The conservative National Review, which has had a longstanding attachment to racism (FAIR Blog, 4/11/12) which it has lately shown signs of regretting, now has a cover story (5/28/12) by Kevin Williamson that argues that the Democratic Party is now and always has been the party of racism, while the GOP has always been the party of civil rights. Sample: That is because those Southerners who defected from the Democratic Party in the 1960s and thereafter did so to join a Republican Party that was far more enlightened on racial issues than were the Democrats of the era, and had [...]
Jun
25
2010
Conservative Exclusion Is a Right-Wing Delusion
By 19 Comments
National Review senior editor Jay Nordlinger (Corner, 3/24/10), responding to CNN pairing disgraced Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer with a not-conservative-enough-for-National-Review Kathleen Parker, muses: I'm reminded why conservatives had to build their own media outlets. It's sort of like Jews and country clubs. Jews built their own, not because they wanted to, necessarily, but because the other clubs wouldn't let them in. They weren't being "clannish." They wanted to play golf, on first-class courses…. Well, we conservatives built our own media outlets–because the other clubs wouldn't let us in. I guess it's working out OK. Blogger Ryan McNeely (Yglesias, 3/24/10) takes [...]
Mar
11
2010
A Part of the National Psyche
By 1 Comment
Victor Davis Hanson notes that one reason for American exceptionalism may be that we did not inherit from England "a large underclass of only quasi-free people attached to barons as serfs." Sadly, a worse institution took root here, but never became part of the national psyche. –Rich Lowry & Ramesh Ponnuru (National Review Online, 3/8/10, via Crooked Timber, 3/9/10) So, David Paterson will become the massa who gets to appoint whoever gets to take [Rep. Eric] Massa's place. So, for the first time in his life, Paterson's gonna be a massa. Interesting, interesting. –Rush Limbaugh (Rush Limbaugh Show, 3/9/10, via [...]
Apr
22
2009
More Calls to Bomb (Any) Somalians
By 4 Comments
Taking the brave position (ScholarsAndRogues.com, 4/20/09) that the National Review Online is so bad that it makes William F. Buckley's print version look "semi-respectable" by comparison, former U.S. Navy Commander Jeff Huber writes that in his April 11 NRO post, "military historian and former classics professor Victor Davis Hanson comes across like a rabid war mongrel": Frothing over the recent Somali pirate caper involving a U.S. flagged merchant ship, Davis insists that, "To end Somali piracy, disproportionate measures against the shore should be taken–for every one pirate assault, a lethal air assault should immediately follow." It's perhaps understandable that Hanson [...]
