Eric Breindel and Steve Sailer

Eric Breindel, the editorial page editor of the New York Post during the 1990s who tragically died in his forties in 1998, is the subject of an ugly sneering treatment by Steve Sailer. For Sailer, who talks about Jewish neoconservatives the way an anti-Semite talks about Jews, everything about Breindel was sinister and repulsive: Breindel was a manipulator, a climber, a user of people. He was even a force for political correctness: “Breindel is an extremely important figure in the development of the neocon stranglehold on public debate in America,” Sailer writes. Sailer’s piece is based on an almost equally sneering treatment in the New York Times Magazine by Craig Horowitz, whom he quotes saying:

As a writer, Breindel was unexceptional, producing mostly the joyless prose of an ideologue. And as an ideologue, he was more effective working the back channels than he was at publicly taking issues and ideas into new territory.

Sailer even hints, without any evidence to back up it up, that the disease Breindel died of in 1998 was something other than non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

If you knew nothing about Eric Breindel, you would never know from reading Sailer’s comments that Breindel was highly intelligent, talented, and idealistic (though the Times article quoted by Sailer includes some complimentary descriptions of Breindel, after the damage has been done), that the New York Post editorial page under his leadership, far from being characterized by the “joyless prose of an ideologue,” was the best in the country and indeed the best I’ve ever experienced, that he made the Post a must-read paper, a lifeline for conservatives in the left-wing intellectual desert of New York City. Under his editorship, even the letters to the editor sparkled. And far from being limited to a neocon perspective, the Post during those years expressed an older kind of American patriotism and also featured traditional Catholic conservatives like Ray Kerrison.

Were there limits to Breindel’s political vision? Yes. Were his strongest intellectual passions focused on issues that were mainly of concern to Jews? Yes. Was he oblivious of problems that are of especially concern to paleoconservatives, such as immigration? Yes. When I met Breindel at a cocktail party in the early ’90s and brought up immigration, he said, “Immigration?” as though he had never even heard of it as an issue. Yet he also allowed his assistant editorial page editor, Scott McConnell, to write thoughtful and searching articles questioning the cultural aspect of immigration in America, making the Post virtually the only mainstream paper in the country to feature such politically incorrect columns.

Eric Breindel was a highly admirable figure. But from Sailer’s treatment, you’d think he was some sinister intellectual flunky of the Elders of Zion.

This whole neocon-paleocon stand-off is an impossible situation for me. After Sailer’s depraved comment last summer that the prospect of the nuclear destruction of Israel by Iran was of no more concern to him than a game in the National League would be to an American League fan, I basically ceased visiting his site or paying any attention to him. Yet when there’s something big going on, like the current debate over the immigration bill, it is hard to avoid Sailer entirely. He is the author of many useful articles on immigration, such as his evisceration of the Proposition 187 myth which I linked recently . Also, I had to take Sailer’s side somewhat yesterday because he was correct in puncturing David Frum’s silly claims to having been a pathbreaker in the immigration debate, and it was also necessary to go after Frum for his renewed attempt to marginalize all traditionalist immigration critics as bigots. Yet, notwithstandng Sailer’s positive contributions, the bottom line on him is that he is a small, nasty bigot.

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I realize some people will disapprove of the strong language I’ve just used about Sailer. But if Sailer’s fellow paleocons would publicly criticize him for some of the things he says, instead of, tribe-like, automatically defending him when he is criticized, then that might get Sailer to change his behavior and an outsider like me wouldn’t feel called upon to say anything. But that doesn’t happen, does it? In our multicultural world, nobody is ever really criticized. Self-esteem and group-esteem is all. The problem is, if a group refuses to police itself, if it allows its negative or extreme elements complete liberty, then other people are justified in concluding that it is extreme.

Sailer’s ugly animus against Israel, Peter Brimelow’s insistence on publishing every single column by the lunatic hate-monger Paul Craig Roberts (because Roberts is his friend), these are the sorts of things that put a shadow over the paleoconservatives, and tend to justify the condemnations of it.

- end of initial entry -

Thucydides writes:

It is hard not to be upset by some of the outrageous things people say, including especially Frum and Sailer at times, or not to be frustrated by the tiny creeping steps toward realistic thinking of some of the younger neocons like Jonah Goldberg.

Someone once said, never forget the rhetorical power of understatement. When you push hard on conventional pieties, it is especially important to be careful to avoid overstatement or the appearance of excessive emotionality. It is tough to avoid being too bland and dull, and too inflammatory, especially given the volume of your output.

With high respect for your work, I would like to suggest that you consider trying to let people’s actions and statements speak for themselves as much as possible (as you often do), and avoid outright blanket characterizations of persons (as opposed to statements), even where they seem warranted. For example, you might say that Sailer has made such and such a statement which is bigoted for such and such a reason, but avoid saying Sailer is a bigot.

Please do not take offense; my goal is to see your work be as influential as possible, especially among people who need to hear what you say, but will be resistant and prone to take any excuse to turn away from the painful process of rethinking their own opinions.

LA writes:

Never worry about giving offense by thoughtful and helpful criticism. I realize some will be offended by what I said about Sailer. I have qualms myself about speaking this way. But I felt I had to say it. Eric Breindel (whom I did not know personally except for a few brief converssations) was a noble figure. To see him viciously and meanly trashed as Sailer did made more clear than ever what Sailer is about.

What is bigotry? An attitude of portraying a disliked group or any member of that group in the most negative terms possible, to make them as hateful as possible. What is a bigot? A person who displays a fixed bigotry. Steve Sailer has a fixed bigotry against the Jewish state, and against the Jewish neocons.

My intention in saying this is not to get other people to exclude Sailer but to get them to criticize him and dissociate themselves from those aspects of his writings that are nasty and bigoted. Then maybe he will change. He’s sure not going to change so long as the automatic reaction of people on the right to defend and excuse him.

Why is there no reaction against Sailer’s disgusting bigotry by other people on the nationalist right? Why am I the only person to point out these things? As long as this is the case, the right will be vulnerable to the kinds of charges the David Frum makes against it.

The other day when I referred to paleocon tribalism, someone questioned what I meant. The complete lack of any criticisms of Sailer is an example. The paleo right forms a “tribe.” Every member of the tribe automatically defends every other member. Truth doesn’t matter. It’s just “our” tribe against “their” tribe.

At Dennis Mangan’s weblog, a commenter said that my remarks about Sailer were an expression of my “offended Jewish sensibilities.” According to this type of response, which one runs into over and over on the paleo right, there is no objective truth, no objective right and wrong, just my group automatically siding against your group. I don’t have a mind. I am simply a robot speaking forth the Jewish imperatives that actually drive me. That’s the tribalist, materialist reductionist, and frequently anti-Semitic view that one finds all over the paleo right, and it spells the death of the intellect. But of course, if that’s the way the nationalist paleo right sees things, what is the basis of their own opinions? Not truth, but tribalism. What they say about someone like me, they are actually saying about themselves.

I say that my views are based on my attempt to understand truth. And I hold my statements up to that test. But someone who says right out that any opinon by a Jew is just an expression of his Jewishness, and have nothing to do with objective truth, thereby implies that his own opinions are just the expression of his non-Jewishness, and have nothing to do with objective truth. If that’s what he thinks about his own statements, why should we pay any attention to them?

Pay attention to people who say their views are based on a good-faith attempt to understand truth, because such people have subjected themselves to an objective test and can be trusted. But people who tell you that there is no such thing as objective truth but only tribal imperatives are telling you up front that their own statements are worthless.

Alan Levine writes:

Thought your comments on Frum and Sailer dead on target. But then, I have always felt that Frum fully sounded the depths of his own shallowness in the last chapter of his book on the 1970s, when, after repeatedly showing, to any normal person, just how awful the late 60 and 70s were, and how offensive they would be to anyone at all conservative, he chose, in the end, to pull his punches and jeer at people who would respond with a traditionalist reaction. That was in a book, not just a daily column.

Re Breindel: I did not know him personally, nor did I read the NY Post.. I saw Breindel on TV occasionally, and was not impressed.

LA replies:

On televison Breindel was terrible. He had a high nasal voice and came across like a nerd.

Apparently he did have that history with drugs. That was also many years before he became Post editor. But Sailer describes him as “heroin junkie / neocon extraordinaire,” making it sound as though Breindel was a heroin user at the same time that he was a leading neoconservative editor.

TGGP writes:

It seems rather odd to say that Sailer has a hatred of Jewish neo-conservatives, considering that he used to identify himself as one (see this interview: and this ). He frequently talks about how much better the first generation of neoconservatives were than the ones of today. I don’t think he has ever identified himself as a paleoconservative either (I much more frequently read people refer to you, Mr. Auster, as a paleo). He mostly just seems to be irritated over the Iraq war, immigration and other screw-ups of the Bush administration.

LA replies:

You’re mistaking formal statements for reality. Whatever he may have said about the earlier generation of neocons is not relevant to what he feels about the neocons now. And whatever he calls himself, neocon, paleocon, genetic realist, or whatever, he’s part of the American Conservative, VDare universe, and all his readers and fans are of that universe. Or perhaps you haven’t noticed?

In mistaking a formal statement for reality, you’re committing the same fallacy as Robert Spencer. Spencer would say that he had a strong position on immigration. So when I pointed out that he didn’t, he said I was lying, because … because he had said that he had a strong position on immigration. It didn’t matter that his position on immigration consisted of literally nothing. Because he said he had a strong position, he did.

So if Sailer says something positive about neoconservatives in some context, for you that means that Sailer cannot be anti-neocon, even though his blog is filled with obsessive attacks on neocons. Your belief in formal statements is preventing you from seeing what’s actually there.

As for what you said about me, it’s true that in terms of philosophy I am more paleo than Sailer, since my basis is traditionalism while Sailer’s is biocentric yuppiedom. His biocentrism has overlaps with paleoconservatism, however, because it leads to the belief in human difference and inequality. Also, Sailer, like paleocons, believes in the American nation as a concrete thing, which the neocons do not. (By your formal reasoning, however, since he says he’s a neocon, he is one, regardless of his actual beliefs.) Also, just as in recent years neoconservatism has been largely reduced to the belief in spreading democracy, paleoconservatism has been largely reduced to opposition to the neoconservatives. The American Conservative, where Sailer is the movie critic, literally came into existence in order to oppose the neocons and their agenda.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 20, 2007 08:57 PM | Send