Posted on 01/22/2020 11:45:57 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Christopher Caldwell is not a household name. But for the relatively small set of people who care deeply about political writing, he is a towering figure. His prose — full of wit and irony, enlivened by an eye for paradox and the telling detail, informed by a polyglot and polymathic erudition — is second to none in the world of conservative journalism and exceeds nine-tenths of what is published in the press at large. In a review of Caldwell’s previous book, 2008’s immigration-skeptic Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, the Marxist historian Perry Anderson, himself one of the most learned individuals on the planet, praised Caldwell’s “cultural range” as “perhaps without equal” among American journalists and noted, respectfully, that his “columns in the Financial Times make much liberal opinion look the dreary mainstream pabulum it too often is.”
Although long affiliated with the neoconservative Weekly Standard, Caldwell has always been more of an old-school, even Old World type of conservative. The cast of his mind is literary and historical, not ideological, and his principal concern is with cultural preservation and continuity. Perhaps for this reason, Caldwell has, over the past several years, emerged as America’s premier highbrow defender of transatlantic populism. In his recent essays for the Claremont Review of Books, City Journal, and even the New Republic, he has relentlessly attacked the “globalist” consensus around free trade and immigration while writing sympathetically — some would say too sympathetically — about some of globalism’s most disreputable opponents: Viktor Orbán, Eric Zemmour, Rodrigo Duterte, et al. In Caldwell’s writing, the conflict between globalism and populism is staged as a clash of civilizations: on one side is a high-handed elite, set on transforming the West into a sort of multicultural shopping mall . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at nymag.com ...
Good post!
I think social media is causing the ideological polarization. When you have electronic monitoring of every keystroke, there are those who are using that information to manipulate those who they have identified as open to their political indoctrination. These operatives are working social media for their political objectives.
ping
That’s certainly not the impression I got from watching an interview.
His thesis appeared to be that the mechanisms of the act kept going and metastasized into forces well beyond anything actually in that act that are commonly now used to overwhelm and negate democracy.
He used the example of the 1980s immigration reform where the mechanisms of the CRA were used to not only negate the entire enforcement side by to make it a civil rights violation liability to enforce, leaving only the amnesty part.
I saw it too in my med school classes. One color of citizens could flunk classes repeatedly, other colors would be out.
One of my black friends in my class said “I could never go to a black doctor cuz you won’t know if they got through by their brains or their skin color.”
Because America has no core and is confused.
I learned as a salesman, you never, EVER offer a choice of three or more ... ONLY TWO and the one you want to sell is a push.
In modern American society there are more choices than Carter has Little Liver pills from the moment we become cognizant, and the input is a machine gun of vignettes for the rest of our primary learning years.
By the time we are 15 or 16, instead of having dreams of marriage or a career, we're confused about who and what we ARE.
We have been in fact, turned INTO the more than three offer rather than having decided on a path for life.
Maybe the good old days weren't that good considering agriculture, out houses and limited refrigeration, but we knew who we were and why, and we had a spiritual underpinning that commanded a Godly morality almost universally accepted in the USA.
More books, no matter how well understood in our modern world only add to the confusion of trying to untangle ourselves from the psychobabble "they" have instilled within us.
Shut down the public schools and demand every female "teacher" become the mama of at least three kids before the age of thirty .... THEN they can enter a classroom.
That was my take on it as well.
bkmk
Bkmrk.
When the government can harm one citizen to the benefit of another it’s all pretty much a con game after that.
“I learned as a salesman, you never, EVER offer a choice of three or more ... ONLY TWO and the one you want to sell is a push....By the time we are 15 or 16, instead of having dreams of marriage or a career, we’re confused about who and what we ARE.”
Interesting observation. It’s easier to choose/sell when one is “limited” to an “either/or” selection. Until the customer tells you they want/need something different. If you have the thing they want/need, then the first two choices disappear.
Perhaps the breakdown of the family, divorce and out of wedlock births, have contributed to this loss of focus on career/marriage choice for obvious reasons. Also, the shift away from actively “going to church”. The meaning of life, why we are here, how we got here, our place in it, are no longer significant relevant questions to ponder so that we know the key choices we have to make at the different points of our lives. Society “offers” seemingly infinite other choices of values and purpose via the ubiquitous technological revolution of information (now overload) that began with the printing press, but at a much slower rate. The “filter” of the family and a faith in practice to steer through it all is less present or where it is present, it is in constant competition with society for the young people’s attention, every minute of the day.
“Notably, although inadequately credited, race relations in America have never been better between ordinary Americans and are better here than anywhere else in the world.”
Your factual quote deserves repeating, and repeating.
“Notably, although inadequately credited, race relations in America have never been better between ordinary Americans and are better here than anywhere else in the world.”
You are going to need to think that through a bit more.
What makes this country great is the, “leveling” of opportunity. Capitalism rewards the achievers and they lift up the unfortunate by their work. The socialists want the ladder of success to rest on the ground rather than on an incline.
The army of Free Republic Free Traitors™ please take note.
Re: Tolerating the intolerable
Hm?....Like pumping children with sex hormones? Crushing the skulls of fully formed babies seconds before their first breath?
It is really quite simple. I overheard a San Francisco democRAT stated stating, about the importance of elections, ‘if we don’t win, we don’t eat.’ The idea of hard work and saving money is anathema to these creepozoids.
Go to church and listen to a man trying to get you think like God.
You are, indeed correct, in your reply.
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