PLEASE, SIR, MAY WE HAVE LESS?

Marxists who decry history devouring its children tend to forget how feeble its powers of digestion can be. After a decade of dining on freshly mugged Liberals, and gristly Trotskyites,  it disgorged the hairball of Neoconservatism into the pages of  The Weekly Standard.

Thence Bill Kristol's column has trickled down to make its The New York Times debut, with the historic assurance :
'We don't want to increase the scope of the nanny state'
This is cold comfort for  Republicans, but the real value of neocons to the Times lies in their capacity to alienate palaeoliberals. The newspaper's motive in putting his column front and center is as electoral as Time Magazine's was in dropping it. Republicans need no reminding of the recent authorship of their woes, but what better way to motivate Democrats to get behind the party, and shove the neocons over the transom, than to limelight Kristol dishing up gems like this weeks :

" December 2007 saw the second-lowest number of U.S. troops killed in action since March 2003"

Sharp rhetorical practice that--besides witnessing the Marines' and Army's first and fiercest attack on the Republican Guard, March 2003 saw Kristol declare:

" We'll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction and when we liberate the people of Iraq."

23 days after our troops set foot in Baghdad he opined: "The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively."  Five years later, he fears an administration yet unelected may “snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory .”

.It remains to be seen if his  science advisers  from The Discovery Institute will tag along, or his Center For Ethics And Public Policy cohort will arrive to reinforce the Times own inimitably communitarian  Ethicist. Conservatives once entertained hopes of Kristol's reformation in Dan Quayle's  service, but Hail To The Vice-Presidential Chief Of Staff  has never been much of an anthem of change.  He was a social democrat when first I met him thirty years ago, and such he remains. I wish him joy of his journalistic homecoming.

Comments

[Wondering Aloud]

I'm sorry I can't agreee here, you're assuming that working for the New York Times is a promotion. I always thought that was what happened to bad people when they died.

[jens]

Ah...This Modern World.

A breath of fresh air blown in the direction of ignorant blowhards everywhere.

Thanks for the laugh at William Kristol's expense.