Summer 2008

While I concur concerning the coarseness of the debate, I disagree as to the demise of the Conservative movement. It was however delivered of two serious body blows. The first being the disgraceful evolution of the first Republican HR majority in forty years from one of fiscal responsibility to that of: I can spend money faster that you in order to get reelected. Then we elected GWB expecting much more reserve on the domestic front than we received. Add to the above developments an unpopular war and the constant screeching of the liberal mainstream media and there is concocted the witch’s brew that is manifest today. However, be of good cheer. There is an issue of overarching concern that threatens to fracture the Liberal movement, for they are on the wrong side of it. That issue being the direction of our energy policies. Democrats have for the last four decades halted progress on the energy front. Their “chickens are coming home to roost.”

Posted by Robert de Jong | July 14, 2008 10:15:35 AM EDT

This article opened my eyes to a world I never knew existed. Unfortunately, I find myself profoundly disturbed and angered by what I've read. What the author portrays here is nihilism, not conservatism. Is this what conservative intellectuals have to offer? The fact that a self-proclaimed senior figure in the conservative movement openly and unabashedly admits that, absent the desire to engage in meaningful, substantive debate, the policy of the right will be to make outlandish attacks against fellow Americans and support them with so-called 'solid' research, is truly appalling. By admitting his movement is intellectually bankrupt, Bellow practically defines conservatism as anti-historical. More importantly, these debates set Americans against one another with no intent to achieve meaningful resolution, no intent to seriously address real political, social, and economic problems. They have no purpose but to get the public's dander up. Equating liberals to Fascists, for example (when the right demonstrably closer on the ideological spectrum), does nothing but undermine the respectable right, alienate broad swaths of the population, and mobilize others to act under a false premise that will eventually—inevitably—be unmasked as such. If America wanes in the world, we will have movements like these to thank. The capitalist defense does not suffice, either. Either one is an ideological warrior or a capitalist wealth-monger. Surely the wealth-monger does no service to what may once have been a real, respectable movement by promulgating pure antagonism behind the empty facade of scholarship. Moreover, telling critics to lighten up is an intellectual white flag, and casually dismissing the predictable reactions of these actions is irresponsible. People on both the left and the right take the culture debates seriously because they take their country seriously. Exacerbating their fears and hopes to make a buck is petulant. I truly fail to understand how Americans are to be more successful, more productive, and more competitive with our real adversaries overseas when we've been set to our own throats at home, sometimes literally. But furthering ideology to improve America’s situation is clearly not the point. The only answer is nihilism, the rejection of moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless. Bellow sees ideology as sport, not as a mechanism to improve lives or strengthen America. It’s very depressing that individuals like the writer think of the American polity as something to be exploited, not cherished and improved. I would go so far as to say that most lower and middle class Conservatives from across America would be flatly disgusted with this nepotistic, shamelessly elitist intellectual sub-culture.

Posted by William Hames | August 7, 2008 12:23:26 AM EDT

To say, as Mr. Bellow does so casually, that Mr. Goldberg's book is a "serious work of intellectual history" is to say that pornography is a "serious work of intellectual filmmaking." Mr. Goldberg's book has the same value intellectually as anything offered by Larry Flynt--only with overweening hypocrisy. Both offer products designed to satiate certain people's emotional desire to enjoy vicariously another individual being degraded for the viewer's self-gratification. Flynt uses young models; Goldberg uses Hillary Clinton. Had Mr. Bellow argued that Mr. Goldberg's book, like too many others, are sold only to humiliate liberals and gratify conservatives, he would have been on much firmer ground--and I would have heartily agreed with him.

Posted by Brian J. Lancial | October 10, 2008 17:53:35 AM EDT