The American Spectator : Is Our Children Learning?

Text Size

Is Our Children Learning?

By Jeremy Lott on 2.22.10 @ 6:07AM

A "defining" literary war comes into its own.

"You're the guy who said I should never write another book!" the young Jonathan Krohn said to me at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel on Saturday.

We were both there for the annual CPAC convention -- Jonathan to introduce Bill Bennett, yours truly to report. I had come up to him in the book signing area, notebook and pen in hand, to ask the so-called child pundit about his future literary plans. He recognized me from my name tag.

"Yes, I did," I told him.

"Well, my latest book just sold 5,000 copies," Jonathan said and walked away in what sure seemed like a fit of pique.

The thing he was referring to was an article that will live in infamy. It was a review for The American Spectator that I wrote of his first book, Define Conservatism, after his appearance as one of the "two minute activists" at last year's CPAC.

In the review, I called the book "terrible," "riddled with typos," "shallow," and "awkwardly phrased." I also said that it would be "cruel to quote this book at great length" and gave readers only one short paragraph to back up that point.

It would be cruel, I argued, because of the age of the author. He was 13 then, 14 this year.

That instantly earned me a reputation as the guy who beats up child authors, and cue the correspondence from irate readers. However, the real target of my wrath was not Jonathan but his parents. I argued that they should not have let their still young son publish such a bad book.

I thought about this for a few minutes after the confrontation, as I stayed in the book signing area, waiting for a friend.

Then Jonathan unexpectedly returned and handed me a signed copy ("To Jeremy Lott, Jonathan Krohn") of his new, really rewritten, book Defining Conservatism.   Jonathan explained to me that his first effort had minimal editorial input and that it was indeed problematic. (He used a more colorful word.) He said that the new effort, published by Vanguard Press, went through five drafts. He asked me to give it a read. "I think you'll like this one better," Jonathan said.

Well...  Here's the one paragraph of his first effort that I shared with readers last year:

Now that we have finished our discussion of old school conservatism and the constitution, let's move on to the next major aspect of the conservative belief system: the life issue. The life issue is near and dear to all conservatives. Does not life keep all of us alive? If it wasn't for life would we not surely be dead? Conservatives believe that life is something that everyone should have.

To which your reviewer replied, "[T]hat specific answer is the sort of unrefined thought that we expect young people to throw out there for adults to respond, 'Isn't he cute?' or 'Well that's not quite right, son. See...'"  I take back not a word of that judgment, but now we have Krohn 2.0. The life chapter in Defining Conservatism begins:

In the summer of 1822, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley worked on what would be his final poem, The Triumph of Life. With some of the last strokes of his pen Shelley wrote his ultimate question, "Then, what is life?" We have had more than 185 years to ponder this question, but it still remains unanswered in many people's minds.

Okay, that's undeniably better. And as I page through Defining Conservatism, I see that level of improvement is evident throughout.

It is still not a great book. It shows evidence of a young mind trying to understand and articulate things that are difficult and not always succeeding. It could have used a sixth or seventh draft. Some of the goofiness of the first volume remains and would probably have gotten knocked out if Jonathan had waited another year or two to publish this.

But this is not an embarrassment and the kid has clearly picked up a few tricks along the way. Jonathan told me he was working on another book but wouldn't say on what. And for some reason I'm curious.

topics:
CPAC, Jonathan Krohn, Defining Conservatism

About the Author

Jeremy Lott is editor of RealClearBooks.com and RealClearReligion.org and associate editor of RealClearScience.com.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (32) | Leave a comment

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 2.22.10 @ 8:41AM

Your critical remarks may have been one of the main reasons why he sold 5,000 books.

Apparently, our children need to learn manners too and learn to thank those who make constructive remarks.

angie| 2.23.10 @ 3:09AM

It would be cruel, I argued, because of the age of the author. He was 13 then, 14 this year.
~er~surprise to me
http://www.udtek.com/laptop-keyboard-c-3.html

Ryan| 2.22.10 @ 9:05AM

Don't know the kid, but I wonder something...

One thing that we're seeing with today's youth is their inability to handle adversity. If something is hard, they quit or look for someone else to do the job for them, all being taught that their "self-esteem" is somehow important.

Kids need to learn the character issues of occasionally doing something hard that they don't want to do, but NEED to do.

The ones that DO will be the future leaders over the ones who don't.

Dan Hirsch| 2.22.10 @ 10:14AM

So let's get this straight. A young author publishes a decidedly inferior work. A critic criticizes it objectively on its own merits. The young author writes another, seemingly better book. Upon meeting the objective critic, he, in effect, says 'please look at my newest work.' Is he not asking for more objective criticism?

I say he is.

I say he recognizes how he benefited from the first, objective review he got. (Maybe the only realistic one he got.)

I say watch this one - he's doing it old school. And old school worked.

And God bless you, Jeremy for doing the right thing, then and now.

Dan Hirsch
Paris, Wisconsin

wow| 10.17.11 @ 1:33PM

Hey guys thanks for sharing this article, hope all of us here will make an update.
actos lawsuit

Havoc| 2.22.10 @ 10:53AM

Jonathan Krohn reminds me of the 1970's / 1980's Christian evangelical performing phenomenon, 'Little Johnny Lord'. Otherwise seemingly-mature adults raved at the pronouncements of this five-year-old. Such unbecoming worship of childreen speaks more of the adults than it does of Johnny / Jonathan.

Yosemeti Sam| 2.22.10 @ 11:15AM

" ... It shows evidence of a young mind trying to understand and articulate things that are difficult and not always succeeding...."

Give him that at least - a probing mind!

Something absent from the Liberal psyche.

Yosemeti Sam| 2.22.10 @ 2:38PM

Speaking of mind, after writing the above I felt my Lithium kick in. Any of you out there take this mood-stabalizing drug? Since I'm bipolar 2,4 and 8, I take it three times a day, and man does it zonk me out. Anybody else have this problem?

Alexander Cockman| 2.22.10 @ 2:42PM

Hey, Yosemiti! After reading your tedious rants, I thought there was something peculiar about you.
Stay on the drugs; don't you consider for a minute going off them--no telling what you would say.

Liberals are Losers| 2.23.10 @ 4:41PM

Nice surname, Alexander--in your case, it fits!

Why the hit on Yosemeti? Did his cogent post about your loser Liberal psyche pinch your pink panties ? LOL!

You made his point for him, moron.

maverick muse| 2.22.10 @ 11:34AM

I remember your first critique of this boy's first edition. I thought it good, doing the boy a favor by showing him the process of thought that extended beyond what he had known to use, advancing his education. A unique genius amalgamated historical Classical structure and Romantic evolution; Franz Liszt maintained that criticism is the best of teachers. You were exposing where youthful thought failed to convince within a shallow state, illustrating how to pierce through an impression using logic to enter depth.

Most people just want life served to them on a silver platter, and fail to utilize mind in thought, particularly if there is no immediate profit to squander. The public's negative response to your teaching the boy showed the temper of today's adults, young parents themselves reliving childhood wishing for "no loser, every child a winner" progressive American world for their baby, an impediment to growth. Though they deny it, even conservative parents do our children wrong, cheating them of life's lessons in responsibility and self sufficiency, and prepping them with expectations to be given achievements they do not earn. Yes, conservative parents give values lip service. But for the majority, that is as far as they have the inclination to actually do. Life is already so difficult balancing careers and family. Nonetheless, conservative parents including the "greatest generation" have been distracted since wars were declared "over"--yet socialism flourished anew with armistice. Otherwise, our nation of people would not have arrived at the point we are today.

Another choice point that Liszt made is that "Idea determines form." It took creative and unique invention in his day to be called a genius; no mere replica of a previous genius was so recognized, imitation never being creative invention. But no creative invention made a genius unless the masterwork exemplified classical thought process and values. Truly, the study of classical titans is the fundamental groundwork that provides a budding innovator with the appreciation of values and the techniques to do more than simply recreate. But without the dedication to follow inspiration to its full expression through the evolution of experience into a new appreciation of classical values made evident through a new perspective, no new genius appears. It is the thin line, the razors edge, to value tradition while expressing it in new life that does not discard liberty's strongest structural form, the US Constitution. Along with Marxists, Neoconservatives reference Liberty as "outdated" since it is so inconvenient to coerce. Fraud provides such simpler means to revise the record and law, brutally cutting to the authoritarian chase with unconstitutional extravagant fascist coercion rather than conservative rule of law enforcement. Rousseau and Marx made available to criminal opportunists an ideology and protocol to destroy European modern enlightenment and revise a Neo-Medieval Feudalism via role reversal empowering the intellectual elites anxious to abuse the masses by hording opportunity, establishing statism as the new dogmatic religion that requires absolute obedience or torturous execution. Marxists still promise the masses heaven, having all their needs cared for by Big Brother's Nanny, sacrificing all in life for status in the Marxist party realm. Neoconservatives don't preach Marxism, they just go along with it for the ride, holding on to their own contingency power in this new feudal system's game of musical chairs as parties share the same corrupt interests, power and profit to benefit more bureaucracy and more corruption, earned by the coerced sweat of tax payers' work and life.

Today's conservatives seek an illustration of how America is to reignite our Classical Liberal Founding Fathers' masterpiece, our Constitutional Republic in our daily life while its structure is yet intact. We value all of the Classical knowledge that the founders amalgamated into their American achievement. We also value the Romantic love for our land, our families, our Constitution, traditions of our heritage that we yet hold in our hands though the politically correct do purge legitimacy. We yet value our dreams and hopes for our posterity to enjoy living with our American Constitution to protect American citizens' civil rights, and further, to protect by recognizing our unalienable rights that the Marxists deny existence. It takes appreciation and even the amalgamation of Classicism with EARLY Romanticism as America has already achieved in our modern expression of the original motto: E PLURIBUS UNUM. And that amalgamation is precisely what our young Constitutional Conservatives need to do, implementing strong Constitutional principles in contemporary life.

"First to tolerate sin, then to embrace." America's effort to achieve tolerance has gone to the extreme of dropping Constitutional values in order to embrace Marxist values, strategy and tactics as well. Read media accounts of the Neoconservatives denouncing and smearing Libertarian Tea Party Conservatives as anti-American threats to democracy. Neoconservatives are campaigning for a witch hunt attacking Constitutional Conservatives rather than Marxists. That reeks of intolerance for strict Constitutional values, burning them as inconvenient, uncomfortable and hence irrelevant today. Without the Libertarian voice, the GOP will persist with the neoconservative agenda that has and continues to corrupt the very foundation of our Constitutional Republic.

It takes tolerance and appreciation of strict conservatism to recognize WHERE the Republican Party left conservatism and established neoconservatism as the norm. George W. Bush has been quoted, taking credit for revising the meaning of conservatism; while historically, W's rise in office occurred holding the coattails of Clinton's brutality and corruption.

Many older Conservatives have already corrupted their expectations, compromising their values to buy their own power at the expense of the public that they serve. Recognize the Neoconservatives who embrace bigger government and bipartisan alliance with Marxist Democrats. They prepare and build the new fascist American bureaucracies for the Marxists to move in and exploit towards the demise of our Constitutional Republic.

There are also the older Constitutional Conservatives who found long ago that the Republican Party denied Libertarian values. Yet these who respect the need to conserve Constitutional Governance have not disappeared; rather, they motivated this past year's public protests against corrupt governance. And true to form, the Kissinger Neoconservatives wasted no time changing their rhetorical public tune in order to "fit in" with their angry constituents and avoid defeat in elections, in order to continue their invested pursuits in corrupt governance at the expense of tax payers and civil liberties. Today's government empowers organized criminals and Islamofascist terrorists. Both Bush and Obama demand that our military forces abroad in battle play diplomats and conform to rules of engagement that are suicidal to our American troops, the Karzai 12 Rules of Engagement. And Both Bush and Obama perpetrated politically correct military procedures that enable radical Jihadists to infiltrate our forces and sabotage our troops EVEN AT HOME.

We are at the crossroads where many political paths meet as our magnificent nation enters unprecedented bankruptcy as bipartisans vote for more debt, more bureaucracy, more death. And those who believe in the Constitutional Republic must recognize that those who now "own" the GOP are neoconservatives whose vested interest is in swallowing the Tea Party, for Constitutional observance to be digested and flushed away as waste in water that's gone under the bridge. We do not accept the "good intention" excuse for corruption. The Kissinger Neoconservatives have held GOP power since Nixon's potus election, and have progressively moved away from the Republican Party platform agenda to limit government involvement beyond the Constitution's designation of separate branch powers, and to insure our Constitution's supremacy in America. Naming China as favored nation, creating the Dept. of Education and the Department of Homeland Security have proven that neoconservative solutions only make major problems monumentally worse. Bureaucracies fail to address their original charge of responsibilities and instead invest all their bureaucratic powers in obliterating American Civil Rights while enabling enemies of our state who pervert the Constitution and the lives of our most precious children, and plunder the lives of our most valuable troops who love America and our Constitution so much that they put their lives on the line to protect us. Those who love our troops need to protect them from political abusers who exploit our bravest young adults in order to manipulate our sentiments to promote more neoconservative power at the expense of the Constitution.

Compromises in values are considered necessary by politicians, hence the party of neoconservatives, in order to play bipartisan at opportune moments to survive in our contemporary socialist directed society that the neoconservatives added to the socialist establishment. The neoconservative mindset only perpetrates more compromise and more Marxism in state sponsored American cultural life. Whereas, Constitutional Conservatives do not vote to amiably allow more government control of our values, lives, private property, and vocabulary which neoconservatives revise as frequently as Marxists do in progressive legislation and lack of Constitutional law enforcement.

When this young author learns to manage the confluence of structural lessons that explicate values, he will have already determined himself either as a Constitutional Conservative or as a Neoconservative.

Eventually, as this youngster writes a book a year, the time for yeast to activate will show what he's grown to become. It is a good thing that the Tea Party has emerged simultaneously alongside this young author as he matures. He witnesses the re-emergence of American value for Liberty even as the political opposition submerges America into ruin. Does he speak for the Tea Party to change the Republican neoconservatives, or for the neoconservatives to embrace the Tea Party in a lover's choke hold.

Whereas Constitutional Conservatives simply rescind power from the corrupt, both neoconservatives and Marxists entice the population with political Asphyxiation play. "Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly..."

Ah, to be young again, when impetuosity was as forgivable as ignorant bliss. I grew up having witnessed life beginning with clockwork church services and MLK leading marches for equal rights so that we can all be judged according to the quality of our character. I would not want to do it all over again unless I knew then what I know now. Conservatism has been abused by both major parties as socialism permeated America.

After a lifetime instructing students, an old professor's joke proved valid: education is one thing which people rarely want their money's worth. Students simply expect a diploma for coming to class or paying tuition, as if the transference of knowledge is too much to expect from modern students to exert their own dedicated efforts studying and practicing until they gain the power of knowledge. Given all the mechanical computational tool-toys that distract concentration into substandard multitasking production during "studies", pity the youth today who have no idea of how to study thought beyond quick-profit means to coerce people to abandon Liberty and join the mob in group think.

Havoc| 2.22.10 @ 11:37AM

Ahem. Succinction, anyone?

Le Cracquere| 2.22.10 @ 1:11PM

I kind of miss the days when stuff like this was cranked out on grimy mimeographs and thrust into folks' hands on the street. It gave it a more human touch.

Interested Conservative| 2.22.10 @ 1:30PM

He was 13, now he's 14. He's learning. What's not to like? What will he be producing in 5 years, or in 10?

Frankly, he already seems to have passed the CNBC/MSNBC level of comprehension and logic, and he's headed in the right direction, and has no competition on the left.

Margie| 2.22.10 @ 2:51PM

Good point.

JimE| 2.23.10 @ 12:41AM

Why is this conservative little twit not in a re-education camp? He and his ilk are dangerous. After all the money the government has spent I'm appalled that we still turn out indepedent thinkers.

Yosemeti Sam| 2.23.10 @ 10:29AM

To American Spectator:

Appears I successfully strike upon Liberal/Leftist nerves.

Do you or do you not validate email addresses
with posts?

You let an asshole - pardon the shorthand -
impersonate me.

Get your AS act together!

Do you have hacker firewalls - at all?

If not - moving on!

AS Webmaster - what's up with this significant
failure?

Chicolini| 2.24.10 @ 12:04PM

Reminds me of the Mark Twain story 'Marjorie Fleming, the Wonder Child' where he satirizes our fascination with precocious children.

The young boy may be smart but he has no perspective that comes with experience -hardly the fundamental stuff from which Conservatism is made.

I predict a future filled with rebellion and Che t-shirts.

Tony| 2.26.10 @ 5:54PM

Perhaps it says something about modern conservatism that a tween is held up as one of its great apologists.

Julian| 8.11.10 @ 6:58PM

That's a very interesting article.
~ Julian - watch the superbowl online

L Tod Schlosser| 11.4.11 @ 12:47PM

your post is so good.thanks for taking time to discus this topic.
L Tod Schlosser

yanyan| 10.10.11 @ 3:52PM

this is amazing i can't imagine this was very helpful..its a magic you do the magic form..thats interesting i love itmesothelioma attorneys

malibu real estate| 10.11.11 @ 2:22AM

I just sent this post to a bunch of my friends as I agree with most of what you’re saying here and the way you’ve presented it is awesome.

balcuizar62| 10.12.11 @ 8:52PM

Bottom line – just get blogging! It’s amazing how many lucrative jobs I’ve gotten via my blogs. Plus my blogs have been a great way to show cases my writing just as much as clips, samples, etc
yaz recall

ruth| 10.17.11 @ 10:47AM

your blog is amazing and the topic is awesome and great very educational thats what i like it..can you share for more topic?thanks

silver spot price

fiance visa| 10.17.11 @ 9:07PM

The informations are so lovely and so usefull so thank you very much. Be sure i will use all of them keeping in my mind.Thanx alot

fiance visa

creamer| 10.19.11 @ 8:32PM

I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.
actos lawsuit

love| 10.20.11 @ 5:49AM

structureSome good data as well as enjoyed the way youve got structured your site.
Actos side effects

devourment| 11.4.11 @ 1:44PM

Well, that is my very first visit on your weblog! We're a group of volunteers and beginning a brand new initiative in a group throughout the same niche. Your weblog supplied us useful info to work on.

L Tod Schlosser

PIERCE| 11.8.11 @ 3:00AM

It confirmed to be Very beneficial to my opinion and i'm bound to all the commenters here! It’s always nice when you're able to not only learn, but this articles 's best
filipina girls