It is rare that public intellectuals are held to account for their past positions relative to “adjustments” made later in light of events. So it is particularly satisfying to read Marcus Epstein’s devastating chronicle of National Review’s unacknowledged flip-flop on the Iraq War–a chronicle made necessary because NR itself has so far not admitted its own culpability in the calamity, much less admitted that the war’s critics proved wholly correct. Because NR pushed so excitedly for war, defended the looting, dismissed the loss of life, viciously attacked and smeared war critics, and uncritically embraced and spread war propaganda, Epstein’s article does moral good as well: journalistic justice of a sort.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/1874/national-review-and-accountability/
National Review and Accountability
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I guess that’s what they get for writing everything down on paper. It seems to me when I think about it though that we should be glad that we know how far the war dogma goes for those in the Wilsonian mode at NR. And speaking of modes, isn’t some of this in the Aesopian mode? I mean, isn’t it more likely that what they’re really saying is that while, yes, mea culpa on me, but only this time, with my fingers crossed? Even if they’re not actually “saying” mea culpa. I, for one, don’t really care if they do but I’m not a journalist and haven’t taken the Hippocratic Brown Journalism Oath. My morals don’t require it. It comes implicit. But still, what’s the big deal? Are we going to hold it against them that they are, were, and always will be wrong? Probably. But who do you think is more dangerous to the public weal and intellectual sobriety, those who can or those who can’t change their minds and hearts? Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Menger, all minds of nearly unflagging consitency but, and no offense epigoni: so what? It’s admirable only as far as it goes. Good for them because most of us probably have assonance with the lion’s share of their thoughts on liberty. I know this is part of a bigger tangential subject but it’s a pathology that seemingly doubles on virtue, depending on where you sit, and it doesn’t just befit us to call one man’s mental consistency another man’s cognitive virus (or vice versa) just because you don’t like what he consistenlty says, consistently. I think it’s frankly weird that we castigate intellectuals for jumping ship always ready to impute the most sordid kind of turncoat turpitude in unintellectual motives for doing so. Like being a lifetime devotee to one doctrine is somehow not at least slightly suspicious, forgetting yourself for a minute, if you would. I just don’t think one doctrine is safe enough in any dialectic to not admit of the rightness of an even isolated contrary conclusion. I know libertarians are furious at the Neocons, the Wilsonians, the Wolfotizes for their work on the war. The non-aggression axiom, the laissez-faire, the que sera sera. Gotcha. Rumsfeld and Cheney are hawks, Powell is a reluctant one. Fine. But working backwards from predetermined conclusions no matter what the ideological clothing should be far more alarming than openly, terra incognita, knowing that new ones might be out there. Just a minor thought. See yas!
I have read National Review for more than 25 years and it seems to me that the urgency to publish on the web has led to many articles which have not been thought out completely. I have not understood the editor’s early optimism for post war Iraq, neither have I understood all the President Bush cheering that went on while Bush went on a spending binge. Only recently has there been any criticism of Bush’s spending habits. It seemed to me that during Nixon’s time in office they (the editors) were highly critical of Nixon, particularly during his second administration. I do not believe the old guard would have been so unrestrained in their enthusiasm for “Nation Building.”
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