TNR and the Crisis of The American Intellectual: Can the Old Liberal Stalwart Play a Role in Today’s World?
Yesterday, The New Republic announced that its editor for the past five years, Frank Foer, is stepping down to return to the position of editor-at-large and regular writer for the journal of opinion. (Foer’s outgoing statement and new editor Richard Just’s outlining of his vision for the magazine may be found here.)
I wish Just, whom I do not know, well in his new job. Just writes:
I believe passionately in the higher magazine journalism: in the worth of long-form argument and narrative, the importance (intellectual but also social) of brilliant cultural criticism, and the value of highly informed, nuanced, and passionate crusading.
He is correct when he says that “no magazine has as rich a political and literary tradition as TNR.” I doubt, however — I say this in sadness — that he is right when he claims that “no magazine is in a better position to demonstrate, definitively, that all the things that we love about magazine journalism can not only survive in this new age of media, but prosper in it.”
Most TNR readers I have spoken with regularly comment to me about the journal’s decline in importance over the years. Their decision to go bi-weekly, while possibly necessary for financial reasons, made it less effective as an influence in the nation’s political debate. Sites like Real Clear Politics sometimes put up pieces from TNR, but more than often, one finds more entries from conservative journals like National Review and the Weekly Standard. Checking the magazine’s print circulation figures that by law are publicly printed once a year, we see a steep drop in subs, compared to a huge rise in left-wing magazines like The Nation, and a constant high circulation in National Review, still since Buckley’s days the standard-bearer for the conservative movement.
I have much affection and respect for TNR. I have myself published many of my major journalistic endeavors in its pages. In the mid-80s, the magazine gave me the opportunity to write often about the conflict in Central America in its pages, and way back in 1979, they printed an early version of my work on the Rosenberg case (co-authored with Sol Stern) as its cover story, making the issue an instant best-seller.
For many years, the magazine functioned as the more realistic and hard-edged liberal alternative to the stale liberalism of the wartime Popular Front, and later, the new anti-anti-Communism of the bulk of the liberal movement during the Vietnam War and after the war tore our country apart. Just writes that he intends to again have the journal stand:
… on behalf of the strain of liberalism that this magazine has championed for the past century — a liberalism that is obsessed not just with building a fairer, more decent society at home, but also with the spread of democracy and human rights abroad; a liberalism that is not afraid to question itself and to criticize its own.
A few years ago, Just participated in some of the meetings held to create an American version of the Euston Manifesto, which TNR publicized, and of which Just was a co-author and signer. (The full American manifesto can be found here.) As the American authors of what began as a British endeavor explain:
The statement was a defense of liberal democracy and human rights as well as a rejection of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and terrorism.
Regarding the British one as a “turning point in contemporary intellectual and political debates,” the American supporters came up with their own domestic version.
Unfortunately, the high hopes its framers had came to naught. Its influence was virtually nil. In Europe, rather than have a great effect, the climate of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, especially in London where Euston originated, has only become worse.
The problem that Just and TNR have, however, is one brilliantly addressed by Walter Russell Mead in his latest important blog post on “The Crisis of the American Intellectual.” Read argues that the reason today’s intellectuals are ill-equipped to play a major role in addressing what we must do about today’s issues goes way beyond Just’s hopes that liberalism questions itself and its own favored exponents of the doctrine.
As Mead explains, “the United States is stuck with a social model that doesn’t work anymore.” Mead writes that the problems go beyond the erosion of our cultural model, the problem of the deficit, and the problems of international competition, all of which he thinks can be dealt with. The problem is nothing less than the Weltanschauung of the American intellectual class. Mead explains:
The biggest roadblock today is that so many of America’s best-educated, best-placed people are too invested in old social models and old visions of history to do their real job and help society transition to the next level. Instead of opportunities they see threats; instead of hope they see danger; instead of the possibility of progress they see the unraveling of everything beautiful and true.
I will make it short and sweet for everyone. Arthur M. Schlesinger,Jr. was an awful historian while writing about FDR and the New Deal. Left-wing history writers have distorted our understanding of this era. I only found out the truth a few years ago. At the beginning of this decade—I was sure Roosevelt saved American capitalism. Yup, even I was a deluded fool. Amity Shlaes’The Forgotten Man was instrumental in helping me find out the truth. The New Republic has no reason to continue its existence. The Progressive myths of Woodrow Wilson and his followers have been laid to rest. TNR should cease publication immediately.
“the new republic” is bankrupt intellectually and fiscally
Bravo to Messrs. Radosh and Mead!
“Sites like Real Clear Politics sometimes put up pieces from TNR, but more than often, one finds more entries from conservative journals like National Review and The Weekly Standard.”
Really? How surprising!
Statement from Real Clear Politics founder Tom Bevan: “We have a frustration all conservatives have [which is] the bias in media against conservatives, religious conservatives, [and] Christian conservatives.”
“…from Hitler’s Germany, to Stalinist Soviet Union, to Maoist China, to Fidelist Cuba, to Khoemeinist Iran, to Britain’s NHS, and to ‘real change’ ObamaCare U.S.A.”
Yes, and don’t forget the health care systems of every other Western democracy.
Which again brings up the question as to why, if these gov’t healthcare systems are so oppressive, the people of Canada, Israel, England, France, the Netherlands, etc., etc., etc. don’t rise up and demand their systems be replaced by the American model?
Probably because the people who run those systems are constantly telling them how awful the American system is!
But when Canadians need health care which is rationed at home, they turn up here quickly enough…
Ah, those lying governments! Even Margaret Thatcher assuring the voters that the NHS was “in good hands” with her party. And those dumb Canucks! Crossing the border when they could have a US-style medical utopia right at home. I guess the truth about our system just can’t penetrate the Iron Curtain that separates us from Canada.
Move there. You will not be missed.
I lived in Montreal for 3 years in the 90′s. I had 500 employees. I dated a French dermatoligist and talked with many citizens about their health care system. I can tell you amazing stories about it’s inadequacies (Want some stories, I would be happy to share).
I am not here to tell you that the U.S. has the best medical insurance in the world, but surely it has the best doctors and medical practice generally. Their simply is no arguing that point from the quality of doctors (Doctors here are not limited as to how much they can earn, which is fine with me unless someone wants a cheap doctor opening up their chest to take a look see), hospitals, and the hated cutting edge pharmaceutical companies.
Does the U.S system need some work. You bet. but Canada and the UK medical rationing systems are NOT the answer (my brother and sister in law have lived in London for 34 years and don’t have much good to say about the rationed UK healthcare system, which by the way has recently developed new ways to privatize parts of the system in order to IMPROVE it. Oh Really???).
I think it probably is true to say of these healthcare system in Canadia and the UK that they are better than nothing.
From what I can discern at this early date it would appear that Obamacare should match up nicely with this new low standard i.e. better than nothing.
I for one am unwilling to trust politicians the likes of Obama, Pelosi and Reid et al(Who BTW WILL NOT be using this new low standard healthy care) to make decisions about my health provider. If they want to help those who have no recourse, go for it and tell me what the plan is and don’t drop a 40 pound bag of paper on my desktop and tell me this is good for me and them and everyone. Bull$hit.
“don’t rise up and demand their systems be replaced by the American model?”
Because EUropean uprisings against their masters haven’t turned out well: Hungary, 1956; Czechoslovakia, 1968; France 1789; Spanish Civil War, 1936;… In almost every case (and every one I listed), the anti-American, totalitarian EU norm won out over freedom. Leaders in the EU prosecute anyone who exercise their freedom of speech (see current trials in Netherlands and Austria), lecture their subjects on how freedom is dangerous and leads to Nazism (a commonplace among Germans); and, given that the last 100 years of EUropean behavior left 100+ million dead, I’d be reluctant to rebel over health care, too.
“Leaders in the EU prosecute anyone who exercise their freedom of speech….”
Well that certainly explains why their healthcare systems endure.
Yes. EU repression of liberty, truth, dignity explains a great many features of EUropean governance. Glad you agree with me.
Joseph – I doubt if you know just how many Canadians make use of the US health care system. It’s a basic adjunct to the Canadian system and regularly, people ‘go south’ to some American clinic or doctor, for treatment that is either not available in Canada or takes too long to be given access to it.
The Canadian health care system could not function without this additional input from the US system.
In addition, the US system, with its private corporation development of new drugs and treatments is the basic research foundation for the world. Copycat drugs are made and sold in Canada for one quarter of the price of the US drugs. Why? Because the heavy work and cost of research and development of the drugs is done in the US. Canada simply copies the final result- at no cost.
All around the world, people come to the US for its up-to-the minute treatments and drugs, none of which are available within their own funding-starved systems.
And, Canadians DO want their health care system changed; they want private clinics – and even took this to the Supreme Court which ruled in favor of such…because the wait times in the public hospitals for treatment are ‘unreasonable’. But the ideology of the left in Canada, dominant because of the backup support from the US, remains dominant and so, Canadians go to the US regularly, for all kinds of treatment.
“…the US system, with its private corporation development of new drugs and treatments….”
HEAVILY subsidized with gov’t money, and yet, yes, Americans pay more for the drugs their tax money helps develop. (One of the provisions of Bush’s very expensive Prescription Drug Benefit proposal forbade negotiating prices with the drug companies.)
“Canadians DO want their health care system changed….But the ideology of the left in Canada….”
Bottom line: Canadians keep, and will continue to keep, their gov’t healthcare system.
Yes, well…it certainly is proving wonderful to Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain…all that European fiscal “brilliance”.
The “rising up” crowd in Europe tends to be much like the Greeks who demand more entitlements and the French who can’t stand the thought of having to work past the ripe old age of 39.
We could, if we wished, model ourselves after the terminally lazy, incompetent, backsliding, ne’erdowells…but, then who would the leftists have to support them?
America as “Mom’s Basement” sounds fine to the permanent residents of Slackerville.
Coffeehouse BS sessions are great for the Deadbeat Poet’s Society, but I don’t want those daydreamers running the economy, the epic failures when they do litter the pages of history.
And lest we be fooled again, there is a difference between charity and forced confiscation. The best way to take care of those who truly cannot fend for themselves, is to not steal from those who are in a position to help.
Leftists deal from a position of resentment and false accusations. They want to take more of what does not belong to them and that they have not earned. Better that they should stop wishing that everyone was poor and equal, so that we all starve together and instead get off the necks of those who want to move up in this world and make something of themselves.
Then again,those who want to make something of themselves would soon pass the leftists who would rather stand around besmirching everyone who has. Get your hands out of our pockets.
Your ideas suck.
‘The “rising up” crowd in Europe tends to be much like the Greeks who demand more entitlements and the French who can’t stand the thought of having to work past the ripe old age of 39.’
But haven’t you heard? “Leaders in the EU prosecute anyone who exercise their freedom of speech….” You wingnuts really ought to get your message straight.
Bottom line: Western democracies that are in fiscal crisis and those that aren’t will all continue to maintain their government healthcare systems.
You aren’t listening, Joseph; you are trapped in your conclusion that ‘Canadians will keep their health care system’. You don’t explore WHY they will do so – and therefore your conclusion is empty of content.
Again, the reason WHY Canadians will keep their health care system is because the US health care system is there, not occasionally, but all the time, to support the inadequacy of the Canadian system.
The percentage of Canadian population who make use of treatments in the US is, relative to their population, not to be ignored. ‘Ordinary’ illness is treated in Canada; wait times for elective surgery can be months to a year, but more serious ailments are often rerouted both by hospitals and by private choice, to the US.
As well, the fact that it is the US, and not other countries, that is the foundation for research in both disease and drug treatments, cannot be ignored. Your comment about the cost of drugs in the US utterly ignores that the reason for the cost, is because it is the US – whether private or public – that funds the research and development of these drugs. Other countries just sponge off the work/taxpayers of the US for these items.
Joseph apparently conflates free health care with free speech. The Marxists are always looking for something to kill off. It’s what they do best.
They can’t win a debate on the merits so they either shout it down, falsify the evidence or legislate it out of existence.
Usually all three. The marketplace of bad ideas wrapped in holier than thou populism. The People’s Party, the Workers Party, the Revolutionary Party…is the same bucket of warm spit.
Nationalized “anything” is simply an excuse to tear down the system of free market enterprise and replace it with DMV quality crapology.
Leftists are, as a rule, officious intermeddlers, coffeehouse philosophers and backsliding, bloviating, pontificators who couldn’t run a lemonade stand …all theory and no real world success.
They are useless and inevitably divisive. The problem stems from a society that stops doing and starts ruminating. The one skill that leftists possess in spades, is the ability to make an imbecilic idea, hypothesis, or beard-stroking pile of nonsense…SOUND like it’s worth pursuing.
It never is. AND…they almost always have to have an “enemy” a “foil” a “bad guy”…so they create them out of whole cloth. Lies, distortions, faked scenes, phony pictures.
The coffeehouse break is over. We have work to do. Let these lazy, lying, beard-stroking, pontificating, bloviating, hypothesis creating, philosophers keep on spouting their drivel.
And let them declare that the “science” behind their “issue” is “settled”. Then ignore them and let’s stop taking their pap seriously. We are going to have to support them anyway, so let’s get back to work in the real world and leave these fantasy drama queens to conjure up another slander about us. We waste too much energy on these wastrels. Let’s simply shake our heads and go on about our business.
“Again, the reason WHY Canadians will keep their health care system is because the US health care system is there, not occasionally, but all the time, to support the inadequacy of the Canadian system.”
I don’t believe the Canadians feel their system is inadequate. In fact, every poll I’ve seen says they’re quite happy with their system. And if such a system only works with a neighbor like us, why do the Europeans, the Israelis, the Japanese, etc., etc. keep their healthcare systems?
Joseph – you state that ‘every poll that you have seen’ shows that Canadians are satisfied with their health care system. Have you considered the polls that you have NOT seen? Have you considered the poll question?
And how does such ‘assumed satisfaction’ deal with the FACT that Canadians took the health care system to the Supreme Court, because of its failures to provide timely service and the SC agreed with the complaints and said that, therefore, private services could be provided.
How does such ‘assumed satisfaction’ deal with the FACT that Canadians make constant use of US medical services, if they are satisfied with their own? Or could it be that the poll failed to rule out the FACT that Canadians make regular use of US services and only use their own service for non-serious general complaints?
As for the European systems – the public systems are broke and there is a severe shortage of services.
Your commitment to a ‘big government’ solution to societal needs precludes your analyzing whether such a system can provide for all needs. It has been shown, again and again, that a public system, relying for its funding only on taxpayers, cannot fund a societal need. It can – whether it is dealing with garbage collection or snow-clearing or medical needs, only fund general or average needs. It cannot fund so-called ‘risk’ or high-cost non-general needs which are germane only to a small proportion of the population or rare event BUT are extremely costly.
Your error is to consider that a taxpayer can fund BOTH general or average needs as well as high-cost risk needs. The taxpayer cannot fund both and to hike taxes in an effort to do so, will destroy the economy.
Joe, people used to receiving “free” stuff from the government, and unused to paying high taxes to support the giveaways, will go to savage lengths to protect their advantaged position. As Ron notes, it is they who are the true reactionaries.
Exhibit A: The rioting “students”, or UK Taliban. They are attacking police, destroying government property (evidence they pay little if any in taxes), and they even attacked royalty, those with royal blood in their veins for God’s sake. (Quite understandable really, that last bit.)
Is it reasonable to think that part of the reason they ‘choose’ to keep it is that any alternative system does not exist and effort would have to be made to establish one? Much like the mind set of someone on the government dole…its easier to just deal with what you have been conditioned to accept.
Anne Doig, the incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association, said her country’s health care system is “sick” and “imploding,” the Canadian Press reported.
“We know there must be change,” Doig said in a recent interview. “We’re all running flat out, we’re all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands.”
Canada’s universal health care system is not giving patients optimal care, Doig added.
Not a one-way street . . .
“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” – Sarah Palin
That was her parents generation, before the Health Care in Canada went completely public – and – they used the Canadian system twice. Primarily because of location. Skagway, where they lived, had no road and no doctor. I suggest you consider facts, sensei.
Because they’re blindly dedicated to an impossible ideal, just like you are.
One little detail, Joe: those European health care systems are bankrupting their societies, just like Medicare, Social Security and now ObamaCare are bankrupting ours.
We are in debt to our eyeballs and Out. Of. Money.
“..if these gov’t healthcare systems are so oppressive, the people of Canada, Israel, England, France, the Netherlands, etc., etc., etc. don’t rise up and demand their systems be replaced by the American model?”
Hell, we won’t even be able to rise up here in the US to replace Obama care. Once something is installed by a statist government it takes a lot of obvious failure, pain and agony before a change can come.
The problem, Ron, is that leftism has become a cult. You see this within the Jewish community itself, unfortunately, where many adhere to the tenets of anti-Semitism because it is championed by leftists and they abandon their faith, Israel and their brethren while clinging bitterly to a stale and useless dogma.
TNR would be hard pressed to find an audience. They certainly won’t appeal to today’s leftist if they engage in any meaningful introspection. Non-leftists are fed up with forty years of distortion, lies and pollution of the information stream.
Alas, there really is no center-left (true “liberals”), the leftists ate them. Their voices have been shouted down, from the left. Actually, Brooks and Frum, Noonan and Parker probably come the closest to being the New Center Left. Joe Lieberman. Christopher Hitchens. Perhaps Jon Stewart.
TNR shows no signs of adopting such a stance and therefore, they will die from lack of oxygen.
“Leftism has become a cult.”
Indeed, and it is a cult increasingly terrified of material realities and plain common sense.
Men like Mead and Radosh can, I hope, persuade at the margins, but the bulk of leftists will be moved by nothing short of miraculous exorcism.
you are right on
the “political spectrum” is way out of whack as far as the labels that “define” it is concerned
that, as cfb often makes mention , is where the lefty monopoly on the vernacular takes over and the smoke screen commences
I think that is the point; there is no market for an reassessment of the progressive-statist paradign. And, so long as the government checks still clear the bank, there won’t be one.
Now once the supporting institutions of the Left have been swept away, then they will join us in the 21st century. Not until. That means an end not only to the commissions and bureaucracies and the studies, but most state and federal hierarchies, most of our education systems, most of our charities. Tall order.
Other societies have swept away hierarchies. Not willingly. 19th century Japan, 18th-20th century China, renaissance and revolutionary Europe. None of it was pretty stuff.
I subscribed to TNR for many years. While I mostly disagreed with them, their approach was analytical and critical and often original. And the “back of the book” was terrific. But under Foer (and his predecessor) it became yet another font of the Progressive conventional wisdom, devoid of criticism in any sense. I hung on for the cultural coverage, but gave up around the time of the fake Iraq reports. I’d be happy to sign up again if the old magazine came back.
I missed out on the good years of TNR. I know it from the past decade where it has been a bastion of mostly stupid, blind, and nasty partisanship marked by an unseemly smugness.
I see no excuse why Foer wasn’t forced to step down after the Thomas Beauchamp scandal in which TNR savaged the reputation of our military overseas with gonzo-style fiction masquerading as journalism. I don’t understand why TNR had any reputation after that, considering that the Stephen Glass scandals were only nine years before.
I for one will welcome the day when TNR is sold for a dollar to become a liberal vanity project like Newsweek.
Perhaps Mr. Just will reassign Jonathan Chait, and make other changes. The all electronic version of TNR.com actually does provide variety in “ideology” (especially the new Entanglements on foreign affairs), and is one of the rare internet venues where the subscribers debate amongst themselves in some comment threads, which sometimes is far more interesting than anything the official pundits anywhere come up with.
If nothing else, one can read the tension between the leftist true believers, and the centrist pragmatists in the comment threads. Some of us truly confound the purists in TNR.com
Still a great venue for book reviews, a necessary alternative to the New York Review of Books.
Here’s why that’s not going to happen: Old-school progressivism appeals to the narcissist in people in high places. They want to believe that they can and are uniquely qualified to dole out justice and mercy and goodness to the poor oppressed masses. If the new paradigm involves devolution of power to the masses, there’s no more need for narcissistic demigods.
Until human nature itself evolves, we’re just going to keep watching reruns of the same old Robin Hood story where, preposterously, the rich and powerful get to fancy themselves as Robin Hood’s merry men.
When a man’s knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion–Herbert Spencer
Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual–Eric Hoffer
The cruelty of ideas lies in the assumption that human beings can be bent to fit them–Paul Johnson
Certainly the progressive ideas of big government are tired and in decline at the moment, but a lot of that comes from having had so many of their ideas adopted and now taken for granted. Take away Social Security and Medicare and the resulting voids will make the old ideas regain popularity fast. Imagine if GWB had succeeded in freeing millions to dump their SS for a 401K. Also imagine how those enlightened, bold individuals would feel after the latest meltdown, having lost not only a huge chunk of the value of their homes, but an even larger chunk of their retirement investments. Good luck on persuading a high percent of our population to be risk-takers. A small business owner may need and want one thing, but his employees, who most likely outnumber him/her, want something quite different, once they are assured of having any job at all. Those people are always going to tend to vote for statism and security.
The issue to me is more economic, than philosophical. We obviously have huge unfunded pension liabilities for local, state, and Federal employees, including the military. Going back to a strict construction of the Constitution does not cure that. Our huge trade deficits with China are not just because we are over-regulated, but the simple and jarring facts that their labor is so much cheaper AND they are willing to work harder for less. When the Constitution was written, more than half the population were still relatively self-sufficient for half of what they ate, had minimal health care, and we had a small to tiny standing army.
Would that we could cure our economic and social woes by shrinking the role of the Federal government to close to what it was then. Hardly any of us are close to self-sufficient without
income, even if it is only unemployment or welfare.
It is undoubtedly true that the old left should take a hard look at the numbers, and the Tea Party folks should consider what life would be like without Medicare. We should all look long and hard at California and many of our states that seem close to going under, but finally, economics will trump philosophy. From a distance, it seems to me that what Christie is trying to do in NJ is what the whole country needs to do, but could even Christie trim military pork?
I have already gone beyond my pay grade for economic analysis, so will leave the rest, for the moment, to Christie, Obama, and a divided congress.
You seem to have a non-ideological approach to the discussion and I like that.
Just for the sake of the debate I will counter your argument about the privatization of the Social Security that if you had bought Ford stock at the bottom of the crisis you would have paid 2 dollars per stock. Last time I checked, it had gone up to 12.
I could agree that it’s a big “if”, but the point is that an investment must be observed on the long term.
If a worker who is 24 years old now invests in the markets s/he has 40 years to watch his money grow.
And s/he can diversify the investment on many markets (…what about something in China too ??? just kiddin’…or not )
“IF you had bought Ford stock….” Well, of course, but without SS, x% of the people would not even invest it, just spend it, another x% would make bad investments, and x% would come out golden. There’s a Catch 22 here; without everyone (not otherwise covered) putting $ into SS it will not work, but the ones who are sure they can do better, bitch. At any rate, it is all part of the larger problem of how to pay for all our Big Government stuff. Many of you say, “just get rid of it.” I will tell you that that’s not happening because a large majority of the population would never stand for it, but, yes, the problem of funding still remains.
Hell, I have a state-tax-free state pension, but I can see the day, when no matter what the original deal was supposed to be, something may have to be worked out so some state tax IS paid on that pension. Changes in taxation on pensions seems to me a reasonable way to begin to address the problem. Got something better? Let’s hear it.
I find that argument both myopic and misleading. Let me counter with a longer term strategy – which is exactly what Social Security is after a lifetime of payroll withdrawals.
If individuals had been able to choose to privatize a portion of their Social Security in nothing but an Index Stock Fund for one year – say 1980 when the investor was 35, they would have earned themselves about 400-500% return on that investment at present, even with the three huge downswings in 1987, 2001 and 2008-2009. That far exceeds the cost of inflation.
Privatizing at least part of social security is not to destroy it. It’s the only way to save it IMO.
No remedy will work unless Marxism is finally and utterly repudiated and eradicated. From the day it was formulated until now, it has been the poison well from which so much misery and destruction have sprung.
The arrogance of the intellectual elite is evidenced in our current government; from the left to the right and all shades in-between.
To actually believe, much less preach to the huddled masses, that a few intellectuals can foresee, manage, and correct the errors that arise within the trillions of variables that occur in everyday life in America is much more than narcissism. It is insanity.
When each person, acting on their own better behalf, functioning in personal sovereignty and without burden of tyranny, makes individual choices that benefit him or her (and his or her family), the whole of society is improved.
When any person — even one, is shackled by the tyranny of good intentions and cannot make the best personal decisions because of threat of financial or personal ruin, the whole of society suffers from that tyranny.
Let us all declare that our property — starting with ourselves, and our labor — as enumerated by our income, is ours and ours alone and the government has no innate right to any of it. Only by common agreement should any of our labor be transferred to the government (any government).
I am not the property of the federal government. My labor is not the property of the federal government. And no jurisdiction holds deed to me or my labor. If it be not so, then I am no more than a slave and can be traded like chattel.
I think the elite are crazy. But even more, I think they have become the 21st century’s slave-holders. And they like it.
phat
Great article. There is an old saying ‘when you are green you are growing, when you are ripe you are rotten.’ I think that describes the ideas being pushed by liberals. I am sure they can reinvent themselves, but as Ron says, it means dropping the old paradigm.
cfbleachers “Joseph apparently conflates free health care with free speech.”
Sorry, that was your colleague tehag. You two really ought to coordinate your messages.
NHS reaching ‘breaking point’, doctors warn
The NHS could soon reach ‘breaking point’ due to increasing demands on the service, cuts in doctors’ hours and financial cutbacks, senior doctors warned.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8189044/NHS-reaching-breaking-point-doctors-warn.html
LOL. Impeccable timing.
Other countries, in much more statist, less free and democratic cultures, wanting to keep their nationalized health care is no mystery. They assume it is the state’s job to take care of them, from the cradle to the grave. Any argument in favor of the free market or privatization is demonized as “American,” their favored “other” from way back. But in America it is mostly the Leftists who see things this way–most of us think it is our own job to take care of ourselves, and that if the state stays out of the way, people will, in various collaborations, find innovative solutions to problems, including the problems of health care and health insurance. If the Europeans want to leave it up to the Muslims to dismantle their nanny states a few decades down the road, that’s their decision. Here, I want a doctor and a patient to be free to decide that the former will treat the latter in a manner and at a price voluntarily agreed upon by both parties. I consider any system that would outlaw such a benevolent transaction a monstrous tyranny–and I only care if Americans, not Canadians, agree with me.
Frankly, the far left pinkoes should have NO place in America, especially since there obvious goal is to destroy America. the left is not interested in debate. Like the Moslems, everything with them is in the context of war. We on the right have been too nice, we expect them to be as civilized as we are. I for one, have no lefty friends and dont want any. We as Americans need to see them for what they are, enemies of freedom and lovers of spreading hate.
Hey Ron, why stop with TNR, why not stump for the Transcendalists? THE DIAL was a really great magazine – I used to read it in the archives at KSU library in the 80′s.
This post sounds more like a rough draft for a grant proposal than relevant cultural commentary. Are you fishing for a philanthopic life line, or trolling for the TNR’s new editor?
I mean the survival of TNR is pretty basic. Be relevant enough to boost subscribers – and hopefully – like the WEEKLY STANDARD – have plenty of wealthy contributors who are readers who generously supplement what has always been a failing concern – socially relevant content news.
As a writer yourself Ron you should know this better than anyone else. So it bears repeating. It is the reality of every magazine in this country of any cultural relevance;they never pay for themsevles!
I am no intellectual, more a source of pride rather than shame as I enter mid-life. Yet I couldn’t disagree with the arching negativism of Ron’s latest ruminations more.
This is a great time to be alive in America. It is even a better time to be a born again conservative in America. I have never in my life ever had more interesting or stimulting content available in the little time (when not doing the basic stuff of living) I can devote to it.
So why the gloom and doom?
I gotta say Ron, yet again, you are really starting to worry me a bit. An intelectual manifesto? Really? We need a knuckleheaded ‘mission statement’ about as much as we need another 4 years of Obama!!!
We really lucked out here, unlike the euro-trash. Or the Asian fanatics. We have a hellva mission statement – FROM THE PREAMBLE RIGHT ON THROUGH THE WHOLE DECLARATION! Oh, and the Consitituion?
I have never believed that this country is anti-intellectual, which is why I never thought much of that so-called PARANOID STYLE OF AMERICAN POLITICS theory the left is so fond of defining the right by. Americans are a pragmatic people and their skepticism of intellectuals by nature is natural – it is not the same as being anti-intellectual. It seems only intellectuals themselves reject this easily qualified truism.
What is peculiar to the post Watergat/Nixon era is that the radical left took over our universities in the 70′s and and has used them as a ’4th estate’ if you will to mold both libralism in it’s modern dysfunctional state ever since – and to promote likewise the radical transformation of the Democrat Party Obama today leads.
I lived to view part of this at Kent State in the 80′s – and – after a 5 year sabatical (money driven) – when finishing a BA in English in the early Clinton 90′s. Just as Unionism – a topic you have written on quite well regarding similar issues – has transformed into a sclerotic government tyranny [which progressives, Obama included, view as 'good middle-class jobs], became it’s march into state universities like Kent.
And just as the professors who were tenured gained this comfortable and largely unassailable protected class – with wages making them quite comfortably upper-middle class – their work load obligations evaporated – as they could shift the actual work (even when it came to publishing) onto the backs of grad students who of course had no such representation.
It was just that the B & C list universities like Kent took an extra thirty years into the post-war period to establish themselves when following the Ivy League example.
What is amazing really is that America has tolerated it this long to begin with. And given that the American University is now being recongized as the latest economic bubble [stripped naked by their endowment losses as well as the tuition inflation parents are increasingly unwilling to submit to] – combining with the countries confirmed march – socially and economically – in the opposite direction of those leftists who have been enjoying a ride on the public teat – their bubble is really going bust.
We have enjoyed a resurgence on the right in both attacking the university establishment – from the Christian insurgency via institutions like Liberty to the good work of folks like David Horowitz – as well as the very alive and active conservative Think Tanks.
Sorry Ron. The entire premise of your piece is bullocks.
Obama’s iditocracy has amounted to a cold splash of Old Spice. But the Tea Party didn’t spring up from some primordial ooz. That movement is the kind of ‘manifesto’ that the vitality of the American experiment provides.
If this editor Just can just put out a relevant rag then he and TNR will be fine. If not, we will be fine without them.
You make some reasonable points about the excesses of the university, but as far as I can tell, the traction is being gained only in a relatively small number of conservative circles, because academia is still almost the only game in town for the vast majority of middle class and upper middle class folks. Their kids are not going to join the military and are not going to become trades people. We are talking major cultural, not political habits, reflexes, and beliefs here.
It will take a lot more economic, social, and political upheaval to turn the huge ship. It may have slowed a knot or two and a couple of warning lights are flashing in the engine room, but people are a long way from testing the cold waters.
Not much as changed at The NR since the days of Herbert Croly, I guess that’s what makes them progressive. That term dates from at least the 1890′s and is in usage totally dependent on government power. Some might suspect an obsession. So called liberals, a bastard derivative from “liberty”, can’t change, to do so would mean ceasing their need of power, and so their craving for central government.
Do these monomaniacs have a role for the future? Certainly, they can be used for dangerous medical experiments,[ why hurt rats?], they can be human bulls eyes for games of darts, dummies for auto crash tests, and when out of paint, the dividing lines on our roadways.
Everything on God’s earth has a purpose, even scummy liberals, who in their twisted nature have only bitterness towards Normal People.
“Do these monomaniacs have a role for the future? Certainly, they can be used for dangerous medical experiments,[ why hurt rats?], they can be human bulls eyes for games of darts, dummies for auto crash tests, and when out of paint, the dividing lines on our roadways.
Everything on God’s earth has a purpose, even scummy liberals, who in their twisted nature have only bitterness towards Normal People.”
The right wing’s worst enemies couldn’t make this stuff up!
Joseph, hang in there baby, a little tongue in cheek satire.
Our worst enemies have worse things in mind, like Al Sharpton appealing to the FCC for regulations on Limbaugh and others.
Using people for “dangerous medical experiments.” Wingnut “tongue in cheek … satire.” Heh, heh. Well, johnt, you may have your tongue in your cheek, but you also have your head up your ass.
I respectfully disagree with Mr. Mead. To me, America’s so-called intellectuals do the exact opposite when it comes to a historical model of viewing the world. They see danger as opportunity and by this I mean the baby boom in the Third World being transported wholesale to the US is a form of wonderful diversity that will transform America into a “real” country. What it’s really doing is endangering all our lives and raping our treasury not to mention overpopulating our country. We have enough people.
They see the past of the West as sinful from the “Trail of Tears”, to the Mexican-American War to Tenochtitlan. When I was a kid, people celebrated Columbus but now he is viewed as a wholesale murderer. Maybe he was, but I’m talking about the shift in perception.
As far as Islam, there is no need to confront it. Simply stop letting them into our country. America has no obligation to allow muslims into the US. So what if people call us racists? They do anyway and at least we’ll be safe.
We have had these liberal intellectuals thinking and in charge and so far they have made a real mess of things both here and in Europe. Not much of a resume. And it is a reflection in part of the elite universities ability to produce well rounded and skilled graduates.
New poll indicates 40% of physicians will retire or find other work under ObamaCare
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/12/10/new-poll-indicates-40-of-physicians-will-retire-or-find-other-work-under-obamacare/
More impeccable timing. You just can’t make this stuff up…or so I’ve heard.
It really doesn’t matter what Mr Just, Winnie the Pooh, or Tinkerbell think about the value of TNR because the market and only the market, will decide whether it survives or not.
Re the Canadian Health system – that it needs fixing is obvious to most Canadians. How it needs to be fixed – establish a parallel private system – is also obvious. As commenter ETAB points out, the fixing has already begun.
If our two health care systems had not become ideological pinatas, an informed intelligent comparison of the two systems and how they are evolving would be a great subject for a good writer.
But then, everyone loves their ideological pinatas – which is exactly the point that messrs Reade and Radosh are making about progressive intellectuals.
Funny you should mention a ‘parallel private system,’ Mr. Western Canadian. That is exactly what we have here in Western Australia and throughout Australia. When the government system develops waiting lists more people purchase private insurance. When the private system gets too expensive they drop the insurance and rely on the public system. Together the two systems cost us a bit over 8% of GDP. Effective competition. In the US medicine costs 16% of GDP and Obamacare didn’t dent that figure – just rearranged the deck chairs. Stats on health outcomes show that the US and other first world countries are very close. Why does it cost double in the US? Some of it is that a lot, but hardly all of the medical and pharmaceutical research gets done in the US. But the biggest reason is that US medical costs are not subject to effective competition. A small example. I and a relative living in the US suffer from a medical condition that requires equipment this must be regularly replaced. US Medicare covers it for my relative; Australia does not and the stuff is expensive in Australia. I buy the necessary items on the open US market through Amazon and ship them to Australia. Medicare pays 5 TIMES that amount for the same thing in the closed US market. That is government and the private sector working in collusion. Like Goldman, Fannie Mae and assorted Congress critters in the Real Estate game. This collusion results in a lack of cost control in the US system. A New Yorker article last year uncovered that Medicare expenditure per patient was double in McArthur Texas as compared to ElPaso Texas. There is that curious 2x again. Here is a personal example of the Australian system working medically and financially. I had arrhythmia a few years back and the public system got it under control with medication and was content for me to go on without making any attempt to fix the underlying cause. Not content with the medicated life I sought out specialists in the private system and my heart is now in sinus rhythm. My insurance covered most it and I paid a small gap. The private insurance companies negotiate vigorously with the private hospital system to minimize the gaps. No one gets to charge $10 for aspirin. I am both an American and an Australian citizen and I will say this to both sides of the debate in the US – that 16% of GDP is going to eat your lunch.
Are Richard Just and the other TNR editors prepared to acknowledge that the old so-called progressive Left is neither progressive or “left,” but instead utterly reactionary?
Is there some kind of rhetorical question contest on PJM that I don’t know about? Are you kidding me?
The only cure is to split the country in two. I no more want to live under their form of governance (which, near as I can see, is to the left of the Khmer Rouge) than they want to live under my form. Well, that’s fine. I consider Leftists sub-human untermenschen scum whose nearest evolutionary relative is the cockroach on a good day, but I have no problem with letting them live out their socialist fantasies, just not in the same country whose laws I live under.
Today’s Leftist isn’t even the expansionary imperialist of the old Soviet days, so he’s even less of a long-term threat. Give ‘em California, build a wall around it and let them nanny-state each other to death. Shouldn’t take long once they’re cut off from the tax revenues produced by responsible adults.
Part of the concept being danced around is the key part brought up by Mead and others: disintermediation. That is getting rid of the middle man who adds no value to a transaction.
The argument for social security was that private investment was out of the reach of the ordinary worker… the low income wage earner had no access to the realm of market investment in the 1930′s. You needed a stock-broker and accountants and financial analysts to do that, thus there was a barrier to entry for equal participation. By the early 1970′s with the mutual fund run by a fund manager, that concept was breaking down as one did not have to have stock brokers, accountants and such, but just invest through a single point that performed these services for you via transactional burdening. By the 1980′s one could get a wealth of financial information to be processed on a PC. In the 1990′s that started to move online with more sophisticated tools available to do one’s own analysis and forecasting. So why do we support a solution for a problem that is no longer with us?
Your car, on the other hand, has gotten far more sophisticated due to the wealth of technology now adorning it. The day of the shade-tree mechanic can still be found, but it is with someone armed with a laptop and digital interface to the vehicle as it is running. You can still learn the mechanical part of the tradecraft, but that is now only a part of the tradecraft that now has expanded to include more information than any automotive engineer in the 1930′s could even dream about. Thus the requirements for a basic maintenance position has gone up, at the same time the requirements for once sophisticated financial tools has come down.
The intersection of these two are the professions done by highly trained individuals. With the shift of medical technology to smaller scale, making it less intrusive and yet yielding more data, we are coming to see a need for automated systems to help keep track of what is going on inside your body. The skilled physician has become a specialist, and yet the amount of information about you, as an individual, now requires more than one specialty and that can go up as you get older. Layering an old-style, top-down system to this phenomena makes it less reactive to your needs and has it dance to the tune of the regulator. At the exact same time you are getting more information about all of your conditions and having to do more in the way of tracking than any single specialist can. The power of that information is in your hands, for you to use and work with, and yet we are trying to say that a top-down system works for this?
Finally there is the strange belief that we should require a college degree for everyone. It has been pithly stated: ‘No Child Left Behind – Every Childe Must Go To College’. The problem? The US is missing about 500,000 welders. Want to know why construction projects take forever? Not enough welders. We have, over three to five generations, shifted the perceived viability of the manual trades down and the educated services up, while needing more of the former and less of the latter. Individuals needing more capability to understand a tradecraft that has gotten complex can do so… if they have actually received some encouragement to go into the tradecraft and not go to college. It is all well and good to say that ‘an education matters’ but we also have the physical infrastructure of this society to keep up and expand. Yet that has been put on the low end of the priority scale via the ever so well educated bureaucrats and politicians who devalue that physical plant necessary to keep society running.
Something is drastically wrong with that concept, and it doesn’t matter if you are Right, Left, Tea Party or Communist – the view taken is that of Luddites via our top-down, credentialed elite that we somehow have put into power. We don’t need a different government we need less government, less bureaucracy, and more accountability by these older mechanisms to individuals. We don’t ‘need’ a social security when we are now a majority ownership and investment society. What we do need is people willing to work for a living and for that payment to be flexible and NOT based on education or credentials but PERFORMANCE. At this point in time the elite class is not performing in anything close a 21st century fashion… while the general population IS.
I like to keep things somewhat simple when possible. In doing so, one can map the effects of the socialist progressives “Intellectualism” quite easily if one compartmentalizes history. Lets look at just the past 50 years (1960-2010) of [intellectual policy makers] of the socialist progressives effects on America.
1. Failed foreign policies.
2. Growth of size and authorities of the federal government.
3. Progressive inflated values for goods and services against a deflated dollar.
4. Progressive non competitiveness of American goods and services.
5. Progressive unsustainable government social welfare programs and costs.
6. Progressive education failure.
7. Progressive federalized labor….unions.
8. Progressive loss of domestic manufacturing.
9. Progressive consolidation and centralization of economies and populations.
10. Progressive transition from family unit values to an individualist values society.
And the very long list goes on!
All these wonderful effects have been bestowed upon Traditional America from the brains of intellectual policy maker idiots who have never produced anything, worked up a sweat doing labor or earned an honest dollar in their lifetimes. ALL they stand for is an ideology, a mission and their conceived strategies of implementation and NOTHING ELSE!
Today, Journalist, who perceive themselves as part of the ideological intellectuals, report nothing of news! They are to busy perpetuating their progressive ideology and social conditioning upon the remaining Traditional American’s.
Todays zillions of socialist progressive think tanks (ideological policy makers) are led by the 60/70′s revolutionaries and filled with indoctrinated kids straight out of college with ZERO life experiences….and they develop ideological strategies for self destruction forcing control of every facet of the country through the federal (centralized) government.
But, while I rail on them, equal or greater fault is on the side of all the sleeping American’s falling into their every strategic trap of [self destruction] for Traditional America over the past 50 years.
One of their strategic targets is listed below. How many people understand that the [States malitia's] were moved to the “central” control of and under the U.S. Department of Defense? They took a “single word” (regulated) out of context from the amendment to authorize such otherwise unconstitutional initiative.
U.S. Constitution Amendment 2 12/15/1791
[A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be *infringed*.]
*Infringe*
[Latin infringere] 1: violate, transgress 2: encroach, trespass Source: NMW
Traditional American’s need to wake up in short order to all the socialist progressive intellectuals…many wearing coats of many colors!
Since we are moving towards statements about what’s wrong with our society, how about this:
As was pointed out on a couple talking heads programs tonight on NPR,
Obama helped himself significantly with this last deal. Republicans are happy, Democrats unhappy and the supposed seriousness of purpose in the Deficit Reduction Commission has been more or less shot to hell with this unfunded stimulus and unemployment extension.
The rationale has to be that once the economy gets moving, other things will sort themselves out. Anyone believe that?
["The rationale has to be that once the economy gets moving, other things will sort themselves out.] HA HA HA!
A single page, 1 trillion dollar add-on to debit and the Republicans are happy while the Democrats are unhappy with it. Isn’t that ironic…a month and a week since the elections?
While I’m certainly for a more fair and equal tax system with folks keeping as much monies in their pockets as possible, the GOP “tax” arugment (currently in place) hasn’t influenced unemployment positively, one bit over the past two years. So, putting the ideological intent aside, what is the “real” factual significance of this battle…at this time, with the GOP coming into a more power majority position in a couple of weeks? NOT the most intellectual choice of battles at this time….in my opinion! Retaining a hundred plus billion dollars a year (currently the case) in the pockets of the wealthy is NOT a solution to the unemployment and economic problems.
Other than some conceived and phoney unsustainable “bubble economy” we no longer have a jobs based economy in America to employ folks. The economies we still do have, are doing just fine without anymore laborers. The States are broke, the government is broke, we’re essentially still in two wars and there simply is not any monies to keep spending for the creation and expansion of a closed domestic economy such as infrastructure modernization, etc.
So this fighting over a miscual “personal” income taxation issue for a defined wealthy, at this time, is just….silly and misdirected!
I think most American’s of all stripes, want to see what the GOP has to put on the table addressing the “real” problems including jobs and reversed government spending/debt, when they come back for the new congress….besides Boehner’ 35M congressional overhead cost reduction suggestion.
I agree with all of your concerns here. I am afraid that neither side “knows” how to achieve what is needed, and we will have to muddle through as always. Winning and losing political battles is a messy way to fix anything, but it is our system, and bad as it is, seems to work better than the others.
If it it turns out that the 10% unemployment becomes a fixed number, do we eventually say, the hell with this stimulus stuff, either the righty or left versions and go for a more balanced budget?
Dwight…..
Again, I like to keep somethings simple though I struggle at avoiding all the complex diversions myself. That said, the *core* causations that bring us to this point in time are really non-complex if we can avoid all the clutter of the diversions.
Allow me to be once again redundant!
Problem I. The federal government having striped the States of their Rights to regulate commerce while observing the constitutional intent of the Commerce Clause, for duty free commerce between the many States. The average citizen has not a clue how much the federal government has abused the commerce clause for expanding their authority over areas that are not even remotely relevant to commerce. Roe vs. Wade is one that most can identify with more easily. EPA, OSHA, Department of Labor, Railroad and Union mediation, Department of Agriculture, FAA, FCC, FDA/CVM, social welfare programs beyond Veteran Affairs and the list goes on and on. There are very simple but comprehensive solutions should the government be eliminated from its present commerce authority. Just imagine the layers of corruption that would be eliminated from the federal goverment if commerce were to be returned to the States. Every function of those “commerce” entities in the federal government have long been redundant in the private sectors institutions and industry disciplines….and State departments and agencies. The federal government would then be within its rights and limited to legislate criminal anc civil tort redress.
Dealing with the commerce clause appropriately would allow for a systematic privatization of social welfare programs, reduce the size and most important, reduce federal government spending and bring it once more back to a constitutional government. Lastly, it would stop the progression of the socialist progressives through the federal government, dead in its tracks, reversing most all of its legislated gains of many decades, over time.
Traditional industries could return to American soil. Regions, States and communities would eventually begin to prosper once more from a competitive environment to industries currently consolidated and centralized. Then, and only then, can the nation begin to find the economic resources to support low unemployment. If not, we as a nation, have a very ugly future ahead inspite of any little upward contrived spikes.
We’re in a real mess and only some *stark* remedies will give us a long lasting chance!
“Traditional industries could return to American soil.”
Whoa! You can’t just throw that in there. There is no question that the Federal Government has expanded in more or less the way you describe, but shrinking it, so that the States would do, or not do the same thing (and it would be more the former than the latter) is going to bring back traditional industries…HOW?
This is where your belief takes an almost religious turn, that if we restore the original balance of States and Feds as set forth by the Founders, then we will no longer buy Chinese goods from Walmart, be led around by the nose by thirteen huge banks, or expect that some government will help us with our boo-boos, large and small. I have already spent some time explaining how our citizenry and culture is so different from the one for which the Founders were writing the Sublime Document.
It is understandable that the commerce clause was root of the expansion of Federal powers. The new country was in a lather to expand its commerce, beginning with canals, moving on to railroads, then interstate highways etc. It WAS a “natural” political progression which got us here. As Bill Parcells said, “You are what you are.”
Excellent article! The New Republic is a relic and we are all suffering from the ministrations of a crustacean class who have served longer than many of us have lived. Look at the members of Congress and understand why nothing has changed and why it all seems so surreal. It matters not a damn thing whether anything “works” anymore except that some old effin’ fossil is stuck in the past and can no longer think but like Pavlov’s dogs REACTS. They truly are the real reactionaries. They look to the glory days of the Father of American Fascism, FDR, and believe that they can resurrect them once again. FDR was a horrible president who trampled upon anything that stood in his way, the Constitution, the Supreme Court, individuals, their property rights, the list goes on and on. But he broke the back of the old republic and we are still suffering from his legacy today. When history books begin to teach the truth about FDR and his is routinely condemned for the poisons he unleashed throughout the body politic, then future generations might have a chance to think differently about their relationship with government. But until then, the lies and myths about that bastard will continue to be told and the geezers in Congress will continue to think it is still 1939 and a Marxist/Socialist Utopia is just around the corner, if we just create one more layer, or one more entitlement, of confiscate just a little more property. Drop dead New Republic.
In the sentence right after Mead is first mentioned, the first word is “Read.” As in “Read argues that the reason today’s intellectuals are ill-equipped …”
It should say “Mead.”
That Mr. Just, the new editor, used “passionate(ly)” twice, “nuanced,” and “narrative” all in the same sentence is proof he and TNR are circling the drain. He left out “embrace” though.
“If Richard Just is up to addressing these questions in a serious fashion,” … He isn’t and he won’t and you know it.
I can hardly believe you write this without reference to Robert Nozick’s fantastic article on Why do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html
In fact, I think, the hatred for capitalism is the key reason for Liberal hatred against: Nixon, against Reagan, against Bush 41 (a wimpy hate for a wimpy blue blood), against Bush 43, and now against Palin.
Ron, since you and so many intellectual Jews have long opposed capitalism, your insights into that issue might well be very interesting.
Mead missed the problem. The whole group certifiable. They cannot see the difference between their thoughts of reality and reality. They think the two are the same.
Speaking about outdated thoughts and things going full circle into the opposite (progressivism as reactionary)… Obamacare simply takes money out of most medical rationing decisions. This will have terrible overall effects on many levels (such as the loss of cost inputs). But the cultural Marxist left is most blind to the fact that there are other forms of classes than those they think of (which are mostly race, economic class, gender, and sexuality). By politicizing healthcare we will have a new class structure reflected in it. The well and the ill. There are more well people than ill and they will decide how much to spend on the ill. I suspect, the well will want spending sent their direction for mostly useless wellness projects. Treating cancer is just so expensive… While the dead are free.
They want the bipolar world of the Cold War, with the USA and the USSR leading their blocs. That stability is long gone, and they do not know what to do without it.
“I believe passionately in the higher magazine journalism: in the worth of long-form argument and narrative, the importance (intellectual but also social) of brilliant cultural criticism, and the value of highly informed, nuanced, and passionate crusading.
Here’s the first hint TNR will not change under Just’s leadership.
PASSION. Any time you hear that some one is “passionate” about something (other than a lover) it’s a sure sign that they’re full of it. What is it with the need Leftists have to emotionally italicize, bold and underline their stances by the use of this woefully overused and abused term?
Claude Castonguay, the father of the Canadian single payer system 40 years ago, says it is now in crisis and needs reform. The reforms he is championing is privitization.
The reason so many people accept the health care they get, which is different than insurance, is that overall most people are fairly healthy. If you are and average 30 year old and have employer paid health care, you are probably pretty happy with your health care. You probably also never really use it much.
Like Nancy Pelosi says, you have to need it to actually understand whether it is good or not.
/the old statist model and progressive ideology is actually reactionary, and not “progressive.”/
I’ve been saying this for literally decades now. To boil it down to a pithy quip (that has been attributed to Nixon, but I’ve never found any definitive proof this is so):
“Liberals… aren’t.”
Great questions about TNR, Mr. Radosh, and how sad that most of your commentators don’t even remember when TNR served as the loyal but sly opposition to Democratic orthodoxy from the 70s through the 90s, and to an extent even through the first years of Beinert’s editorship – and therefore they can’t appreciate how far it has fallen under the Foer years.
Isn’t it also interesting that Marty’s last serious picks for editors, Beinert and Sullivan, turned out to be men who became self-realized as anti-Zionist, in very different but equally psychologically naked ways (Beinert’s bitter, sullen, disappointed, affectless and dumbed-down depressiveness about his personal social failure (this is pure speculation about Beinert about whom I have never heard a personal word, but I bet I am not wrong), contrasting nicely with Sullivan’s raving monster loony party style, both of these expats making a violent break with their former selves for an elaborately-explained but incomprehensible reason having to do with Iraq – as if they couldn’t bear themselves a single minute longer. How does Marty pick them?
I think Russell Jacoby ought to be blamed for all this decadence, simply because he invented the ugly and unnecessary term “public intellectual,” which encouraged would-be intellectuals toward a stuffiness tinged with celebrity – who had had until then achieved either stuffiness or celebrity or both by their own devices and were content with the term “intellectual,” qualified by “well-known” or “obscure and patheticm,” and with quite a bit of mobility between the two poles.
The old world depicted in “To an Early Grave” began to be ushered to an early grave by Jacoby and his peers in the 80s, and its disappearance did the subsequent TNR edit talent no favor.
W.R. Mead is wrong. This is not a question of a “model not working anymore”. It is a question of a simple power grab. What you will get depends entirely on who is in charge.
One other issue in play here that Radosh (and, from the quotes, Mead) hints at – the relative speed of information processing.
In the beginning, the central government concerned itself with just the big, central things because the speed of communication with outlying regions was so painfully slow. Locals could assess, decide, and solve a problem in days where it would take months for the central government to even become aware of the problem.
Rapid communications and industrial methods convinced people that the Progressive project could be made to work. But the RELATIVE speed of decision making still favors the individual and the locality every bit as much now as then. Central authorities are left finding solutions to problems days and weeks and even years after they’ve been OBE (overcome by events).
“Can the Old Liberal Stalwart Play a Role in Today’s World?”
Possibly. Might put ‘em to work serving up burgers or something.