Neither John Jenkins nor his new book, The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist, have gotten much respect on the web. Both University of Chicago Law Professor Eric A. Posner at the sometimes liberal New Republic and Kevin R.C. Gutzman, professor of history at Western Connecticut State University, writing for the unconventionally conservative American Conservative,…
Search Results for: Liberalism
Francis Fukuyama, finding what he’s been looking for, again
Well-known Hegelian Francis Fukuyama takes a look into the soul of Egyptian liberals and, predictably, doesn’t like what he sees. Two of the leading candidates for Egypt’s presidency, Fukuyama says, are “suspected of having ties to the military,” another has been endorsed by “the ultra-conservative Salafis,” and the fourth is the candidate of the Muslim…
Jonathan Chait, having discovered that Obama isn’t that liberal, prefers not to be reminded of that fact
Last week, Jonathan Chait, heretofore one of President Obama’s most passionate defenders, wrote a bitter piece in New York magazine entitled “How Obama Tried to Sell Out Liberalism in 2011,” bouncing off the latest “what went wrong” tick-tock in a long series of what went wrong tick-tocks on the Obama Administration, this one written by…
James Q. Wilson good, James Q. Wilson not so good, Part II
Yesterday I had mostly good things to say about the late John Q. Wilson; today, mostly not so good, taking off from his May 22, 1995 review of Alan Brinkley’s The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War in the New Republic (subscription only). Confronting FDR, the liberal god himself, Wilson doesn’t…
James Q. Wilson good, James Q. Wilson not so good
James Q. Wilson, paired perhaps too conveniently in death with the rowdy Andrew Breitbart, was hailed as one of the best, or at least one of the most tolerable, of the neo-conservatives, no doubt because he was careful to avoid foreign policy. The “necessary” war in Iraq, and now the even more necessary war in…
Vile thoughts, vilely expressed
A few weeks ago New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier discarded his usual pose as a cranky, polysyllabic intellectual demi-god and wrote a shockingly intelligent piece on the rise of fundamentalist fanaticism in Israel. Among other things, Wieseltier said the following: “Like all liberal societies, Israeli society contains anti-liberal elements, and these anti-liberal elements, both religious…
Why Do the Heathen Rage, Part XLVIII
One of the many projects that I have—lumbering towards completion like weary mammoths journeying across the darkened Arctic landscape of my mind—is a political novel set in the near present-day, with the lives of its characters coming to a halt shortly before the 2008 election. To pick up a little background, I’ve been reading, among…
DeLong punks Krugman
That is to say, DeLong punks Krugman if “punk” means “point out the gaping logical and factual fallacies in an opponent’s argument.” Berkeley economist Brad DeLong frequently links to Princeton economist and Nobel winner about town Paul Krugman with an enthusiasm that can approach hero worship. Today, however, Brad shows himself to be a man…
Anne Applebaum totally double-crosses me. Again!
This is getting ridiculous. I just finished nailing the last nail in Annie “Europe Sucks” Applebaum’s coffin, so I thought, when she uncorks a thoughtful, seriously pro-Europe review—a totally way pro-Europe review, actually—of Christopher Caldwell’s recent double-dome tome on Europe and the Muslim hordes, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West….
Ross Douthat, Enters Dancing
I haven’t been kind to Ross Douthat in the past, referring to him with perhaps an excess of sarcasm as Ross Dumbfuck. Well, I won’t descend to that level today, but I will say that his debut column in the New York Times, “Cheney for President,” is not a winner. “Watching Dick Cheney defend the…