The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Upon Further Investigation

7.7.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 5 of 5)

Better a RINO in Ohio, because, here, "true conservative" is a euphemism for "loser."
-- Kyle Kondik
Lakewood, Ohio

STAYING TRUE
Re: Peter Ferrara's The Conservative Welfare State:

Many thanks to Mr. Ferrara for bucking the trend among conservative intelligentsia regarding Grand New Party. I have been puzzled by the overly positive reactions and reviews for Douthat and Salam's prescription. Even as stalwart a conservative publication as National Review ran a syndicated opinion column from its own editor stating how important this new book is; how valuable its prescription for the Republican Party is; and finally concluding that "[t]he details are less important than the trajectory." Now Douthat, Salam, Lowry, Kristol, et. al argue that Republican pols should follow the DNC to the left, thereby returning to the Great Society and the New Deal model of expanded government. The New Deal was patently leftist; appearing across history as covertly fascist. To pick one egregious example: a New Deal farm subsidy program destroyed livestock as thousands waited in soup kitchen lines in the quest to prop up farm prices. I suppose that was quite a buttress to those hungry families and unemployed workers of the Great Depression. Why should any such ideas rooted in large government socialism be applied to the GOP, which is ostensibly home to conservatism? While it is unfortunately true that the GOP has made some move towards the ideological left (with the fallaciously branded policies of compassionate conservatism), why would the cure now be additional movement to the left?

I would submit (and Mr. Ferrara writes in agreement) that the details, the very bedrock ideals, are of the utmost importance. Conservatives from Sir Edmund Burke to William F Buckley, Jr. have told us that the details are important, the ideals are important, and our principles as conservatives are important. Over the course of time, keeping the details, ideals, and principles at the forefront of the discourse has served to differentiate conservatism (and the GOP to a large degree) from an increasingly leftist, statist liberalism that now defines the national Democrat party. Extemporaneous extrapolations of cultural and social values from the New Deal applied today are no more a prescription for renewal of the GOP than the faltering attempts to win elections via compassionate corruptions of conservatism. I find Mr. Ferrara's solutions much more agreeable and soundly grounded in conservatism.

I do not need Obama's change and I do not need Grand New Party's proposed change.
-- Jeremy Jester
Birmingham, Alabama

BACK IN ACTION
Re: Michael Roush's letter (under "Holier Than Thou") in Reader Mail's Defenses Down:

I was out of town and didn't see Mr. Roush's response to my letter of June 18 until today.

Barack the Magic Negro was coined by a (liberal=Left) columnist for the L.A. Times. Rush Limbaugh used it to make a point about how the Left views its nominee. Is that indecent or using a liberal's words to make a broader point?

You're the one who brought Coulter and Malkin into the fray, not Mr. Homnick. He was writing a specific column about a specific incident. Rather than addressing that incident you throw in the kitchen sink. You don't cite specifics, just generalities. As Mr. Dooley said, we have our share of jerks on the Right, but generally ours "attack" those who deserve attacking, not the innocent bystanders such as the Bush twins.

Holier than thou, aka
-- Deborah Durkee
Marietta, Georgia

IN DEEP DENIAL
Re: Reader responses under "Sullivan Sent Us" in Reader Mail's Mandatory Reading and Jeffrey Lord's Freedom and the View From Obamaland:

In regards to the Left's latest responses to Jeffrey Lord's article on Obamaland, all I can say is: the truth hurts, doesn't it? That's obvious by the ridiculous responses.

Either those responders have buried their heads in the sand or they have gotten quite good at denying what they're all about since the Left has done it for so long. Obama is a socialist. Obama's mother was a socialist. His friends are radicals. He stayed in a church for 20 years that hates white people and the country. His idea of patriotism is "change" -- not "freedom." What kind of change does he want? It's anybody's guess, and mine is similar to Mr. Lord's -- do as I say, don't question, unity by force.

He's an empty vessel into whom the naive or the willfully blind can pour their "hope" for "change." Good luck with that.
-- Deborah Durkee
Marietta, Georgia

I would just like to comment on the article referred to in the subject line of this email. This piece was a rather off-putting example of reckless hyperbole. The cited statements do not even approach the sort of over-reaching authoritarianism that Mr. Lord projects onto Senator Obama. What is most disappointing, is that there is a fine argument that could have been made as to keeping a skeptical eye of the use of political office as a solution to specific problems. Instead, Mr. Lord runs straight into a paranoid rant; I would compare this to the more hysterical statements made by opponents of President Bush.

Just one person's view, but this sort of outlandish & transparent axe-grinding has not made me think of your journal as a credible source. Thank you for your time.
-- Mark Entel

Very interesting, I thought, that not one of the letter-writers who were so critical of Jeffrey Lord's article on the freedoms we would stand to lose in "Obamaland" refuted any of Mr. Lord's claims, or presented any logical arguments against what he wrote. Instead, they engaged in name-calling and, in suspiciously similar form, used the side-splittingly funny "this was so stupid, I thought surely it was a parody" approach. Again, no coherent arguments, just pointless insults. Sad, but, unfortunately, typical.
-- Sheryl DeMille
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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