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The Sad Saga of Max Boot
I worked with Max Boot at Commentary Magazine for a few years, not in the office and not directly, but I would promote his work when it appeared on our blog. I would always joke (but not really joke) that there was never a war that Max Boot didn’t want to start. Boot’s work was the only material on the blog I consistently disagreed with and disliked, in large part because it was so trigger-happy.
It’s been strange watching Boot’s evolution into just another “woke” newspaper columnist; his shtick is so tired by now, what exactly does he offer?
The cadre of “woke” former “conservatives” is growing larger, and each has less and less intellectual honesty than the last.
.@MaxBoot: "With its long-standing opposition to immigration…National Review has found common ground with the far right. Like many conservative media outlets, it has flirted with the “great replacement” theory espoused by the El Paso gunman." https://t.co/tmnJnPv8Oz
— Evan McMullin (@EvanMcMullin) August 14, 2019
It’s so profoundly dishonest, it’s still somewhat surprising to see a newspaper as large and as storied as the Washington Post would run such a screed by a man who clearly didn’t read the entire column he’s responding to,
I grew up reading National Review in the 1980s, @MaxBoot writes. Its founder, William F. Buckley Jr., was a childhood hero.
"So it was a shock on Monday afternoon to see myself attacked in National Review as, essentially, a traitor to the white race." https://t.co/jq9tIDJXxO
— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) August 14, 2019
And not only did the Post run Boot’s piece, but CNN’s Anderson Cooper even had him on his show to whine about it too,
.@MaxBoot responds to the National Review article attacking him, saying "it's incredibly shocking and offensive to me."
"Sadly, I think it's a reflection of how even mainstream conservative publications are being Trumpified and are going down the same road [of] Fox News." pic.twitter.com/ZRdWUbR9QW
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) August 14, 2019
National Review’s editor Rich Lowry responded,
One sentence from the piece: “We see that in the tone of hysteria that creeps into immigration conversations: not just traditional fears of crime and ghettos or clashes of language or culture, but screeds about ‘invasion’ or, worse, ‘white genocide.’”
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) August 14, 2019
My husband commented:
Btw the response from those at NR has been admirably restrained in the face of lunatic attacks.
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) August 14, 2019
And on this, I’m going to have to disagree.
Proof that National Review hasn’t been “Trumpified” is evidenced by NR’s response to what amounts to Boot’s slander; if it had been truly “Trumpified” NR would be hitting back. Hard. And they should. Trump’s election for many on the Right was proof that the base is sick of being abused by those in the mainstream media and left (but I repeat myself). And we should be sick of it. Being polite in the face of being called white supremacists is how we got Trump, and on this front, maybe we needed him. It’s time to stop being polite.
The left calls the President a white supremacist until they’re blue in the face, and they are astounded that the accusations don’t resonate with a majority of Americans. If they had learned any lessons from Trump’s election, Boot wouldn’t be smearing National Review and John Hirschauer and Dan McLaughlin (the authors of the pieces Boot is criticizing).
Published in General
To be clear, he didn’t really help spending either, but he told Paul Volker to just crush inflation regardless of any political consideration. He also got the tax code overhauled, so that helped as well.
Pretty sure he was being sarcastic. He wants whatever spending Trump needs to prop up the economy and win. Then he’ll play moral relativism by saying Paul Ryan wasn’t a perfect fiscal conservative either…..so who’s to judge Trump’s fiscal disasters.
Anyways, this NC guy opposing Tillis claims to support a Balanced Budget Amendment. And he loves Trump. And wants gobs more military spending. Sounds mighty confused.
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That’s exactly right. We are way past the point of idealism being a good plan.
Principles First finally put out an agenda.
https://principlesfirst.us/declaration-of-principles/
Sadly, I couldn’t have imagined that President Obama would say and do the things he said and did…for example, he stood before a backdrop of stoic, grief-stricken Dallas police officers and blithely elided the difference between the murder of five good, decent police officers and the death of Alton Sterling (a repeat offender who had been threatening another man with a gun when police were called, and still had the gun when he was shot by Baton Rouge cops.)
I could not have imagined that President Obama—he seemed so nice!—would’ve been the first president not to appear on behalf of the American people, nor to provide his vice-president to stand in at the National Law Enforcement Officer’s Memorial service in 2016. Obama sent a deputy attorney general. It was a calculated slight, perhaps even a deliberate insult aimed at law enforcement more generally (presumably to cement his and Hillary’s bona fides with the #BLM crowd) but received by widows and orphans.
So yeah. Let’s talk about character and heartbreak, shall we?
I regretted posting right after I hit enter for this very reason. I voted for Obama thinking he would deal with the race hustlers and grievance-industrial complex the way Eisenhower did with his industry. I too have been disappointed. I agree if Trump had lost Hillary would have been far and away the most corrupt, low-character person elected in decades. But I still feel like a dad watching his 19 year old daughter throwing her life away on a 37 year old ex-con covered in tattoos when I think of the Republican Party’s enthusiasm for Trump instead of so many of our more deserving candidates.
I’m going to take a break from commenting because I’m getting too wrapped up in my anti-Trump focus again.
No one has a plan to stop the decades trend to the left or populism. Nobody has any idea what to do about the media, education, the leftist bureaucracy, entitlements, or Keynesianism. Nobody has any ideas. This all got locked in twenty or thirty years ago.
They had eight years to get ready to repeal the ACA. They could have waited another after Trump was elected.
But no.
Tillis’s opponent will have my money, my vote and my backing.
Garland Tucker Conservative for Senate
This battle was lost 20 years ago, at least.
I grew up in the culture that produced Trump.
You can not expect more from a president than what you have expected from the culture for two decades.
I remember people pushing the lines on what was acceptable in public discourse. We have businesses now very publicly refusing to offer an option to censor music for listeners because they think that people asking for it are stupid and shouldn’t participate in the culture on those terms (Spotify has since modified this policy as they gained prominence).
People are crass, rude, and lack good manners. And if you display any kind of… rectitude… you are soundly mocked.
And I reject your premise that the GOP had anyone better. It is not virtuous to roll over for liars. And they all ran to microphones to apologize for things they thought (maybe?) were right because it outraged the liars. Enough of that. They are either weak or agree with the left.
Stimulus > policy and election strategy. Ask Valerie Jarrett. The fiscal disaster was baked into the cake decades ago.
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Oh @pettyboozswha – how I loved this comment.
My daughter was the one covered by tattoos – but he was 37 and she’s still in her 20s. And she’s the one with the record.
They are happily married and have two beautiful daughters.
It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.
Sometimes we don’t know who is best qualified to save the day.