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For Goodness' Sake!

Clark points out a rather odd post from Robert Stacy McCain concerning, of all things, Ross’ new comments policy, which must be the most talked-about comments policy post in the history of the world.  Having scrolled through Ross’ comments section more than a few times, which is routinely filled with obtuse, obnoxious attacks on him […]

Clark points out a rather odd post from Robert Stacy McCain concerning, of all things, Ross’ new comments policy, which must be the most talked-about comments policy post in the history of the world.  Having scrolled through Ross’ comments section more than a few times, which is routinely filled with obtuse, obnoxious attacks on him personally without regard to the merit of his argument, I am amazed that it took him this long to implement a more draconian comments regime.  Apparently, the proximate cause of this new policy is that he has acknowledged that Steve Sailer, TAC‘s film critic and a regular contributor, was the source of “a passage about the UK’s crime and illegitimacy rates, which appears on page 161 of GNP, draws on data points that I first encountered in an April 2005 column he wrote about the British working class.”  This is nothing more than an intellectually and academically honest recognition of someone else’s work that had been left out of his book’s citations by mistake, but it caused a furore because Ross acknowledged that Steve Sailer may, in fact, be worth reading.  In some quarters, this is the equivalent of cannibalism, or perhaps worse, since they might grant that cannibalism offers some nutrition.  Those of us who have known for many years that Steve Sailer is insightful and smart find the entire thing absurd beyond description, but it has now led to R.S. McCain offering the following guidelines to Ross:

  • 1. Stay to the right of the Left. Don’t try to get into a one-upmanship situation where you’re trying to outdo them in multicultural enthusiasm. You can’t win that fight.
  • 2. Avoid arguments with Paleos. Those guys play for keeps and (as Joan Jett said) they don’t give a damn about their bad reputations.
  • 3. Keep your friends close, and your Neocons closer. This is the flip-side of my advice about the Paleos. Whatever your quarrels with the Neos, avoid making any outright enemies, or next thing you know, you’re an “Unpatriotic Conservative” and NRO will dump you like yesterday’s garbage.

This last point seems the most remarkable, since it plainly acknowledges the culture of intimidation and ostracism that neoconservatives promote as if it were simply a fact of life, rather than a despicable tactic to be repudiated by reasonable people.  The essence of this point seems to be: live in deathly fear of your “friends,” who will try to destroy you the moment that you utter a sentence that they do not like.  Some friends!  The second point is bizarre, since Ross and I have had many arguments over the years and yet somehow Ross has survived and even flourished.  Evidently, I do not “play for keeps.”  The first point is redundant, since there was never any danger of Ross drifting to the left of the Left.

McCain then goes on to complain about the “Buddhist economics” of Crunchy Cons, which doesn’t even begin to make sense as a label.  Aside from the small problem that there is no such thing as “Buddhist economics” (since Buddhists would not be bothered to concern themselves with economics), this line makes complete sense:

When it comes to economics, Mises and Hayek are right and Buddhists are wrong.

Er…okay.  Never mind that Crunchy Cons has essentially nothing to do with Buddhism or Buddhist anything.  If we ever do encounter a Buddhist economist, we will be sure to tell him that he is wrong.  Let us just hope that there are not Buddhist Hayekians, or else this entire nonsensical paradigm might fall apart. 

P.S.  As part of the general Southern conspiracy against R.S. McCain, I guess I must be aligned with Clark, since I did my undergraduate work at an ODAC school.  My college has been called the “Princeton of the South,” so I suppose that proves that we Ivy (and Kudzu) Leaguers stick together.

P.P.S.  Proving that he is not crazy, McCain ends his post with these words in an update:

Harvard, New York Times, PBS, AFL-CIO, al Qaeda — part of my short list of institutions that qualify everyone associated with them for automatic hatred.

Okay, so Ross is supposed to be the one who has the problem?

Update: McCain responds, after a fashion.  This was the part that I found most amusing:

Dreher, Stooksbury, Douthat — what do they have in common? A contempt for the basic consevative idea that the best economic policy is to let the market take care of itself.

Actually, I’m pretty sure Clark has contempt for the idea that this is a “basic conservative idea,” but he can speak for himself.  As anyone who had even glanced at the responses to GNP from me or other “anti-market conservatives” would know, I do not regard Ross “an automatic hero” because of the proposals in the book.  The invocation of protectionism at the end of the post is the perfect conclusion to an argument that shows absolutely no engagement with anything Ross has ever said.

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