Friday, September 18, 2009

Irving Kristol (1920 - 2009)

Speaking of conservative public intellectuals whom I disagree with profoundly but are not "utter morons", Irving Kristol died today. RIP.
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6 comments:

PG said...

Bah. Irving Kristol merely started an intellectual movement. Did he ever have a #1 bestselling book? I doubt it, given that half of his books had the word "idea" in the title. They were sadly devoid of self-aggrandizement (SITYS) and fear-mongering, which are the signs of common sense.

1:37 PM
Anonymous said...

You know, PG, if you would read more carefully, you'd find that the commenters in the previous thread were generally not equating popularity with intelligence. As with your embarrassing whiff at Steyn, you have a problem with jumping to conclusions by slamming ideas together that weren't intended to go together. Maybe read a little more carefully before commenting so often...

3:14 PM
PG said...

Then what was the point of their repeatedly referring to popularity in response to David's calling these guys morons? They just felt like saying "bestselling author" over and over with no actual refutation of David's post?

Talk about useless commenting.

3:34 PM
Anonymous said...

Refutation of what? What evidence did Schraub's original post present that these men are morons? Refuting lazy namecalling is hardly worth the time.

Is it too much for you to comprehend that these commenters were suggesting popular success and intelligence might BOTH be worth acknowledging? Here's the quote from Patrick that set you off: "You may not like them, but they move millions, and they're smarter than you give them credit." There's nothing causal about the way the second phrase links to the first. I see no reason why Patrick should be obligated to take the time to lay out an evidentiary argument for "smarter than you give them credit" (something that would be impossible to do in a few sentences) in this comment thread. And, again, I wonder why you're not taking Schraub to task for his unsubstantiated use of "morons."

To Schraub's credit, at least his UPDATE takes a stab at linking to some arguments against Goldberg, but that followed Patrick's comment.

3:57 PM
Jack said...

If refuting lazy name-calling is hardly worth the time what the hell are you all doing here?

Don't you people have jobs and stuff?

4:07 PM
PG said...

What Jack said. If no one wants to actually take up the banner of Limbaugh's being a genius, what's the point of commenting? (Other than, as so many commenters have done, to tell David he's too young/ over-educated to know anything.) And people have used a lot more than a few sentences in their comments. If the longest comments had devoted themselves to explaining why Goldberg, Limbaugh and Steyn are worthy influences on conservatives, David might have to eat his words. As it is, if a man can be judged by his fanbase, David's only been more assured in his "morons" assessment.

4:50 PM

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