Rod Dreher:
Boarding the flight for Dallas at Heathrow, I saw a stack of
American Spectators free
for the taking. I saw on the cover a story titled, "Obama's
national socialism." I picked up the magazine anyway, and
was glad I did, because there's always something worth reading
in the Spectator.
[...]
[W]hat if you were a normal person looking for something to
read on a long flight, and you eyeballed that magazine near the
gate. Would you think a magazine that called Obama an exponent
of "national socialism" had anything interesting and important
to say to you? Or would you be more likely to think it was a
scream-sheet of the loony right, one safely ignored?
James Srodes's piece, "The National Socialism of Obamanomics,"
was a judicious and thoughtful take on the similarities between
the economics policies engineered by the Nazi central banker
Hjalmar Schacht and those implemented by Obama and his economic
team today. He referenced two new books, both of which are very
well respected and mainstream: Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of
Finance and Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction.
Furthermore, Srodes's piece, published in the May issue, followed
on the heels of an
article by David Leonhardt published by the New York
Times on March 31st that drew the connection between Obama's
policies and Schacht's even more explicitly. "Every so often,
history serves up an analogy that’s uncomfortable, a little
distracting and yet still very relevant," Leonhardt wrote. "...No
sane person enjoys mixing nuance and Nazis, but this bit of
economic history has a particular importance this week." He then
presented the successes of Schacht's stimulus policies as
historical precedent validating the theory behind the Obama
stimulus.
So is Dreher prepared to deride the work of Liaquat Ahamed, Adam
Tooze, and The New York Times for looking like
"scream-sheets of the loony right"? If not, he should back off
his criticism of Srodes's article.
Rod goes on to say,
These guys [like the Spectator's R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.]
act like there is only one conservatism, and Ronald Reagan is
its prophet....
Until and unless conservative magazines and opinion leaders are
willing to undertake a serious rethinking of what it means to
be a conservative in 2008, it is unreasonable to expect that
they will offer any enlightenment or guidance.
Well if "rethinking what it means to be a conservative" means no
longer publishing undeniable and uncontroversial observations
that happen to reflect poorly on the liberal leadership, then I
hope we never do offer the kind of enlightenment or guidance
Rod's looking for.
topics:
Economics, Obama, Rod Dreher
