"the intellectual honesty of his frequent sparring partner, Andrew Sullivan."

Wow, what a slam. :-E

The pitch of an A.J.P. Taylor? Fuck pitch, does he have the brains of a Taylor?

Taylor was a smart guy, who cared fuck-all for his pitch?

Cheers,

Alan Tomlinson

Not much "intellectual honesty" in the claim that liberals support eugenics, I think.

I was reading Atlantic fairly regularly for a bit, and thought Douthat was a reasonable more or less ok human being for a conservative, thoughtful, intellectual. . .

and then all of a sudden the hidden Limbaugh ripped through the human facade and he went on the most intemperate, uncivil, intolerant, anti-intellectual screed against Douglas Kmiec in a Slate roundtable. it was totally inappropriate (to the host, if no one else), totally swallowed the broader topic, and was everything a reasonable commenter would complain about in terms of lowering the level of discourse.

i've not been able to view Douthat quite the same since.

I thought that the most recent issue of the Atlantic was a hair too transparently conservative -- one article on how our incredibly expensive health care system maybe-perhaps saved Virginia Postrel's life (compared to New Zealand, where they spend about 2/3 LESS per capita, 8.4% of GDP instead of 15.4% of GDP, and have 2 years GREATER life expectancy -- god help, what good is data, when I have this Shiny Personal Anecdote!) -- and another article that was very excited about future fighter jets.

So, sure, you can call him an "intellectual", if you can include the numerically illiterate in that category. How can you fail to count the dollars, count the dead bodies, count the years lost to illness and early death? Our health care statistics are a two-by-four whacked across the face, and Douthat and the Atlantic are publishing cute articles about someone's hypothetical near-death experience at the hands of socialized medicine. Feh.

Why does the Times need to replace one conservatives with another? There are too many as it is.

I haven't quite gotten over the time he insisted that liberals support "eugenics" -- but I respect Douthat as a conservative who cares about intellectual honesty.

It isn't intellectually honest to insist that liberals support eugenics.

I recognize that Douthat is probably the closest one could come to finding a conservative commentator who cares about intellectual honesty, but that doesn't make him intellectually honest any more than stipulating that, say, Matthew R Marler is more intellectually honest than Mike K absolves Marler of his constant bad faith.

Except, that over years of reading the Atlantic, I find that Douthat has written some remarkably stupid things.

I have a feeling, one I've had for a very long time, that being "conservative" in this country makes you stupid, almost by definition, if not by pathology. Douthat almost never writes anything worth reading, by any thinking person anyway. A 20-something conservative intellectual? Please. Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break. That guy is a competent writer at best, a pathetic, deluded, wet-behind-the-ears right-wing milquetoast at worst. On some basic level, he seems to understand almost nothing, about anything.

He's just a slightly more civilized Kristol...and, no, I do not take Douthat seriously. No-one with a brain should

ptah.

If he cares about intellectual honesty then he wouldn't have said liberals support eugenics.

LL says: A 20-something conservative intellectual? Please. Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break.

The problem isn't his age. Liberal twentysomethings like Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein would improve the quality of practically any op-ed page in the country. And conservatism, being far less intellectually complex than liberalism at this point in time, can surely be mastered by a twentysomething.

The problem is strictly the conservatism, like you say: being "conservative" in this country makes you stupid, almost by definition.

If their tooth-and-nail defense of GWB until the moment he left office, followed immediately by their efforts to forget him as quickly as possible, don't reveal the intellectual bankruptcy of conservatism all by itself, I don't know what it would take.

Apparently Douthat is somewhat an exception to that, and can make some arguments worth the effort of rebutting. But that's where conservatism as a movement is, and to the extent that Douthat differs, he's an outlier. That doesn't mean he'll be a bad columnist - it just means he won't represent conservatism per se.

"Ross is late-twenties-year-old public intellectual with the sensibility of a 60-year eminence grise, the range of a Hitchens, the pitch of a conservative AJP Taylor, the conscience of a Neibuhr and the intellectual honesty of his frequent sparring partner, Andrew Sullivan."

Okay, so his voice has just finished changing but he's approaching senility (I'm getting there myself), he has "the range" of a Christopher Hitchens, presumably in hurling a shot glass across a bar, "the pitch" of AJP Taylor -- maybe Taylor once dueled with Hitchens -- the "conscience of a Niebuhr," who, admittedly a complex character, drilled volunteers as a Communist and advocated converting Jews to Christianity, and the "intellectual honesty" of Andrew Sullivan, the one man Emily's List -- he doesn't care who thinks what, as long as they support gay lib.

Thanks for the laugh of the day. Another NYT columnist to skip. Too bad Ambinder couldn't work in a comparison to Maureen Dowd.

Thanks for the laugh of the day. Another NYT columnist to skip. Too bad Ambinder couldn't work in a comparison to Maureen Dowd.

Hah! Thank you for the laugh.

Ross is smart enough but everything he says and writes is colored by his obsession with abortion. Seriously, his public spat with Kmiec was hysterical and ugly and related directly to his sense of panic, if you can be morally panicked, over the fact that abortion is still legal and George W. Bush is gone.

You know when that girl and her friends killed their parents? The thing Ross found most horrifying was that they might be in a bisexual relationship.

MNPundit: You have the wrong conservative pundit whose initials are R.D. . . that would be Rod Dreher, not Ross Douthat

I'd like to suggest that all of you read Roy Edroso's blog column in the Village Voice if you want to get the REAL lowdown on the hacktacular Mr. Douthat.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/03/ross_douthat_new_times_rightwing_columnist.php

He's not my cup of tea -- I haven't quite gotten over the time he insisted that liberals support "eugenics" -- but I respect Douthat as a conservative who cares about intellectual honesty.

In your linked post, Steve, you state, "...he and his fellow conservatives are using the word "eugenics" because they also know perfectly well that it's (quite rightly) associated with racism, pseudo-science, and Adolf Hitler."

Out of curiosity, what would Douthat have to write for you to consider him "intellectually dishonest?"

It's understandable that MNPundit got confused. Douthat is also pretty obsessed with sexual mores and behavior.

What the FUCK is there to respect about Douthat? He's crazier than the rest in some ways, saner in other ways, not as bone stupid as Dr. Kristol (PhD, Harvard) and less horrible than Rush Limbaugh. This is a very low bar.

He got his start whining because Harvard let him sluff his way through college without working much. Society is to blame!! Other Harvard students worked hard at school, but of course, they weren't headed for wingnut welfare.

This isn't really about Douthat any more, it's about Benen. What did he say something that dumb? I can't imagine a good reason.

Never heard of him. Must be the kind of conservative liberals read.

Is he Jewish? That would be the kind of conservative the New York Times would go for to pander to the locals--a staunch Israel man. His Widipedia entry says he converted to Pentacostal, then Catholic, but it doesn't say what from.

"being conservative in this country makes you stupid, almost by definition."

And there, in one sentence, is all we really need to know about the liberal movement.

"Must be the kind of conservative liberals read."

Luther's intellectual nuance shows from the start...

"Is he Jewish? That would be the kind of conservative the New York Times would go for to pander to the locals--a staunch Israel man."

Ah, and an anti-Semite to boot. Sounds like he's the kind of conservative *you'd* read...

I'm not sure what bothers me more: that the NYT hired him or that he's in his late-twenties.

I started skimming his blog posts at Atlantic for awhile, went from skimming to skipping pretty quickly.

He can't be accused of having a low opinion of himself.

Chief failing: he seems to have an unquestioning belief that the way to elevate your thinking is to stand on a soapbox. Writing for the Times is only going to make this worse, probably.

Wait a minute:

Ross is late-twenties-year-old public intellectual with the sensibility of a 60-year eminence grise, the range of a Hitchens, the pitch of a conservative AJP Taylor, the conscience of a Neibuhr and the intellectual honesty of his frequent sparring partner, Andrew Sullivan.

Hahaha. AJP Taylor has crapped better things than Ross Douthat writes.

The intellectual honesty of Andrew "Bell Curve" Sullivan. I'd say that's setting the bar pretty f**king low, don't you?

The point, of course, is that Kristol has never been a serious, respected conservative intellectual. Douthat, however, is.

Jeez. The bar's on the freaking ground. Better than Bill Kristol. There's something nobody wants on their epitaph. There are only about 6 Billion people on this planet that are better than Bill Kristol. And by rights, a good half of those are probably conservative.

If the paper is going to go with a creative, conservative thinker -- someone who'll do more than just spout RNC-crafted, neo-con approved talking points -- Douthat is probably the single strongest choice the paper could have made.

He's not my cup of tea -- I haven't quite gotten over the time he insisted that liberals support "eugenics" -- but I respect Douthat a

Wait a minute. We've gone in one paragraph from saying he won't spout RNC-crafted neocon approved talking points to, gee, an example of an RNC-crafted, neocon approved talking point.

Congratulations, Steve. Another six months on this blog and you'll be about as mealy-mouthed, milquetoast, and useless as Kevin Drum was.

I still enjoy The Atlantic, but to be honest, I don't read anything by Douche Hat or Steyn. Mebbe that makes me intolerant, but I prefer the term "discriminating, but in a GOOD way".

Ah, for the days that being a public intellectual required being an intellectual.

"Douthat is probably the single strongest choice the paper could have made."

No.

This just illustrates the pathetic state of current conservative opinion writing. Douthat is probably better than most, but here's the best you can say about him: he's occasionally good, more often OK, and sometimes horrifyingly clueless. (And the eugenics bit was unforgivable.) Nowhere near as bad as Kristol, but still not NYTimes material unless you are grading on a steep curve.

There are a few truly good conservative options out there. Daniel Larison would have been my choice. I often don't agree with his conclusions but he's reliably fact-based, his opinions are well argued and interesting, and he's a good writer. Plus the NYTimes folks could still have been giddy over hiring a youngster.

Roy Edroso at The Village Voice isn't quite as sure as you that Ross is better than Bill. He gives a little taste of what he think is Ross' sillier stuff, but says that his best work, silly-wise, at The American Scene has been scrubbed. Well ladies and gentleman, I give The American Scene's archives via The Way Back Machine.

I have no time myself to dig. However, I do encourage anyone so inclined to take a look.

Does anyone else just find the culture war boring now? I have no interest at all in reading a pro-life perspective right now.

I think the NY Times got this wrong, not on the merits but on the focus. I'd be very interested to read a thoughtful conservative take on our economic and financial challenges. I'd be interested to read how a conservative would approach the mess neoconservative foreign policy has left us. I don't know that Ross Douthat has much original thought on those issues.

The culture war of abortion is just beside the point right now, and it's likely to stay that way for a while. I quit reading Douthat's blog because it's irrelevant to me.

I know very little about Douthat; I've seen his name before, but I know very little about his politics or writing history.

I'll say this, though, Mr. Benen. I'm wondering why you wrote this article without actually linking to anything good Douthat ever wrote. You linked to Ambinder kissing his ass, and you linked to Mr. Drum's old article about Douthat's ridiculous "eugenics" smear. But why not include any examples of *good* work that would justify giving Douthat column space at the NYT?

The only reasons I can think of are: you didn't bother looking; or you couldn't find any. Either way, not the most persuasive case.

An archetypal Washington Monthly post: faint praise followed by the baying of dullards. Comments ranging from the innumerate (confounding correlation and causality in health care's effect on life expectancy) to the genuinely retarded ("conservatism is sooooo much less sophisticated than liberalism").

So much for the concept of "intellectual honesty" on the left.

At 29 he was an editor at "the Atlantic" and is now off to columnist position at the NY times?

He has certainly proved one thing: he's good at marketing himself. There are thousands of better columnists out there, but like usual we must have a conservative to replace a conservtive. When is the Post going to put some more liberals on the staff, or how about the moonie times? When are they going to option Barbara Ehrenrich?

I'm not the previous luther in this post, by the way.

I haven't quite gotten over the time he insisted that liberals support "eugenics" -- but I respect Douthat as a conservative who cares about intellectual honesty.

Can you be "intellectually honest" if you are sometimes wrong?

Conservatives frequently appear to be anti-intellectual because they believe that government can't solve problems as well as citizens themselves will be able to. Liberals want to have a really stimulating intellectual debate about what government will do to boost the economy, but conservatives think that most such boosting will be done in unpredictable ways by entrepreneurs. Even to point out that the framers of the Constitution wanted to limit the scope and power of the federal government strikes liberals as "anti-intellectual".

Liberals do not support "eugenics". Liberals sometimes support a woman's absolute right to choose whether to have an abortion. Women choose to abort for many reasons, but some (millions annually) choose to abort because the fetus is a girl, because the fetus has trisomy 21, or has spina bifida, or will evidently be too tall (if the mother has dwarfism) or too short (if the mother has dwarfism), or Tay-Sacks disease. They are literally choosing what they think will be the "good genes". This is not being called "eugenics" in order to avoid the association with past state-sponsored or society-supported (e.g. Margaret Sanger's support of aborting probably unintelligent children) eugenics. Sarah Palin got some criticism for not aborting a fetus with trisomy 21 -- from critics who do not think of themselves as supporting "eugenics". But if women are free to abort their children based on "bad genes", and if women do in fact so choose, what word would you use to describe the practice? Would you simply avoid discussing the selection of "good genes" because it is a private matter? Without intending to, support of the right to abortions has created, with genetic testing, the largest wave of "eugenics" in human history. I don't oppose women's rights to choose abortions, but the wholesale slaughter of female fetuses in India and China is, if not gruesome, at least contrary to what women's rights advocates usually support.

"being conservative in this country makes you stupid, almost by definition."

And there, in one sentence, is all we really need to know about the liberal movement.
Posted by: RH Potfry on March 11, 2009 at 7:54 PM | PERMALINK

That liberals think conservatives are stupid? That's really all you need to know? Are you at all interested in why we think that way?

Or is it inherently impossible for conservative thought to be thought of as stupid, coming off the most disastrous decade of conservative rule the country has ever seen?

I haven't quite gotten over the time he insisted that liberals support "eugenics" -- but I respect Douthat as a conservative who cares about intellectual honesty.
Can you be "intellectually honest" if you are sometimes wrong?

Yes.

Do you think Douthat sincerely believes that liberals support eugenics? Or, perhaps, he was being dishonest when he made that argument?

Is it not the defining characteristic of "intellectual dishonesty" to make arguments one knows to be factually false?

Or do you think that Douthat literally believes in his heart that liberals support "eugenics"? It seems to me that if this is his belief, he's really a very stupid man, as his belief system is completely divorced from reality.

How do you know when a liberal is gunning for the "serious" crowd? They bestow the flavor of the month conservative with the title "serious." All of which, in this day and age, is a pretty damn good indication that neither can possibly be anywhere's near close to serious. This whole pundit world and it's belief that prestigious positions are based on evaluations of logic and skill is all the stuff of a bizzaro world cloudcuckooland. The average blog commenter, let alone blogger, would provide more intellectual heft to the NYT. Douthat links you to Nazis yet you grant him conviviality. That ain't civil, that's certifiable.

Congrats, Steve.

Douthat is an ass-hat.

They are literally choosing what they think will be the "good genes"

No, they are not. Eugenics is the promotion of certain select traits to improve future generations and the forced suppression of what are considered to be undesirable traits.

The situations you cite are abortions to mitigate or avoid terrible physical suffering on the part of a future human being, who in many cases will not be able to experience a normal length or quality of life, much less reproduce, and in some cases will live lives of terrible agony and restriction.

As for the separate issue, the cultural idiosyncrasies and population realities in certain (and usually remote) parts of China that have led to sex-selective abortions isn't eugenics either any more than was the practice of exposure or infanticide in earlier societies.

And liberals do not support this anyway.

Further, the absolute right to choose that you cite isn't supported to the same extent by all "liberals," but to the extent that it is, the issue is predicated upon a human being having control over their own body rather than ceding that control to the state. It is for the sake of that inalienable right that liberals support the right to abortion, and not because of any concern for eugenics, which liberal values strenuously oppose.

To go even further, many liberal-minded individuals actually choose to give birth and care for children whom they knew to have certain genetic defects when they were at the fetal stage.

This is not being called "eugenics" in order to avoid the association with past state-sponsored or society-supported

It's not being called eugenics because it is not even remotely anything like state-sponsored eugenics, which focused on reducing certain races, homosexuals, and other alleged societal undesirables.

That you would make a long-winded argument to try and casually conflate two issues, one which involves a heart-wrenching decision to reduce the potential suffering of an organism and the other a monstrous historical evil borne of bigotry and racism just shows what an outrageous jackass you're willing to be in the service of both your own ego and repulsive political agenda.

As elucidated by Orwell, your desperation and dishonesty have caused you to use doublespeak to take a thing and try and make it mean its opposite.

He's probably a likeable and decent guy. But conscience of a Neibuhr? Really? Ambinder is comparing Ross Douche Hat to a man who deeply influenced Dr. King's theology?

Yeah, Right.

If he's the best conservatism has to offer, they really are in trouble.

I wish devoutly it would have been Larison instead, as I would say he was the best possible choice for a conservative voice much more unequivocally than I could anybody else. But as these things go, Douthat's not a bad choice.

Ambinder's lovesong was comically over the top, though, but what did people expect? It's Marc freakin' Ambinder, for crying out loud.

Time to short the NYT stock.

Just as hiring of Gartner and, later, his replacement by Jonah Lucianne coincided with the beginning of the downfall of the LATimes, both in terms of quality and its financial viability, Kristol and now this twenty something heir herald the flushing of the New York Times down the shithole where once great newspapers go down to die.

Replacing one Harvard blowhard with another? That's pretty daring. Way to push the envelope Gray Lady.

Hey "You Fools Think It Matters".

I'm not confusing correlation and causality; I'm noticing a whopping correlation. It's (ahem) not just New Zealand where universal health care kicks our ass, both on costs and outcomes -- it's about 20 other "modern countries". ONE country is "interesting"; 20 countries is "oh shit". Of course, for Douthat and that Atlantic, one PERSON's story was more compelling, than worse outcomes for hundreds of millions.

And one other thing, mister cutesie-conservative-shill: I thought you guys liked to save money. Universal care would save us a truckload of money, if only we could do it as well as the least-efficient country out there (that would be Switzerland -- at Spanish levels of efficiency, our current spending would stretch to cover everyone in the Western Hemisphere). The money we spend now, comes from the government already (often routed through convoluted semi-privatized paths, thanks heaps, GWB) or from businesses covering their employees. With insurance not linked to your employer, people would be freer to change jobs (had two kids born under COBRA, that sucks) which would increase the efficiency of our economy. Lack of health care is a major impediment to starting your own business; if you have a family to take care of, that's a huge startup cost, or just plain non-starter (yes, I worked in a tiny startup, too, couldn't do it till my wife had a job with benefits). And lack of health insurance is a big cause of bankruptcy -- but fortunately, people going bankrupt and failing to make their mortgage payments, is not a serious problem for us, right?

The Atlantic could have written that story, they could have done a fuller version of the recent TR Reed television story on universal health care in other countries (he covered maybe four, among them Japan and Germany). And it might not be universal health care, indeed -- in which case, what the heck is it that 20 other countries are getting right? Is it less driving, more walking? Did they all ban transfats? Do they tax sugar differently? Maybe it's all about income dispersion (I can see how conservatives would not want THAT to become an issue :-). This is important stuff -- but not, to Douthat and the rest of the Atlantic, as important as taking a slam at universal health care. That Postrel article was designed to make people nervous about universal care, and not to think about how much better it actually works.

And to continue my rant.

The main difference is that there is an observable, huge problem out there, and conservatives DO NOT CARE, and they definitely DO NOT LIKE SOLUTIONS. The huge problem is that in this country, life expectancy is years below what is attained in other similar countries, and the years that we are alive, we are sicker. Above and beyond that, our health care system is a huge economic drag on the country (hundreds of billions of dollars wasted, year after year after year). Can you name me one conservative who has raised this as an issue? That is why I find "conservative principles" to be particularly bogus. One person's anti-universal-care anecdote, is more deserving of space in a magazine, than even a mention of this huge problem.

Can you be "intellectually honest" if you are sometimes wrong?

We know from your postings here, Marler, that you can't be intellectually honest and are always wrong.

Douthat differs from most conservative commentators in at least attempting to engage his opponents' arguments on an intellectual, rather than purely emotional and rhetorical, level. To that extent, he does indeed elevate the conversation, even when he oversteps.

He says liberals support eugenics, and you salute his intellectual honesty?

The national exposure klieglights will disintergrate this two bit hack like a tissue in a bonfire.

And I think he has just enough intelligence in his coward's heart to be sweating out the fact that he's bitten off more than he can chew.

The silver lining is the thought of him sweating and twitching alone in the dark as each deadline looms.

(Only 29! Too bad Douthat was too old to serve on 9/12/01, thats when my best friend enlisted at 30, died at 34 on his second trip. Thank god we have 'conservative' voices like Douthat alive and well to tell the rest of us exactly why We are stupid and weak.)

I saw him on Bill Moyers Journal once. Every time Bill pointed out that Douthat's theoretical solutions would hurt real people, he brushed it off ("Of course we'd have to look at that.") and kept on talking.

I know age does not in any way bring wisdom, but I'm not about to take advice from a spoiled boy who traded one authoritive religion for another and is more enamoured of his God and his intellect than his fellow human beings.

The New York Times is ass.

The Sulzbergers have run a once great center-left institution of the New Deal into the ground, so much so that it's now the plaything of Carlos Slim.

Steve is worried that Douthat is an improvement on Kristol only insofar as the former will refrain from peddling the talking points?

Please. The Times is dying because its content is trusted less and less, and its editorial slant has become little more than that of house cheerleader for whatever Democrat is either in power or wants power.

Conservatives hold the Times in contempt, and slight regard. Now a real newspaper, like the WaPo, that's another matter.

I saw him on Bill Moyers Journal once. Every time Bill pointed out that Douthat's theoretical solutions would hurt real people, he brushed it off ("Of course we'd have to look at that.") and kept on talking.

Uh, no living, breathing human being should take Bill Moyers' word on anything. Bill Moyers was LBJ's hit man during the Vietnam days. He's got more dirt on his hands than Lee Atwater, my friend, and was responsible for a lot of dirt tossed at Johnson's opponents in the antiwar movement, not to mention the GOP.

He was LBJ's butt boy. Period. Bill Moyers is swine. He's tried to buy peace by becoming Mr. Liberal.

You suckers bought his act. One born every minute, of course.

Ross is late-twenties-year-old public intellectual with the sensibility of a 60-year eminence grise, the range of a Hitchens, the pitch of a conservative AJP Taylor, the conscience of a Neibuhr and the intellectual honesty of his frequent sparring partner, Andrew Sullivan.

He's fully a match for any of them, considering that Sullivan and Hitchens are sly, malicious slimeballs, and Taylor and Diebuhr are mouldering in the grave.

Section9: Johnson left office 40 years ago. If Moyers hasn't done anything bad since for you to rave about, he should be canonized.

Why don't you tell us about the corruption of Boss Tween and Martin Van Buren now?