Tuesday, January 17, 2012

A tale of two works: Andrew "I won't be ignored" Sullivan vs. Mark "The Great One" Levin

Andrew Sullivan's Newsweek/Daily Beast article made me think of this quote: 
"Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary." 
George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3
Inspector Sullivan, Insane Foreign Blogger and Amateur OB-Gyn
There is plenty of print about Andrew Sullivan's Newsweek/Daily Beast article today.  Sullivan is a propagandist--and the whole purpose of his piece is to justify why President Barack Obama should be re-elected.  Objective truth does not mean anything to him anymore.  And like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, he won't be ignored by conservatives.  He will argue he is being more true to conservatism by defending Barack Obama's policies (which are obviously anything but conservative).  If Bush's spending and deficits were so bad, why does Dr. Sullivan prescribe that we drink down Barack Obama's budgets and deficits, which are four or five times worse?  This might explain Sullvian's confusion over Sarah Palin's reproductive system.  He chooses a provocative headlines sure to offend and drive some traffic--Which is what Tina Brown wants him to do. Why encourage it?   It is almost like he finally broke that Trig story he has been working on. I will just link some of the responses. I will update the responses as more come in:
Previous EBL Posts:

Then again, why even discuss Andrew Sullivan's view of things?  A far more substantial work came out today, Mark Levin's Ameritopia. 
Mark Levin, Scholar and Patriot
The man of system . . . is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board.
Adam Smith quoted by Mark Levin.  
This book's scope is far broader than merely arguing why Barack Obama should not be re-elected--explaining the philosophical roots the United States of America is based on and why the adoption of utopian ideas is threatening that.  Ameritopia examines the historical and philosophical roots of the utopian ideal, for it is that ideal that has always animated the leftist liberal worldview.  The utopian ideal is the bait that drives leftist arguments (even when the utopian reality never materializes).  And Levin then contrasts that with the contrasting views John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, Adam Smith and others who were influences on the founders of this country.
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1 comment:

  1. chickelitJanuary 17, 2012 at 8:23 AM

    I regret that this controversy (which goes beyond being an "Althouse issue" which Troop seems to think) has followed me there. What Sullivan fucks with is people's sense of trust which is downright evil.

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