People ask me, no actually they don't. But they imply in a tangible way that they don't get where I'm coming from. It took me a long time to understand people - I only got it from good fiction and history. So now that I've moved from the Progressive Left to the Right, people ask me how and why. But they don't actually.
Somehow I have become tangentially responsible for the mindlessness of Right Thinking, but it's actually Right Behavior they mean. The thinking takes place outside of the behavioral affinities of the Right. But you can't know that unless you find out what the thinkers are saying and understand their value. Thus the following from the Archives:
There's a sweet PDF for you, just in case you store things like I do. Otherwise here's the text.
The party dispute led to Shachtman, Burnham, and their supporters resigning from the SWP in 1940, and soon afterwards, Burnham broke with Shachtman and left the Communist movement and worked for the war time Office of Strategic Services. After the war, he called for an aggressive strategy to undermine the Soviet Union's power. During the Cold War, he regularly wrote for the National Review magazine. In 1983, President R.W. Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His ideas were an important influence on the neoconservative and paleoconservative factions of the American Right WingCobb: Dog-Whistle Politics
cobb.typepad.com/cobb/2007/01/dogwhistle_poli.htmlI think Petraeus is the right man for the CT job in Iraq, and given all that I've read through Ricks' 'Fiasco' I think that ought to be the operational consensus. I know we're getting on a tangent here, but what I can't stand is the idea that the 20k 'Surge' troops are being given no indication that anything they do will be worthwhile. People who are saying Iraq is a failure are giving no respect to the job that's being done, and that's just wrong.
Posted by: Cobb | January 17, 2007 at 02:39 PM
IntroductionA friend asked me for publications that would assist her child in presenting a paper supporting the US mission in Iraq. I was more than happy to help, but then I fumbled when it came to naming more than a few. This notebook is a comprehensive list of the primary sources of my knowledge on that and other subjects of political and historical concern.Update to the Introduction9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, War on TerrorTerror & Consent - Phillip BobbittThe Man Who Warned America - Murray WeissThe Pentagon's New Map - Thomas PM BarnettThe Looming Tower - Lawrence WrightFiasco - Thomas RicksSecond Fallujah
I've just gotten up to the part of 'Fiasco' which describes the second battle for Fallujah, the one I recall being rather piqued about when it happened. Ricks says it was quite a mission. Still, I believe that I have mischaracterized the insurgency in my politics up to now, so I'll recap Iraq sometime later this week. (I'm also spelling it with an 'h' now, so as to conform with search engines.)It was Fiasco however that told me the most about what I was wanting to know. How was the American army doing on the ground in Iraq and what could we learn? I've continually rejected the Baby Bin Laden Theory and I've continually said that we would get better in CT on the ground. That was because I understood from reading Fiasco that the generals in Iraq, especially Petraeus, would not leave lessons unlearned.America Alone - Mark SteynMark Steyn isn't a great writer, in fact his book, America Alone isn't a very good book. I think he's way better as a radio commentator and columnist. So this effort seems a bit scattershot for me. But I think it's just the kind of book that someone like me needs to have read. It gives me a handful of double-ought shotgun shells of red hot facts to spew. By 'someone like me' I mean someone with a reason to defend America in the face of all the gibberish that passes as constructive dissent.
Individual Writers of NoteVictor Davis Hansonhttp://victorhanson.com/
Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor emeritus at California University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall courses in military history and classical cultureHe was a full-time farmer before joining CSU Fresno, in 1984 to initiate a classics program. In 1991, he was awarded an American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given yearly to the country's top undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin.Michael Yonhttp://www.michaelyon-online.com/Michael J. Tottenhttp://www.michaeltotten.com/Ed Morrisseyhttp://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/Gerard Van Der Lewenhttp://americandigest.org/Geopolitical BlogsThe Belmont Clubhttp://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/Tigerhawkhttp://www.tigerhawk.blogspot.com/In From The Coldhttp://formerspook.blogspot.com/Counter Terrorism Bloghttp://counterterrorismblog.org/Conservative Thought & PolicyMichael OakeshottFor more than forty years, Russell Kirk was in the thick of the intellectual controversies of his time. He is the author of some thirty-two books, hundreds of periodical essays, and many short stories. Both Time and Newsweek have described him as one of America’s leading thinkers, and The New York Times acknowledged the scale of his influence when in 1998 it wrote that Kirk’s 1953 book The Conservative Mind “gave American conservatives an identity and a genealogy and catalyzed the postwar movement.”Edmund BurkeManhattan Institutehttp://www.manhattan-institute.org/American Enterprise Institutehttp://www.aei.org/Hoover Institutionhttp://www.hoover.org/Heritage Foundationhttp://www.heritage.org/Cato Institutehttp://www.cato.org/General Conservative PublicationsFront Page MagazineWall Street Journal Editorial Board
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