Well, I guess it's nice to know that in a world where just about everything changes, we can count on disastrous foreign policy takes from *NR* to always stay the same.
One of the reasons I canceled my subscription to NR was their continued "war is great" stance. They keep folding themselves into pretzels justifying it. I am really over any of these so-called "just wars". In the end, all of this is clearly just to feed the military-industrial complex, period. They are all in the tank for it. Same for most politicians.
William Tecumseh Sherman: “I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”
Indeed. Most of the people sending others into war are cowards and just care about how they get rich of it. All while hiding behind a veneer of "patriotism" and "democratic values". I really like that quote.
I have come to the same conclusion, Yvonne Dreschler. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I had hoped to reduce armies and armaments. But expenditures rose and the politicians found fresh ways to wage war.
American politicians were so infatuated with their own cold war propaganda that they thought any post-communist regime would be our good friends and warm democrats. They forgot, first, that Russian culture has a strong autocratic streak going back many centuries. They also forgot that before there was a socialist/capitalist paradigm polarizing the world (while a number of countries sought to be none of the above), there were capitalist empires fighting massive wars over territory, raw materials , and spheres of influence. So here we are.
National Review... considered brilliant at the time but in hindsight, turns out to have been wrong on almost everything since the end of the Cold War.
American Conservative founder Pat Buchanan... considered a racist kook at the time, turns out to have been right on most things since the end of the Cold War.
Why exactly is anyone still reading National Review? William F. Buckley is dead. It's time to close his magazine for good.
NATIONAL REVIEW became a racket. The original thinkers of NATIONAL REVIEW like Russell Kirk and James Burnham were brilliant. The modern NATIONAL REVIEW was filled with lightweights like Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg and Ramesh Ponnuru. They run the magazine as the only gold-plated platform that will print them and, of course, there's the money.
Maytag comes to mind, a brand that made products in America that were so high quality they had an ad campaign touting the "bored Maytag repairman"... is now being run by Whirlpool making Chinese crap and milking the reputation for maximal profits while hoping consumers don't notice for a while. (Which they have by now -- Maytag no longer commands a premium price.)
That is the story of so many institutions in America today: hollowed out shells of their former selves.
Andy M's detailed, carefully reasoned pieces backed up with his understanding of the justice system from his work as a fed prosecutor are themselves worth the price of a subscription.
For one thing, National Review is one of the very rare places where the writers can have different points of view and argue about them in one forum. Most media have one Narrative, from which no one is allowed to vary even slightly. In NR you will find rational arguments for supporting Ukraine and rational arguments for the opposite. There are rational takes on many of the topical issues which conservatives are focused on, without the breathless hyperbole of some other outlets. They have writers who focus on certain topics, like Maddie Kearns, who is brave enough to take on Big Gay and the Trans Revolution. I think it’s well worth the subscription cost.
I just don't understand: how two equally well-meaning and intelligent people can read the same news, watch the same images . . . but come to completely opposite conclusions. I used to assume those who disagreed with me were uninformed, moronic, or evil. But I have come to conclude that is not so; people who are as well-meaning and intelligent as I am just for, to me, incomprehensible reasons come to opposite conclusions. As many have said, it's as if we were watching the same screen in the theater but seeing two different movies. I am starting to wonder if there is some atmospheric indetectable alien (possibly satanic) virus that affects all citizens in one of two ways, pretty much 50/50. It would be loverly if we could disagree respectfully and graciously . . . but when the questions are existential, I am not sure how that helps either. As the King of Siam said, "is mystery."
I think the answer to that has to do with axioms. Reason only functions within axiomatic paradigms, which means that people's foundational assumptions about reality will radically morph everything else.
Overall, there's a third possibility apart from moronic or evil, which is delusional. You can be brilliant and well-meaning but nevertheless totally out of touch with reality.
Cancelled my yearslong subscription to NR about the same time as I stopped pretending to read Christianity Today. Felt like they both turned on me like rabid dogs.
I really haven't gotten past the first paragraph of today's article but you obviously don't pay much attention to the neocon, war mongering feces that appears every day on Ukraine with the exception on MBD who occasionally (yesterday) writes a rational article. They were bad enough before they brought Noah Rothman now they are the echo of Lindsay Graham, a more dangerous man I have never seen in the US Senate. And there you go again about learning from the Iraq War, and obviously you refer to the second not the first. Apparently to you our dangerous and malignant foreign policy started in Iraq. which illuminates your utter ignorance of our destructive foreign policy since at least 1952.
Donald, the French pleaded with us to help them against the Viet Minh just before their final stand at Dienbenphu, in 1954. Eisenhower was open to it, but was in momentary disbelief when he learned where the French had built this fortress of theirs: in a valley!!
So, no, the United States did not help the French, and no, not all of our foreign policy decisions since 1952 have been destructive.
I wonder whether Nordlinger would consider Eisenhower a traitor to all that is decent because Ike wouldn't send tanks to help the Hungarians against the Soviets in 1956?
And given what we've learned since the declassification of the Venona papers, JFK's decision to blockade instead of attack Cuba in October, 1962, must be seen as an example of the triumph of brilliantly informed intuition against overwhelming "expert" opinion to the contrary. I admire Eleanor Roosevelt, too, but for me, Barbara Tuchman is the Woman of the 20th century.
I was actually thinking of our acts of aggression when I made my "destructive" comment. I should have been more precise in what I was referring to. How can anyone accuse Eisenhower of being a traitor for refusing to go to Hungary's aid. It was neither in America's interest or any of its business. Eisenhower can be faulted for expanding the CIA's powers, giving it a free hand in both planning and execution and, in my opinion, the CIOA is literally the most dangerous organization for both America and the world that exists. I have not the slightest idea why you would consider either Eleanor Roosevelt or Barbara Tuchman worthy of praise.
I can understand that implacable ideological resistance of an aynrandian kind to government's modification of law - of - the jungle capitalism could lead one to dislike Mrs Roosevelt.
It may be that you're unaware of the decisive role Barbara Tuchman's book, "The Guns of August," had on Kennedy's appraisal of things at the beginning of The Cuban Missile Crisis. He had read the book the previous spring, and been so impressed with her acute presentation of the way in which misunderstanding piled upon misunderstanding led to the outbreak of war in 1914 that he alone of everyone in the ExComm group wanted to blockade, not invade, Cuba. Unknown to the West until the declassification of The Venona Papers, that lunatic, Khrushchev, had smuggled not strategic nukes alone but also tactical nukes into Cuba.
If Kennedy had acceded to the advice of everyone else, included Robert, and set a massive invasion upon Cuba, the Cubans and the Soviets would have used one or more of the tactical nukes on our troops. This would have obliged Kennedy to do God knows what, maybe knock down the Berlin wall, nuke one of the "stans," who knows? We would have been at thermonuclear war.
Kennedy had read the Tuchman book. He realized that things he couldn't know made an invasion far riskier than a blockade, which is why you and I are able to have this exchange, and why I nominate Barbara Tuchman as Woman of the 20th Century.
If I'm the aynrandian type to whom you are referring and in your judgment I am an advocate of jungle capitalism, you couldn't be more wrong. I am simply not an admirer of Eleanorr or a supporter of the issues for which she is well known. As to THE GUNS OF AUGUST, I was well aware of the influence that the book had on JFK but that influence was based on the main premise of the book. that World War I began because of a series of mistakes which moist credible historians have opined was an erroneous conclusion by Tuchman. Perhaps lucky for America but hardly a basis for admiration for Tuchman.
There are worse reputations to have than being known to history as someone who in all earnestness wrote a book which, though it may have been based on a misapprehension, caused a president to hesitate to act in a way which would have kindled a nuclear war.
And you, being a lawyer, know that "most credible historians" is not quite the same thing as "the unanimous verdict of history, based on the following incontrovertible facts..."
I used to sneer at "our martyred Jack" too (remember the picture on the wall of Karen Black's doublewide in Five Easy Pieces?), but his ability to keep his head in October 1962 makes him a great man, and makes Dallas a real tragedy. From that to old uncle Corn Pone!
It's in Evan Thomas' fascinating book, "Ike's Bluff," which is one of the most interesting and surprising books I have ever read. When I came to the sentence in which Thomas wrote about its location, I started to laugh. Eisenhower seems to have been speechless with shock for a moment.
I haven't read the book, but in re these recent rehabilitations of Eisenhower based largely on the reference to the MIC in his farewell address: the military industrial complex got created in Truman's time, but it was Eisenhower who finished the job, wasn't it?
I would tend to say that the USA has been consistently in the wrong since 1989.
Global Communism was sufficiently nasty that the Cold War was justified (I get that this is open to criticism).
However, after 1989 it had no strong ideological basis, and was just about dominance. Then, from about 2010, it has been about Woke, and is increasingly becoming explicitly anti-Christian. This can be seen with the anti-Russian rhetoric and the Pride Flags in Gaza.
I cheer for Russia against the USA, Iran against Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinians against Israel.
I agree. Any objective read of Islam makes it clear that it is a violent creed, born in violence, spread by conquest, preaching violence against unbelievers, and specifically singling out Jews for contempt. And, imo, its origins are demonic, with the "angel" exhibiting behavior decidedly unAngelic, according to the Bible. Rather, more resembling that of infernal entities, as exorcists and others who have encountered them can relate.
Barbara Tuchman was one of David McCullough's favorites. The Guns of August inspired him to write books. He died two months after his wife in 2022. Both were 89.
Only one of the three has the kidney to fight for its survival, though the French have shown surprising signs of life since October 7. My British cousins seem determined to go quietly.
I don't think Rod is saying that our foreign policy has been a problem since the second Iraq war, but that is when he realized he got scammed into supporting it. Not sure why that makes you upset. Everyone has their experiences in life where things shift.
I'm not upset. I don't take anything Rod says very seriously but the way he has never indicated that he understands the Iraq 2 was simply a continuation of the mistakes we had been making for many years before that and truthfully I'm not sure he understands that. If Rod wants to correct me, it's his substack and he's free to do that.
I've lost count of how many of the National Review people I used to revere who turned out to be complete sell outs to the Regime, people like Mona Charen and George Will. I never was a fan of David French, but he is another NR grifter. Quite a collection of cucks, grifters and traitors have come out of that magazine that I once loved.
I was hoping that Andy McCarthy could have at least expressed SOME distress at the clearly unjust judgment from Judge Engeron. But no, instead we get a completely technical explanation of how Engeron probably does have Trump in a real trap. Far more important than Trump’s fate is what happens to us with judges like this tyrant around.
There's nothing "good" or "Patriotic" about the Neocons. They know who they serve and it's not the true National Interests of America and it's definitely not We The People (the American citizenry). The Neocons serve the Ruling Class Elites, they serve the Empire those Elites control, they serve and have become wealthy serving the interests of the Military/Industrial Complex and the Surveillance State. There's nothing good or patriotic about these people. They are traitors to the Constitutional Republic and if a second civil war does break out in America I hope these Neocon traitors are systematically hunted down and brought to justice for their crimes against this nation, our Constitution and We The People. I'm serious. These people (the Neocons) are "The Enemy" of every Patriotic American, every true American Nationalist, every Constitutionalist. They are the enemy every bit as much as the Democrat run wing of the "Deep State" if not more so because Neocons drape themselves in our flag. I despise them. I loathe them with a burning passion!
So true! Rod, you should watch the 2 geopolitical strategists on "The Duran" once in a while to get a more realistic take on Zelensky. You're still drinking U.S. and NATO kool-aid.
Yeah he was probably murdered by the CIA. He was no threat to Putin. He's worth more to the Western Powers as a "Russian Martyr for Western Democracy" than he's worth alive in a prison cell and the West already has his successor (his wife). Very convenient. He's not even in the ground yet and she's already giving press conferences to the Western MSM. The Western Powers needed something like this after the Tucker interview so they could continue their mantra "Putin Evil Dictator", "Putin Thug"! It's all bullshit. I'd take Putin over our scumbag Western Leaders any day of the week. I hate the Globalist Elites scum with every fiber of my being. When I think of them I have to spit.
I read in a couple of places that Navalny's wife visited him in the Arctic "penal colony" a few days before his death and then showed up at the recent Munich Security Conference. The whole thing is bizarre and needs more scrutiny.
Countless articles from the mainstream press about the "heroic" Navalny (though, if he was a western politician his pro-gun, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and Neonazi associations from his past would make him radioactive)...and next to nothing about the American journalist Gonzalo Lira, who died in a Ukrainian prison.
Oh, and meanwhile we're fighting to get Julian Assange extradited to the US and to go on trial for the crime of journalism.
Rod, I think I'm less forgiving of neocons than you. They have the blood of millions on their hands. They are not our friends.
I commented on it on Twitter. It's appalling. He was a courageous man -- and a believing Orthodox Christian. I don't know what other useful thing I have to say about it.
Just as there's a certain type of liberal who's an instant sucker for any person place or thing that can be painted as another Civil Rights journey, there's a certain type of conservative who seems to be an instant sucker for any overseas war that can be painted like an episode of Star Wars—"The Ukrainians...are fighting and dying to hang on to their country — to keep from being dragged back into an evil empire. They are fighting for their very right to exist." (Cue the faux Mahler and slow pan across the ragtag band of rebels that will inevitably defeat the Empire just before the credits roll.)
And speaking of conservative scams, there's also the stink of televangelist here: For just $5 a month you can give the blessings of liberty to a benighted foreigner in a country you can't find on the map! (And it would be gauche to mention how all these prior endeavors have always failed or backfired, never led to their promised utopian results, and always seem to privatize the gains while socializing the deaths and mutilations.)
The John Wayne myth of the heroic honest American who strolls into town and delivers justice with his six-shooter before riding off into the sunset seems to be both unkillable and impervious to evidence. And what kind of monster asks about things like costs/benefits, audits, corruption, or possible negative consequences? Don't you see we're fighting an existential battle of Good v Evil here!?!
It really is great to be an American and to live fat and happy in the center of the Empire—we get to live in a permanent fantasy world and act out our morality plays until we get bored and wander off to audition for a new role.
And since these scripts are all well-worn by now, we can already see the ending to this one being written today: "Who lost Ukraine?" will be the next chew toy for our media class, with the answer of course being those evil Republicans, who were hypnotized by that geopolitical (Ras)Putin.
"Who lost Ukraine?" will be the next chew toy for our media class,"
Reminds me of "Who lost China" an idiotic comment I hears frequently as I was growing up.
The question should be replaced with "Who destroyed _________? Fill in the country- The "who" is America and we can fill in the blank with a variety of countries - Iraq. Libya, Syria, Sudan, Viet Nam, Serbia. The next country will be Ukraine.
Since this substack does not show the comment to which you commented I'm not sure what I missed but if it was countries destroyed by America, you can fill in the blanks. I was only scratching the surface. I could add, depending on time frame, most of the Central American countries. some of South America and a few more in Africa.
As someone that interned at NR some time ago, when William F Buckley was still there, I find its current incarnation incomprehensible.
The ego driven invective you quote from Nordlinger is of a piece with leftist rhetoric...i.e., if you disagree with me you are evil, not merely "wrong".
Would that Nordlinger could adopt some humility.
And FWIW, I don't think Zelensky is any prize. As I see it he is a poseur manipulating naive Western media while he rushes around in fatigues. His generals (whom he has recently fired) appear to be both better liked and more realistic about the situation in Ukraine.
I dropped NR about 1998 when they called the Confederate soldiers dishonorable. I had subscribed since college. NR began to decline when the Soviet Union committed suicide. Soon they were printing front page stories on Bart Simpson, written by Jonah Goldberg.
Nordlinger can't help it if he still hears the hoofbeats of the czar's calvary echoing on the cobblestones as they chase his great- great grandmother down the street every time he closes his eyes. Go easy on him.
Are you saying that he is not at least ethnically Jewish? Given that "Nordlinger" is a Jewish surname and how much of his work back at NR, which I admittedly haven't read in awhile, was "Israel this" and "worry about anti- Semitism that," particularly back in the days immediately after 9/11, I was under the impression that he was. Seems a pretty obvious assumption to make, although I will admit that one has to be careful about what happens when one assumes.
Being of Jewish heritage and still nursing old grievances against the Russian hordes has very, very little to do with one's modern religious identification. Obviously one can no longer practice (or have never practiced) the Jewish faith and still be ethnically Jewish. I would imagine that a case can be made that the less religiously observant a person is, the more likely they're to be consumed with their ethnic heritage and the historic injustices suffered by their kin.
In truth if Nordlinger is an ethnic Jew I think it exculpates him and his neoconnery. Conor Cruise O'Brien's word for what the Jews feel about what was done to them 1942-1945 is the best: grief. You can hear it in Bari Weiss's voice and it even comes through in Podhoretz's semi-comic bluster. I think the Jews are right to fight for their own, even if I don't like how they do it, and even if they see Russia as an ancestral enemy.
It's the gentiles that get me. I remember back during the '90s hearing Bill Bennett say that his opponents thought "Jewish blood is cheap". That's just distasteful for somebody who doesn't have a dog in the hunt to say. And when somebody like Nordlinger overlays his steely-eyed American Empire nonsense with a moralistic Putin bad Zelensky Churchill patina, big chief is not pleased.
I feel like I'm in a funny position here. I think Putin is a total shitbag and I want Ukraine to win their war. But I also don't want to pay for that victory.
My county school system is $50 million in the hole and talking about cutting several programs, even though our property taxes got hiked. My state assembly is dealing with a budget crunch. Charities that rely on state help are going to feel serious hurt, and state taxes are going to rise. And the spending clusterfudge at the federal level goes without saying.
So how about the Europeans, who are actually the ones in danger from an emboldened and expansionist Putin, take some cuts to their health care and their princely summer holidays to pay for Ukraine's munitions? I'm done sacrificing for Europe's safety.
So I don't feel at home with most other people who want to see Ukraine victorious, because I'm not down with the fables they're telling themselves about the nobility of Zelensky and their ignorance of how much we're spending for small gains. But I'm also not at home with the pro-Russia, anti-war right either, as I never dreamed American conservatives would find themself horny for an ex-KGB sociopath.
So my opinion is meaningless, I'm caught in the middle, I'll vent in comments here on Substack for a few minutes and then get on with my life, because it's all going to unfold however it unfolds, regardless of what any of us think.
I agree with everything you say, Jonah R., except for your calling the anti-war right "pro-Russia." While some in the former category may also be in the second, I suspect the number is small. My sense is that the anti-war right comprises people who learned the lessons Rod outlined about the Iraq war, and who legitimately have grave doubts that our demented dunce of a commander in chief and his handlers are capable of managing our military involvement with Ukraine strategically, effectively, and efficiently, or even of articulating an end goal. Indeed, those doubts were grounded in Biden's decision to end our energy independence policies on day one of his administration, and they were confirmed by his debacle in Afghanistan, which preceded his failure of deterrence in Ukraine -- remember his "minimal incursion" invitation to Putin? Add to that his willful and cynical refusal to protect our own borders -- an impeachable abdication of duty that is transforming us from a nation into a mere land mass -- and perhaps you can understand why those of us whose hearts are with Ukraine have chosen to follow our heads.
Thanks for this comment—you make a good point. I didn't mean to imply that the anti-war right was all pro-Russia or pro-Putin, only that some of the anti-war right is. And I shouldn't be implying such things, because it leads to silly overgeneralizations from the left about the motives of conservatives.
I'm with you on Biden, the border, energy independence, et al.
I'm not certainly not pro-Putin or pro-Russian. I think the war waged by the Russians has been atrocious and is indefensible. But it seems to me that the worse one thinks the war is, the more one should want it to end as quickly as possible. It makes no sense to me when people decry the horrors being inflicted on the Ukrainian people but then want those horrors to continue with no end in sight. The war will end with some negotiated settlement, and all that really remains is where the exact border will be. Is it really worth $60 billion more, along with all the lives lost, to move the border a few kilometers this way or that way?
We're closer to Cleavon Little in "Blazing Saddles."
Or another take: we think we're Superman, but we're actually more like Homelander.
"war pigs" sums it up nicely
https://youtu.be/bYgpv5clf3Y?si=kMp0TwGNCbmXqvXl
Yes it does. I like the slur Neocon Chicken Hawks too. It drives them crazy when you call them Chicken Hawks.
Chickenhawk is also slang for "boy lover" so it's very appropriate for the Lincoln Project crowd
Fits Nordlinger.
The dude exudes soy.
Well, I guess it's nice to know that in a world where just about everything changes, we can count on disastrous foreign policy takes from *NR* to always stay the same.
One of the reasons I canceled my subscription to NR was their continued "war is great" stance. They keep folding themselves into pretzels justifying it. I am really over any of these so-called "just wars". In the end, all of this is clearly just to feed the military-industrial complex, period. They are all in the tank for it. Same for most politicians.
William Tecumseh Sherman: “I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”
Indeed. Most of the people sending others into war are cowards and just care about how they get rich of it. All while hiding behind a veneer of "patriotism" and "democratic values". I really like that quote.
Makes me think of Bob Dylan's song "Masters of War":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEmI_FT4YHU
Can you picture J.D. Vance singing that song?
Or Donald Trump? Oh, wait...
I have come to the same conclusion, Yvonne Dreschler. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I had hoped to reduce armies and armaments. But expenditures rose and the politicians found fresh ways to wage war.
The Phantom Peace Dividend!
American politicians were so infatuated with their own cold war propaganda that they thought any post-communist regime would be our good friends and warm democrats. They forgot, first, that Russian culture has a strong autocratic streak going back many centuries. They also forgot that before there was a socialist/capitalist paradigm polarizing the world (while a number of countries sought to be none of the above), there were capitalist empires fighting massive wars over territory, raw materials , and spheres of influence. So here we are.
National Review... considered brilliant at the time but in hindsight, turns out to have been wrong on almost everything since the end of the Cold War.
American Conservative founder Pat Buchanan... considered a racist kook at the time, turns out to have been right on most things since the end of the Cold War.
Why exactly is anyone still reading National Review? William F. Buckley is dead. It's time to close his magazine for good.
NATIONAL REVIEW became a racket. The original thinkers of NATIONAL REVIEW like Russell Kirk and James Burnham were brilliant. The modern NATIONAL REVIEW was filled with lightweights like Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg and Ramesh Ponnuru. They run the magazine as the only gold-plated platform that will print them and, of course, there's the money.
Maytag comes to mind, a brand that made products in America that were so high quality they had an ad campaign touting the "bored Maytag repairman"... is now being run by Whirlpool making Chinese crap and milking the reputation for maximal profits while hoping consumers don't notice for a while. (Which they have by now -- Maytag no longer commands a premium price.)
That is the story of so many institutions in America today: hollowed out shells of their former selves.
MBD, for one. And Andy McCarthy.
Andy M's detailed, carefully reasoned pieces backed up with his understanding of the justice system from his work as a fed prosecutor are themselves worth the price of a subscription.
Great piece in Compact Magazine about National Review and Buckley today.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/i-bought-everything-advertised-in-national-review-and-all-i-got-was-this-bleak-odyssey-into-the-rotten-heart-of-american-conservatism-america-and-also-myself/
It should go the way of the Weekly Standard. Most of NR's writers would be comfortable moving over to the Bulwark.
For one thing, National Review is one of the very rare places where the writers can have different points of view and argue about them in one forum. Most media have one Narrative, from which no one is allowed to vary even slightly. In NR you will find rational arguments for supporting Ukraine and rational arguments for the opposite. There are rational takes on many of the topical issues which conservatives are focused on, without the breathless hyperbole of some other outlets. They have writers who focus on certain topics, like Maddie Kearns, who is brave enough to take on Big Gay and the Trans Revolution. I think it’s well worth the subscription cost.
I can see that. And I respect it to a certain extent, I guess. The zombie Reaganism is just too much for me though.
Yep. It's not 1984 any longer. The problems that Ronald Reagan faced are different from those of today.
They were wrong about everything during the Cold War too.
I just don't understand: how two equally well-meaning and intelligent people can read the same news, watch the same images . . . but come to completely opposite conclusions. I used to assume those who disagreed with me were uninformed, moronic, or evil. But I have come to conclude that is not so; people who are as well-meaning and intelligent as I am just for, to me, incomprehensible reasons come to opposite conclusions. As many have said, it's as if we were watching the same screen in the theater but seeing two different movies. I am starting to wonder if there is some atmospheric indetectable alien (possibly satanic) virus that affects all citizens in one of two ways, pretty much 50/50. It would be loverly if we could disagree respectfully and graciously . . . but when the questions are existential, I am not sure how that helps either. As the King of Siam said, "is mystery."
I think the answer to that has to do with axioms. Reason only functions within axiomatic paradigms, which means that people's foundational assumptions about reality will radically morph everything else.
Overall, there's a third possibility apart from moronic or evil, which is delusional. You can be brilliant and well-meaning but nevertheless totally out of touch with reality.
Truer words, etc, indeed.
And just differences in basic values. Security vs liberty, for example. And where those two values are sought.
Right—those would be part of the original axioms of the paradigm.
Cancelled my yearslong subscription to NR about the same time as I stopped pretending to read Christianity Today. Felt like they both turned on me like rabid dogs.
Dang, "pretending!" Still laughing.
I really haven't gotten past the first paragraph of today's article but you obviously don't pay much attention to the neocon, war mongering feces that appears every day on Ukraine with the exception on MBD who occasionally (yesterday) writes a rational article. They were bad enough before they brought Noah Rothman now they are the echo of Lindsay Graham, a more dangerous man I have never seen in the US Senate. And there you go again about learning from the Iraq War, and obviously you refer to the second not the first. Apparently to you our dangerous and malignant foreign policy started in Iraq. which illuminates your utter ignorance of our destructive foreign policy since at least 1952.
Donald, the French pleaded with us to help them against the Viet Minh just before their final stand at Dienbenphu, in 1954. Eisenhower was open to it, but was in momentary disbelief when he learned where the French had built this fortress of theirs: in a valley!!
So, no, the United States did not help the French, and no, not all of our foreign policy decisions since 1952 have been destructive.
I wonder whether Nordlinger would consider Eisenhower a traitor to all that is decent because Ike wouldn't send tanks to help the Hungarians against the Soviets in 1956?
And given what we've learned since the declassification of the Venona papers, JFK's decision to blockade instead of attack Cuba in October, 1962, must be seen as an example of the triumph of brilliantly informed intuition against overwhelming "expert" opinion to the contrary. I admire Eleanor Roosevelt, too, but for me, Barbara Tuchman is the Woman of the 20th century.
I was actually thinking of our acts of aggression when I made my "destructive" comment. I should have been more precise in what I was referring to. How can anyone accuse Eisenhower of being a traitor for refusing to go to Hungary's aid. It was neither in America's interest or any of its business. Eisenhower can be faulted for expanding the CIA's powers, giving it a free hand in both planning and execution and, in my opinion, the CIOA is literally the most dangerous organization for both America and the world that exists. I have not the slightest idea why you would consider either Eleanor Roosevelt or Barbara Tuchman worthy of praise.
I can understand that implacable ideological resistance of an aynrandian kind to government's modification of law - of - the jungle capitalism could lead one to dislike Mrs Roosevelt.
It may be that you're unaware of the decisive role Barbara Tuchman's book, "The Guns of August," had on Kennedy's appraisal of things at the beginning of The Cuban Missile Crisis. He had read the book the previous spring, and been so impressed with her acute presentation of the way in which misunderstanding piled upon misunderstanding led to the outbreak of war in 1914 that he alone of everyone in the ExComm group wanted to blockade, not invade, Cuba. Unknown to the West until the declassification of The Venona Papers, that lunatic, Khrushchev, had smuggled not strategic nukes alone but also tactical nukes into Cuba.
If Kennedy had acceded to the advice of everyone else, included Robert, and set a massive invasion upon Cuba, the Cubans and the Soviets would have used one or more of the tactical nukes on our troops. This would have obliged Kennedy to do God knows what, maybe knock down the Berlin wall, nuke one of the "stans," who knows? We would have been at thermonuclear war.
Kennedy had read the Tuchman book. He realized that things he couldn't know made an invasion far riskier than a blockade, which is why you and I are able to have this exchange, and why I nominate Barbara Tuchman as Woman of the 20th Century.
If I'm the aynrandian type to whom you are referring and in your judgment I am an advocate of jungle capitalism, you couldn't be more wrong. I am simply not an admirer of Eleanorr or a supporter of the issues for which she is well known. As to THE GUNS OF AUGUST, I was well aware of the influence that the book had on JFK but that influence was based on the main premise of the book. that World War I began because of a series of mistakes which moist credible historians have opined was an erroneous conclusion by Tuchman. Perhaps lucky for America but hardly a basis for admiration for Tuchman.
There are worse reputations to have than being known to history as someone who in all earnestness wrote a book which, though it may have been based on a misapprehension, caused a president to hesitate to act in a way which would have kindled a nuclear war.
And you, being a lawyer, know that "most credible historians" is not quite the same thing as "the unanimous verdict of history, based on the following incontrovertible facts..."
I used to sneer at "our martyred Jack" too (remember the picture on the wall of Karen Black's doublewide in Five Easy Pieces?), but his ability to keep his head in October 1962 makes him a great man, and makes Dallas a real tragedy. From that to old uncle Corn Pone!
Dien Bien Phu - like COP Keating (“The Outpost”)
Yeah, my spelling didn't look right to me, either.
I don’t think the Vietnamese care, one way or the other, how Anglos spell their place names!
I frankly hadn’t realized that the French position was in a valley. That fact made me think automatically of “The Outpost”.
It's in Evan Thomas' fascinating book, "Ike's Bluff," which is one of the most interesting and surprising books I have ever read. When I came to the sentence in which Thomas wrote about its location, I started to laugh. Eisenhower seems to have been speechless with shock for a moment.
I haven't read the book, but in re these recent rehabilitations of Eisenhower based largely on the reference to the MIC in his farewell address: the military industrial complex got created in Truman's time, but it was Eisenhower who finished the job, wasn't it?
I would tend to say that the USA has been consistently in the wrong since 1989.
Global Communism was sufficiently nasty that the Cold War was justified (I get that this is open to criticism).
However, after 1989 it had no strong ideological basis, and was just about dominance. Then, from about 2010, it has been about Woke, and is increasingly becoming explicitly anti-Christian. This can be seen with the anti-Russian rhetoric and the Pride Flags in Gaza.
I cheer for Russia against the USA, Iran against Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinians against Israel.
I agree with everything but your last sentence, which I abhor.
Agreed. No matter how bad one thinks Israel is, the Palestinians and those who wave their banner are vile. No other way around it.
Recently, I realized I had come to believe that it wasn't being an Arab which was so conducive to violence as it was being a Muslim.
I agree. Any objective read of Islam makes it clear that it is a violent creed, born in violence, spread by conquest, preaching violence against unbelievers, and specifically singling out Jews for contempt. And, imo, its origins are demonic, with the "angel" exhibiting behavior decidedly unAngelic, according to the Bible. Rather, more resembling that of infernal entities, as exorcists and others who have encountered them can relate.
You had earned a 'Like' until the last sentence. I no longer cheer for much of anyone or any nation.
I guess I’m pretty much there too. I was thinking in terms of lesser evils, which is usually the best one can hope for in a fallen world.
Barbara Tuchman was one of David McCullough's favorites. The Guns of August inspired him to write books. He died two months after his wife in 2022. Both were 89.
Yes, he was a great figure. One by one by one they go, and thirty years later, you realize one day that you have lost your country.
" . . . but was in momentary disbelief when he learned where the French had built this fortress of theirs: in a valley!!"
Made perfect sense. The Viet Minh would never be able to get their artillery on top of the surrounding hills!
The French really tricked them!
I'd say Ike's handling of the Suez crisis was likewise masterful.
See any president for the last 30 years having the guts to say "no" to Israel, Britain and France?
Only one of the three has the kidney to fight for its survival, though the French have shown surprising signs of life since October 7. My British cousins seem determined to go quietly.
I don't think Rod is saying that our foreign policy has been a problem since the second Iraq war, but that is when he realized he got scammed into supporting it. Not sure why that makes you upset. Everyone has their experiences in life where things shift.
I'm not upset. I don't take anything Rod says very seriously but the way he has never indicated that he understands the Iraq 2 was simply a continuation of the mistakes we had been making for many years before that and truthfully I'm not sure he understands that. If Rod wants to correct me, it's his substack and he's free to do that.
I've lost count of how many of the National Review people I used to revere who turned out to be complete sell outs to the Regime, people like Mona Charen and George Will. I never was a fan of David French, but he is another NR grifter. Quite a collection of cucks, grifters and traitors have come out of that magazine that I once loved.
I was hoping that Andy McCarthy could have at least expressed SOME distress at the clearly unjust judgment from Judge Engeron. But no, instead we get a completely technical explanation of how Engeron probably does have Trump in a real trap. Far more important than Trump’s fate is what happens to us with judges like this tyrant around.
George Will, I was a fanboy.
So was I!
There's nothing "good" or "Patriotic" about the Neocons. They know who they serve and it's not the true National Interests of America and it's definitely not We The People (the American citizenry). The Neocons serve the Ruling Class Elites, they serve the Empire those Elites control, they serve and have become wealthy serving the interests of the Military/Industrial Complex and the Surveillance State. There's nothing good or patriotic about these people. They are traitors to the Constitutional Republic and if a second civil war does break out in America I hope these Neocon traitors are systematically hunted down and brought to justice for their crimes against this nation, our Constitution and We The People. I'm serious. These people (the Neocons) are "The Enemy" of every Patriotic American, every true American Nationalist, every Constitutionalist. They are the enemy every bit as much as the Democrat run wing of the "Deep State" if not more so because Neocons drape themselves in our flag. I despise them. I loathe them with a burning passion!
Zelensky has been silencing and killing critics, no different from Putin. If such things make Putin a villain, well....
So true! Rod, you should watch the 2 geopolitical strategists on "The Duran" once in a while to get a more realistic take on Zelensky. You're still drinking U.S. and NATO kool-aid.
Do you have any comment on Navalny’s murder? You haven’t had much to say about it and you’re not usually at a loss for words.
Yeah he was probably murdered by the CIA. He was no threat to Putin. He's worth more to the Western Powers as a "Russian Martyr for Western Democracy" than he's worth alive in a prison cell and the West already has his successor (his wife). Very convenient. He's not even in the ground yet and she's already giving press conferences to the Western MSM. The Western Powers needed something like this after the Tucker interview so they could continue their mantra "Putin Evil Dictator", "Putin Thug"! It's all bullshit. I'd take Putin over our scumbag Western Leaders any day of the week. I hate the Globalist Elites scum with every fiber of my being. When I think of them I have to spit.
Washington didn't give a damn about Gonzalo Lira. They didn't lift a finger to help him.
I read in a couple of places that Navalny's wife visited him in the Arctic "penal colony" a few days before his death and then showed up at the recent Munich Security Conference. The whole thing is bizarre and needs more scrutiny.
It must be said, though, that Lira behaved quite stupidly. Certainly doesn't mean that he deserved to die, but man, he sure made it easy for them.
And Navalny didn't?
Countless articles from the mainstream press about the "heroic" Navalny (though, if he was a western politician his pro-gun, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and Neonazi associations from his past would make him radioactive)...and next to nothing about the American journalist Gonzalo Lira, who died in a Ukrainian prison.
Oh, and meanwhile we're fighting to get Julian Assange extradited to the US and to go on trial for the crime of journalism.
Rod, I think I'm less forgiving of neocons than you. They have the blood of millions on their hands. They are not our friends.
They are soaked in the blood of Arabs, Persians and Slavs.
And American soldiers
Yes absolutely American soldiers including those who came home broken and put a bullet in their own heads. That accounts for thousands
And it is still happening.
I commented on it on Twitter. It's appalling. He was a courageous man -- and a believing Orthodox Christian. I don't know what other useful thing I have to say about it.
https://youtu.be/f1Vvgo7SKf0?feature=shared
The facts speak loudly.
Could be false flag, not likely, but could be. I am of no help.
Just as there's a certain type of liberal who's an instant sucker for any person place or thing that can be painted as another Civil Rights journey, there's a certain type of conservative who seems to be an instant sucker for any overseas war that can be painted like an episode of Star Wars—"The Ukrainians...are fighting and dying to hang on to their country — to keep from being dragged back into an evil empire. They are fighting for their very right to exist." (Cue the faux Mahler and slow pan across the ragtag band of rebels that will inevitably defeat the Empire just before the credits roll.)
And speaking of conservative scams, there's also the stink of televangelist here: For just $5 a month you can give the blessings of liberty to a benighted foreigner in a country you can't find on the map! (And it would be gauche to mention how all these prior endeavors have always failed or backfired, never led to their promised utopian results, and always seem to privatize the gains while socializing the deaths and mutilations.)
The John Wayne myth of the heroic honest American who strolls into town and delivers justice with his six-shooter before riding off into the sunset seems to be both unkillable and impervious to evidence. And what kind of monster asks about things like costs/benefits, audits, corruption, or possible negative consequences? Don't you see we're fighting an existential battle of Good v Evil here!?!
It really is great to be an American and to live fat and happy in the center of the Empire—we get to live in a permanent fantasy world and act out our morality plays until we get bored and wander off to audition for a new role.
And since these scripts are all well-worn by now, we can already see the ending to this one being written today: "Who lost Ukraine?" will be the next chew toy for our media class, with the answer of course being those evil Republicans, who were hypnotized by that geopolitical (Ras)Putin.
"Who lost Ukraine?" will be the next chew toy for our media class,"
Reminds me of "Who lost China" an idiotic comment I hears frequently as I was growing up.
The question should be replaced with "Who destroyed _________? Fill in the country- The "who" is America and we can fill in the blank with a variety of countries - Iraq. Libya, Syria, Sudan, Viet Nam, Serbia. The next country will be Ukraine.
Since this substack does not show the comment to which you commented I'm not sure what I missed but if it was countries destroyed by America, you can fill in the blanks. I was only scratching the surface. I could add, depending on time frame, most of the Central American countries. some of South America and a few more in Africa.
"Who destroyed the United States?"
Not me.
As someone that interned at NR some time ago, when William F Buckley was still there, I find its current incarnation incomprehensible.
The ego driven invective you quote from Nordlinger is of a piece with leftist rhetoric...i.e., if you disagree with me you are evil, not merely "wrong".
Would that Nordlinger could adopt some humility.
And FWIW, I don't think Zelensky is any prize. As I see it he is a poseur manipulating naive Western media while he rushes around in fatigues. His generals (whom he has recently fired) appear to be both better liked and more realistic about the situation in Ukraine.
I dropped my NR subscription many years ago, when it ceased being the NR I'd worked for in the 70s. It died even before WFB did.
So sad. Buckley's sister, Priscilla, was also quite a force when I was there. She was managing editor until 1985, worked there till 1999.
I think it went downhill after Reagan's term. I lost track then as I was in Europe and then super busy with family and work.
Priscilla was a gem and a joy. There wouldn't have been an NR without her -- and Bill was the first to admit that.
I dropped NR about 1998 when they called the Confederate soldiers dishonorable. I had subscribed since college. NR began to decline when the Soviet Union committed suicide. Soon they were printing front page stories on Bart Simpson, written by Jonah Goldberg.
My last NR subscription around 2000. Off and on since 1971.
Rod's right.
JD Vance makes some good points.
Nordlinger can't help it if he still hears the hoofbeats of the czar's calvary echoing on the cobblestones as they chase his great- great grandmother down the street every time he closes his eyes. Go easy on him.
Thr czar’s what? Haha. You might wanna look at that word again.
Whoops! Whoopsie!
Are you implying that he's Jewish? Dude, he's a Christian Scientist from the Midwest.
Are you saying that he is not at least ethnically Jewish? Given that "Nordlinger" is a Jewish surname and how much of his work back at NR, which I admittedly haven't read in awhile, was "Israel this" and "worry about anti- Semitism that," particularly back in the days immediately after 9/11, I was under the impression that he was. Seems a pretty obvious assumption to make, although I will admit that one has to be careful about what happens when one assumes.
Being of Jewish heritage and still nursing old grievances against the Russian hordes has very, very little to do with one's modern religious identification. Obviously one can no longer practice (or have never practiced) the Jewish faith and still be ethnically Jewish. I would imagine that a case can be made that the less religiously observant a person is, the more likely they're to be consumed with their ethnic heritage and the historic injustices suffered by their kin.
I can't speak to whether he's ethnically Jewish or not, but "Nordlinger" looks like a German surname derived from a locality.
OK, here goes.
In truth if Nordlinger is an ethnic Jew I think it exculpates him and his neoconnery. Conor Cruise O'Brien's word for what the Jews feel about what was done to them 1942-1945 is the best: grief. You can hear it in Bari Weiss's voice and it even comes through in Podhoretz's semi-comic bluster. I think the Jews are right to fight for their own, even if I don't like how they do it, and even if they see Russia as an ancestral enemy.
It's the gentiles that get me. I remember back during the '90s hearing Bill Bennett say that his opponents thought "Jewish blood is cheap". That's just distasteful for somebody who doesn't have a dog in the hunt to say. And when somebody like Nordlinger overlays his steely-eyed American Empire nonsense with a moralistic Putin bad Zelensky Churchill patina, big chief is not pleased.
I feel like I'm in a funny position here. I think Putin is a total shitbag and I want Ukraine to win their war. But I also don't want to pay for that victory.
My county school system is $50 million in the hole and talking about cutting several programs, even though our property taxes got hiked. My state assembly is dealing with a budget crunch. Charities that rely on state help are going to feel serious hurt, and state taxes are going to rise. And the spending clusterfudge at the federal level goes without saying.
So how about the Europeans, who are actually the ones in danger from an emboldened and expansionist Putin, take some cuts to their health care and their princely summer holidays to pay for Ukraine's munitions? I'm done sacrificing for Europe's safety.
So I don't feel at home with most other people who want to see Ukraine victorious, because I'm not down with the fables they're telling themselves about the nobility of Zelensky and their ignorance of how much we're spending for small gains. But I'm also not at home with the pro-Russia, anti-war right either, as I never dreamed American conservatives would find themself horny for an ex-KGB sociopath.
So my opinion is meaningless, I'm caught in the middle, I'll vent in comments here on Substack for a few minutes and then get on with my life, because it's all going to unfold however it unfolds, regardless of what any of us think.
I agree with everything you say, Jonah R., except for your calling the anti-war right "pro-Russia." While some in the former category may also be in the second, I suspect the number is small. My sense is that the anti-war right comprises people who learned the lessons Rod outlined about the Iraq war, and who legitimately have grave doubts that our demented dunce of a commander in chief and his handlers are capable of managing our military involvement with Ukraine strategically, effectively, and efficiently, or even of articulating an end goal. Indeed, those doubts were grounded in Biden's decision to end our energy independence policies on day one of his administration, and they were confirmed by his debacle in Afghanistan, which preceded his failure of deterrence in Ukraine -- remember his "minimal incursion" invitation to Putin? Add to that his willful and cynical refusal to protect our own borders -- an impeachable abdication of duty that is transforming us from a nation into a mere land mass -- and perhaps you can understand why those of us whose hearts are with Ukraine have chosen to follow our heads.
Thanks for this comment—you make a good point. I didn't mean to imply that the anti-war right was all pro-Russia or pro-Putin, only that some of the anti-war right is. And I shouldn't be implying such things, because it leads to silly overgeneralizations from the left about the motives of conservatives.
I'm with you on Biden, the border, energy independence, et al.
I'm not certainly not pro-Putin or pro-Russian. I think the war waged by the Russians has been atrocious and is indefensible. But it seems to me that the worse one thinks the war is, the more one should want it to end as quickly as possible. It makes no sense to me when people decry the horrors being inflicted on the Ukrainian people but then want those horrors to continue with no end in sight. The war will end with some negotiated settlement, and all that really remains is where the exact border will be. Is it really worth $60 billion more, along with all the lives lost, to move the border a few kilometers this way or that way?
If each European cut their summer holiday from 28 to 25 days, the Ukrainian army could be gold-plated.