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- The impulse behind conservatives like Norman Podhoretz preferring obviously unqualified politicians to Barack Obama has several sources. First there's the deep-seated mistrust, even among conservative intellectuals, of intellectuals in general. Backing candidates like the former governor of Alaska is the manifestation of that distrust in overdrive. Then there's the need to piss off liberals. As a neocon, Podhoretz feels like he's been in the belly of the beast and escaped with horror stories to tell. For him, it is insufficient to best liberalism electorally -- it must be mocked and destroyed. And finally, supporting candidates who possess neither knowledge nor curiosity means they are a blank slate upon which to sketch the next neoconservative foreign-policy disaster. Taken together, this is a cynical, hubristic, and manipulative worldview that is unfit to influence something as significant as the would-be commander in chief of the world's largest military apparatus.
- Ah, blaming Islamic terrorism on our cultural "degeneracy." If only we were more chaste and conservative the would-be radicals in the Middle East would simply ignore the history of Western military occupation, Palestinian suppression, and colonial puppet states. Meanwhile, Ross Douthat, while fully admitting the Catholic Church's culpability in covering up decades of sexual abuse, nevertheless feels obliged to note that "the scandal implicates left and right alike" because the "permissive sexual culture ... of the ’70s deserves a share of the blame, as does that era’s overemphasis on therapy." Yep, sexual freedom among consenting adults is just like priests molesting deaf alter boys.
- I don't intend to talk about this subject every day, but I wish some of the writers at The Corner could step out of the bubble long enough to appreciate how ridiculous some of their commentary has become. Here's an AEI scholar making the case that yesterday's Moscow train bombing could be al-Qaeda-related, which leads to the usual conclusion that we can never forget that we're locked in a "global struggle" with an enemy who seeks to "harm American interests." Superterrorists! Here's another AEI scholar claiming student-loan reform "violated basic tenets of representative democracy," which "will move the country closer to a European-style socialism that has brought that continent stagnation" and create "over-educated and over-indebted young Americans." And that's just the guest posts.
- Remainders: I wonder where 49 percent of the public got the idea that "Democratic tactics" were responsible for recent anti-health-care reform violence; a federal judge delays our inevitable descent into Gattaca; Ezra Klein responds to John Sides' critique of Klein's piece on congressional failure; hey, at least global warming is helping eradicate land disputes; oh, the crushing debt caused by the financial bailouts...never mind; obviously sex scandals are a bipartisan affair but only one party preaches to us about "family values"; and at least on paper [PDF], it's clear a Meg Whitman governorship would be the final nail in California's coffin.
--Mori Dinauer
