Thomas Friedman Extols the Virtues of Communism

Thomas Friedman's latest column, in which he argues Communist China's system is preferable to ours because it "can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century," has quite naturally generated a heated response in the blogosphere, with everyone from Reason editor Matt Welch to National Review's Jonah Goldberg to ...

American Royalty – Nepotism in Politics and Media

Glenn Greenwald laments the rise of "American royalty." They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it.  They can all bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it's ...

Anti-Hero Worship

Steven Taylor forwards Steve Benen's recent post "Right Movie, Wrong Lesson" in which he chides Joe Scarborough for his sympathy for Colonel Jessep, as played by Jack Nicolson in the movie version of "A Few Good Men," noting that we'd had a similar conversation when I was at his house last weekend helping celebrate the publication of his new book. Amusingly, ...

The End of Fascism

Megan McArdle calls for an extension of Godwin's Law that would put an end to "using the word fascist to apply to the current, or indeed previous, administration." How is this helpful?  Has clarifying the distinction between fascism and socialism really added to most peoples' understanding of what the Obama administration is doing?  All this does is drag the specter of ...

From the Archives

Looking for the Colonel Jessup discussion I referenced in my last post, I came across the post "GOOD MOVIE, WRONG LESSON," written on January 31, 2003 and imported over from the original blogspot site (unfortunately, owing to then-existing vagaries, sans comments).  It was the fourth substantive post and fifth total post ever on the site, written on my first day ...

Wire Politics

Jonah Goldberg argues that conservatives should have embraced "The Wire" more than we did. This is a Democratic city, run almost uniformly by liberals. While many of the problems most prominently on display can certainly be traced back to racism, racism itself is not a central issue in The Wire (nor is racism an inherently or historically conservative phenomena). These drug ...

GOP’s G-O-D Problem

Kathleen Parker is getting quite a response to her WaPo piece "Giving Up on God." As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit. Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D. I'm bathing in holy water as I type. To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ...

Obama Mocks McCain’s Computer Skills

The Obama campaign launched a new ad yesterday, "Still," which mocks John McCain for being out of touch because, among other things, he "doesn't know how to use a computer" and "can't send an email." The Charge: McCain Computer Illiterate The key 'graph in its entirety: Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn't. He admits he still doesn't know ...

By Any Other Name…

Jonah Goldberg has sparked a minor blogospheric furor for a recent column in which he castigated Barack Obama, John McCain, and others for promoting a compulsory national service program, which he compared to slavery. There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to ...

Racist Toddlers

A bizarre story in the London Telegraph, "Toddlers who dislike spicy food 'racist,'" is getting some play, thus far only from conservative blogs. The National Children's Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents ...

Obama = Charismatic = Hitler = Armageddon

Arthur Silber is, as am I, fascinated by the cult of personality surrounding Barack Obama.  He notes some anecdotal creepy gushing on a local radio show and then Reactions of this kind to Obama are fairly common. No, they are not this extreme much of the time, but such statements are far from unusual. And many of Obama's less obviously deluded ...

Going to War with the Ideology You Have

Kevin Drum, responding to Jonah Goldberg's argument that George Packer's "The Fall of Conservatism" erroneously conflates conservatism with the Republican Party, retorts: No political ideology lives in isolation. We judge communism by how Mao and Stalin implemented it, we judge 60s-era liberalism by how LBJ and the Democratic Party implemented it, and we judge social democracy by how Western Europe has ...

Goldberg, Coulter, and Savage

Goldberg, Kevin Holtsberry, and Steve Dillard take exception to the assertion in my recent post on The Conservative Minority that "the modern Conservative Moment seems to be dominated by the shrill nonsense of Coulter and Jonah Goldberg and Michael Savage and Neil Boortz." First, it's a good sign that conservatives at least recognize that being associated with these people ...

The Conservative Minority

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse on the issue, but the continued high pitched battle between conservative Republicans who have rallied around conservative-come-lately Mitt Romney in hopes of defeating Teddy Kennedy's Good Friend John McCain remains the most interesting story this election cycle. Conservatives Love Romney The most recent Rasmussen poll shows that "Romney leads by sixteen percentage points ...

Conservatives Against McCain

Judging by the enemies he's making, I'm liking John McCain more with each passing day. Ann Coulter says she'd "campaign for" Hillary Clinton, who she thinks "is more conservative." Meanwhile, Glenn Beck is railing against "Juan McCain" for his outreach to Hispanics. Thankfully, this over-the-top stuff is being rejected by most conservatives. AllahPundit calls Coulter's statement "Madness" and Sean Hackbarth, late ...