Commentary is America’s premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal voice in American intellectual life. Since its inception in 1945, and increasingly after it emerged as the flagship of neoconservatism in the 1970’s, the magazine has been consistently engaged with several large, interrelated questions: the fate of democracy and of democratic ideas in a world threatened by totalitarian ideologies; the state of American and Western security; the future of the Jews, Judaism, and Jewish culture in Israel, the United States, and around the world; and the preservation of high culture in an age of political correctness and the collapse of critical standards.
“The Report of our Death was Greatly Exaggerated.”
So whatever happened to the death of conservatism? Wasn’t it supposed to be long gone by now, crumbling within its sarcophagus, a dim memory of a discredited past? Didn’t we start hearing authoritative rumblings about its impending doom around the time of the last set of midterm elections, in 2006, when disillusioned ex-conservatives like Francis Fukuyama and soi-disant types like Andrew Sullivan began tuning their cellos of lamentation and discontent? Wasn’t that also approximately when disaffected conservative writers were proclaiming, in the pages of the Washington Monthly, that “It’s Time for Us to Go”? The talk was so deafening that I was moved to argue with it back in January 2007 in these pages in an article entitled “Is Conservatism Finished?” I concluded with some gingerness that it was not, but my conclusion came nearly two years before the most liberal candidate to run for the presidency in nearly half a century won a resounding victory.
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David Horowitz was one of the founders of the New Left in the 1960s and an editor of its largest magazine, Ramparts. He is the author, with Peter Collier, of three best selling dynastic biographies: The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (1976); The Kennedys: An American Dream (1984); and The Fords: An American Epic (1987). Looking back in anger at their days in the New Left, he and Collier wrote Destructive Generation (1989), a chronicle of their second thoughts about the 60s that has been compared to Whittaker Chambers’ Witness and other classic works documenting a break from totalitarianism. Horowitz examined this subject more closely in Radical Son (1996), a memoir tracing his odyssey from “red-diaper baby” to conservative activist that George Gilder described as “the first great autobiography of his generation.”
Obama & Co.: Never Met A Tax They Didn’t Love
Director David Zucker of “Airplane” fame and most recently “Call Me Senator” addresses our timeless little problem with the Federal Government and its thing about bleeding American citizens dry.
Lifetime cure for Lefties
Scientists have given mankind many blessings, but the discovery of the gene for Left-wing behaviour must be foremost among them. For now there is a diagnosis, there can be a cure. Just think of it – a quick screening of the unborn infant, a mild course of gene therapy, and hey presto! The disease can be eradicated within a generation.
Perhaps we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. But even if science falls short of an outright cure, it should still be possible to ameliorate the symptoms. The gene does not automatically make the carrier a Lefty; rather, it triggers the adolescent brain’s reward mechanism in the presence of novel experiences and viewpoints. The treatment is simple: lock teenage sufferers in a drab room, furnished with the works of Hayek and Friedman. True, their social skills will be somewhat stunted. But the benefits will last a lifetime.
Scientists have given mankind many blessings, but the discovery of the gene for Left-wing behaviour must be foremost among them. For now there is a diagnosis, there can be a cure. Just think of it – a quick screening of the unborn infant, a mild course of gene therapy, and hey presto! The disease can be eradicated within a generation.
Perhaps we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. But even if science falls short of an outright cure, it should still be possible to ameliorate the symptoms. The gene does not automatically make the carrier a Lefty; rather, it triggers the adolescent brain’s reward mechanism in the presence of novel experiences and viewpoints. The treatment is simple: lock teenage sufferers in a drab room, furnished with the works of Hayek and Friedman. True, their social skills will be somewhat stunted. But the benefits will last a lifetime.
Reagan was the tea party
Liberals and their Democratic Party allies are frightened out of their halfwits by the re-emergence of the dreaded tea party, which began in Boston Harbor in December 1773, when colonists dressed as Indians dumped shiploads of tea into the water, helping to set off what eventually became the American Revolution.
Standing Tall: The Rise and Resilience of Conservative Women
My military friends have a favorite saying: “If you’re not catching flak, you’re not over the target.” This campaign season, conservative women in politics have caught more flak than WWII Lancaster bombers over Berlin. Despite daily assaults from the Democratic machine, liberal media and Hollyweird — not to mention the stray fraggings from Beltway GOP elites — the ladies of the right have maintained their dignity, grace and wit. Voters will remember in November.
Thank You, Lord Barack, for the Great Awakening
It is time to thank Barack Obama — or Lord Barack, as our media elites might prefer, having declared him a “sort of God.” He said memorably in April that the Tea Partiers “should be saying thank you” for the great job he’s been doing. And now, as Election Day approaches, vast swathes of the country are ready to give him the acknowledgment he seeks. Thank you, Mr. President, for giving back our country.
A Referendum on the Redeemer
Whether or not the Republicans win big next week, it is already clear that the “transformative” aspirations of the Obama presidency—the special promise of this first black president to “change” us into a better society—are much less likely to materialize. There will be enough Republican gains to make the “no” in the “party of no” even more formidable, if not definitive.