National Review's Anathema Corner

The spitball bombardiers of the imperialist "right" aren’t satisfied with imposing "democracy" abroad – they also want to stifle it here at home. The most serious attempt in recent weeks to silence discussion in American politics is David Frum’s cover story in the current National Review. If you haven’t slogged through it yet, it’s a compilation of all the most unfortunate things ever said – or almost said, or never said but possibly implied – by thinkers whom the ex-Canadian speechwriter broadly labels "paleoconservative."

Rather than refute his charges point by point – that has been done extraordinarily well elsewhere, such as here and here – I’d rather address what Frum is trying to do, and why. I’ve a certain insight into this question, since, like Frum, I was once a conservative columnist at Yale. I came in just after he graduated, and made a lot of noise in the campus papers, just as he had, so inevitable comparisons were drawn. And contrasts.

You see, Frum had made himself well-known among the amazingly intolerant leftist students of early 1980s Yale by loudly espousing Reaganite foreign and budgetary policy. He also made certain to assert over and over again that he was a fiscal conservative but a social liberal.

This was a crucial point, on a campus where liberal social attitudes were taken utterly for granted, and very few students dared to speak against them. For those who did, "social suicide" doesn’t begin to describe what they'd done to themselves. The few undergrads who advocated traditional Christian values made themselves almost radioactive. Shunned and loathed, they would eat alone, or in tiny groups of fellow thinkers, in the cavernous Gothic dining halls, as if they’d contracted some contagious, incurable skin disease. (And no, they didn’t get to date much.)

As if to publicly proclaim his distance from the misfits who were so despised, Frum led a public campaign to close down a conservative literary magazine, The Yale Lit, because – well, because "he couldn’t stand that type of conservative," as he told a friend. Enlisting student opinion, and the Yale administration’s help, Frum succeeded in quashing an exquisitely edited, beautifully produced student magazine, which was promptly replaced, under the same name, by a fourth-rate broadsheet that printed students’ trashy, confessional poems about their drug experiences and tentative erotic fumblings. Frum’s first purge of right-wing opinion was accomplished.

No ostracism for David. He went from Yale to swim among the suits at The Wall Street Journal, and write a number of mildly interesting books, en route to rising smoothly through the ranks of what was by now called "neoconservatism." He really "arrived" (or "made it" in the sense of Norman Podhoretz in his revealing, appalling autobiography) when his commentaries began to appear on that bastion of respectable opinion, National Public Radio. I listened to many of them, and found them witty. Also troubling – since their purpose was clear: To explain to America’s liberal intelligentsia why they shouldn’t be afraid of Republicans.

These urbane, chatty contributions all centered on one theme: That the social issues the Republican party had adopted were simply red meat for the rubes. They would never go anywhere, and shouldn’t stop people from voting for lower marginal tax rates and a "strong" foreign policy. Again and again Frum would patiently explain how the gestures made by the likes of Newt Gingrich, George Bush I, and Robert Dole to appease the Religious Right, the Southerners, the libertarians, and the "gun people" in their party were simply that – hollow, symbolic tips of the cowboy hat to the hapless activists whom they needed to keep in line. Cheap pizza bought for the "3:00 am" types who leave their trailer parks to volunteer at Republican phone banks. His wink was almost audible. Those people were never going to get what they wanted – any more than black voters really benefit from electing Democrats. But the rabble must be appeased. No wonder Frum got a job writing speeches for a Republican administration.

It does, however, strike me as strange that such a chameleon feels entitled to dictate the legitimate boundaries of conservative debate. I feel it’s fair to ask Frum now: Where does he stand on the social issues which matter so much to many fervent conservative voters? Is he still pulling the wool over their eyes, wrapping tax cuts for Enron in pages torn from the New Testament?

Frum’s ascendancy doesn’t surprise me. You see, one of the most dominant motives in any socially stigmatized group – such as conservatives were at Yale and still are in the opinion-making circles Frum now inhabits – is self-purification. 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. That renders you yourself ritually pure, at least for a while – and joins you securely to the community that has now been purged. Anthropologist Rene Girard analyzes this social phenomenon brilliantly, tracing its operation from the ancient world, through the death of Christ, up to the present. It was frequently the motivating force in anti-Semitic uprisings, as social misfits whipped up the crowd to persecute the "evil," loathsome Other. As Justin Raimondo points out in Reclaiming the American Right, this liturgy of anathema has been the rite of choice for decades in "movement conservatism." Self-hating conservatives conduct such a ritual every few years – are duly applauded for it.

How easy to relieve one’s own anxieties, demonstrate one’s own "good will," and win general approval by finding an alternate focus for opprobrium, then leading the mob that drives out the evildoer! Bill Clinton (remember him?) was engaging in this tactic when he denounced Sistah Souljah. Moderate black leaders do the same when they dutifully denounce Louis Farrakhan – a point made brilliantly in Warren Beatty’s worthy film "Bullworth." Countless conservatives joined in such fun when Trent Lott shot off his mouth. I must confess that I’ve done it myself. There’s a certain glee, a sense of cleanliness and virtue that arises when you discover that there is someone – anyone – in the world who’s further out on a limb, then you righteously saw it off. "I may be conservative (or liberal, or antiwar), but I’m not like…" Fill in the blank with your favorite extremist, the person with whom you’d least like to be associated. The gay writer David Sedaris described the phenomenon brilliantly in a radio essay, explaining how in high school he’d find someone more effeminate than he, and lead the chorus of taunts, to help redirect the social abuse from himself, and affirm his place in the mainstream.

Of course, there are ideas that must be refuted. But the unseemly eagerness with which today’s political police latch onto and denounce perceived dissidents betrays something dark at work. When you realize that someone in your own political camp has taken your own principles and perverted them beyond recognition, the appropriate emotional response is sadness, a grim sense of necessity, and a determination to be fair. That’s also the spirit in which sane men approach the prospect of starting a war.

Instead, too often, the self-anointed members of a given "mainstream" movement (whatever it is) respond with an ugly glee. John Podhoretz boasted on NPR of the role warbloggers had played in bringing down Trent Lott. Podhoretz spoke with as much bravura as if he’d personally captured Osama bin Laden, and dragged the murderer to prison by his beard. It’s the very same spirit that Frum displays in his preening piece in National Review. With an almost papal solemnity, he declares opponents of the current war virtual traitors, and employing the papal "We" he pronounces anathema: "We turn our backs on them." My first reaction to this was simply to laugh, and mutter, "Be glad there’s an American soldier watching your back, chicken-hawk."

But upon reflection, I think I was being a little too harsh, expecting too much of a political ghostwriter. Man is a social animal, and it’s only natural for men to wish to move amongst the principalities and powers, to ascend socially, to consume rubber-squab at election parties with Republicans, then kick back and drink Barolo with the Democrats. It’s only human. But it’s not particularly admirable. It doesn’t take courage – just the instinct of a dog to stick with its pack. The lone wolves Frum presumes to exile – serious, flinty, sometimes wrongheaded and mostly crotchety, unclubbable thinkers such as Peter Brimelow, Lew Rockwell, Paul Gottfried, Sam Francis, Pat Buchanan, and Justin Raimondo – have each added far more to the stock of interesting arguments on the Right than Frum ever will. They have each, in different ways, helped blow away the cloud of rhetoric, demagoguery, and lies that passes for political debate in this country. They each write with careful reference to history, reverence for the Western tradition, and an understanding of our country and its Constitution – instead of spewing mindless, provocative slogans such "Axis of Evil," or "Nuke Mecca." They each provoke serious thought among their readers. But then, that isn’t what Frum cares about. As far as I can tell, it never was.

"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.

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.

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

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 -

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.

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?

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.

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