Tristero, you ignorant twerp

You can judge an idiot by the authorities he cites:

I thought they were serious people interested in a genuine meeting of the minds. I was dying to have useful conversations with intelligent conservatives, who knew how to write and also knew how to debate.
It has never happened. It will never happen with the Robert Stacy McCains of the world, for they are not what we think of as conservatives. They are probably best described as part of the group that flirts with what David Neiwert calls eliminationists and eliminationist ideas . . .

"Eliminationist" being a perjorative description of an outcome in domestic politics similar to the triumph over the Soviet Union, which collapsed from the weight of its own inherent contradictions, once Ronald Reagan resolved to call evil by its right name. To the extent that a conservatism that genuinely succeeds -- rallying a majority to a decisive rejection of liberalism -- would "eliminate" the political viability of its philosophical antithesis, then the term is accurate.

The problem of Bush's "compassionate conservatism" was that it sought to co-opt liberal policy ideas -- No Child Left Behind and Medicare prescription drugs being the most significant examples -- as a sort of pre-emptive compromise. This had the opposite of its promised political effect, since it involved a "conservative" paying rhetorical tribute to policy ideas that were the opposite of conservative.

If, as we were led to believe in the case of NCLB, experts in Washington have all the answers to assuring educational excellence, then why not give the federal government complete control of American schools? The fundamental premises of NCLB therefore being antithetical to any recognized meaning of "conservative" (in its American sense, as opposed to some universalist philosophical "conservatism" detached from the constitutional principles of the Founding), then the "success" of NCLB would have had the effect of invalidating basic conservative principles.

Of course, NCLB has been an abject failure, producing none of the promised policy benefits in terms of educational improvement, while spectacularly failing to "take away an issue" from the Democrats, which was its aim as political "strategery." By attempting to pass off this Big Government boondoggle as "conservative," Bush succeeded only in confusing people about the meaning of conservatism.

Karl Rove envisioned a "permanent Republican majority" to be obtained in a "center-right" nation by this sort of unprincipled "triangulation," blurring the edges of partisan loyalty by seeking compromise between right and wrong, offering voters a Laodicean blend of truth and error.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it appeared as if Rove and the Republicans might actually achieve this dubious objective. With the economy buoyed by tax cuts -- the one inarguably conservative policy that President Bush implemented-- and with attention focused on national security issues, the GOP stunned the Democrats in the 2002 midterms and handily dispatched John Kerry in 2004.

Ah, but fatal hubris had already taken hold, and in the next two elections, the Republicans who had sowed the wind reaped the whirlwind. Now, in 2009, the liberals stand triumphant, and we see many in the GOP arguing for a "pragmatism" even less principled than the bankrupt politics that have led the party of Reagan to a low ebb of influence it has not seen since 1977, or perhaps even 1965.

"Eliminationist," bah! As if Dave Neiwert wouldn't eliminate conservatives if he could. Let us return to the vacuous arguments of Tristero:

Whatever you call them, they hate liberalism with a passion. And by "liberalism" I mean liberalism as in the Enlightenment and the American Founders such as the Jefferson of the Declaration and the letter to the Danbury Baptists. These are people who are still fighting the battles lost by the Federalists in the earliest days of the United States.

What Tristero knows about the Founders is as a thimble to my ocean -- to accuse me of siding with the Federalists (e.g., Hamilton, Adams) rather than with the authors of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798! Tristero could more accurately accuse me of sympathy with the Anti-Federalists (e.g., James Mason and Patrick Henry) who opposed ratification of the Constitution on the grounds that the central govenrment created was insufficiently limited, and would ultimately prove hostile to liberty.

Tristero knows even less about the ratification debates than he knows about Jefferson. Years ago, while visiting a girl in Charlottesville, I was able to spend a day at Monticello and found myself standing before Jefferson's grave, pondering that pregnant riddle: Why would a man who had twice been elected president, rather than to list such an honor on his tombstone, instead command that it should note his authorship of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom?

This question long burdened my mind, and I studied that document intently over the years so that I might almost cite by memory the key passage:

[T]hat to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical . . .

Intimately familiar with the text, I am also well-versed in the historical background of abuses caused by the establishment of religion, abuses which Jefferson sought to spare his fellow Virginians. But "establishment of religion" does not mean what Tristero and his fellow liberals have been indoctrinated to believe it means. People who file federal lawsuits, claiming their "civil rights" have been violated if a pastor is invited to say an invocation over the public-address system before the start of a high school football game, are not friends of liberty but its worst enemies.

The problem of the "Naked Public Square" -- the cultural vacuum carved out in our society by the advance of militant secularism -- is far from the contemplations of a Tristero, content as he is to think in the superificially convenient categories furnished to him by his indoctrinators.

Accept these prefabricated categories and the selective narratives provided to you by your professors, and you are mentally enslaved, incapable of forming genuinely independent conclusions. There is an entire universe of facts you've never encountered, yet your conception of your self as "educated" serves to stifle any sense that you ought to inquire further. These, you see, are the liberals who don't get the irony of their "Question Authority" bumper stickers!

Like so many other liberals, Tristero you possess the arrogance of ignorance, presuming that no one can possibly know facts that you do not. Ergo, if anyone does not share your opinions, this must somehow signify their intellectual and moral inferiority to you, Tristero, who can't even accurately describe the political landscrape of your own country during the life of Jefferson.

Facts you do not know, Tristero? That I am an ex-Democrat, perhaps? That if I had been content to accept prefabricated ideas, I might still be a Democrat? You do not know me, and you don't know what I know and yet, in your vast ignorance, you are going to lecture me about the Founders? Make. Me. Laugh.

And now, Tristero, to your conclusion:

I'll simply conclude by repeating what so many of us have said: our political discourse is deeply askew. Norman Podhoretz's and Robert Stacy McCain's ideas would have only a marginal impact and distribution in a healthy discourse. Instead, NoPod, a truly troubled soul, is thought a serious intellectual, and the likes of McCain are heard everyday in the drooling rants of Beck and other clowns. They can't be ignored, but they also can't be engaged. Believe me, I tried. I learned.
Finally, don't be fooled if, like Huckabee or Gingrich, they seem personable. They have a long history of acting on their hate and rage. These are ugly, ugly people.

Well, you may be the first liberal ever to describe Newt Gingrich as "personable," a term that few Republicans of my acquaintance would apply to the former Speaker. As to the "drooling rants of Beck" -- do you perhaps mean the investigative reporting that led to the recent resignation fo Van Jones?

And really, why would anyone think that -- compared to you, Tristero -- Norman Podhoretz is a "serious intellectual"? He only spent three decades as editor of Commentary, one of the nation's most influential monthly journals. His most recent book is, what, his 11th? He was a student of Trilling, he knew Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer, to say nothing of his acquaintance with such historically significant figures as Ronald Reagan and Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

That you should sneer at me, Tristero, is not in the least surprising, but to condescend to Norman Podhoretz as a "troubled soul" -- well, no one can say that your observations about "drooling rants" from "clowns" lack for authenticity, as you examine the subject of your expertise every time you look in a mirror.

Conservatives and their "long history of acting on . . . hate and rage"? That's hard to do when we're laughing our asses off at the likes of you.

On Jews and liberals

UPDATE 9/8: For the benefit of liberal blog readers, a relevant question: "Is 'Liberal Idiot' Redundant?"

ORIGINAL POST: The September issue of Commentary has a symposium in which six writers discuss Norman Podhoretz's latest book, Why Are Jews Liberals? A few excerpts:

Since nature abhors a spiritual vacuum, Podhoretz concludes that the religion of liberalism—that is, faith in the powers of government -- has replaced Judaism in the hearts of Jews. . . .
Why, asks Podhoretz, do Jews cling to this belief if it no longer serves our interest? . . .
If I may be allowed so vast a sweep of generalization, Republicans, conservatives, are the party that feels comfortably at home. We need not attach a value to this observation; you may approve of this sensibility or not. But for Jews, unease is our mother tongue. . . .
-- David Wolpe

Jewish liberalism endures, Podhoretz concludes, because turning conservative, in liberal eyes, is nothing short of heresy—or worse, apostasy.
-- Jonathan D. Sarna

Most American Jews, on the other hand, seem to have learned from an early age that to be Jewish is to be a liberal Democrat, no matter what. . . . [T]he loyalty of American Jews to the Left has been unaffected by the failure of the Left to reciprocate that loyalty.
-- Jeff Jacoby

In many cases, Podhoretz notes, left-wing politics took the place of a Judaism that felt to new American immigrants like a business suit on a beach: conspicuous, constraining, ridiculously out of place. . . . On this reading, emotional, facts-be-damned Jewish liberalism is a gravestone marking the death of religious faith.
-- David Gelernter

But my own tentative personal resolution, reached after reading Why Are Jews Liberals?, is this: I'm going to stop worrying about American Jews. They're not worth the headache. Either they’ll come to their senses or they won't, and there's not much I (or anyone else, I suspect) can do about it.
-- William Kristol

For most American Jews, the core of their Jewish identity isn't solidarity with Israel; it's rejection of Christianity. This observation may help to explain the otherwise puzzling political preferences of the Jewish community explored in Norman Podhoretz's book. Jewish voters don't embrace candidates based on their support for the state of Israel as much as they passionately oppose candidates based on their identification with Christianity -- especially the fervent evangelicalism of the dreaded "Christian Right."
-- Michael Medved

The order of the symposiasts has been re-arranged to allow Medved to have the last word for a reason: He's nailed it.

The demonization of the "Religious Right" was a project developed by Norman Lear and others during the Reagan era, after Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority played such a key role in the 1980 election, and this theme has defined the politics of the Democratic Party ever since.

As a political tactic, it is both amazingly effective and fundamentally false. The Republican Party is chiefly devoted to political policies having nothing specifically to do with evangelical Christianity. Yet there is an entire industry of liberal propagandists who specialize in seeking out various outre pronouncements of "Religious Right" leaders and presenting these views as if they would become firm policy in the next Republican administration.

Sophisticates vs. the Benighted
Thus, for the past several years, we were treated to endless liberal jeremiads against "abstinence education," as if the sex-ed curriculum in public schools were the single most important issue in national politics. The propaganda purpose of this liberal campaign was to suggest to people who think of themselves as sexual sophisticates that the GOP is actively promoting ignorance.

If you wish to identify the source of the Republican Party's electoral weakness among under-30 voters, this is it -- even though, as I say, this perception of the GOP as "anti-sex" (or "pro-ignorance") is strictly a function of liberal propaganda. GOP leaders have failed to recognize the damage inflicted by this propaganda, have failed to clarify the policy issues involve and have, at times, unwittingly played to the negative stereotype of Republicans as uptight, repressed, and clueless about sex.

Depicting the "Christian Right" as an especially benighted and menacing component of the Republican Party has, as Medved notes, a particular value in discouraging Jewish Democrats from reconsidering their political loyalties. To any liberal, the conservative is always the Other. But by depicting the GOP as dominated by the "Christian Right," the Otherness of conservatism is effectively doubled -- if not, indeed, magnified exponentially.

Never mind that evangelical Christians are overwhelmingly pro-Israel and philo-Semitic. The liberal propaganda depiction of evangelicals as backward ignoramuses, taking their marching orders from a handful of TV preachers, accomplishes its intended purpose -- to evoke a distinctive cultural revulsion among Jews, and to conjure up nightmare visions of an American Kristallnacht.

Town and Country
This effect is compounded by a factor which, whether or not Podhoretz discusses it in his book, I didn't notice mentioned by the symposiasts, namely the town-and-country divide in American politics. Although the trend to suburbanization has somewhat ameliorated this generalization, most American Jews are fundamentally urban in their orientation, while most American conservatives are fundamentally rural.

Think of Reagan, riding horses and clearning brush at his ranch -- it is an image that appeals to the "country" side of the town-and-country divide, embodying as it does the antique ideal of the American frontier homesteader.

This "rugged individual" ideal, the self-sufficient property owner zealously guarding his freedom, is intrinsic to what American conservatism is all about, and it is an ideal quite alien to the urban lifestyle. The city-dweller is inherently dependent on public services. He doesn't draw his water from a well, doesn't go out with a chain-saw to supply firewood for the winter, doesn't augment the grocery budget by hunting deer or growing his vegetables.

Also, and I think this is an important point, city people can't drive worth crap. A country boy learns to drive by hot-rodding along winding backroads, often well before he's old enough for a license. Because his home is sometimes quite distant from the places where he works, shops or goes to school, the rural youth has typically driven many hundreds of miles before he turns 18.

The rural American's natural love for the internal combustion engine, and his pride in his automotive skill, has a lot to do with his active hatred of environmentalist wienies who want him to limit his fuel consumption by driving a hybrid or -- God forbid -- taking public transportation. "I drive, therefore I am" is the existential truth of the rural American, a truth that the city-dweller can never truly appreciate.

People tend to vote how they live and, despite the particular cultural differences that influence the politics of American Jews, I suspect that lifestyle has a lot to do with the persistence of liberalism in Jewish politics.

If Messrs. Podhorhetz, et al., wish to promote conservatism among American Jews, let them find some way to encourage Jewish families to move to small towns in the Heartland, where their kids can grow up hunting, fishing and hot-rodding the backroads. A guy with a gun rack in the back window of his four-wheel drive truck may occasionally vote Democrat, but he's extremely unlikely to be an out-and-out liberal.

UPDATE 9/10: Oh, for crying out loud, now I've been linked at The New Republic and the New York Times (liberals never link me when I'm bashing RINOs, you might notice). Thanks to this publicity, I suppose that henceforth I shall be known to liberals as The Great Ruralizer.

Meanwhile, I reply to Ron Rosenbaum's Joan-Baez-Made-Me-Do-It defense of liberalism at the Hot Air Green Room. Perhaps this would not be the best place to mention the (strictly hypothetical) scenario of Israel's first Gentile prime minister, but once you poke your thumb in the eye of liberalism, it's usually best to go ahead and use both thumbs.

If anyone named Podhoretz is reading this: You're welcome for the free publicity. The liberals were politely ignoring your symposium, until The Great Ruralizer stirred things up. Feel free to hit the tip jar now.