My Life Among the Neo-Cons
It's rare that I can beat my friend and office-neighbor Steve Clemons at his own game, and so to divert the wrath of his commentors, I too will “come out”: not only do I know people at the American Enterprise Institute, but I worked there myself. In fact, I worked for Norman Ornstein, whose New Republic diary about being falsely held responsible for the AEI neoconservatives prompted Steve’s post. In my first job in Washington, I was his research assistant in 1988-89.
Tempting as it is to play the conversion card, I was no kind of conservative, then or now (although I move a bit to the left with each passing year, as I think anyone with either a heart or a brain should do.) But I totally enjoyed working at AEI, at that time, and I've never had a moment's regret about that year and a half.
Norm was exactly as Steve describes him, completely independent, moderate, sensible, and even idealistic in his view of the democratic potential of legislative institutions. He unhesitatingly gave me joint bylines on lots of articles in serious journals, and after a year and a half, he recommended me to Senator Bradley as his speechwriter, which is how I came to work on the Hill. But I also relished AEI as an institution. It exposed me to intellectually serious conservatives, for the first time in my life, and I've valued that ever since. And much of the institution was not that conservative: the younger research assistants often were not; the economists came from the Nixon and Ford administrations, which meant above all that they were not supply-siders; and the analysts of American politics (Norm, Bill Schneider, Ben Wattenberg, Karlyn Bowman), many of whom had come in the late 1970s when AEI was even more moderate, were mostly Democrats, although mostly not liberal. (One could still feel the legacy of a time when the center-point in American politics was further to the left, and AEI and Brookings were each about one degree off-center, to the right and left respectively.) Above all it was, as Steve says, a place of serious debate and conflict, and one that had no party line.
And in thinking about the kind of think tanks we need to revitalize the intellectual underpinnings of liberalism, I've drawn on the AEI experience many times to make the point that the most productive institutions of the center-right are not those of what Rob Stein, a founder of the Democracy Alliance, called the Conservative Money Message Machine, or that others refer to as the “echo-chamber” for the right’s orthodoxies, but those that foster internal conflict and independent thinking.
For Norm, it has been a platform from which he has been able to operate with admirable freedom, indeed perhaps more than could be found at any university (where the pressures would come from the stultifying orthodoxies of current political science) or most other think tanks. In addition to his critical support for campaign finance reform in the late 1990s, Norm’s outrage at the abuse of power in Congress during the Tom DeLay era broke not only with conservative orthodoxy, but even more significantly challenged the banal both-parties-are-failing mantra of the High Broderist faithful. (See The Broken Branch.) And AEI has been useful to Norm in ensuring that his outrage is taken seriously and his ideas cannot be dismissed as partisan.
Still, even in the time I was there, one could feel AEI moving hard to the right, and in particular the growing influence of the foreign-policy neoconservatives with which it is so strongly identified today. Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Richard Perle were the royal couple of a foreign policy group populated mostly by strange obsequious people (one of whom was a then-unknown Alan Keyes) whose speech consisted entirely of pompous sentences like, “At a time of moral equivalence, Ambassador Kirkpatrick alone had the courage to speak the truth that communism was not merely another form of government but was in fact EVIL...” And so one might find oneself, on an otherwise ordinary day, attending a brownbag lunch with Jonas Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader who was then seen as the vanguard of the fight against said evil.
In other respects, AEI moved sharply to the right later, during the 1990s. There was the controversy over Dinesh d'Souza's The End of Racism, which led several black conservatives to quit AEI's board of academic advisors (they were ahead of the curve in recognizing that d’Souza was an embarrassment even to conservatism). There was the similar controversy over Charles Murray's Bell Curve. And then there was the emergence of John Lott (a.k.a. Mary Rosh), Kevin Hassett (a.k.a Dow 36,000), the Kagan family, Michael Ledeen and John Yoo as the face of the organization, along with the revelation that AEI was using funds from ExxonMobil to pay academics to produce studies disputing climate change. In addition, it has become a parking place for conservative politicians: both Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich hang their hats there. (Ben Wallace-Wells wrote a good article on the transformation of AEI four years ago.)
One could see the beginnings of this trend even eighteen years ago. At that time, AEI was funded mostly by corporations like Intel (which Steve cited) and Paul O’Neill’s Alcoa, but mainstream corporate giving of that type was stagnant and AEI had faced a financial crisis in the mid-1980s. Meanwhile, institutions with a harder ideological edge and less internal dissent, notably the Heritage Foundation, were raking in multi-million dollar gifts from wealthy individuals like Shelby Cullom Davis. To attract the big bucks, AEI’s image as a barely-right-of-center counterbalance to the one-degree-left-of-center Brookings Institution was inadequate. Much of the history of the growth of the hard-right establishment involves frustration with AEI, and particularly its posture as a quasi-academic institution that was not trying to influence policy in real time. (See Lee Edwards’ history of Heritage, The Power of Ideas, for a full account.) Leapfrogged by Heritage, AEI had to transform itself, and the organization one sees now is largely a result of the challenge from Heritage. (Meanwhile, Brookings faced no comparable pressure from the left.)
So as an abstract principle, I agree with Steve that Norm Ornstein and others of independence and integrity at AEI (some would name welfare scholar Doug Besharov as another example) bear no responsibility for the views or activities of their neoconservative or fraudulent (e.g., Lott) colleagues, any more than I am responsible for Steve’s views (such as his curious gullibility to Hillary Clinton fundraising letters), or someone on the Harvard faculty is responsible for, say, Harvey Mansfield’s views. However, Harvard is an institution with a purpose – education and scholarship – and AEI is an institution with a different purpose. At one time, AEI’s purpose was honest analysis of policy from a broadly heterodox conservative perspective; over time its purpose has been moving in the direction of reinforcing the interests of its donors and of the conservative power structure, right or wrong. At some point, the sheer number of Lotts and Hassetts, the more explicitly political purpose, and the the large-scale deception perpetrated by Ledeen and the AEI neo-cons becomes the essence and purpose of the organization. And at that point, it becomes a lot harder to stand within it and yet apart from it. Conservatism, as well as the country, would be better off if AEI had retained some of what made it a more interesting place a dozen years ago, rather than joining the echo-chamber.
not only do I know people at the American Enterprise Institute, but I worked there myself.
You are now on double secret TPM Cafe probation.
September 5, 2007 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The sheets are clean and the rooms were aired out, down in the lounge we had a piano player who tickled the ivories. The pantry was well stocked and we could always get up a game of cards. The Madame made sure that the riff raff stayed in their place. On the whole, it was a good place to be a whore, and I was well paid and happy there. I heard, though, that it's gone downhill a bit since I spent time on my back there."
September 5, 2007 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm just having a bit of fun with ya there. No hard feelings, eh?
September 5, 2007 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I just have to ditto my comment on Clemons' thread, and add extra thanks for even more nuance and helpful insider skinny. It's so refreshing to find a non-Manichean, non-Machiavellian, non-demagogic post for grown-ups on a blog with comments. More please; all of you should quit hiding it in your private emails.
September 5, 2007 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
That was really fascinating. Thanks. Also one more nail in the coffin of the theory that the GOP we know triumphed by building up new ideas rather than, well, abandoning thinking.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
September 5, 2007 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
On one level, this is perfectly correct. But on another, it is dramatically evasive.
While it is true that each proponent of and through the AEI stands on their own two feet, yet their work reflects upon and is in turn reflected by the institution.
The fact that AEI endorses and celebrates a fraud artist without apparent standards reflects poorly on everyone associated with the institution.
Consider for instance the situation of a neighborhood watch association which proudly announces that 'we only have one pedophile' among our numbers. Scepticism follows naturally. Everyone is tainted by the association. And worse, the credibility suffers - the standard is to allow pedophiles? How do we know that it's only the one? What else are they up to?
If the AEI's standards are so low as to embrace Lotts and Ledeens, if its criteria for integrity is so vacuous, then what reliance can be placed on anything that comes out of there? The work of reputable scholars is sullied, the source becomes a mark of shame, the quality may be dismissed out of hand, the assertions cannot be accepted. Nor is the 'mark of cain' easily dislodged, after all, if this was truly credible work then why isn't it being published somewhere else. There's reasons why peer reviewed papers are not published by the Weekly World News. One of those reasons is that no one finds it credible, and if you choose that venue, or can't find a better venue... well, that tells us all we need to know.
Mister Schmitt soft peddles AEI's line, but it remains pertinent:
Although he tries to dodge artfully around it, Schmitt has one of those revealing little freudian slips. Harvard is an institution with a purpose of scholarship. The AEI has a different purpose... not scholarship. I'm sure he didn't mean for that admission to come out that way, but there it is.
If AEI's purpose is not scholarship what is that purpose?
Not scholarship, not education, but 'honest analysis.' Analysis to what purpose, if not education or scholarship. Oops, Schmitt forgets to say.
Let me fill it in. 'Analysis of policy' for the purpose of creating, influencing and manipulating policy as practiced by government. Simple and obvious, n'est ce pas? But somehow, it doesn't quite get articulated. Instead, Schmitt wants to leave us with the impression of a crew of sober intellectuals doing deep thinking in a kind of vaccuum. They're just there to have great big thoughts.
Y'see, he's trying to make the point that they weren't a gang of whores when he was with them. They had 'integrity.' That's why he can't divulge the purpose of analysing policy outside of scholarship and education... because that would kind of be admitting to whoring.
The rest of his thesis, such as it is that now AEI has become a gang of paid whores without integrity. And that's completely different from when he was there.
Y'see, when he was there, they were whores with integrity.
Gotcha.
It is a regrettable fact of life that the bad drives out the good. Drop a turd into a barrel of sweet pristine apples, and soon enough, every apple tastes like shit. It doesn't matter how good an apple was, it still tastes like shit.
This is the way of the world, and those who object to the injustice of it all can take it up with a higher power than me. Write an angry letter about the unfairness to God, or perhaps the Easter Bunny.
The evolution of the AEI into what even Schmitt admits it has become was an inevitable consequence of the nature of the beast. Fresh young whores become tired old whores. The AEI set aside the standards of scholarship, the accountability of academia, it set out to wrestle with and influence policy, inevitably, that opened the door and it became what it became, an organization without standards, without accountability, with no other mandate than influencing policy, and with no other drive but ideology and service.
ROTFL. Give me a break. And who took Norm's outrage seriously?
Mr. Schmitt has come to the defense of Mr. Ornstein and his old memories of AEI.
He's succeeded only in burying it.
September 5, 2007 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's hard to explain why Mark and Steve's articles are so creepy, but I'm going to try.
The description of Ornstein's perceived relationship with AEI reminds me of the story of the domineering guy who often remarks "I brought my kids up to be independent thinkers--just like I am."
It sounds great, until you actually spend some time thinking about it.
September 5, 2007 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
And which highly respected conservative think tank is at the top of Dick Cheney's list to call when he wants help rolling out the Winter '07-'08 War on Iran?
Why, the AEI, of course.
September 5, 2007 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Informative commentary Shmitt. A thousand thanks. In all seriousness, I respectfully request that you offer an explanation of why terms like fascist and fascim are marginalized in the blandishments of the socalled MSM, and within the cognisenti and Thinktank elites
With respect to invididuals like Ledeen, Yoo, Gonzales, Cheney, Rumsfeld, d'Souza, and rather large cabal of farright arch conservatives disproportionally influencing conservatism, the GOP, and American foreign and domestic policies through the sundry sordid machinations of the Bush government - are the terms fascist and fascism indeed accurate, and applicable descriptions of these individuals pronounced ideologies, designs, pipedreams, policies, and actual undertakings?
September 5, 2007 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did AEI ever get money from Richard Mellon Scaife? One of the many ways Scaife used is money to revitalize the Right after 1964 was to fund think tanks. However, these unlike Brookings or Rand were designed to produce not just policy papers but ideologically consistent talking points. It is one reason why the Right often sounds so consistent.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
September 5, 2007 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Daniel, Oh yeah, bigtime. From 1985 to 2001, the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation donated $4.4 million to AEI and the Scaife Family Foundation $590,000. See this link. Heritage was Scaife's fave, but your follow-the-money point is exactly right.
There will be a lot more on this subject at tpmcafe the week of 9/17, when we'll be doing a book club on my The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing.
--Greg Anrig
September 5, 2007 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
So I guess the main take away here is that one thing that can turn a diverse and independent-minded institution into a soapbox for ideologically narrow and hyper-politicized hackery is moving from distributed funding to becoming the plaything of a single rich individual with an agenda. Could we say that the reputation of Brookings has been compromised in the same way through the Saban Center?
September 5, 2007 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
You seem to be labelling something a "Freudian slip" when it was in fact my entire point: AEI is not Harvard. It wasn't in 1989, and it definitely isn't now. Nothing subtle in that point.
September 5, 2007 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
When intelligence or analysis feeds policy, we have a sound democracy. However when preconcieved partisan policy dictates or corrupts or contaminates the intelligence and/or analysis products, democracy is undermined.
September 5, 2007 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds just like CATO & HOOVER, w/ Brookings seemingly trying hard to catch up.
September 5, 2007 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Apparently they weren't big on nuance where you came from. No problem. I'll make it simple:
* Premise
Harvard = Scholarship
* so inversely
Not Harvard = Not Scholarship
* now, also
AEI = Not Harvard
* therefore
AEI = Not Scholarship
How's that? There's the Freudian slip you made. Got it now? That little inadvertent confession of intellectual/ethical irrelevance/bankruptcy. Sadly, TPMCafe doesn't have a graphics program, or I could do it in Venn diagrams and pie charts and whatnots, maybe throw in a few stick figures of happy and unhappy dogs and cats to make it really clear.
Anyway, glad I could clear this up for you. Have a terrific day.
September 5, 2007 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
One good thing to come out of Al Franken's radio program was introducing us to Norm Ornstien. He was a regular on the program and for the first few times that I heard him I didn't know he was from AEI. I was shocked when I found out. He was always a sensibly moderate voice. Very smart guy.
September 5, 2007 2:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's interesting, Greg. Olin pulled its funding from AEI in 1985 because they thought it was drifting too centrist, which led to the resignation of its director. I always thought Olin and Scaife viewed the world with the same eyeball.
Neoboho
September 5, 2007 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are confused. Mark is agreeing with you, not defending AEI.
September 5, 2007 3:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. He's from the "I'm a conservative but I didn't sign on for this garbage" school.
His arguments against the so-called nuclear option on judicial nominees were the most well-reasoned, cogent, and compelling ones that I read.
September 5, 2007 3:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right. But after William Baroody left, Olin came back to AEI in a big way. Don't worry, Scaife and the leaders of Olin largely saw eye to eye.
September 5, 2007 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Norm Ornstein is, as far as I can tell, the only intellectually honest and worthwhile person at AEI. The rest are a bunch of frauds, charlatans, and shills for the rich that are responsible for thousands of deaths and the loss of billions of dollars from the treasury. The longer Ornstein stays at AEI, the more it hurts his reputation.
For that matter, I don't see any reason for my tax dollars to continue funding (through their tax-exempt status) think tanks of any idealogical stripe. You want to influence federal policy, do it on your own dime, thank you very much.
September 5, 2007 3:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed, although I strongly disagree with this part.
The success of the right HAS come from the BS-spewing echo machine organs. Despite being objectively wrong on topic after topic, they scare journalists from wading into the debate to find the truth for fear of being labelled partisan, and they lead average Americans without time to sort it all out into confusion. Their success is most certainly NOT from winning any sort of intellectual battle of ideas or from independent thinking.
The neo-cons didn't get Iraq b/c they convinced anyone that their ideas were right. Instead, they just made up ties to al Qaeda and WMD (See Cheney, Dick). Same with supply side economics, tax cuts for the rich, ending the estate tax, Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, Patriot Act, military commissions, doing nothing about global warming, putting a fox in charge of every henhouse (FEMA, NLRB, FEC, FCC, FDA, Interior and EPA, HUD, DOJ, presumably everywhere else), and basically every piece of legislation that you can name supported by the GOP since 1994 and probably earlier.
The whole point is hiding the ball and preventing voters from connecting the dots. Look at any survey on voter opinions and views and see how massively uninformed they are on pretty basic issues and differences between candidates and the parties. That's the success of the GOP think tanks.
September 5, 2007 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I also agree that being at AEI tarnishes all involved, including Ornstein, although he has built up a body of work that can sustain his reputation (like a crummy school with a few good professors).
Revoking the tax exemption is an interesting idea in theory, but might be difficult to do in practice. Who gets to decide what is ideological and what is unbiased, or what is meant to influence federal policy and what is purely academic? The Bush/Cheney IRS?
September 5, 2007 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very exciting. Can't wait to hear more about your new book. Glad someone is keeping score and putting all the pieces together.
Now can you explain how it works to every reporter in D.C.? They still don't seem to get it. I think courtesy copies are in order.
Then you can explain it to the rest of the country.
September 5, 2007 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's see if we can get them to pay first! --Greg
September 5, 2007 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Relax, I'm not confused at all. Schmittyboy's thesis, such as it is, is that once upon a time the AEI was a relevant and worthwhile place full of intellectual discourse, big ideas, and wise pondering. And undoubtedly fluffy bunnies, unicorns and carebears.
In his world view, it's suffered an immense fall from grace, the carebears and unicorns have moved on, the fluffy bunnies all have mange, it's now overrun with Ledeens and Lotts and Kagans.
His narrative is the decline into ruin of a once great, or at least valid institution, and the loss of its integrity.
My point is that, unfortunately no, it's turtles all the way down... as the flat earther's used to say.
It was all just intellectually dishonest whores right from the start, escaping the tiresome restrictions of formal academe and it's nattering insistence on integrity, accuracy and sound research.
The golden age of AEI he remembers is just the era of teen prostitutes, when they're all tight and perky and enjoy aspects of their trade. But it wasn't anything more than that.
He sees the current era of AEI as an abberation, a corruption. They're tired, they're worn out and sagging, they wear too much makeup and they're just in it for the money.
Hardly, its merely the natural and inevitable progression.
September 5, 2007 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post. Appreciated.
September 5, 2007 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wonderful post, Mark. A very useful history.
September 5, 2007 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like Ornstein-however, I think it's high time he should think about joining the Brooklins Institute (sic?) where his good friend Thomas Mann works. It's quite clear they are mostly on the same page, and that they have worked with each other a lot.
September 5, 2007 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
You could throw in a pile of dead bodies.
Many perceive that the AEI is chock full of war and torture happy sociopaths like 'Torture' Yoo, and Ledeen. They even have celebrate the Iraq War parties at AEI. To many the AEI is an organization that aided and abetted the commission of war crimes by this country.
September 5, 2007 9:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I tried. There's no 'mounds of mutilated corpses' HTML function on TPMCafe. I think that's probably because the function wound up getting used so continuously that it wore out.
September 5, 2007 9:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
The AEI might have at one time been a place where there were voices both left and right. It is now a bastion of neoconservatism and part of the GOP propaganda machine. I have seen Norman Ornstein on CSPAN. He seems like a reasonable enough person from what I've heard him say and surely doesn't deserve the label of "neocon". But he is part of the AEI and gives "centrist" credibility to an organization that shouldn't have it. He associates with them and sometimes he gets mistakenly confused for being one of them (according to both Steve Clemons and Mark Schmitt, who I have no reason to doubt)...But his peers know he isn't of the neocon ideology and in this context they are the only ones that matter. So if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it, did it make a noise?
If he is that upset about being called a neocon why doesn't he relocate to a organization that better fits a centrist ideology? But I know he has been at AEI for a loooooong time, probably feels tied to it in a sense and that's what keeping him there.
September 5, 2007 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
So your big point is what, that if AEI was not scholarship, then it was "Analysis of policy' for the purpose of creating, influencing and manipulating policy as practiced by government"?
I don't think Schmitt would deny this (or that he was trying to hide this in the essay). Rather, I assume he'd argue that there is nothing inherently evil in that purpose. As TonyForesta says below:
"When intelligence or analysis feeds policy, we have a sound democracy. However when preconcieved partisan policy dictates or corrupts or contaminates the intelligence and/or analysis products, democracy is undermined."
I'd say it's you that is having trouble with nuance here, apparently in the name of defending "the tiresome restrictions of formal academe and it's nattering insistence on integrity, accuracy and sound research," which seems to me to be a rather dubious description itself.
September 6, 2007 5:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
AEI is neocon central. It is Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Ledeen, Doug Feith, John Yoo and tied to the rest of this warped group.It's embedded in government and is the policy manufacturer and executor of the conservative movement, now the neoconservative movement. It's connected to PNAC and CSIS and JINSA and the other neocon groups and is not an independent “think” tank, regardless of having a few independents working there. AEI is as responsible for the blood, torture, Big Brother imperialism and fascism of this administration as any (nominally) outside organization and any soft pedaling, it’s-not-that-bad, fond remembrances of this most dangerous ideological junta becomes unwitting facilitation of the disastrous conservative revolution and AEI’s continuing influence.
September 6, 2007 6:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, but you're not following through.
Analysis shorn of scholarship is merely ideological preconceived partisanship. It's analysis without standards, without integrity, without accuracy. It is ideologues grinding their axes.
Which is what the AEI does today. Which is what the AEI was about in Schmitty's day. Which is what, Schmitty finds himself acknowledging, is the only thing it was ever about.
He pines away for a golden age of AEI, but it's just wishful thinking on his part. To belabour the term, it was ever a brothel, and its members were never anything but what they were.
As for nuance, well, there's a place for nuance. But fundamentals are elemental in their nature. To put it simply, there is truth, and there is that which is not true. And no amount of spin and massage will change one into the other.
September 6, 2007 6:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Brookings was moving rightward in the late 70s, fater hiring some ex-Nixonites. AEI may have been less of wingnut circus when Schmitt was there, but it was mostly a position paper mill, even then. the same could be said for Cato and, to a large extent, Brookings. It's important to recognize that even if one is a lefty, a lot of lefties have little concern for facts or reality and are more comfortable in an overtly ideological environment than one which may provide at least some questioning of their premises, assumptions, and proof. In many ways, Scmitt may be better off for having worked for wingnuts, but he shouldn't spend so much time trying to justify what wonderful scholars they weren't.
September 6, 2007 7:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure that left wing think tanks can be criticized for the same abyssal standards and their toxic erosional effect on public discourse.
The trouble with left wing think tanks is that there aren't many of them, they aren't well funded, and the media and policy makers don't pay much attention to them. So their potential for harm is quite limited. I'm happy to condemn them on the same general principles. But truthfully, they're just not an issue.
Schmitty can work for whoever he wants to. It's a free country. But I'm not inclined to sit there and agree that the institutions that they enlisted in had anything to do with scholarship, truth or integrity. Or that their participation in these institutions ennobled them or anyone else.
Think tanks, by and large, have become end runs. A means of escaping the restrictions and discipline of formal academics, avoiding peer review, etc., all for the purpose of promoting ideology as a substituted for intelligence, replacing agendas and politics with debate.
At some point, someone is going to write the intellectual history of the United States, and places like Cato, Brookings, Heritage and AEI will be remembered as destructive cancerous growths poisoning the body politic.
Not that I have any particular axe to grind, I'm just saying. Y'know what I mean.
September 6, 2007 8:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Did you ever meet James K. Glassman?
I write on automotive matters, and every time there was a push to boost auto gas mileage, Glassman was always there with letters to the editor saying high gas mileage would kill people.
I think he was also co author of the 'Dow 36,000' book.
He comes off to me as a real charlatan. I'm interested if you think he belongs in the honest conservative bunch or in the rat-bastard sellout crowd.
September 6, 2007 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
I fervently hope that you are right and 'the truth will out.'
Unfortunately it might be AEI and Hoover who are writing the history books.
September 6, 2007 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Then it will be written with crayons, won't it:
"Gyroge Bushh wuz a grate ledr, he nu wut to do! He put dose Ahabs in Erak in ther place an tuk ther awl. But thin sumtin went very wrong. It was dose libruls. Libruls an Franchman. Libruls and Franchman and Ahab terrariss. Dey woudlno play fair. If dey played fare, we wood have won an everbuddy wood have sung sings and we wood have all the awl in the worl. So hate libruls frever! Got any fude? Me am real hungry."
excerpt from, A Comprehensive History of the Twentieth Century published by the American Enterprise Institute, circa 2052.
September 6, 2007 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can't you just submit a social science paper to a peer-reviewed journal with an ideology in line with your own?
September 6, 2007 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, normally you'd think that would be the way to do it. I assume that if a Conservative thinker has integrity, then they'd just go down that road, exercising academic discipline, checking their facts, meeting reasonable standards of writing, logic, etc.
Apparently though, that's too much for some. So they invent things like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the AEI to sneak past all that bothersome 'integrity' stuff.
September 6, 2007 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink