Regarding the advice column cited by Clark, and its Corleone-esque “keep your enemies closer” language, I might suggest to the author that there’s no closer and more advantageous proximity in which to array oneself relative to your enemies than the traditional embrasser to derriere–you can’t get any closer and they won’t be able to see you back there. No need to point this out, as this is actually the only possible arrangement for this means of engagement when the power arrangement is clearly asymmetric, and no, one shouldn’t count on reciprocity from the powerful.

I would like to know where this rough and tumble paleo faction is that “plays for keeps”, presumably drumming renegades out of elite power centers like TAC (it all sounds like “Democrats have to learn to play dirty too”, which is rather like saying the Yankees, having finished out of the money for a couple of seasons, need to learn to play baseball too, like the Red Sox).

 I couldn’t help thinking of the motto of a publication that The Ambler  Kevin Grace once mentioned, the name of which escapes me at the moment (bad sign, that), that went “____ Has No Friends.” Until now I’d thought that phrase was about perfect at summing up the guiding philosophy for any individual or organization engaged in an honest pursuit of truth. Sure the advice offered Mr. Douthat is more along the lines of self-preservation, but maybe the paleo hooligans around here (I’m picturing Michael Dougherty in full biker regalia and Kara Hopkins in spiked-coiffure punk chic using a switch-blade as a letter opener–and I don’t even know what these people look like), just irresponsible enough to indulge in such unsavory pursuits as honest intellectual engagement, might appreciate it.

 But reading about the irreconcilable nature of NPR, PBS (that bowl-cut freak Ken Burns and his subversive melodramas are sapping the nation’s vital fluids as I write) et al. (fellow travellers of al Qaeda mind you; what a vast free-fire zone every inch of real estate to the left of David Brooks is), I realize that motto is only the first half of the equation. I hereby call dibs on Untethered Has No Friends and No Enemies.