January 23, 2006

You sir, are dead on:

My line was that the war in Iraq was morally right and politically wrong. I said this six months before the war started, and I did not change my mind. Morally right, because it’s always right to overthrow a dictator, one of the bloodiest regimes in the world, but politically wrong because I knew it would produce more chaos, more terrorism. It would make the world even less safe than it was.

What I don’t understand is why you cannot at the same time denounce economic disparity, the anti-abortion movement, religious fundamentalism, the widespread domestic availability of firearms, and so on. An intellectual is someone who is able to count past two. And even three, sometimes. The intellectuals we’re talking about seem only to be able to able to count to one. One — finished. No, please! I want to say. Let’s count to two! I am in favor of the war in Iraq, but I am against economic disparity. I am in favor of prisons to protect the general population, but I am against the death penalty.

I far prefer the neoconservatives, like Kristol, to someone like Pat Buchanan, who is fascist. I far prefer the neoconservative idea of spreading democracy all over the world, to Buchanan, who says that people in the rest of the world don’t deserve democracy.

Political leaders are what they are. Obama and Hillary Clinton are brilliant, charismatic, but they will be exactly what the left will make them be. As long as the Democrats speak money, instead of ideas, as long as they are afraid of their own shadows, they will lose. And as brilliant a leader as Obama or Hillary is, they cannot win with such a party behind them.

It was a shame to see people on the left, in the last days of the election, trying to adopt the platform of the National Rifle Association. They should have said, No — vote against us if you want but we are against the sale of firearms. Instead of, Me too, I’m a hunter! I like weapons! The right expresses itself in America. The left does not. It is a pity.