Antiwar.com Blog

From Atrios, courtesy of David Sneek, David Brooks’s response to critics of his most recent garbage:

For what its worth, that neo being short for Jewish was meant as a joke. Nothing more. Most of the people who get labeled as Neocons are Jewish, so I was just sort of playing off that.
As for me accusing anybody who accuses neocons of being anti-Semitic, there are a few issues here. First, I wasn’t saying anything about people who criticize neocons’ ideas. The column wasn’t about that at all. It was about people who imagine there is a shadowy conspiracy behind Bush policy. Second, I explicitly say that only a subset of the people who talk about the shadow conspiracy find Jewishness a handy explanation for everything. I have no idea how large a subset that is, but judging from my e-mail it is out there.
So I was careful not to say that Bush or neocon critics are anti-Semitic. I was careful not to say that all conspiracy theorists are anti-Semitic.
I am still on the learning curve here, and I do realize that mixture of a crack with a serious accusation was incredibly stupid on my part. Please do pass along to readers that I’m aware of how foolish I was to write the column in the way I did. –David Brooks

Yeah, he nailed it, Tim Blair, right between your eyes.

R.J. Stove nominates Tim Blair for most obnoxious. Despite the general irrelevance of his posts, he seems mildly witty. I was actually chuckling a bit as I scrolled down the page–until I hit this post on David Brooks’ latest ruminations:

Brooks has nailed it…

David Brooks may have nailed something in his life, but never with his pen.

The fascinating economist Joseph Schumpeter, whose concept of “creative destruction” has been so abused by Michael Ledeen and various liberventionists, opposed the Second World War. Found this nugget from a Schumpeter biography via LRC blog:

Before the war’s outbreak on 1 September 1939, [Schumpeter] made clear to his friends and colleagues his belief that war should be avoided at all costs. Even if concessions to Hitler were necessary, they would be preferable to an all-out war that could destroy the European economy and, even more important, its culture. Not only did Schumpeter fear the physical destruction of cities and the loss of many lives, he also dreaded the idea that European civilization itself might receive a blow from which it could not recover. Imagining yet another threat, he felt that capitalism could not survive a war. His alarm was not based on a fear of socialism, because he believed it would result from the natural evolution of capitalist society anyway, but he did fear fascism, state-controlled capitalism, and circumscribed personal liberties. He reasoned that a war would so change Europe that fettered and state-dominated capitalism in the hands of totalitarian regimes would become permanent features of European states. And, as he would say later, even the United States might share the same fate.

Cue David Frum and Conrad Black worshipping FDR; the ever-plumping military-industrial mafia; and the spend spend spend/restrict restrict restrict GOP.

Great roundup of base-closure stories by Jeremy Sapienza. Which makes me wonder: once (if) these bases close, will the folks who get kicked off the dole remain as intensely militaristic as they are now? Will love last after the pork is gone?

Before anyone calls for my scalp, here’s a link to a non-loony Randian whose work you might enjoy: Arthur Silber, who writes:

I think that a deep understanding of Rand’s ideas, and especially of the unique methodology which she brought to her explicitly philosophic work, would lead one to see that those ideas are fundamentally opposed to the system of corporate statism which so completely dominates the United States today. It is that system which is now inextricably tied to our foreign policy in countless ways, including what appears might be a succession of foreign wars, followed by lengthy periods of occupation. I think a genuine appreciation for Rand’s insights in this area would lead one to oppose that policy in the most forceful terms, as I myself do. And yet, many self-proclaimed admirers of Rand maintain that her views support the current foreign policy of the United States. I believe this is a significant distortion of her work, and of her intellectual legacy.

But some Randians are pretty creepy. Jim Capo sends in his nomination for most obnoxious “libertarian” hawk: Leonard Peikoff and crew at the Ayn Rand Institute. Not that they’re being untrue to Rand’s vision or anything. Check out her own thoughts on collateral damage:

Q: Assume a war of aggression was started by the Soviet Union; assume also that within the Soviet Union, there were many that opposed the aggressive work of the ruling group there. How would you handle that type of problem?

AR: This question is so blatantly wrong that I cannot understand how anyone can entertain it seriously. It assumes that an individual inside a country can be made secure from the social system under which he lives and which he accepts (because he hasn’t left the country). It is the idea that others must surrender to aggression—in other words, be goddamned pacifists, who won’t fight, even when attacked, because they might kill innocent people.

In Soviet Russia, there aren’t very many innocent ones—and they’re mainly in concentration camps.

If you could have a life independent of the system, so that you wouldn’t be drawn into an unjust war, you would not need to be concerned about politics. But we should care about having the right social system, because our lives are dependent on it—because a political system, good or bad, is established in our name, and we bear the responsibility for it. [emphasis mine]

I think Osama bin Laden would agree. For more on the Divine Miss Ayn, see our own Jeremy Sapienza’s “Kill an Arab for Ayn.”