Conservatism

On Oct. 22, Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, among our most knowledgeable progressive political commentators, published a courteous rebuttal, “Debating the Tea Party: A Reply to Peter Berkowitz,” to my recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Why Liberals don’t get the Tea Party Movement.”  The rebuttal, or rather attempted rebuttal, is instructive for several reasons.

If Americans know anything about the presidential election of 1924, they know that it was won by the incumbent Calvin Coolidge in a landslide over the Democratic nominee, John W. Davis of West Virginia, a prominent lawyer and diplomat who was a compromise candidate after 103 ballots at a convention where support from the Ku Klux Klan was an issue. (Davis was an anti-Klan Southerner.)

Via Matthew Milliner's terrific post yesterday, I came across a seven-part series about the relationship between beauty and conservatism, Art and Beauty Against the Politicized Aesthetic, by the young scholar and poet James Matthew Wilson. He studied under the late Thomist scholar Ralph McInerny, whom Jody Bottum kindly remembered in our pages, and is largely inspired by the thought of Jacques Maritain, who, as Milliner points out, is becoming a bit more in vogue these days. Katie Kresser, for instance, has argued for a Maritainian approach to making art in IMAGE. (A good place to start in reading Maritain is Art and Scholasticism, a book Flannery O'Connor read and reread and had several copies of to give to those who visited her for tea and discussion at Andalusia.)

WHAT DO CONSERVATIVES think today about History? As President Bush readies the nation for war, an abstract question like this one seems out of place. And yet, having raised this theme himself in recent speeches, President Bush has been faced both at home and abroad with widespread criticism for his use and abuse of History.

WE ARE NOW just weeks away from going to war to disarm and depose Saddam Hussein's regime, and beginning the difficult but necessary task of bringing the fresh breezes of self-government into the authoritarian hothouses of the Arab world. The arguments of the antiwar protestors--to the extent they even bother making arguments more sophisticated than placards reading "Bush = Hitler"--are refuted easily enough, and fortunately they've only strengthened the resolve of George W.

WE LIVE IN A FREE COUNTRY, thank God, so we are each of us entitled to celebrate Richard Nixon's birthday in our own way. Out in Yorba Linda, California, at the Nixon Library & Birthplace, the hardiest of the nation's merry-makers assembled on January 9 to toast the former president's 90th birthday with their annual "Victory of Freedom Gala." Other Americans celebrated quietly, surrounded by family and friends, while some preferred to be left alone, to gather their thoughts and memories. Still others chose not to mark the occasion at all, which is their right.

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime. . .

But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near. . .

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust.

--Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"

IN THE MATTER OF TRENT LOTT, time's winged chariot has surely arrived. Now's the time for his Republican colleagues, and the president, to "roll all [their] strength . . .

ANY DAY NOW, the Democrats may come to regret deeply the moment the Trent Lott disturbance caught media fire. It is now a great mess for the Republican party, but one that has the potential to turn into a great opportunity, and one the party should eagerly seize. It is a chance for the GOP to clean up its act and its household, haul tons of old rubbish out of the attic, and banish some shopworn old ghosts.

AFTER A WEEK of confusion, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott held a press conference Friday in an attempt to clarify his position on segregation. "Segregation is a stain on our nation's soul," said Lott. "Let me be clear: Segregation and racism are immoral."

Stop for a moment and think about that. Almost half a century after the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v.

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Speaking as one who has abandoned the left screaming in panic, David Skinner has hit the nail on the head with his article ("No More Idealism on the Left"). The Left has lost its sense of purpose, its reason for being, and just generally, its sense and reason.

RECENT EVENTS--September 11, the war in Afghanistan, and the coming war in Iraq--have rigorously tested one of the perennial cliches of politics: that the Left is for idealists. Dreamers. People longing to change the world--and make it better. It's no longer true. Idealism has become a property of the Right, while the Left has been taken over by low partisan enmity.

Last week, Britain's Foreign Office released a brief report on human rights in Iraq.

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In his article Bond Forever, Jonathan V. Last writes that part of the secret of James Bond's success was his accent. He states, "If an American were to tell a girl, 'I hope my big end can stand up to this!' he'd be a troglodyte.