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Referring to Ernest Hemingway and the poet Robinson Jeffers, DeVoto argued that while some of the coterie made a fetish of American inadequacy—businessmen, for instance, were viewed as impotent, barely able to reproduce—another branch, led by Jeffers, went so far as to describe them as inferior to animals. “It is a short step,” DeVoto asserts, “from thinking of the mob to thinking of the wolf pack, from the praise of instinct to war against reason, from art’s vision of man as contemptible to dictatorship’s vision of men as slaves.”

Of course, just because DeVoto “asserts” something hardly makes it true. Were the great dictators of the 20th century really outspoken critics of the masses? Or were they more likely to flatter the volk and the proletariat?

DeVoto deserves some credit for recognizing the genius of Mark Twain (then again, Mencken led the way on that), but from what Siegel writes, it sounds as if DeVoto believes cultural mediocrity is redeemed by violence:

“War,” DeVoto observed, “provided an appeal of judgment. The typist and the clerk had fortitude, sacrifice, fellowship; they were willing to die as an act of faith for the preservation of hope.”

DeVoto insisted on “the democratic view of life . . . that holds quite simply that the dignity of man is unalienable.” What the courage and sacrifice of World War II demonstrated was that the word bankruptcy best described not the lives of most Americans but rather the ideas of the literary culture that had so cavalierly pronounced judgment on the freedoms of modernity. It was ordinary men and women steeped in a way of life supposedly not worth saving who stepped forward to defend the freedoms on which the literary men depended.

What strikes me about a mindset like this is how it mirrors the thing it criticizes. If intellectuals scorn ordinary folks, DeVoto turns around and scorns intellectuals. Somebody has to be “bankrupt.” The idea that maybe the unpatriotic authors are right about a few things, even if they’re too sour overall about their countrymen, doesn’t emerge as a possibility. Does rejecting one folly have to mean embracing another?

I don’t know about Siegel or DeVoto, but I’d like to live in a country distinguished by something other than its clerks’ and typists’ aptitude for killing.

Las Vegas is Disneyland, only with hookers. I didn’t see any on the street, but they were advertised heavily — the roadside bins where in other cities you can pick up real-estate brochures contain catalogs of girls in Las Vegas. Lining one sidewalk on the Vegas strip was a gauntlet of (presumably) illegal immigrants in neon-green T-shirts handing out cards advertising various demimonde establishments to passersby, few of whom took any interest. The tourists from the Midwest and Japan come for the tacky hotels and the city’s other, more lucrative vice. There are even slot machines in the airport.

Hard-bitten fiscal conservative that I am, I didn’t gamble, although a friend of mine tells me you can get pretty good odds against the house — a little under 50/50 — if you know what you’re doing in craps. FreedomFest itself had some interesting programs, including an always-rousing Campaign for Liberty event with Ron Paul and the absolutely packed sessions of the Liberty editors’ conference. There was standing-room only at Liberty‘s panel on anarchism vs. limited government, which featured Mark Skousen (for minarchism) and David Friedman and Doug Casey (anarchists both, with moderator and Liberty editor Stephen Cox giving Skousen some assistance — Skousen’s intended co-panelist didn’t show). The main sessions of FreedomFest included a great debate on abolishing the Fed, with Tom Woods and Gene Epstein of Barron’s wiping the floor with the pro-Fed John Fund and Warren Coats. (Catch it on C-SPAN this weekend.) While I didn’t gamble, I did fork over some cash at the Laissez-Faire Books table for a copy of Felix Morley’s Freedom and Federalismand the Morley-edited Essays on Individuality (which includes a superb essay by John Dos Passos on individualism in English literature).

In St. Louis the following weekend I looked around my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, which is always attractive in the summer but is starting to feel claustrophobic with all the new buildings hemming in the hilltop campus. The economic collapse and decimation of the university’s endowment should put the breaks on any more of that that for a while. I got some good bargains in the campus bookstore, picking up the Transaction edition of Peter Viereck’s Metapoliticsand a copy of Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter,as well as a Michael Walzer book that reminds me how much I despise egalitarian liberals. The things Walzer sees as defects in society — like hierarchy — I consider virtues in much need of restoration.

Now I’m back in D.C. and the new TAC is out, which means I have time for blogging again.

You can also check out an electronic version of the first issue, which includes my essay on the future of the youth movement that coalesced around Ron Paul, here.

“Is Conservatism Dead?” — a response to Sam Tanenhaus’s “Conservatism Is Dead.” I briefly argue in this University Bookman symposium that a love of Disraeli does not necessarily make one a conservative and that the Cold War Right repudiated Burkean conservatism from the very beginning, when it chose not to heed the anti-anti-Communist wisdom of Viereck, Kennan, Lukacs, and Nisbet.

“Getting Reagan Right” — I was pleasantly surprised by William F. Buckley Jr.’s posthumously published Goldwater book, Flying High, which turned out to be, in part, an affectionate look at the pre-Goldwater Old Right. (Clarence Manion figures prominently.) Buckley’s The Reagan I Knew is equally surprising, seemingly influenced by the Reagan revisionism of Paul Lettow and John Patrick Diggins. I give WFB considerable credit for rethinking Reagan, rather than regurgitating the conservative movement line. (I’ll be discussing Buckley at ISI’s “God and Man at CPAC” panel this Saturday, by the way.)

And, going back to late ’08, “McGovern Beats Nixon,” my argument for how the reaction against George McGovern created a new, less conservative, more authoritarian Right.

Here’s a teaser vid YAL put together:

We’re going to have a launch party for the magazine on Friday, Feb. 27 (during CPAC), 9 pm at the Asylum Bar (2471 18th St NW, Washington D.C.). More details about that on Facebook.

Naturally, I’m keeping my eyes out for young talent to write for the YAR — we’ll produce two issues per semester out of the gate, and plans for the second issue are already being laid. Contact me if you’re a student or young-ish person interested in writing. One of the exciting things about YAR is the opportunity to feature the work of students and other not-yet-professionals alongside veteran conservative and libertarian thinkers.

There are two ways to get YAR, by the way: a four-issue subscription is complimentary with a donation of $50 or more to Young Americans for Liberty, or if you’re under 39, join YAL and a a subscription is included in your membership dues.

At some point I’ll polish and expand my YPU remarks for publication. In the meantime, my piece on Sen. Jim Reed of Missouri, Mencken’s favorite politician and a man Oswald Garrison Villard once likened to Andrew Jackson (in a good way), appears in the current issue of the University Bookman, which is now on-line. This is the regionalism special issue of the Bookman guest-edited by Bill Kauffman, and my article is but the least of the treats that await therein. Other essays come from Jeremy Beer, Gerald Russello, Jason Peters, Katherine Dalton, Caleb Stegall, Jesse Walker, and more. Plus Russell Kirk on Donald Davidson.

Also last week, Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) received Ron Paul’s official blessing. YAL is the successor to Students for Ron Paul, led by my friend Jeff Frazee. I’m lending a helping hand to YAL’s forthcoming student journal. More on that later. For now, here’s my recent Taki’s Magazine piece on why the Right needs a principled youth movement.

Virginia Postrel on her concept:

Postrel: I always saw reason and myself as engaged in a mainstream intellectual and journalistic activity done by mainstream standards, but with an unusual point of view. I don’t see what I do or what reason did when I edited it as being alternative. I wanted it to be focused on policy debate, I wanted a Washington office, I wanted it to be much more prominent a place for people who participated in the public policy debate. I wanted people to leave reason and go to work in other media organizations; I wanted to have an internship program that would train people so they would be able to pursue media jobs.

Two of the magazine’s founders* on theirs:

Machan: Essentially we embarked on a Commentary-like magazine that turned out to be more of a Wired-like magazine. I now call it the hip-hop magazine of libertarianism. It has an emphasis on a certain kind of light-hearted cleverness that didn’t use to be there. I admit it may very well have been market-driven. It’s one thing to say I am displeased, another to say it shouldn’t have gone that way.

Klausner: reason has evolved. It has gotten far greater stature and impact and quality. But what we have shed that makes me a little uneasy is that the magazine is less movement-oriented. We covered the Harry Browne [Libertarian Party presidential] candidacy [in 1996]. The nonlibertarian press covered Harry Browne with far more sympathetic and supportive journalism than we did. I think treating the L.P. as if it were any other party is not fair to this, not embryonic, but undercapitalized party. I think as an ideological magazine we should know who our friends are and who our enemies are and not use the same standard. We should be respectful of people on our side of the debate. We can accentuate the positive.

Machan: The only regret I have is I was eventually cast aside by the Nick Gillespie crowd completely, so they didn’t even review any books of mine, ran no letters to the editor. I thought some personnel became what I refer to as the “loft crowd”—the people who like loft parties and always dressed Hollywood-like. There was a big change in style.

I have to say, none of the Reason people I know dress “Hollywood-like,” unless you interpret Nick Gillespie’s trademark leather jacket that way.

*I should say, as Doherty’s piece makes clear, founders of Reason Enterprises, which took on responsibility for the zine-like Reason from founder-founder Lanny Friedlander.