tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post254773421948799271..comments2024-02-24T00:37:43.087-05:00Comments on The Other McCain: Reihan Salam is too young for this 're-inventing conservatism' gigRobert Stacy McCainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03084541621503669804noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-91651169878830317862009-11-09T09:29:51.157-05:002009-11-09T09:29:51.157-05:00just remember that if Salam was named Bob Smith an...just remember that if Salam was named Bob Smith and went to a big state school he would be a full blown liberal and not just a "moderate". He gets attention with his "minority Harvard grad conservative" mask on so he's just running with it. Just like Obama ... its a con because nothing in his life points to "conservative" ...The Ghosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09554055593581812426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-19770202347000895042009-11-09T09:23:36.729-05:002009-11-09T09:23:36.729-05:00Salam is a name dropping poser with no real world ...Salam is a name dropping poser with no real world experience. He is nothing but a hot house flower who fancies himself a "moderate" because that is so "in" now in the age of Obama. He is a conservative because that makes him "unique" among Harvard grads but his liberalism leaks thru every now and then and you can see he really wants to find the liberal/moderate solution to every issue.The Ghosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09554055593581812426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-56189351884468610972009-11-08T18:21:39.473-05:002009-11-08T18:21:39.473-05:00Salam doesn't ever criticize Castellanos, as y...Salam doesn't ever criticize Castellanos, as you said. In fact, he seems to be AGREEING with his assessment of a successful Republican election strategy; he uses that assessment to start a discussion on the fact that few elected Republicans seem to be acting on the principle of "bottom-up conservatism." You seem so focused on these guys' deplorable (in your view) pedigrees that you missed the actual point that Salam is making, one I would think you would agree with.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15677781054368633850noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-55742562905610450172009-11-08T14:27:42.918-05:002009-11-08T14:27:42.918-05:00Not anonymous. Just faking to get past the javascr...Not anonymous. Just faking to get past the javascript bugs.<br /><br />K~Bob said,<br /><br />100 years ago, Harvard and the other Ivy-league schools were special. Thanks to the internet, streaming video, the growth in the economy and population; and cheap, plentiful international travel deals, these schools only lead in *some* areas. And I don't mean in broad areas like "science" or "business." I mean narrow areas like "Mesopotamian Anthropology."<br /><br />Pick up any--ANY--college promo literature, and you'll find photos of "field studies" in foreign countries.<br /><br />Any technical specialty that involves computers and the web can be learned ON the web. In fact, no better place to learn about them exists. Sorry, MIT, but it's a fact.<br /><br />Thanks to smartphones, middle-schoolers who want to read translations of Cicero can do so anytime, and for free. The monopoly on "superior intellectual development" was destroyed years ago.<br /><br />Kids (including high-schoolers) can get a fantastic education in Community College, often with visits by leading thinkers and professors from top-ranked universities.<br /><br />Becoming intelligent has never been so affordable nor accessible. For those who were stuck in expensive, difficult-to-gain-admission, brownstone-and-ivy "Universities:" your degree is no longer an indicator of superior intellect, nor excuse for poor reasoning skills.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4223398383609158624.post-56922060255939862822009-11-07T13:48:44.788-05:002009-11-07T13:48:44.788-05:00Age is correlated with experience, but people do l...Age is correlated with experience, but people do learn at different rates and have different personal histories. That having been said...<br /><br />From the biographical squibs I have seen of these two men (which may be incomplete), it appears neither have any history of involvement in humdrum party politics or in local government. Both are childless. Both appear to have been educated in the verbal liberal arts and give no evidence of academic instruction in statistics or sociology or economics, so a somewhat removed and intellectualized apprehension of their social world is likely to elude them as well. It would appear also that Mr. Douthat has spent nearly his entire working life in the word merchant sector, nearly his entire life a resident of metropolitan centers in the Boston-Washington corridor, and nearly his entire life in a social environment that ranges from salaried bourgeois to frankly patrician. There is nothing wrong with any discrete element of this. Most people are born into a given social stratum and stay there, most do not move around much, most do not change careers much, and only a small minority has anything to do with political life that involves actual labor. However, all of the elements of their history taken together do inhibit both an intellectual and a rough-and-ready apprehension of the dispositions of the electorate and of the concerns of the wage-earning stratum in particular. <br /><br />For all that, I think your criticism needs to be qualified. I have seen no indication that the political commentary of either man flows from aught but but some sort of conception of how the common life ought to be lived. I can think of several members of the commentariat who appear to be poseurs to one degree or another, or to be propagating opinions that flow from professional disappointments or a sort of psychological inner turmoil. Mr. Douthat can irritate by almost <i>apologizing</i> for what he advocates. There is no reason to think him a fraud, however.Art Decohttp://wwrtc.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.com