How David Frum responds to being called a bigot by his fellow conservatives

Reader Mark G. writes:

Motivated by your posting on William Kristol’s and David Brooks’s smears of their fellow conservatives who oppose open borders, I wrote to David Frum. Below is the short exchange. I found it interesting that on hearing that Brooks calls him a yahoo, Frum just shrugs. Here’s the exchange:

Mr. Frum,

You wrote on your blog: “Do see David Brooks’ very fine and moving column today on Iraq’s past and future”.

I find it interesting that Kristol and Brooks speak with great contempt about the people who are against amnesty and for enforcement.

Don’t they realize that many of their fellow establishment conservatives are among those they are trashing as know-nothings and xenophobes?

And how come the respectable conservatives who are being smeared have not reproached the smearers?

Basically Kristal and Brooks indirectly called you a yahoo and virtually a racist. Do you not believe that the way they feel about you? If not, why not?

I’m curious what they would say if you were to confront them?

Regards, Mark G.

David Frum to Mark G.:

Ah in my line of work, you get used to much worse than this.

David Frum

LA replies to Mark G.:

That’s fantastic. Thank you for writing to him and eliciting this perfectly typical response.

This seems further evidence for my view that modern intelligentsia, particularly mainstream “conservatives,” are not serious about the things they claim to be serious about and have no real convictions or principles. For them, it’s all about getting along with their colleagues and adapting themselves from moment to moment to the changing exigencies of politics and career. Truth is not their concern, but functioning within the flow. Thus when I wrote to Fr. Richard John Neuhaus a couple of years ago about David Brooks’s endorsement of homosexual marriage, Neuhaus refused to criticize him for it or say that this passed a line beyond which one cannot be reasonably called a conservative. Thus Frum sees no significance in, and is not offended by, his fellow conservatives calling opponents of illegal immigration, including Frum himself, yahoos and bigots.

Indeed, so lacking in any genuine conviction is Frum, that he doesn’t realize how inappropriate is his lackadaisical, indifferent reply to you. So without a chest is he, that it doesn’t occur to him that he at least ought to pretend to have a chest.

Note, further, that the lack of conviction is only seen in the conservatives who are on the more conservative side of the issue, as is Neuhaus on homosexual marriage and Frum on illegal immigration. For conservatives on the more liberal side of the issue, like Kristol and Brooks smearing conservative opponents of illegal immigration as yahoos and xenophobes, there is plenty of conviction.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 20, 2006 01:32 PM | Send