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Frum on Muslims
David Frum, the Canadian (or Canadian-American or American-Canadian?) neoconservative author and former Bush 43 speechwriter who, believe it or not, represents the farthest right-wing of respectable conservatism in Canada (much as David (“Bobo”) Brooks represents the most conservative position that is heard on the NewsHour), considers the recent murderous Muslim riots in Nigeria that were set off by an innocuous comment about the prophet Muhammad, and decides that Islam may be something of a problem. Yet the conclusions he draws from this insight notably fail to rise to the level of the danger he has described. So I wrote him an e-mail about it, which follows:
David Frum Mr. Frum: In your article about the horrible anti-Christian riots in Nigeria, you warn about how dangerous Islam is, and you specifically point out its danger in the West: “[E]ven in the West, some radical Muslim groups are demanding the same power over speech and thought that their Nigerian counterparts now exercise.” Yet you don’t mention immigration once. Without the mass non-discriminatory immigration you support, none of these people would even be in the West and in a position to threaten our liberties. In fact the only response you suggest to that threat is that we must “reassert our continuing belief in our Western principles of liberty.” Presumably you still view non-discriminatory immigration as among those principles of liberty. In any case, you give no grounds for supposing that you have revisited your long-standing support of immigration. So, on one hand, you point out that Islam represents a threat to our way of life, while, on the other hand, your only response is to say that we should continue to re-affirm our “principles” while also continuing to allow the mass immigration of the very people who threaten those principles. How long are you going to continue in this state of denial?
LA Comments
Well, there it is again. A neocon wails, or in this case tut-tuts about a problem he helps to cause. Incidentally, remember Frum’s book Dead Right? In his chapter on the paleos, he admitted the paleo stance on immigration was very popular. In Dead Right, Frum goes around in circles on immigration. He ends up comparing the paleos to the black nationalist Left. Posted by: David on December 7, 2002 5:01 PMI hope I’m not repeating myself, but Dead Right, while interesting and well-written, was a deeply dishonest book. Frum used core paleoconservative ideas as his central thesis while not mentioning the paleocons except to attack them as extremists. It takes, shall we say, a certain type of character formation to do something like that. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on December 7, 2002 5:10 PMIt is disheartening to think that people with Mr. Frum’s obviously inconsistent ideas are paid for their ideas and paid by associations known as think tanks. The grave danger that the immigration threat poses adds to the unease. We are lucky to have Mr. Auster vigilant and chinking away at the inconsistencies. Posted by: P Murgos on December 9, 2002 12:46 AMWhen I first got to campus, before I knew anything about politics, many of the student organizations on campus encouraged me to attend a Noam Chomsky speech, lauding him as the leading intellectual of our time and one of the most cited authors of all time. Great. Posted by: remus on December 9, 2002 1:39 AMLarry, have you ever heard of Canada’s Mark Steyn? He’s a few notches more conservative than Frum. {Those who care can find find Frum’s columns below. On the neocon scale, at least he’s better than Jonah Goldberg.) “(Those who care can find Frum’s columns below. On the neocon scale, at least he’s better than Jonah Goldberg.)” — Alex Sleighback Alex, I agree: Frum, though very disappointing in ways, IS better than Jonah Goldberg, and the reason isn’t that Jonah is too much to the left — otherwise thinkers even further to the left, such as Christopher Hitchens, Prof. Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, Michael Kinsley, Prof. Dershowitz, and tons of others, would all be even more boring than Jonah … which they’re NOT. Notice, in fact, that every one of these just mentioned is a billion times MORE interesting than Jonah in their writings. I could read Chomsky, Hitchens, and Cockburn all day with pleasure, though they’re totally whacked-out in the head. But JONAH? PUH-LEEEEEZE! Fifteen seconds of that guy puts me to sleep. The problem isn’t Jonah’s idiotic, superficial, childish, and oh-so-petty political notions. It’s that he’s not very bright. He’s a dullard. He’s somewhat of a moron. He is not capable of writing an interesting column, be it right, left, upside-down, right-side-up, inside-out, or ass-backwards (which is usually what it is). Prof. Paul Gottfried sometimes calls Jonah and his ilk at National Review “minicons.” Make that nanocons … with intellects to match. The “minicons” as I understand it are the second generation of neocons such as William Kristol and David Frum, not having the intellectual heft and importance of their predessors, and much more nakedly self-seeking, but not entirely worthless either. A few years behind the minicons are the “microcons,” including Goldberg, and they are pretty much an embarrassment. As for Mark Steyn, though I suppose he is on good terms with the neocons, for some reason he doesn’t “feel” like a neocon to me, I can’t explain why, maybe it’s that he doesn’t strike the usual neocon notes as much. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on December 9, 2002 7:28 PM |