| Deer Readers (Really people, there are easier things to get your news from than ruminant mammals. They're covered in ticks, and they won't stand still. Get an iPad), Okay, so I wrote the bulk of this "news"letter yesterday and I was in a pretty foul mood. After a good night's sleep, I'm a little less whiny, but I don't really have much time to write a new one. So this will be one of the rare instances where my normal column is more G-Filey than the G-File. An excerpt : For instance, here's Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who walked out of the painting American Gothic to deliver this homespun wisdom: "We're not going to bow to tea-party anarchists who deny the mere fact that Obamacare is the law. We will not bow to tea-party anarchists who refuse to accept that the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare is constitutional." Where to begin? For starters, I know a great many self-described members of the Tea Party, and I've yet to meet one who would not acknowledge — admittedly with dismay — that Obamacare is the law. Nor have I met one unwilling to concede that the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare is constitutional. Though from my informal polling, I can report that most think the Court's reasoning left much to be desired (logic, persuasiveness, consistency, etc.). Lurking beneath such lazy rhetoric is a nasty psychological insinuation that there's something deranged not just about opposing Obamacare, but about being a conservative. This is an ancient smear, used to discredit conservatives in order to avoid debating them. Reid is a dim and sallow man whose tin ear long ago started to rust. But it's worth pointing out that "anarchy" is not defined in any textbook or dictionary I can find as "the absence of Obamacare." While, yes, it's true that Mad Max, most zombie movies, and other post-apocalyptic films are set in worlds without Obamacare, that's really not the most salient factor. Okay, now onto yesterday's G-File today. Dear Readers and the other kind, Personally, this week has been like watching Michael Moore doing a nude yoga routine, unendurably ugly from beginning to end, yet with a few moments of dark comedy in between. And it's only Thursday (Yes, I'm trying to write this a day early because family issues will take priority in the morning). I'm only referring in part to the political spectacle, but let's focus on that right now. We've seen these kinds of arguments quite a few times over the last decade. I could recount the episodes, but at least in my memory their intensity has never been this bad or widespread. While I think every individual person has his own reasons, as a generalization I think there are two factors driving pretty much everyone's crankiness. The Weariness of Defeat First, we're exhausted. Some may be exhausted with the fighting, as Ted Cruz and others contend, but I think more are exhausted by the losing -- or at least the feeling that we're losing. People have diverse reactions when they feel like they're losing. Some quit, sure. But I don't think there's a lot of quitting on the right these days. There are at least two other kinds of responses to the sense of defeat. Some decide to go all out in one last frontal assault. Others opt to grow more selective in their battles. Sonny Corleone wanted to brawl, right now. Michael Corleone wanted to play it cool until the right moment came along. Some boxers, sensing the bout is getting away from them, go for the knockout as quickly as possible. Others decide to lay back until their opponent tires himself out. In the Battle of Pharsalus, Pompey reluctantly went for the quick coup de grâce and lost it all. Caesar, left with the option to fight or die, chose to fight and won. Whatever, pick your own damn metaphor. The point that I think is really, really, important is that neither option is right or wrong in the abstract. It all depends on the situation. More on that in a moment. The Clarity of Fear The second factor, I think, is that we're all afraid. And I don't mean that in the way the people shouting at me from their electronic perches mean it. I mean we're all patriots. We all believe that Obamacare is a disaster and could fundamentally transform America in ways that will hurt it. (As an aside, it's worth noting again that there is something fundamentally unpatriotic in the yearning to fundamentally transform your country. I love my wife. Inherent to loving her is loving her for who she is. Gentlemen, turn to your wife and say, "Honey, I love you completely. It's just that I want to fundamentally transform you into someone else." See how that plays out. If you want to fundamentally transform the object of your affection so that it conforms to your fantasies, that is not love, it is lust.) I've never liked the glib way people denigrate fear as if it's a character flaw. There is nothing wrong or cowardly about being afraid. A good father is afraid when his child is in harm's way. A good commanding officer is afraid when his men are under fire. Fear is like pain -- it tells you something you need to know. I don't believe any man is fearless, but if such a person exists he is a fool. Courage is not the absence of fear, it is the triumph over it. In other words, what you do with your fear is the true test of character. To love is to fear, because love demands that you invest your faith and happiness in something or someone outside of yourself and that is a kind of surrender. It is a surrendering of your narrow self-interest to something that ultimately you cannot fully control, and that is inherently frightening. Patriotism, stripped of complication and theory is, simply love of country. And most conservatives who love their country have that hollow queasy feeling in the pits of their stomachs -- like that angst you get when you can't find your child at the Mall -- that something they love is in danger. This is what unites the factions in the argument currently splitting the Right. We are members of the same family arguing about what to do about something we love when we fear she is about to be harmed. The Airing of My Grievances I'm done arguing the tactics for now. Everyone knows that stuff at this point, or at least they should. I've had long talks with people on the other side of the argument this week, including some quite close to Ted Cruz. I'll confess to the mistake of not listening more closely to them sooner. I'm more sympathetic to Cruz's gambit at the end of this week than I was at the beginning. But I still think his plan wouldn't work even if all of his critics agreed to participate in a strategy they sincerely believed would fail. Lack of Republican unity behind a flawed idea is not the reason the idea is flawed. But I can tell you this: I sincerely and with all my heart hope I am wrong. The Cruz Side & the Dark Side And while my sympathy for Cruz's effort has grown, and my admiration for his performance on the Senate floor is sincere and deep, I also find his criticism of people who disagree with him utterly indefensible on its face. He says: If we look to a ragtag bunch of colonists in the 18th century, the idea that we would stand up to Great Britain, the British army -- the most mighty military force on the face of the planet -- was impossible. It can't be done. I guarantee that all of the pundits we see going on TV and intoning in deep baritone voices: This cannot be done -- if we were back in the 18th century, they would be writing messages in dark ink and sending it by carrier pigeon, saying: This cannot be done. You can't stand up to the British army. It can't be done. It is impossible. Accept your subjugation. Accept your taxation without representation. Accept that this is impossible. And: You know, if you fast-forward to the Civil War, a time of enormous pain, anguish, bloodshed in the United States, there were a lot of voices then who said the Union cannot be saved. Can't be done. Accept defeat. I suspect those same pundits, had they been around in the mid 19th century, they would have written those same columns . . . this cannot be done.
And: I suspect those same pundits who say it can't be done, if it had been in the 1940s we would have been listening to them. . . . They would have been on TV [sic] and they would have been saying, you cannot defeat the Germans.
I'll admit it: I take this personally. The mere suggestion that because I disagree with Ted Cruz's legislative strategy I would acquiesce to the Nazis conquering Europe and finishing the Final Solution is repugnant. The idea that I would surrender not only to the dissolution of the Union but the perpetuation of slavery, simply because I don't think you can force Barack Obama to sign into law the elimination of Obamacare, is a slander. The claim that if you disagree with him you are no different than Royalists denying the righteousness of the American Revolution is ridiculous. Now I know Ted Cruz a little, and I've always liked him when I talked to him. Some of my closest friends and colleagues are good friends of his. But the most charitable I can be on this score is that I am entirely open to the idea that Cruz doesn't actually believe this and he's just letting the rhetoric get away from him. Perhaps he hasn't thought it through -- something that's hard to believe given how smart and intellectually meticulous he is. Or maybe he does realize what he is saying, but thinks the stakes warrant giving dissenters no honorable room to disagree with him. Neither, by my lights, is an excuse. By the way, the more apt analogy to World War II would be that we are in the midst of the Sitzkrieg, or maybe the early days after Pearl Harbor or some other time when war had already been declared but the necessary assets for victory weren't in place yet. We must invade Europe now, say the Cruzers, or Hitler will win. No, we've got to wait until we can actually win the inevitable fight. It's not a great analogy, but it captures the fact that the people Cruz is accusing of cowardice have actually spent years doing what they can to stop Obamacare. That Eisenhower waited until June of 1944 to land at Normandy did not mean he wanted Hitler to win in June of 1943. Taking It Personally But my anger isn't really aimed at Ted Cruz anymore, in part because I still want him to succeed and prove me wrong. It's at you, Dear Reader. Well, maybe not you or you, but definitely you. When writing a letter to many thousands of people, it's hard to narrowcast to a relatively few individuals. But those individuals know who they are. In the last week, in e-mails, comments sections, and on Twitter, I've heard from lots of people who think that because I am not swept up in Cruz-mania that I am therefore a sell-out, a fake conservative, a coward (or even a pro-Confederacy, Nazi-stooge Royalist). Look, I'm a big boy ("literally and figuratively" -- the Couch), and I've been through this more times than I can count. But that doesn't mean it becomes any less insulting or dispiriting. I'm not trying to play the martyr, and I fully recognize that the issues here are mountains and my personal feelings are a grain of sand in comparison. But when people who've been reading and corresponding with me for years glibly accuse me of abandoning my principles out of a desire to get more invitations to "cocktail parties" it pisses me off. I have no problem with people disagreeing with me. I admit I've gotten things wrong plenty of times (more than that if you listen to my wife or my couch). But I forwent invitations to liberal cocktail parties long before I got dragged into the Lewinsky scandal. And any remaining microscopic chance at liberal love went out the window with a book called Liberal Fascism. Before and after those personal landmarks is a road paved with literally millions of words in defense of conservative principles and causes, as I see them. The only thing that might get me invited to Andrea Mitchell's house for a martini is if I pulled a full David Brock, which is about as enticing a prospect as being Roseanne Barr's personal proctologist. Besides, I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I've been to liberal cocktail parties. They're not that great. Again, this isn't about me -- but this "news"letter pretty much is! And the only way it works is if I vent what's on my mind. And the only way I know how to be a pundit is to say what I think. Obviously, there is a tension between being part of a movement and maintaining independence. But I think the Dick Morris approach of saying what your fans want to hear regardless of the truth is not merely dishonest, but dishonorable. In fact, anyone in my line of work who tells his audience only what it wants to hear isn't really in my line of work. He's an entertainer or cheerleader. There's a need for such people in any movement, and while I don't think you have to be all one or the other (I'll cheerlead from time to time), the second you start saying things you don't think are true, you've declared yourself a hack or an entertainer or politician, none of which are what I signed up for. And, since we're on this honesty kick, when well-compensated commentators whose whole business model is to tell their audiences exactly what they want to hear say that I or National Review are "selling out" by disagreeing with our readers, it stews my bowels. In purely financial terms, there's only downside for me to disagree with the people who buy my books or read my columns. For National Review, taking unpopular positions on the right doesn't add to the subscription rolls. Anyway, I know, I know this G-File is lacking in the requisite jocularity. But frankly that's because some of you pissed me off. Not because you disagreed with me, but because you didn't give me the benefit of the doubt -- which I think I've earned from you, and you, and maybe not you, because you're new around here. Various & Sundry Speaking gigs. My friends at CFACT are bringing me out to Minny-zoda for a couple days next week. We can have breakfast on Monday. Or on Monday evening you can come by St. Thomas University in St. Paul, at 7:00 p.m., room 204 (Murray Herrick building). On Tuesday night, 7:00 p.m., I'll be at the University of Minnesota in the Science Teaching and Student Services Building, room 530A. On Thursday I'll be at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. Details here. Please come on by if you're in the area. It always helps to have ringers in the audience! In case you missed it, we brought my Breaking Bad cover story out from behind the firewall this week (we changed the open to peg it to the Emmys). I've gotten some fantastic responses to it. When the show's over, we'll discuss it all more. Here's a rant of mine from the Corner yesterday on Terry McAuliffe and the big lies of liberalism. If the mug shots alone didn't tell you this was a couple with problems, the headline should: "Husband To Shoot Neighbor for 'Telepathically Raping' Her" Sixteen Sequels you've never heard of (but, I'm embarrassed to say, I've heard of half of them). This is disgusting, but intriguing for those of us who think our bellies are too far away to be useful food holders. Boob-grabbing monkey. Five newscasters with problems. This is pretty sad: What the Monopoly properties look like in real life. I kinda like the idea here, but this is less a highway sing-along than a video of people ignoring or nervously waving at a crazy dude on the highway. Who is the one who knocks? Five signs you're becoming a grown-up. I know what you're wondering: If you suddenly started rising at one foot per second, how would you die. Well, here you go. | 
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