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To: GOPcapitalist
I believe your evaluation is way off the mark. In fact I'd call it a convenient copeout. I don't see the level of guilt by association that you and others seem to see in David Frum's piece. As with Novak, you seem unwilling to accept the truth of Frum's writing. Too bad you've chosen to be shortsighted in this regard.

The essay by Frum was set up in the first two paragraphs and has more to do with those opening words, then anything else.

"From the very beginning of the War on Terror, there has been dissent, and as the war has proceeded to Iraq, the dissent has grown more radical and more vociferous. Perhaps that was to be expected. But here is what never could have been: Some of the leading figures in this antiwar movement call themselves "conservatives."

"These conservatives are relatively few in number, but their ambitions are large. They aspire to reinvent conservative ideology: to junk the 50-year-old conservative commitment to defend American interests and values throughout the world ... in favor of a fearful policy of ignoring threats and appeasing enemies.

And that's the truth.

19 posted on 03/27/2003 10:35:17 AM PST by Reagan Man
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To: Reagan Man
I believe your evaluation is way off the mark. In fact I'd call it a convenient copeout. I don't see the level of guilt by association that you and others seem to see in David Frum's piece.

The guilt-by-association technique is plainly evident in the opening paragraphs of the article. Since you seem to be unable find his use of it, here you go.

CASE 1: "You may know the names of these antiwar conservatives. Some are famous: Patrick Buchanan and Robert Novak. Others are not: Llewellyn Rockwell, Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming, Scott McConnell, Justin Raimondo, Joe Sobran, Charley Reese, Jude Wanniski, Eric Margolis, and Taki Theodoracopulos."

Let's examine that statement. He opens by identifying the list as "these antiwar conservatives." That is a reference to what he described in detail two paragraphs earlier as persons characterized by the following terms:

"These conservatives are relatively few in number, but their ambitions are large. They aspire to reinvent conservative ideology: to junk the 50-year-old conservative commitment to defend American interests and values throughout the world — the commitment that inspired the founding of this magazine — in favor of a fearful policy of ignoring threats and appeasing enemies."

Next Frum posts his list of names of those who he considers to meet that description. This action by definition implies that the persons he names are associated in a group by shared characteristics.

CASE 2: Frum continues, "The writers I quote call themselves "paleoconservatives," implying that they are somehow the inheritors of an older, purer conservatism than that upheld by their impostor rivals."

By this action he is assigning an identity label to the people he associated together in the previous case by way of listing them. They are now, by his argument, no longer a list that allegedly shares common qualities, but now one that also shares a common label.

CASE 3: In ascribing qualities to the "paleos" Frum then states "Fed up as they were with the Second America, however, the paleos felt sure that they spoke for the First America with an integrity the traditional conservatives, let alone the neos, never had" and "For a good many of the paleoconservatives, that something was, for a spell, Serbian nationalism" and "OF all the limits against which the paleoconservatives chafed, the single most irksome was the limit placed by civilized opinion upon overtly racialist speech" and "Racial passions run strong among the paleos. And yet, having read many hundreds of thousands of their words in print and on the screen, I come away with a strong impression that while their anti-black and anti-Hispanic feelings are indeed intense, another antipathy is far more intellectually important to them." and "Having quickly decided that the War on Terror was a Jewish war, the paleos equally swiftly concluded that they wanted no part of it"

In short, he says that "paleos" are by definition nationalist racist anti-semites, a claim he attaches to that label primarily by quoting American Renaissance fringers. Thus the guilt-by-association argument is complete, implicating Novak and others as anti-semites.

In shorter form, his argument breaks down as follows:

1. Conservatives sharing a certain political position on the war include persons X and Y.
2. Persons X and Y are thus included in a group, which goes by the label A.
3. Person Z is also a member of group A and person Z is a racist anti-semite as proven by an array of quotes.
4. As shown by person Z, group A's characteristics include racist anti-semitism.
5. (Implicit) And since persons X and Y are part of group A, they too must be racist anti-semites.

The obvious flaws in Frum's argument appear at every stage, but first and foremost, the list of names to which Frum applies the "paleo" label is inaccurate. It contains some people who call themselves "paleos," some who simply call themselves "conservatives," and some who would never dream of calling themselves conservative at all as they are "libertarians." Thus, to associate them all together under the blanket label of "paleos" is an act of dishonesty. Only by categorizing all of those names as "paleos" can Frum paint them together with a single brush of anti-semitism based on the statements of another "paleo." Therefore it is necessary that he fabricate an association upon which to declare guilt.

The essay by Frum was set up in the first two paragraphs and has more to do with those opening words, then anything else.

I'd say it is set up in the first four paragraphs, because it is paragraph four where he makes the first association of names.

27 posted on 03/27/2003 12:48:29 PM PST by GOPcapitalist
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