iterated are simply tactics. Policy derives from strategy, which derives from mission. Building highways and waterworks are tactical items, subordinate to strategy.

[ggekko]

I have read Pat's piece in the The American Conservative and in my opinion it is unecessarily inflammatory and in some cases inaccurate. Pat has always been a rhetorical flamethrower and this article follows his pattern but it really pushes the edge of the envelope in a couple of places.

The dual loyalty charge is implicit in Pat's article and to my mind this charge is just as bad as when the implied charge of anti-semitism is used against Pat when he criticizes the State of Israel. Both tactics are dirty pool as far as I am concerned. Criticize policies but don't impugn motives should be the operating principal for conservative debate.

Pat's description of the neo-conservative "cabal" around President Bush is somewhat innaccurate. President Bush did not come into the presidency surrounded by neo-conservatives. In fact his entire foreign policy and defense entourage was composed entirely of George Bush Senior re-treads. As many may recall neo-con outlets were very hostile to George Bush senior because of the leftward drift of his policies toward the end of his Presidency.

The adoption of many neo-con foreign policy goals only came about after 9/11. Neo-con foreign policy and defense experts had been somewhat prophetic in predicting an event like 9/11. They also had a coherent set of policy recommendations to put into place that promised to address the terrorist challenge and the Middle East question forcefully. It is no wonder that the Bush administration embraced their ideas after 9/11; the neo-cons are the only group that seemed to have a grasp on strategic realities after the attack. The multi-lateral oriented foreign policy establishment was in complete disarray after 9/11. They had nothing new to offer.

Having criticized PJB let me also throw a brickbat at David Frum. I am David Frum's age and I am disappointed that he has not acknowledged PJB's and Bob Novak's huge journalistic and political contributions to the fight against collectivism which culminated in the victory in the Cold War. While I feel PJB has staked out some fairly strange positions on trade on some foreign polciy issues in recent years his continuing contribution to the fight against the left on cultural issues should not be ignored by neo-conservatives.

I would also bring to everyone's attention that PJB was accused of anti-semitism during the 1992 election. It was William F. Buckley's National Review that exonerated PJB of this charge at that time.

[JohnGalt]

I am less concerned with the specifics on any given issue as I am happy to welcome my Canadian friend into the fold, what is revealing is the appearance that Frum is embarassed that members of his 'movement' find such debates very important.

[Kevin Curry]

You are delusional as to who actually 'hates America'. - If anything, the socalled paleos you slander err on the side of too much devotion to our constitutional republic.

You still pipsqueaking over here? I thought you, Lew, and the paleo-Uberpatriots were going to peacefully invade a small state and set up Libertopia. Time's a' wasting Jack. Get moving.