National Review Enters the Swamps
The good news is that there at least one person in the National Review universe who understands the whole “sharia threat to America’s judical system” is the most crazy thing for Americans to be worried about since, well– I can’t even easily come up with an analogy from real life, since there really was at least somewhat of problem of domestic communism during the McCarthy era. The threat of subordinating America to the Pope, through the machinations of Irish immigrants? Suffice to say that even hard core neocon hawks, if they know anything about Islam, find the sharia thing pretty fanciful.
The bad news is that this has become a full-fledged controversy at NRO, and judging by the comments and the other contributors, many or most National Reviewers are ready to follow the very bigoted David Yerushalmi off into the fever swamps. Amusing to contemplate what Bill Buckley would have thought of this. Brookhiser?
This is worth watching as an indicator about NR and the broader American Right. When the magazine has been most egregiously wrong, as it was in plumbing for the Iraq war, one could try to excuse it by pointing to its deference to a Republican president. But the sharia campaign was dropped even by Newt Gingrich before his presidential bid began in earnest.
Comments