Showing posts with label The New Criterion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The New Criterion. Show all posts

Thursday, May 23, 2024

The best thing about James Piereson's review of Jacob Heilbrunn's book attacking Trump is that Heilbrunn was instrumental in elevating Trump in the first place


Here:

It is strange, then, in light of this background, for Heilbrunn to waste reams of paper attacking conservatives for supporting Donald Trump and his ideas about Russia, when he was as instrumental as anyone in promoting them. There were few conservatives in Trump’s corner at that time; indeed, most supported Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or Jeb Bush while keeping a safe distance from a candidate whom they judged to be incapable of winning a national election and whose views on foreign policy they generally rejected. Yet there was Heilbrunn, providing a platform for Trump’s speech while sitting attentively nearby as he delivered it.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Roger Kimball doesn't believe in freedom of speech anymore than anyone else

Here, in The New Criterion:

'As for the herds of “Je Suis Charlie” marchers in Paris and elsewhere, it is worth noting how very few actual “Charlies” there were. It is one thing to carry a placard. It is another to take a stand by, for example, publishing a caricature of Mohammed.'

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You see, by Roger Kimball's standard, unless I myself engage in a certain form of speech of which he approves, nay requires, I am an enemy of the West and all it stands for. It's not enough that I subscribe to the principle that one has a right to say or publish anything. Unless I actively read it and publish it myself I am not worthy. Kimball's world has no room in it for people who censor themselves out of religious and moral principle, who believe that without such principles there can be no civilization to begin with. Instead I must become a pornographer, I must become a blasphemer, I must join The Party.

Totalitarian ideology never looked so familiar.