NOTE: PLEASE say if you DON'T want your name and/or email address published when sending VDARE email.

From:  Jonah Goldberg

Although your essay is as snotty and condescending as anything I've ever written (which is allegedly my greatest shortcoming — other than my ignorance — in the Lewrockwell world), I found it fascinating if more than a bit turgid.

I really don't have much of a counter-argument because from your perspective you're more or less absolutely correct. If you consider Buckley and Podhoretz to be liberals, well then color me liberal. Alas, as you are well aware, your use of terminology while accurate and consistent from your world view, would leave 99% of the people who call themselves "conservative" completely baffled.

Paul Gottfried's Reply:

Thank you for taking note of my comments, the polemical intent of which you readily grasped. Although I've written for decades on the conservative movement, I remain astonished how far to the left that movement, without admitting to that fact, has gone. There was a time in the fifties and sixties that I found WFB and NR to be daringly rightwing. Although my conservative politics have not changed since that time, obviously theirs have. Pointing out that situation, however "turgidly," may help clarify our contemporary political culture. Try some Maistre as a change of diet!

July 02, 2001