Wednesday roundup

 This is the kind of piece one can mine for new insights with multiple readings. History professor and former Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff looks exhaustively at what it means to think for oneself. There are a lot of aspects to the subject, as it turns out, such as what the quest for originality can do to one's prioritization of the truth, or the vastly different styles demonstrated by highly organized intellects and those of a more chaotic nature.

I'll just share enough such insights to tease.

How about this one?

For a start, we are confused about what thinking is. To think is not to process information. We have impoverished our understanding of thinking by analogizing it to what our machines do. What we do is not processing. It is not computation. It is not data analysis. It is a distinctively, incorrigibly human activity that is a complex combination of conscious and unconscious, rational and intuitive, logical and emotional reflection. It is so complex that neither neurologists nor philosophers have found a way to model it, and the engineers of artificial intelligence are still struggling to replicate some of the simplest forms of pattern recognition that human cognition does so effortlessly. We must beware that in our attempt to make computers think like us we do not end up thinking like them.

Nor is thinking a matter of expressing yourself or having opinions. It is not about turning on the fountain of our personality. It is an exercise in finding reasons to persuade yourself and others that something is true, or at least plausibly true. Thinking has truth as its goal and its organizing discipline. Bullshitters, as Harry Frankfurt told us, are precisely those who do not think: they simply express what comes into their minds, without concerning themselves with whether what they are saying has any relation to reality. Every university is, or should be, properly worried that their classrooms are training generation after generation of accredited bullshitters.

Nor is thinking about expressing your identity. It is not an intellectual achievement to parrot the truisms of our tribes. Indeed, thinking is about emancipating yourself from identity, insofar as it throws into question prior and unexamined ideas. Identity is a warm bath, but thinking is a discipline. Many important lines of thought are austerely impersonal, purged of the origins of those who thought them up. Think of mathematics, physics, and logic. These are great systems of thought made possible by thinkers who in the laboratory and the library discarded their identities altogether and lived, for years at a time, in the impersonal realm of signs and symbols. It doesn’t matter that perfect objectivity is impossible; imperfect objectivity, the progressive correction of biases, is certainly possible. Even in the social sciences, it is basic to our methods that we try to leave our personal biases, experiences, and histories behind, or in some way to bracket them, so as to see what the data tells us. In this work, thinking means leaving ourselves behind.

Or this?

If thinking for yourself is the goal of your life, then it pays to maintain a certain distance from the institutions in which you work and live. Distance implies wariness about received opinion, about fashions, about the recurring tides of certainty and urgency that course through the places where we work and soon have us all facing the same way, thinking the same thing. The larger point is about liberal society: if thinking for yourself is your goal, do not go looking for the warm bath of belonging or the certitude of faith. Do not expect a free society to provide these for you. Belonging is not the fondest dream of a serious intellectual. She dreams of other satisfactions first.

Lionel Shriver, writing at UnHerd, gives us a bracing upside-the-head entitled "How We Created a Self-Hating Generation." How we did it, she posits, is that we replaced character with identity as the focus of bringing up new citizens of our society:

I submit: the traditional concept of “building character” is out the window.

Once upon a time, a fully realised person was something one became. Entailing education, observation, experimentation, and sometimes humiliation, “coming of age” was hard work. When the project succeeded, we developed a gradually richer understanding of what it means to be human and what constitutes a fruitful life. This ongoing project was halted only by death. Maturity was the result of accumulated experience (some of it dire) and much trial and error (both comical and tragic), helping explain why wisdom, as opposed to intelligence, was mostly the preserve of the old. We admired the “self-made man”, because character was a creation — one constructed often at great cost. Many a “character-building” adventure, such as joining the Army, was a trial by fire.

These days, discussion of “character” is largely relegated to fiction workshops and film reviews. Instead, we relentlessly address “identity”, a hollowed-out concept now reduced to membership of the groups into which we were involuntarily born — thereby removing all choice about who we are. Rejecting the passé “character building” paradigm, we now inform children that their selves emerge from the womb fully formed. Their sole mission is to tell us what those selves already are. Self is a prefabricated house to which only its owner has a key.

Here's what we should say to a kid who says he or she doesn't know who he or she is:

There’s nothing shameful about being an empty vessel when you haven’t done anything and nothing much has happened to you yet. Telling children, “Of course you don’t know who you are! Growing up is hard, full of false starts, and all about making something of yourself. Don’t worry, we’ll give you lots of help” is a great deal more consoling than the model of the ready-meal self. We demand toddlers determine whether they’re “girls or boys or something in-between” before they have fully registered what a girl or boy is, much less “something in-between”. Placing the total onus for figuring out how to negotiate being alive on people who haven’t been given the user’s manual is a form of abandonment.

Adults have an obligation to advise, comfort, and inform — to provide the social context that children have none of the resources to infer and to help form expectations of what comes next.  Instead, we’re throwing kids helplessly on their primitive imaginations. The first time I remember being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I clearly remember answering, “a bear”. I wasn’t trying to be a wiseass. I just wasn’t up to speed on the ambitions to which I was expected to aspire. Little wonder that kids are now “identifying” as cats. Next, they will be identifying as electric lawnmowers, and we will have asked for it.

Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Brad Littlejohn contemplates what true authority might be. 

The year 2020 did not kill authority in American public life; it had been on life support for some time. This was merely the year authority tried to rise from its sickbed, in defiance of its terminal condition, and then expired from the strain. Needless to say, the Biden administration has not succeeded in resurrecting it.

Our contemporary crisis of authority runs much deeper than most realize. It is not just the product of institutional rot in Congress; of a swamp in Washington, D.C., that needs to be drained; or of inept leadership by grandstanding celebrity politicians. Nor is it simply the result of the radically democratizing effect of digital media, of a world in which likes and retweets matter more than credentials or even elections — although this is, as we shall see, a key part of the problem.

More fundamentally, our problem is that we no longer know how to recognize an authentic claim to authority, even if one dares show its face — which it almost never does. Without recognition of authority, there can be no legitimacy. Without legitimacy in our authoritative institutions, we cannot know how or why to act — a paralysis we experience as a loss of freedom even as we rage against the authorities we fear pose the greatest threats to our freedom.

He says it's crucial to distinguish between authority and power:

What is political authority? Before we answer, we must distinguish between two key concepts: authority and power. If we fail to do so, we will misunderstand the relationship between authority and freedom, perceiving them as antagonistic to one another when in fact they go hand in hand.

We may define power as a capacity for action in the broadest sense. The idea of power is thus quite close to that of freedom, for freedom clearly involves a capacity to act; indeed, we can use the phrases “power to act” and “freedom to act” interchangeably in certain contexts.

Some have disputed this characterization of freedom, arguing for a purely negative understanding of the term as the absence of compulsion. Yet under this definition, the quadriplegic is considered perfectly free to walk around so long as no one prevents him from doing so. This, of course, is absurd, and does violence to our well-grounded intuitions about what freedom must entail.

Because power and freedom are so similar to one another, they can readily stand in an oppositional relationship. One person’s power is perceived as (and quite often is in fact) a threat to another person’s freedom. There is, at least in some measure, a zero-sum game at work here.

That is not the case, however, when it comes to authority.

The concept of freedom adds to that of power the idea of rationality — freedom is the capacity for meaningful, rational action. We do not ordinarily think of the insane as “free”; indeed, it is precisely their radical un-freedom that can justify restraining or confining them. But from whence arises this meaning? Where do we find our reasons for acting? Not, as modernity is so fond of telling us, from within the freedom of our own will, for that is simply circular. No, it is authority (in the very broadest sense of the term) that provides us with reasons for action, and which thereby makes free action possible.

Authority is thus, in the pithy formulation of theologian Oliver O’Donovan, “the objective correlate of freedom.” Whereas one person’s power can limit another’s freedom by compelling him to act against his will, authority elicits free action by giving him reasons to act. Although it may be the authority that summons me to action, I can then recognize that action as my own. Power is thus far weaker than authority.

Authority gives us reasons for free action in two main guises: as epistemic authority and as political authority. Due to their systematic conflation over the past century, both types of authority are in a state of crisis.

In "From Environmentalism to Climate Catastrophism," Ruy Tiexiera says that as a society we did a good job of cleaning up actual pollution, but that alarmist swooning has diminished our capacity to address actual, specific problems and solve them.

A piece by Isaac Ariaril Reed and Michael Weinman at Hedgehog Review posits that as we as a society lose our grasp of any kind of common significance, we as individuals stake out positions we find comfortable, but that are untethered to evidence or reason. 

Coleman Hughes, writing at The Free Press, asserts that "Actually, Color-Blindness Isn't Racist." Such a statement ought to have a strong well-duh quality to it, but, in our age, it needs to be fleshed out in an essay.

At Precipice, I republished a Christmas-Eve piece I'd originally posted at Medium back in 2017. It's entitled "How I Made My Peace With God Being An Absolutist."

 

 

 

 

If a twilight struggle for the definition of conservatism is underway, I know which side I'm on

I've been sitting here deliberating whether to provide a link to the essay I'm about to discuss. I generally don't do so in these cases. If the piece is so poisonous to the national discourse that the question of responsibility for aggravating a dark trend arises, I decline.

But I'm going to in this case. Human Events editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam's piece entitled "National Review is Obsessed With Itself" fairly drips with determination to assume the role of arbiter for what constitutes legitimate conservatism in the present moment - and to stamp out that which falls outside its parameters.

I've had to do some maturing myself over the years in regard to what permissibly qualifies as a conservative position. While I still hold to the notion of three pillars that became the accepted model some thirty-plus years ago, I see that there is a big-tent quality to our worldview, that there is something to the notion that it is a sensibility at least as much as a hard and fast platform, and that its essence has resulted from a distillation process that, one could argue, goes back to our common ancestor, Edmund Burke.

There have been purgings before. William F. Buckley had to serve notice to both the John Birch crowd and the Randians that they fell outside the bounds of what qualified. When neoconservatism first became a thing in the mid-to-late 1970s, some of the former liberals fared better at making a full transition than others. For instance, it took a while for the great Jean Kirkpatrick to start to see the efficacy of right-of-center domestic-policy orientation.

The Trump phenomenon has proven thornier than previous points in the synthesis. Trump's status as a party-affiliation flip-flopper was the first glaringly obvious problem. Once his candidacy became the sensation of the primary season, the photo from his (third) wedding reception of him and Melania yukking it up with Bill and Hillary Clinton made the rounds fairly instantly. Then came signals of his collectivist views on health care ("We have to take care of everybody") and his vow not to make any changes to the structure of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Time passed and he became president, and he engaged in rank appeasement of North Korea within weeks of its testing of its most fearsome missiles. That, as we know, led to two summits, the second of which ended in collapse, which in turn has led to Kim's return to full-bore belligerence. It's this kind of stuff; other examples abound.

An unprecedented aspect of the Trump phenomenon is the degree to which it's built around one figure . There was some of that in the case of the Objectivists, but they revered Ayn Rand because of her ideas. And it's also true that three of our four most recent presidents have been pathological narcissists with slavish cult followings, Bush 43 being the exception. However, other than Trump, these were Democrats.

Which gets us to Kassam's piece. The tone is a little different from, say, that of Kurt Schlichter, but not the spirit. His unmistakable point is to use Trumpian tactics to try to delegitimize what has been the flagship magazine of conservatism since the month after I was born. There is no other reason for his citing of NR's circulation statistics and his use of Schlichteresque terminology ("muh free market," "Conservative, Inc."). He doesn't hesitate to go for the point of NR's most recent maximum vulnerability, citing - and linking to - the Nicholas Frankovich piece NR published in the first few hours of the Covington-kids situation, barely noting the fact that the magazine took the piece down and apologized for such a hasty and mistaken first take.

And that as much as anything points up the bully aspect of Trumpism's essence. The image one gets is that of an alpha-male grade-schooler on the playground, finding some kid minding his own business and bending the kid's knuckles backward just to watch him drop to his knees. There is no room in the Trumpists' mind for waiting for anyone to take a second look at his position. In other words, no grace.

And I need to say a word about Kassam's formulation "Where the conservative movement is headed." Conservatism, properly understood, is about immutable principles. It doesn't "head" anywhere. Speaking of the month after I was born, National Review's mission statement includes the legendary phrase "stand athwart history yelling stop."

Kassam's essay is nothing but another splash of gasoline on the fire. It reinforces the notion of an irrevocable split in conservatism.

It's also clearly devoid of any humanity and for that reason is on the wrong side of such a split if there is really going to be one.

It also makes excuses for someone who is not and never has been a conservative and doesn't understand what the term even means.

He's casting his lot with something extremely perishable.

Representative King and why it's imperative to employ precision in the use of language

You surely know the dustup that is causing the present consternation:

. . . a New York Times report published on Thursday quoted him seemingly defending white nationalism and white supremacy. During an interview with the New York Times reporter King asks, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

Now, anybody, from any point on the ideological spectrum, right or left of center, would be understandably and rightly condemned for that utterance.

King attempted to clarify what he'd said in remarks on the House floor.

“One phrase in that long article has created an unnecessary controversy. That was my mistake, Mr. Speaker. And so I want to start this out with some context of that discussion. And that is this: If you can control the language, you can control the policy. Labels have been hurled in this country at people like we have never seen in this history of America,” King added.

He went on to, quite correctly, note that the Times was gunning for him, as evidenced by the title of the piece.

He said the title of the article, “Before Trump, Steve King Set the Agenda for the Wall and Anti-Immigrant Policies” was prejorative. “I have never been anti-immigrant, I have been anti-illegal immigrant, and I remain that way,” King stated.

Yes, every politician - every public figure, including celebrities - misspeaks and has to retract certain utterances. But one ought to be mindful of the track record one is compiling, so that when one's time comes, there's no baggage to answer for:

Over the last several months, the congressman has compiled a distressing record: endorsing the political campaign of a protest candidate for mayor of Toronto who appeared on a white-supremacist podcast and has repeated white-supremacist mantras; approvingly citing white nationalists on social media and, when pressed, refusing to admit error; and nodding to fringe tropes such as “cultural suicide by demographic transformation” that reduce the legitimate issue of national cohesion to an ugly exercise in racial bean-counting.

Just dandy, Representative King. At a time when it's crucial for the Republican Party to engage a wider array of demographic groups, you open the door to the identity-politics crowd being able to disseminate the notion that "Western civilization" is code for white supremacy. The West is already taking a beating in our nation's educational system.

And speaking of our educational system, it no longer inculcates post-Americans with an insistence on precise articulation of intended meaning. We obviously get no help from sloppy polemicists such as the Very Stable Genius or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and now it's clear that we really get no help from this Iowa Congressman.

You burned your bridge with your careless mouth, Congressman. The only value of this episode you caused is the cautionary example you've provided. Now go.

 

 

It's important to conduct ourselves like grownups while defending what's good, right and true

I'd just read Conor Friedersdorf's account at The Atlantic of the interview between clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson and British journalist Cathy Newman - and you should too; his point that there's a trend, on both the left and the right, to reframe what a person has actually said is an important one - when I came upon Jonah Goldberg's take on it at NRO. Goldberg zeroes in on one particular aspect of the interview that is a particular obsession of mine: this utterly false notion that an increasing number of people have that there is some kind of right not to be offended:

Newman questioned Peterson on why he refused to go along with the trendy Leftist cause du jour: using pronouns chosen by individuals rather than pronouns that describe their biology. “Why should your freedom of speech trump a trans person’s right not to be offended?” Newman asked. Peterson, ever the gentleman, answered the question without guffawing: “Because in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive. I mean, look at the conversation we’re having right now. You’re certainly willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth. Why should you have the right to do that? It’s been rather uncomfortable.”

Newman misdirected: “Well, I’m very glad I’ve put you on the spot.” But Peterson pursued: “Well, you get my point. You’re doing what you should do, which is digging a bit to see what the hell is going on. And that is what you should do. But you’re exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me, and that’s fine. More power to you, as far as I’m concerned.”

Newman had no answer. Point to Peterson. But despite Peterson’s obvious logic, the Left refuses to concede this particular point. Any statement — any statement — must be gauged not only on the basis of its truth-value, according to the Left, but on the basis of whether such truth is likely to offend — or, at last, whether such truth is likely to offend groups the Left perceives as victimized.

According to the Left, any and all truth must take a back seat to “your truth,” so long as you claim minority status in any way.

Goldberg goes on to make the point that those on the right - excepting, of course, those dwelling in its fever swamps - tend to value decorum, courtesy, and calm discourse and get stomped on for it by the Left. It's at that point that a sane rightie might be tempted to go all bonehead in a polemical exchange, but that, with truth on his side, he can afford to maintain a dignified demeanor as he puts his points on the board.

He concludes quite eloquently:

This is the ground on which conservatives should fight, of course: acknowledgement that while manners matter, truth matters more. Unfortunately, too many conservatives have responded to Leftist censorship not with truth-above-manners politeness, but with theatrical displays of unconcern with manners themselves. Rudeness is now seen as a substitute for facts. If the Left uses manners as a weapon, the logic goes, let’s just discard manners altogether. But there’s no reason to do that.

We all ought to behave with decency and truth. Those are the twin pillars of conservatism, after all: virtue and reason. Discarding reason undermines virtue by replacing virtue with emotion-based reactivity; discarding virtue undermines the social fabric necessary to undergird the effectiveness of reason. Yes, let’s behave with manners. But let’s recognize that only a society that values truth can afford manners.

A good maxim to live by.

Saturday morning roundup

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air on how the Washington Post is on the verge of a major well-duh revelation - namely, that the reason why a country so astoundingly rich in natural resources - namely, Venezuela - is a sewer of poverty, violence and despair:

The cause of the starvation is obvious. Even under the most benevolent of socialist regimes, the government is ill equipped to operate such a complex system. And this one is far from benevolent, with the party leaders more interested in ensuring their own comfort and security than that of the rank and file. But all of this was predictable because, as we’ve said here more times than I can count, this is how socialism ends. Every. Single. Time.

A bracing upside-the-head from Secretary Kelly:

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Friday said the terror threat is worse than most realize, saying some people would "never leave the house" if they knew the truth.

“I was telling [Fox host] Steve [Doocy] on the way in here, if he knew what I knew about terrorism, he’d never leave the house in the morning,” Kelly said on “Fox & Friends.”

He noted there were four major terror attacks in the last week — in England, Egypt, the Philippines and Indonesia — "by generally the same groups."

David French at NRO makes a great point about how today's campus jackboots may well avoid ever having a real-world wake-up call:

Conservatives tend to respond to incidents like this by rolling their eyes, calling the students “snowflakes” (a term many on the right need to stop using, given their own hysterical reactions to leftist critiques), and relishing their inevitable education in the so-called “real world.” The presumption is simple — these kinds of antics won’t fly when they’re trying to sell insurance or write code or balance a company’s budget. The “real world” is a harsh teacher, and soon they’ll have to grow up.

This response, however, is fundamentally wrong. For the most committed campus radical, the “real world” doesn’t await; a lifetime of activism does. They’ll move seamlessly from academia into government, art, and politics, and sometimes right back into academia.

They can avoid it even if they join the corporate world:

Indeed, even the “real world” isn’t what it used to be. Now that we live in hyper-partisan times and increasingly work in geographically separated ideological cocoons, it’s easy to take your activism straight to work, even if it’s not a philosophy department or progressive law firm. Corporate boycotts directly extend campus politics into the world of commerce, and any person who works for a major progressive corporation knows very well what they risk if they publicly dissent from the company line on the same hot-button cultural issues that trigger campus meltdowns.

There are many real worlds now, and a person of any ideology — if they so choose — can live their entire life without facing the stereotypical “wake-up call” that tends to moderate political extremes. So don’t look at campus craziness and take any comfort at all from the fact that these so-called “snowflakes” will graduate and enter the marketplace. The real world they’ll choose to join will indeed change them, but not in the way that conservatives imagine. Their real world will only magnify their voice.

Dale M. Coulter, associate professor of historical theology at Regent University, has a great piece at First Things on something I personally relish: verbal jousting:

During my brief sojourn in the English system, I became accustomed to the English model of clear argumentation spiced with wit and supported by a well-crafted rejoinder. For those not used to such an approach, it can feel more like a bludgeoning with a long sword than the incisive jabs of a rapier. There is always a fine line between destroying an argument and destroying the person who made it.

This approach teaches you to turn words into weapons in the service of argument. It can begin with a series of questions, seemingly innocent and yet designed to ferret out weaknesses. Depending on the answer, the second round of questions may be punctuated by “Surely you don’t mean X,” or a series of well-placed modifiers (“gross” oversimplification, “fallacious” reasoning, etc.). Appeals to authority are sometimes dismissed with a simple wave of the hand (“Shortest dissertation in the history of that school” was one such dismissal I witnessed). For those who understand it, this cultural form is a kind of rhetorical flair designed to elicit a strong response, rather than deliver an actual blow to the argument.

I experienced reverse culture-shock after moving back to the U.S., when I offered a critique of a paper written by a colleague. I had assumed that my own concern for the colleague’s argument would come through in the careful way I had read the paper. Not so. I discovered that I had offended not only my colleague, but many observers, who rushed in as though my criticisms had done permanent damage. I realized that I had to find softer ways to criticize my American colleagues, who had not been formed in the hard-hitting English system.

One thing to be said for that “aggressively English dialectic of debate” is that it has a leveling effect among socio-economic classes. On the other side of the pond, where regional accents function as signifiers of whether one is cultured or not, the art of skillful argumentation can make equals out of those who come from different classes. One learns to stand on the strength of argument alone.

This art of verbal jousting does not fit in the postmodern world, so concerned with providing safe spaces. Verbal jousting is an invitation to respond in kind, much as “joning” functions in the African-American community to cultivate and display verbal skills that integrate individuals into the community. Yes, joning can lead to violence—just as there is a reason why, at an Oxford viva in the Middle Ages, there was to be precisely one sword length between the examiners and the examined.

Many a writer has dealt with the subject of why the Indianapolis 500 is unique and even magical among the world's sporting events, but I think Christopher Jacobs at The Federalist nails it as well as any effort I've seen.

 

The Left's disingenuousness is on full display when it comes to solar energy

David Harsanyi has a must-read essay today at The Federalist on the "logic" that leftist demagogues use to try to delegitimize economic truths about the inefficiency of the solar-power sector of the overall energy industry.

The other day, American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Perry wrote this postdetailing the astonishing unproductivity of the solar sector, which boasts of 20 percent of all electric power payrolls yet produces less than 1 percent of the electric power in the United States. Perhaps there is a strong argument that funding a “clean energy” economy is worth the trouble because one day it will save the Earth, but right now it exists only as a morally pleasing proposition that serves little economic purpose.

The reaction to Perry’s tweet, though, was a revealing exposition of progressive economics ideas. Which is to say, productivity doesn’t matter if your heart is in the right place. Take Sally Kohn, a CNN analyst, who mocked Perry’s article by saying, “In case you mistakenly thought conservatives mean it when they say they believe in creating good jobs…”

Christopher Hayes and Sam Biddle responded to Perry in similar fashion on Twitter.

Harsanyi quite appropriately offers up the Milton Friedman "why-not-use-spoons-instead-of-shovels" quip.

He then returns to Kohn, who also claims in a subsequent tweet that solar energy is cheaper than normal-people energy forms, thinking she's come across a real gotcha, because that would render the inefficiency argument pointless.

Um, reread your supposed substantiation of this "cheaper" business, Sally:

If solar is also CHEAPER why do we need subsidies and state mandates? Surely Americans would turn away from fossil fuel immediately if this were the case. I know I would. Now, the piece Kohn linked to (but didn’t read apparently) only forecasts that prices will be cheaper, while ignoring the many supplementary costs of creating an entire new infrastructure, not to mention the cost of the fossil fuel capacity necessary to back up a system that runs on the vagaries of sunlight. But that’s another story.

I am particularly pleased that Harsanyi concludes by castigating the populist impulse to bellow about "bringing back" manufacturing jobs, although I wish he'd fleshed out how said impulse is situated on the right side of the ideological spectrum. The case could be made that his use of the phrase "many conservatives" is unfortunate, as I believe that right-of-center types who so exhort are not actually conservatives, but rather boneheads guided by shoddy thought processes.

The way that you say it is nearly as important as the content in determining whether you are contributing to civilizational rot or helping to stem it

So there is a post at RedState today about Paul Ryan's appearance this morning on ABC's This Week. The author, Teri Christoph, kind of leaves it up to the reader to form the conclusion that she presumes a RedState reader is going to come to.

It's the conclusion I come to. You have this Ryan fellow, a lifelong go-getter whose core orientation toward three-pillar conservatism has catapulted him into a very high position: Speaker of the House. But along the way, he's swallowed some Beltway Kool-Aid. He had to make himself palatable to Romney and the RNC to run as Vice President in 2012, for instance. As speaker, he's had to navigate some tricky situations.

And he's got maybe a bit more of the nice-guy inclination than a lot of us would like to see. The same trait that occasionally frustrates us concerning Mike Pence.

The gist of this RedState post, and the video of his appearance that fleshes it out, is that he hemmed and hawed his way through an attempt to explain where the version of the AHCA that finally passed the House stands on pre-existing conditions. Do you need a spoiler alert for my assessment that he comes up a little short? Maybe waffles a little?

But what I really want to draw attention to is a particular comment in the comment thread underneath:

Lying POS

This is so emblematic of the taking-a-crowbar-to-a-Rubic's-cube mode of expression that one finds in - well, it's inadequate to continue this sentence with "the comment threads of cyberspace," isn't it? After all, one finds blog posts and social media posts fraught with the same combination of crude analogies and unsubstantiated slanders anywhere on a routine basis. Hell, late-night television hosts dish this stuff up with not only impunity but fist pumps now.

Come on, you idiot who posted this comment. Paul Ryan is a devout Catholic from Janesville, Wisconsin who immersed himself in the works of great thinkers on the subject of human freedom early on. His 2016 endorsements come from an array of organizations that any American who doesn't hate freedom and dignity would find unobjectionable:

2016 Endorsements

• Air Line Pilots Association, International
• Council for Citizens Against Government Waste
• National Association of Home Builders
• National Federation of Independent Business
• National Rifle Association
• Wisconsin Right to Life

But because he did not choose the tactical route on this particular aspect of this particular policy that you are pretty much completely invested in, he is, in your estimation, a liar and a stool.


This is of a piece with the Polar Pop cups one sees placed - not alway dropped, sometimes they are upright - within ten feet of trash cans at convenience stores, or even libraries. It is of a piece with the "the cameras kept rolling" clickbait you can't avoid no matter what you're reading on the Internet. It is of a piece with the tattoos that cover the bodies of a high percentage of professional and even college-level athletes.

It is of a piece with the all-caps comments one has seen for the past twenty-two months unreservedly supporting Donald Trump.

Stop it. Not only is your level of discourse a problem. There is also the secondary effect of those disputing you overlooking your way of expressing yourself in order to engage you in a discussion or debate.

You are one of the major sources of civilizational rot. Your intellectual sloppiness combined with your embrace of crudity makes the task of those of us seeking productive polemical discourse all the more daunting.

Pull up you pants, put your styrofoam cup in the damn trash can, and address public-policy matters in a focused, informed, thoughtful and articulate matter.

Otherwise, those interested in such a level of conversation have no more use for you than we do the leftist jackboots whose disregard for cultural refinement you've clearly embraced.

While it is ever more late in the day, the fight has not gone out of those upholding what is good, right and true

Thought-provoking Noah Rothman piece at Commentary on the disconnect between the Trump administration's views of how the notion of states' rights plays out with regard to marijuana policy vis-a-vis "transsexual" bathroom "rights" policy.

The question remains: Why does the White House think transgender bathroom rights are a state’s rights issue but recreational intoxicants are not? What is the logic? It’s surely not legal and it’s definitely not deference to political expediency. If the administration was truly committed to eschewing all forms of prosecutorial discretion, why does Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) remain on the books? What we are left to conclude is that the administration is displaying fealty to the traditional views of the vastly underestimated social conservative.

President Donald Trump is many things, but socially conservative isn’t one of them. Although he does have a healthy antipathy toward substance abuse, the president initially expressed dissatisfaction with a North Carolina law compelling its citizens to use the bathroom of their gender at birth. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has no such qualms about policing virtue. After all, “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

Social conservatives have been woefully misjudged and unduly dismissed. In embracing a compromising figure like Trump, they have sacrificed consistency for power—a tradeoff many no doubt feel is a desperate measure called for by these desperate times. Yet the social conservative’s tendency toward martyrdom by fighting long ago lost cultural conflicts has not abated. The fact that a new offensive is coming does, however, communicate clearly to their detractors that social conservatism’s days are far from numbered. Maybe that’s the whole point.

One point on which I would take issue with Rothman is his use of the term "long ago lost cultural conflicts." You either conduct yourself in your role as an engaged citizen based on furthering God's kingdom, or you surrender to the dark force.

Yes, that is an absolutist position.

There is no other worth embracing.

That said, I would urge caution where the effective way forward appears to be that of "sacrific[ing] consistency for power."  Consistency is in such short supply today in post-America that it wouldn't take much at all for such a tactic to render moot any gains achieved thereby.

This nation is starved for clarity. Let not the record show that it was us that finally killed it off.

Nice to see this jackboot stunt backfiring

BuzzFeed thought it had a real coup in this one:

Chip and Joannes Gaines are the stars of “Fixer Upper” — the HGTV series that revolves around turning crappy, dilapidated houses into beautiful homes in order to revive outdated neighborhoods. They are also devout Christians who often talk about their faith and attend the Antioch Community Church in Waco, Texas.

On Tuesday, BuzzFeed published a story with the headline “Chip And Joanna Gaines’ Church Is Firmly Against Same-Sex Marriage.” The piece attacks the couple because the pastor of their church, Jimmy Seibert, “takes a hard line against same-sex marriage and promotes converting LGBT people into being straight.”

“So are the Gaineses against same-sex marriage?” the BuzzFeed article reads. “And would they ever feature a same-sex couple on the show, as have HGTV’s ‘House Hunters’ and ‘Property Brothers’?”…It’s worth looking at the severe, unmoving position Seibert and Antioch take on same-sex marriage.”

The BuzzFeed hit piece never actually specifies the views of the couple in question. It all hinges on their pastors utterly conventional Christian views on what marriage is.

Some astute readers spoke up:

“This is the dumbest story I have ever heard,” one reader commented. “It’s like a witch hunt for their beliefs, to try an stir the oil from a pot into the flames of the stove. This kind of article is exactly what is wrong with the media.”

“Who cares if they think homosexuality is a sin,” another wrote. “Are they campaigning for hate of these people? No. Stop!”

“This is a tired, forced witch hunt. You are inciting a wave of negative attention on this couple for something that indirectly links to them,” a third reader said. “That’s not journalism, it’s petty bullshit.”

And I was heartened to see this take in the Washington Post.  In a way, I'm heartened all the more, because I disagree with one of the author's major premises. (Her reasoning behind her argument that traditional views on marriage are easy to argue against is pretty flimsy.) But props to this pro-homosexual "marriage" lesbian for speaking out about the rottenness of what BuzzFeed has done:

The entire article is an elaborate exploration of that hypothetical question. And yes, it is very much hypothetical, by the reporter’s own admission: “Emails to Brock Murphy, the public relations director at their company, Magnolia, were not returned. Nor were emails and calls to HGTV’s PR department.”

But that doesn’t stop Aurthur from writing almost 800 more words about the non-story. Her upshot seems to be: Two popular celebrities might oppose same-sex marriage because the pastor of the church they go to opposes same-sex marriage, but I haven’t heard one way or the other. (I can’t imagine pitching that story to an editor and getting a green light, by the way.)

There's no way not to admire her intellectual integrity:

Is the suggestion here that 40 percent of Americans are unemployable because of their religious convictions on marriage? That the companies that employ them deserve to be boycotted until they yield to the other side of the debate — a side, we should note, that is only slightly larger than the one being shouted down?

Or maybe the suggestion is that because they are public figures, they need to be held to a higher standard, one that doesn’t allow them room for moral and religious convictions? But that doesn’t make sense, either.

BuzzFeed is probably at the forefront of discussions surrounding diversity in entertainment. Do their reporters think diversity refers only to skin color? Does ideological diversity count for nothing, especially when it is representative of, again, a sizable chunk of the American public?

Another concern I have with the story is that it validates everything that President-elect Donald Trump’s supporters have been saying about the media: that some journalists — specifically younger ones at popular digital publications — will tell stories in certain deceitful, manipulative ways to take down conservatives. (And really, I can’t for the life of me imagine any other intention of the Gaines story.) 

The Gaines story is a non-story, but it's always worthwhile to report on instances of left-leaners departing from hive-think.

What a society that fears the truth gets in terms of government

The assessment-of-the-lay-of-the-land-tpe punditry pieces are coming at us at a furious pace now. On the right, they range from let's-all-calm-down-this-nation-has-faced-much-worse takes to dire warnings of the precipice of civil war to the final trickle of reluctant conversions from #NeverTrumpism to, of course, the final bellowings of the Kool-Aid guzzlers who have been all gooey in the britches for Squirrel-Hair since July 2015. On the Left, it's mostly about pointing out what an unfit candidate S-H is, the one thing about which the Left has not been wrong.

There are the occasional do-we-yet-have-enough-perspective-to-get-a-handle-on-how-we-got-here essays.

I'd like to offer a theory about that.

Where we are is what you get when a society has come to fear the truth. Put conversely, it's the chicken that comes home to roost for a society that takes comfort in lies. To the point that it venerates falsehood.

It's a society in which a major, well-respected cultural-observation magazine gets away with publishing a completely false accusation that a fraternity at a major university was the scene of a gang rape, and said magazine, even after losing a lawsuit in the matter, responds with a lame statement about the "larger issue" behind the fact that its article was based on non-facts.

It's a society that has permitted itself to be governed by an unaccountable bureaucracy that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidization of play-like companies, and in sending its top officials to fancy international conferences at which meaningless agreements are signed, all in the name of urgently addressing something that is an utter fiction.

It is a society that has so bought into the infantile notion that gender is "fluid" that its intelligence-gathering, diplomatic and military functions waste valuable resources accommodating deeply disturbed individuals who think they are something other than what they are. A society in which a legal case about such an individual makes it all the way to the Supreme Court.

It's a society so gullible that a white woman can pass for black and become head of one city's chapter of a venerable black-civil-rights organization, and said woman, after having been found out, can find a publisher for her memoir, in which she asserts that race, as is supposedly the case about gender, is "fluid."

It is a society in which the nation's president repeatedly tells the populace bald-faced lies about the non-existent benefits of socialization of the way health care is provided and consumed.

It's a society that accepts terminology such as "man-caused disasters" and "workplace violence" that its overlords use to describe acts of jihadist war being waged against it.

It's a society that codifies into law via court precedents the notion that Christian doctrine amounts to bigotry.

It's a society in which large swaths of people kid themselves about the fact that both major-party presidential candidates, zealously touting them as vessels of noble ideals and clear vision, when it's plain to anyone willing to look at them unflinchingly, that both are spiritually hideous monsters. One side refuses to see the criminality of its candidate's handling of emails while Secretary of State and of that candidate's foundation's financial dealings. The other side refuses to give proper weight to its candidate's vulgarity, pettiness, vindictiveness, hedonism, shallowness and lack of grounding in the moral and intellectual foundations of liberty.

A society so in fear of the truth is not in a position to "begin healing" anytime soon.

Whatever happens Tuesday, sighs of relief about it "being over" are yet more proof of this phenomenon.

It will not be over by a long shot.

There is no way things are not going to get worse.

The explanation for conservatism's current crisis cannot be found in wonky analysis of worldly factors

I've been thinking about a piece I read at NRO yesterday morning for the past twenty-four hours. It is by George Nash, who in 1976 wrote The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945.

This piece brings his overview up to the present. First, he reviews developments through the publication of his book: the evolving strains of thought that became the three pillars, roughly represented by Hayek on economics, Russell Kirk on traditional values, and the neoconservatives on a foreign policy predicated on freedom's primacy.

He talks about how, while there is a discernible three-pillared conservatism, there has never been a monolithic adherence to it. Factions that emphasize one or two of the pillars at the expense of others have tussled for decades.

But he concludes by noting the rise of something unprecedented:

What I did not foresee before last summer was the volcanic eruption in 2015 of a new and even angrier brand of populism, a hybrid that I will call Trumpism.

Politically, Trumpism’s antecedents may be found in the presidential campaigns of Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan in the 1990s. Intellectually, Trumpism bears a striking resemblance to the anti-interventionist, anti-globalist, immigration-restrictionist, America First worldview propounded by various paleoconservatives during the 1990s and ever since. It is no accident that Buchanan, for example, is overjoyed by Donald Trump’s candidacy. Instead of venting anger exclusively at left-wing elites, as conservative populism in its Reaganite and tea-party variants has done, the Trumpist brand of populism is simultaneously assailing conservative elites, including the Buckley-Reagan conservative intellectual movement that I described earlier. In particular, Trumpism is deliberately breaking with the conservative internationalism of the Cold War era and with the pro-free-trade, supply-side-economics orthodoxy that has dominated Republican policymaking since 1980.

So what manner of “rough beast” is this, “its hour come round at last”? Speaking analytically, I believe we are witnessing in an inchoate form the birth of a political phenomenon never before seen in this country: an ideologically muddled, “nationalist-populist” major party combining both left-wing and right-wing elements. In its fundamental outlook and public-policy concerns, it is somewhat akin to the National Front in France, the United Kingdom Independence Party in Great Britain, the Alternative for Germany party, and similar protest movements in Europe. Most of these insurgent parties are conventionally labeled right-wing, but some of them are noticeably statist and welfare-statist in their economics — as is Trumpism in certain respects. Nearly all of them are responding to persistent economic stagnation, massively disruptive global migration patterns, and terrorist fanatics with global designs and lethal capabilities. In Europe as well as America, the natives are restless — and for much the same reasons.

Trumpism and its European analogues are also being driven by something else: a deepening conviction that the governing elites have neither the competence nor the will to make things better. When Donald Trump burst onto the political scene last summer, many observers noticed that one source of his instant appeal was his brash transgression of the boundaries of acceptable political discourse. The more he transgressed them, the more his popularity seemed to grow, particularly among those who lack a college education.

What was happening here? The rise of Trumpism in the past year has laid bare a potentially dangerous chasm in our politics: not so much between the traditional Left and Right but rather (as someone has put it) between those above and those below on the socio-economic scale. In Donald Trump, many of those “below” have found a voice for their outrage at what they consider to be the cluelessness and condescension of their “betters.”

In the last year, these tensions have flared into an ideological civil war on the right. As the debate has unfolded, many conservative intellectuals have attempted to accommodate what they see as the legitimate grievances expressed by Trump’s supporters. But conservatives diverge profoundly in their appraisal of the phenomenon itself and of the man who has become its champion. To conservatives in the “Never Trump” movement, who have vowed never to vote for him under any circumstances, Trump is an ignoramus and carnival barker at best, and a bullying proto-Fascist at worst. To many on the other side of the Great Divide, it is not Trump but an allegedly decadent and intransigent conservative “establishment” that is the threat, and they are attacking it savagely. Joining the effort to radically reconfigure conservatism on nationalist-populist lines is an array of aggressive dissenters called the “alternative right” or “alt-right,” many of whom openly espouse white nationalism and white-identity politics.

It is a remarkable development, one that has now led to what can only be described as a struggle for the mind and soul of American conservatism. In these stormy circumstances, it would be foolish to prophesy the outcome. Suffice it to say that in all my years as a historian of conservatism, I have never observed as much dissension on the Right as there is at present. 

A question has lingered since I read this: Why? Why does disgust at "decadence and intransigence" within our ranks have to translate into giving raw populism a look?

Conservatism is about immutable principles. That's what distinguishes us. If something was good and right and true in the 1980s, or in the 300s B.C., it is no less so in the present moment.

I understand that Nash is in the position of an objective analyst, desiring as he does to comprehensively present all the factors involved. But I am just about fed up with objective analysis from those who are on the right. It's infected the talk-radio world and the work of more than a few print pundits.

The basic explanation for why the principled three-pillar conservative in this presidential race can't surmount the poll numbers, primary victories and delegate count of a charlatan, an embarrassment, a buffoon with no principles beyond self-aggrandizement is spiritual.

It's quite clear that we have become a stiff-necked people, that this nation no longer enjoys the blessing of almighty God.

As the Old Testament demonstrates, that need not be a permanent condition. Our Lord is slow to anger, and takes note of real repentance.

But we have an active role to play in the matter. We must demonstrate the contrition and the yearning to be blessed once again for us to experience anything but the grim darkness that at this point looks like our fate.

We must purge the Trumpness from our hearts and ask forgiveness.

Stop by this site and have a look around

J.D. Rucker of Red State has had it with the deterioration of the Drudge Report from a first-rate news-and-commentary aggregate into a shill sheet for Squirrel-Hair.

So he's started Social News Watch. It blatantly leans the other way, and so be it. Any outlet that really maintains conservative values at this point in 2016 is going to so lean.

LITD thinks it's a fine idea and wishes the new site much success.

The danger-fraught path to saving this nation

The Pub field narrowed significantly today. Fiorina has suspended her campaign, as has Christie.

Let's take a paragraph or so to do a post-mortem. Of the two, Fiorina was the far more desirable presidential candidate. While Christie's prosecutor background has given his stint as governor and prez candidate a bracing doggedness, it also made the tactic of going after fellow candidates his stylistic centerpiece. Florina, who really didn't distinguish herself ideologically when she ran against Boxer for the Senate, early on in this race employed a unvarnished defense of three-pillared conservatism combined with a razor-sharp command of the facts on any issue. It's really too bad she never got the traction of the upper-tier contenders, much as the great Bobby Jindal never did.

So now all eyes turn to South Carolina and the big questions of whether Rubio stays viable as a third figure at the top level, and of whether there's ongoing life in the Jeb and Kasich campaigns.

Unless something way out of the realm of expectations occurs, LITD will not spend a great deal of time on those question, however.

They're interesting, and at this late date, getting mired in the interesting is a distraction that a dying post-America cannot afford.

The only two serious contenders on the Pub side are Ted Cruz and Squirrel-Hair. And Ted Cruz is the only hope that post-America can remember what humanity, character, faith, fealty to the Constitution and the free market, consistency in foreign policy, and the chops to articulate all of the above, can survive as generally held values. Squirrel-Hair would be as catastrophic for this nation as the election of a Democrat.

Which brings us to the Freedom-Hater side of the race. The only two contenders are both radical leftists, and one is up to her eyeballs in very serious legal trouble over her reckless handling of top-secret classified information during her stint as Secretary of State.

The path to avoid either totalitarian socialism or the impulsive oligarchy of a rudderless, petulant self-aggrandizer is steep and narrow.

It requires the courage to speak out - no easy thing, given that poll numbers mean that among people you personally know and associate with are supporters of Squirrel-Hair, Hillionaire and Bernie Sanders. But speak out you must. Any of the three spells the final knife in the heart of a civilization that has blessed humankind uniquely and immeasurably.

The magnificent Ted Cruz

Great seven-plus-minutes video of Ted conversing with an Iowa farmer about ethanol and subsidies generally. The guy starts out with a hot-head demeanor but is calmed down and has accepted Ted's invitation to consider the broader scope by the end of their exchange.

My only problem with the whole conversation is that, due to the nature of contemporary politics, Ted feels compelled to start his answer to the guy's in-your-face demands with the stock line about "Let me assure you, no one will fight harder for the American farmer" and spend a couple more minutes of their time together setting the table for his core argument about how the government should not be picking winners and losers in the energy marketplace.

In a world of citizens adequately intellectually prepared for such a discussion, Ted could have leapt right in with the essential truth: subsidies distort the market value of anything, so it's a wash or pretty close to it that subsidies help this farmer since they are paid for by taxes which he pays along with his fellow citizens.

And followed up with a ringing reminder that government imposing such market distortions is tyranny - no different than when it is done in North Korea or Cuba.

Anyway, Ted got that point, in a gentler, less direct way, across, and the farmer seems convinced or nearly so, by the end of their conversation, so it was ultimately constructive.

But speaking of demeanor, compare Ted's calmness, commitment to a sound structuring of his argument, and the articulate manner (combined with the personable touch, as evidenced by his invitation to the farmer to go across the room and also have a conversation with a prominent Iowa ethanol businessman) with which he gets his points across, to the way Squirrel-Hair would have dealt one-on-one with the concerned voter. But, of course, S-H is on board with ethanol subsidies, at least this week.

Power Line vs. Fox News

Yesterday, in my post entitled "The National Review Dustup, A Couple of Days In," I included Andrea Tantaros among those putting forth pro-Squirrel-Hair arguments utterly devoid of substance.

Paul Mirengoff does likewise in his latest post at Power Line. He also includes Jeanine Pirro, Peter Johnson, Harris Faulkner, Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity. It's quite an indictment of the rampant sloppy thinking going on at FNC.

And to think that FNC is still miles above the caliber of intellectual rigor one finds on any other cable-news outlet.

If Laura's starting to waver . . .

Squirrel-Hair's Iowa speech last night may have been, to use a hackneyed-in-the-extreme term, a tipping point.

The Carson's-temper-as-a-kid-makes-him-comparable-to-a-child-molester remark.  "How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?" The "bomb the shit out of ISIS" remark.

It was such a volley of stink bombs that it caused a flying-pigs moment on talk radio this morning. Laura Ingraham, whose just-providing-objective-analysis-of-the-populist-anger-in-the-country schtick has rung completely hollow, given her undisguised glee whenever she has cited S-H's poll numbers or rally attendance numbers, was actually lambasting his performance without reserve. She actually spoke of his rise in the past tense. Took several calls from people who branded him toast. This is, as, S-H would say, yuuuuuuge. 

It's not as if she's done a turnabout on any other level, though. She's still a two-note johnny, the two notes being immigration and trade. In fact, she clearly has a goal of cramming those two words into every segment of her show as frequently as she can.

Look, LITD counts immigration as one of post-America's must urgent dilemmas - and for the reasons Ingraham harps on at every opportunity. National sovereignty, the rule of law, cultural cohesion and the ability of millions of citizens to make a decent living are all being mocked and indeed destroyed by not only the Most Equal Comrade's executive-overreach amnesty-granting to illegal aliens, but by the government's visa policy toward those who come here with their paperwork in order. I get that.

But one-note johnnies are a corrosive factor in our nation's political life.

To focus on immigration - or any other issue - to the exclusion of the others comprising the full array of forces dooming this country and Western civilization inclines one to latch on to a figure who carries the banner of that particular issue, even if that figure is a narcissistic blowhard completely lacking in a coherent conservative worldview, not to mention in depth as a human being.

And Squirrel-Hair is thusly lacking. 

Breitbart.com has also largely become a shill for S-H. In fact, today, Julia Hahn, executive producer for Ingraham's radio show, has a way-too-long piece at Breitbart on how National Review is "clear[ing] the way for Rubio with a war on Trump." Most of the piece is an argument that Rubio has not wavered from the position he eked out during the Gang of Eight episode. That, and an argument that National Review has lost its conservative moorings.

The hell it has. One could only argue thusly if one were so ate-up with Squirrel-Hair Kool-Aid that one were willing to completely ignore all evidence that S-H is an utter charlatan.

The only merit to Hahn's screed is that it has alerted me to the news that the magnificent Kevin D. Williamson of National Review has a new book out about this very subject, titled, quite simply, The Case Against Trump.

My must-read-soon list just got a little longer.

I've written before about how a secondary type of evidence, after S-H's own behavior and pronouncements, of the disturbing nature of his rise, is the manner in which most of his followers on comment threads not only at Breitbart, but pretty much anywhere one finds a piece discussing their hero, express themselves. The dismissing of the entire rest of the GOP field as donor-class RINO squishes and sellouts. "Go Trump!" in all caps. The characterization of National Review as a leftist rag of the same sort as Mother Jones. The one-note-johnny harping on immigration. The turning of any subject of conversation to their idol.

I don't know if Hahn wrote her piece before Ingraham's show today, but it seems likely. Then again, Hahn seems so up to her eyeballs in Kool-Aid that it may not have made much of a difference.

But her boss's new-found willingness to candidly assess S-H's grave misstep last night gives LITD hope that we may see the Pub field winnow down to real conservative contenders - and, yes, that includes Marco Rubio.

And when that scenario plays itself out, it will be a joy to see Ted Cruz give his acceptance speech at next summer's RNC convention.

Bill O'Reilly exposes the flimsiness of his own worldview

Of all the commentary on the FNC dust-up between George Will and Bill O'Reilly, I resonate most with that of Scott Johnson and Paul Mirengoff at Power Line:

Johnson provides some blow-by-blow perspective:

O’Reilly begins with Will’s failure to call O’Reilly before publishing his “provocative column.”Michael Clemente said Will would call O’Reilly. Will had an obligation to call him before signing off on such a critical column. Will never did. Are you calling Clemente a liar? This is O’Reilly’s lead. Pathetic.

Our own Steve Hayward failed to call O’Reilly before signing off on the critical Washington Post column about O’Reilly’s book that he wrote with Reagan scholars Craig Shirley, Kiron Skinner and Paul Kengor. Will is in good company.

Will points out that O’Reilly has never seen the memo that is at the heart of O’Reilly’s revelations. The rest of O’Reilly’s rant proves this assertion by Will to be true.

Will states that the author of the memo repudiated it after meeting with Reagan. O’Reilly asserts that he repudiated the memo “under heavy pressure” and reads a quote from Michael Deaver in support of his point. I don’t understand how the quote supports O’Reilly’s point.

O’Reilly declares to Will: “You are lying.” 

O’Reilly then cites Edmund (“Edwin,” if I heard right) Morris in support of this part of O’Reilly’s book. O’Reilly describes him as “the guy who wrote the bio.” 

Many of us recall that Morris is the guy who wrote “the bio” in which Morris inserted himself as a fictional character. Will doesn’t bother to point that out, or to point out that there are a few other authors of Reagan histories beside Morris. Our own Steve Hayward, for example.

Will observes that O’Reilly failed to interview administration witnesses with first-hand knowledge of the issue. Will cites Ed Meese, George Shultz, and Jim Baker.

O’Reilly explains why: “They have skin in the game…emotion in the game…spin in the game.” Surely you recall the first law of historical research: Don’t talk to participants. The interview is going Monty Python on us.

Will says they have knowledge in the game.

O’Reilly says: “We don’t talk to anyone who is derogatory or laudatory.” That rules out a lot of people. Who’s left? O’Reilly doesn’t say.

It devolves to the point where O'Reilly calls Will, a pundit I don't always agree with by any means but whose erudition I respect greatly, a "hack."

Mirengoff weighs in with important perspective:

His excuse for not talking to Ed Meese, George Schultz, and Jim Baker — they have “skin in the game” — is one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard. These people have skin in the game because they were players and, as such, have a perspective on what happened. A real historian will always want to talk to and/or read the views of as many such people as possible. 

O’Reilly has equated having skin in the game with having a perspective that doesn’t support his contrived “killing” theme. If you disagree with O’Reilly, he doesn’t want to hear it. 

As far as the interview with Will goes, it’s O’Reilly who has skin in the game. He’s battling to save his credibility as a writer about history. His performance reeks of desperation. But you should still watch it.

I think what happened was that O'Reilly saw the success of, and critical acclaim for, the first book or two that he titled "Killing . . ." and got caught up in a brand mentality. He scouted around for some more historical figures to fit his basic thrust that their deaths needed fresh treatments and went decidedly overboard with it.

O'Reilly has always been my least favorite FNC host by far. His mannerisms unnerve me for one thing. The looking off to the side and sniffing whenever he's collecting his thoughts. His assumptions about the points his guests are making. His terminology ("the folks," "tattoo guys"). More importantly, he his worldview is wildly inconsistent. He'll talk in general terms about the efficacy of the free market, and then defend the minimum wage, or claim that gasoline price spikes are due to gouging by oil companies. He acknowledges the Most Equal Comrade's radicalism ("He's a far left guy") and then calls him a patriot.

When he is juxtaposed on the split screen with undeniably towering intellects like Will or Krauthammer, he looks small.

And, of course, he has a hothead streak, which got him in trouble last night.