Friday, January 12, 2007

Ah, Rod   [Jonah Goldberg]

Have you heard him on NPR ? Here's the intro on the site:

Commentator Rod Dreher has been a conservative since he was 13. Now on the cusp of turning 40, he's still a conservative, but is so dismayed at the way President Bush is handling the Iraq war that all of his prior beliefs have come into question.

You'll actually have to go there to hear him 'cause I'm not going to type up his comments. I can't fault Rod for his frustration with the war, though I think he comes across as pretty anti-intellectual and unfair in his tirade — as if there was no good faith or no good arguments for the positions he once held and which lots of folks he respects still hold. I should also say that the comparison to Jimmy Carter is really quite weak. Simply because Carter's feckless foreign policy and Bush's over confident foreign policy elicited similar feelings in Rod doesn't mean that they can be glibly equated. Indeed, even if the result of Bush's foreign policy has had the consequence of projecting an image of weakness around the globe as Rod asserts, that doesn't mean they are similar foreign policies. They do come from very different impulses, I think everyone can agree.

Likewise, simply because Rod has the same feelings as hippies that doesn't mean the hippies were right then (or that Rod is right now). In short, there's a lot of talk about feelings.

Also, the commentary leaves the impression that Rod's anti-Bush epiphany and conservative crisis of confidence are solely the product of the war. I know how these NPR things are put together so I understand the limits they impose. But for clarity's sake it's worth reminding people who didn't read Crunchy Cons, that Rod's straying from "mainstream conservatism" has more authors than the Iraq war alone.

One last point. NPR has a habit of doing this sort of thing (so does the New York Times, of course). I was last invited to come on to beat up Trent Lott. Rod's on there to beat up Bush. Maybe NPR could stretch a little bit and find some conservatives to make a positive case for their beliefs that doesn't involve confirming liberal or Democratic arguments? Or is that too much to ask?

01/12 05:00 PMShare