Honor and Dignity
I got some pushback in the comments section when I suggested that many conservatives are honorably opposed to Trump. I stand by my assessment. Here's Kevin Williamson, a National Review writer:
Contrast that with the leftists who are carrying water for Trump. Here's Seth Ackerman of the far-left magazine Jacobin:
Now look, this isn't a contest. There are plenty of bad conservatives and good leftists. If you did a nose count, the leftists would probably come out ahead. My point is that while some in the far left are wallowing in their usual self-imposed ignorance, significant elements of the right-wing movement are behaving with honor and dignity. It reminds me of when I visited the museum in Copenhagen dedicated to the WWII resistance movement, and I learned that a lot of the members of the resistance were nationalist Boy Scout types. Whatever the shortcomings of that way of approaching the world, it generated some very honorable behavior then, and it's generating some very honorable behavior now.
This is not atypical. All of the conservatives I've mentioned, and plenty more, regularly tweet this sort of thing about Trump. Some are more polite, but all are insistent that the man is flatly unacceptable as a presidential candidate because he is unqualified to be President. I can cite plenty more examples and probably will at some point.Key difference: Gerald Ford was not a burning pile of human garbage. https://t.co/4LmmU4VtJm— Kevin D. Williamson (@KevinNR) July 21, 2016
Contrast that with the leftists who are carrying water for Trump. Here's Seth Ackerman of the far-left magazine Jacobin:
If you click through, you'll see that I got into it with Ackerman, and I think I acquitted myself rather well. (The whole point is for the benefit of NATO protection to extend to countries that have made a commitment to shared defense, and not to others. It's not remotely hypocritical to support NATO membership for a country but then to decline to defend it years later when it is still not a member. As I put it in my exchange with Ackerman, "NATO is a mutual binding commitment, not a list of people we want to defend." Whether it made sense to push NATO so far east is another question, but the actual NATO expansion didn't happen on Hillary Clinton's watch.)Let's recall that in Jan. 2008 Hillary Clinton urged NATO membership for Georgia, then declined to call for its defense when Russia attacked— Seth Ackerman (@SethAckerman) July 21, 2016
Now look, this isn't a contest. There are plenty of bad conservatives and good leftists. If you did a nose count, the leftists would probably come out ahead. My point is that while some in the far left are wallowing in their usual self-imposed ignorance, significant elements of the right-wing movement are behaving with honor and dignity. It reminds me of when I visited the museum in Copenhagen dedicated to the WWII resistance movement, and I learned that a lot of the members of the resistance were nationalist Boy Scout types. Whatever the shortcomings of that way of approaching the world, it generated some very honorable behavior then, and it's generating some very honorable behavior now.
posted by James | 8:58 AM
2 Comments:
Finally a commenter who doesn't beat around the bush and get to the heart of the issues discussed on this blog.
On the 20th I predicted that RD would say he didn't endorse trump early on but that push come to shove he would try to help trump win because keeping tax rates down is more important to his paymasters than any other value. I said that he wouldn't say vote Trump but would try to discourage voters or wink at them to stay home instead of voting for Hillary.
And here is that column
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/opinion/sunday/liberalisms-big-bet.html?mabReward=CTM
He may tell himself that this isn't a pro trump column, but look at what its likely outcome is. It will make not trump voters stay home instead of voting Dem. That's a pro trump column. RD ahs always been the kind of man who makes clever arguments and excuses but in the end does what eh is told. He is still doing it.
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