The New Republic
Posted at 6:19pm on Apr. 30, 2008 Studying Conservatives In The Mist
By Dan McLaughlin
Barron YoungSmith at The New Republic thinks conservatism should be studied in schools. Up to a point, YoungSmith is right; the ignorance of conservative ideas never ceases to amaze. But I would disagree with this:
American conservatism actually has nothing to do with Burke, other than drawing street cred off his deceased personage. The conservative movement began with William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer, and Russell Kirk himself during the 1950s, in a magazine called National Review--and it was revolutionary, bombastic, and eager to overhaul American society, not Burkean.
This rather reinforces the point about ignorance. Some people just can't understand the difference between wanting to remake society and wanting to remake government to get it out of society's way. As I have said before: conservatives believe that governments cannot change men, but we do believe that men can and should change their governments. That's why Burke himself was favorably disposed towards the American Revolution (YoungSmith's cramped concept of Burkeanism assumes that a conservative can never be a revolutionary) but not the French.
Posted at 5:52pm on Apr. 2, 2008 TNR's Silly Slogan
By Dan McLaughlin
It may be pretentious, but it's mostly harmless puffery for The New Republic to use this as the slogan for The Plank blog:
Read On so I don't screw up the page with a wide image...
Posted at 10:45am on Oct. 26, 2007 Out Foer Himself
By Dan McLaughlin
If there is one thing we have definitvely learned from the whole Scott Beauchamp episode, it's that Franklin Foer is a cretin.
Relatedly, we have also been reminded of one of the central lessons of the Plame affair: nepotism and secret-keeping don't mix.
Posted at 10:15am on Aug. 10, 2007 All the Soldiers Refute All the Claims. All of them.
By Erick
Others, like Jeff, will I'm sure say more better than I, but the day should not get too far gone without mentioning this AP report:
The Army said this week it had concluded an investigation of Beauchamp's claims and found them false."During that investigation, all the soldiers from his unit refuted all claims that Pvt. Beauchamp made in his blog," Sgt. 1st Class Robert Timmons, a spokesman in Baghdad for the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan., said in an e-mail interview.
The New Republic used Scott Thomas Beauchamp used the New Republic to expound on how war turns all soldiers into rogue cretins. All those soldiers, at least the ones Scott Thomas Beauchamp served with, have now refuted all of Scott Thomas Beauchamp's claims.
Are all the soldiers liars or just Scott Thomas Beauchamp? And if all soldiers are liars, isn't Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a soldier himself, a liar? Or are only those soldiers Scott Thomas Beauchamp serves with day in and day out sharing the same experiences liars?
TheNew Republic still has a lot of explaining to do.
Posted in Scott Thomas | The New Republic | War — Comments (26)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 7:08pm on Jan. 28, 2005 Moving the Goalposts
By streiff
On the heels of the Kennedy meltdown appears a thoughtful piece by Larry Kaplan in the New Republic, The Tragic End to a Liberal Iraq in which he, probably correctly, predicts that those candidates representing Western liberal democratic values will be routed in this weekend’s elections.
According to Kaplan liberal, secular elements in the nation have been losing influence and power to the religiously dominated candidate slates such as that favored by Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Kaplan seems to believe that the fate awaiting Iraq is an Islamic theocracy:
The signature proposals of many candidates on the Sistani list span the entire spectrum of illiberalism, from rolling back women's rights to stipulating in the constitution that Iraq be an Islamic state.
Posted in Iranian meddling | Larry Kaplan | Moqtada al-Sadr | The New Republic | War — Comments (4)/ Email this page » / Read More »
