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The Spectacle Blog
I believe today is Joseph Sobran’s wake and tomorrow is his funeral. I have a piece up at Enter Stage Right that hopefully does a little more justice to the points I was trying to make in my initial reaction to his death. Here’s Sobran’s own final take on some of the controversies mentioned therein, with an introduction by Peter Brimelow. But today I’d like to focus on what the next Congress could learn from the writer who was once one of National Review’s finest.
During the 1992 presidential election, Sobran observed:
The real opposite of a legislating party is not a foot-dragging party, but a party of repeal. What we need is a conservative Congress whose chief business will be chopping down the jungle of bad laws that oppress us, laws that range from misconceived to iniquitous and unconstitutional.
Amen. As true today as it was then.
View all comments (25) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by W. James Antle, III
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/10/04/learning-from-joe-sobran
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Siegfried X| 10.4.10 @ 9:55AM
I agree totally. It is not enough to just make goal line stands. Republicans need to play offense and to play defense hard across the entire field.
We need alternatives, not just saying "no" (or worse letting some RINOs say "yes" to the Democrats). President Reagan helped people with tax cuts and by repealing laws & regulations.
Alan Brooks| 10.4.10 @ 7:16PM
Why is it Jesse can't get away with being anti-semitic, but Sobran could?
Bob S| 10.4.10 @ 10:04AM
One of my favorites. May he rest in peace.
JP| 10.4.10 @ 10:34AM
I used to wonder what happened to the "old salts" who used to write, manage, and edit the National Review. When I first began reading National Review in the late 1970s, I distinctly remember some of the columns of penned by Brookshier and Sobran. Later, writers like Ferguson, O'Sullivan began to write and edit columns for Buckley. Guest writers like George Will, Taki, Florence King, Alan Bloom, and PJ O'Rourke wrote the occaisonal column or artcle. Some became full time writers there.
According to some, a full scale war broke out there in the late 1980s through early 1990s. Sobran, Brookshier, and eventually Sullivan all were fired. The reason for the firings were ideological. Thier dust up became the first warning shots of a possible break in conservative circles: the Paleos vs the Neos. I always admired Sobran. And while I never really got onto his bandwagon, I do not think he was any anti-semite (he is definitly no Taki). Sobran represented the last of a dieing breed of Catholics thinkers who while being conservative were also independent. Most of today's Catholic conservatives toe the "party line" including foreign policy. There's nothing wrong with that, either. It's just that I think Sobran got a bum rap. And I can understand that some Paleos felt a little betrayed towards the end of Buckley's life. He mentored and brought up a number of writers who jumped ship the minute things got rough (ie Katheleen Paker and David Frum).
I know Mr Sobran suffered a great deal during his final years. May he rest in peace.
Occam's Tool| 10.4.10 @ 10:59AM
Joe was an antisemite, although Taki could be worse. In my view, they are both Amaleks. Joe had many correct ideas, but his hatred of Israel was disgusting.
Aleck| 10.4.10 @ 1:12PM
Occam's Tool, you keep saying that. The Amalekites were the first who attacked the children of Israel after God delivered them from Egypt, and while they were on their way to Mount Sinai (Exodus 17:8-16). Interestingly, Amalek was a blood descendant of Abraham and Isaac by way of Esau, Jacob's twin brother (Genesis 36:12). Could it be that blood descent from Abraham is not what makes one a true child of Abraham?
Andy| 10.5.10 @ 9:44AM
Christians, Moslems and Jews are spiritually descended from Abraham thru Essau,Ishmael and Isaac. As I understand it the covenant went thru Sarah to Issac and the Jews have a distinct role as God's chosen people to bring monotheism to the nations and observe the commandments in the Torah. Gentiles are commanded to observe the 7 Noachide laws. Anyone who chooses to become Jewish thru an Orthodox conversion is automatically included in the covenant and King David and ultimately Messiah come from converts. The righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come and there is no obligation or need to convert. This is a Jewish perspective from one with limited knowledge in the area so may be mistaken. Maybe Orthodox websites have other explanations.
Interested Conservative| 10.4.10 @ 2:27PM
I think Rick Brookhiser would be surprised to learn he was fired from NR considering he's a senior editor there, and has been for years.
WFB just chose Lowry as his successor as managing editor rather than Brookhiser, but I don't recall it having anything to do with ideology.
loulou| 10.4.10 @ 6:40PM
Well, I'm going to be charitable and speculate that Sobran was suffering from some kind of brain tumor that caused his questionable behavior. He certainly was an anti-Semite. Poor thing, here I thought he had died years ago.
Mike| 10.4.10 @ 10:42AM
Sobran and the others that were purged from NR were the only people keeping it from being the Neo Con junk that it became. It is un-readable garbage now. After 9/11 NRO became the war monger go to site with scores of keyboard heroes pushing the US into more and more war.
Reagan would not have approved.
Occam's Tool| 10.4.10 @ 11:00AM
Ronnie was a pro-Israel, pro-American hero who was definitely in favor of a muscular foreign policy. He would have destroyed Iran.
Derek Leaberry| 10.4.10 @ 12:48PM
Ronald Reagan was a man of his times and his worldview was colored by the great struggle between the West and World Communism. Conservatives of almost every stripe supported the Cold War, including Joseph Sobran. But with the fall of the USSR and the Berlin Wall, the glue that held the disparate groups of conservatives together corroded away. Reagan was pretty much finished as a public figure of consequence by the time World Communism collapsed. It is difficult to surmise how he would interpret the vital issues of our day.
Tim*| 10.4.10 @ 10:47AM
This is why we are Tea Party Rebels in an escalating Tea Party Rebellion .
The Tea Party Rebellion Escalates .
Rise Up !
Bob| 10.4.10 @ 11:10AM
Joe Sobran was a great voice both literally and figuratively. He used to do a short commentary a few times a week on national network radio. They were awesome. He was clearly intellectual and went where his informed conscience told him to go regardless. This gets people into practical trouble but it is true of writers and thinkers just as it is for anyone that with the free exchange of ideas it allows for the best to rise to the top if there is enough courage to stand by them. Joe Sobran had the courage to stand by his and he took this world seriously, perhaps too much so, but one should not be faulted for that or for occasionally being wrong or overreacting to things. After all it is our human nature. God bless him, his family and friends.
Billy Joe| 10.4.10 @ 11:36AM
Yes, National Review went off the rails and there is no clearer example of it than the writing allowed to grace the pages and website during the Obama ascendancy. Horrible, outrageous writing, uninformed, unknowing, wishful, stupid truly unbelieveable, cowardly ideas put forth by people who knew or should have known better, in a publication supposedly dedicated to liberty, they wrote as if Obama really were who he faked himself to be and it was fine with them. I would write letters and call the editors frequently during this time period and never, ever got a response. I have two long personally typewritten letters from Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. including an invitation to join the editorial staff for one of their meetings in New York City including lunch. National Review seems to have been overrun with the usual Washington vermin that have leaked in with the overflow of lefties gushing from the Ivy League. They are the miseducated, snot-nosed, snobby hierarchy that has been in the process of ruining the nation for the past 100 years and they got themselves into the heart of the resistance, National Review, and are attempting to kill it from within.
Derek Leaberry| 10.4.10 @ 1:07PM
Think how far National Review has declined. Past writers include Whittaker Chambers, Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Wilmoore Kendall, Frank Meyer, Willi Schlamm, Allen Tate, Father Malachi Martin, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddhin, John Chamberlain, the older Brent Bozell, Richard Brookhiser and Sobran. Today lightweights like Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, John Miller and Kathryn Lopez hold the NR fort. Modern National Review is little more than a cheering section for the Republican Party.
JP| 10.4.10 @ 1:30PM
Many of the writers you mentioned were before my time. But I still remember the late Austrain writer Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddhin, and Malachi Martin. Of course, as I stated in an earlier post I also remember Sobran and Brookshier. NR, back in those days had a much different feel to it. I think most of the older writers were non-media/journalist specialists. Sobran was a Shakespeare expert; Kirk of course was mainly an all around specialist in classical political theory. M. Martin was a Jesuit priest and scholar who possessed several PHDs. They were not nearly as polished or mainstream as today's NR editors, writers. But, they brought something very unique to the table.
Rod| 10.4.10 @ 1:02PM
Repeal! There have been hundreds of Nanny State laws passed and signed into law the last 10 years!
Repeal!
Repeal all of them!
james wilson| 10.4.10 @ 1:33PM
Sobran left National Review after reading Garet Garrett. He was not the first. It highly recommends a man already mature in years when he can recognize his own unwitting part in a play he discovers to be false.
It is a poor quality of intellect that accuses Sobran of antisemitism. Most people on this page oppose the great bulk of Jewish intellectualism with it's disastrous consequences proceeding at a pace that has not slowed to this day.
aware| 10.4.10 @ 4:42PM
Garet Garrett. Brilliant mind. Good to see there are more of us here.
The essence of the problem is the confused nature of what passes for modern "conservative thinkers". They condemn "socialists" and accept the State, which is nothing if not socialism itself. They even believe putting different people in charge of the State changes the State. They don't notice the trot to totalitarianism, but come alive at the gallop. The new kids don't understand how deadly the concept of the all powerful State really is.
Without the State socialism is unthinkable. Men like Sobran, Garrett, and the rest of the real thinkers knew this and weren't afraid to say so.
Siegfried X| 10.4.10 @ 5:38PM
Conservative is not the same thing as libertarianism. Unlike libs, conservatives sometimes think that the government can do good, and the private sector can be bad.
A conservative like myself see libertarians as the mirror image of Marxists, with both being equally bad utopian fantasies.
I decide between the two empirically. Where the government is proven to work better than the free market, I support it.
I thank God every day for the "state", for this country and constitution which I love.
aware| 10.4.10 @ 7:27PM
You are laboring under several delusions, chief among them the belief that "government" makes civilization possible. If this is true then MORE government would mean we would be more civilized?
I'd like an example of where "government" has "proven to work better than the free market". If you find one, I bet I can supply 20 that say the opposite. Unless the freemarket creates the wealth to be stolen government can't even exist, since it creates none of its own.
Most, and maybe all, the alleged "shortcomings" of the freemarket are actually the results of interference by the "fixers" of the State. I'll be glad to stop calling them a vast criminal gang if they will stop acting like one.
J.C.Eaton| 10.4.10 @ 6:23PM
Sieg, Government is power. Raw, oppressive, crushing power. In the hand of a human, a dizzying, fearsome thing indeed. At best Sieg, I'd say it's a necessary evil: at worst:Totalitarianism. The Constitution was ordained to constrain it, not celebrate it. Best,
Siegfried X| 10.4.10 @ 7:24PM
"At best Sieg, I'd say it's a necessary evil"
I totally agree. All the other players like large corporations can be evil too, like criminal gangs and individual criminals. Sometimes government needs to be part of the solution.
aware| 10.4.10 @ 7:42PM
The large corporations and government are NOT adversaries, they are partners! One cannot exist without the other.
By presenting the illusion that the corporations are bandits and government is the federales, you are kept in the dark and the fleecing can continue uninterrupted. Government crushes competition with regulations and tax law while the corporations collect "hidden" taxes through the same rules and laws from the hapless "consumer" who can't figure out why he doesn't end up with much real wealth. That's how crony capitalism works. The cronies are protected and the State collects protection money.
If "necessary evil" is still in the end evil, why grant it deification to be worshiped and respected. Or allow it to be the dominant factor in all aspects of our lives?
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the big ones to high office".....Aesop