New at The American Conservative
Two articles from The American Conservative’s December 2010 issue can now be read online.
Extraordinary Joe | Kevin Lynch
Kevin Lynch remembers his friend and colleague Joseph Sobran.
His timing was exquisite. He would, at the perfectly appropriate moment, offer the perfectly apt quote to illuminate the moral or political point under discussion. I preceded Joe by three years at NR, and editorial sessions in the pre-Sobran days were far from somber affairs, especially when Bill Buckley was presiding. But with Joe on board they frequently became hilarious. He would come up with a quip or quote that would cause the room to erupt, and Buckley’s laughter was invariably the heartiest. No one could have made a smoother transition to life at the magazine.
Glenn Beck’s Myths | Paul Gottfried
Glenn Beck spends many hours on radio and television informing his listeners about the troubling historical roots of the modern progressive movement. But as Paul Gottfried illustrates, Beck often fails to mention cogent characteristics and divisions that do not align with the progressive straw-man.
In foreign policy there was an unbridgeable divide in the Progressive camp between liberal internationalists and isolationists. Most of the opposition that FDR encountered to Lend-Lease and other policies leading to America’s entry into World War II came from his fellow Progressives in both parties. Antiwar Republicans in 1917 and again in 1939-1941 included Progressives such as La Follette, Borah, and FDR’s neighbor in upstate New York, Hamilton Fish. Hiram Johnson not only opposed American entry into both European wars but had the distinction of being the only U.S. Senator to vote against America’s joining the League of Nations and the United Nations.
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