I Survived the Summit

Got back late last night from the National Review Institute's Conservative Summit in D.C. I'll have a full report posted tomorrow, including strategies to watch out for, the grand dilemma of conservative ideology, and the Jonah Goldberg Facial Hair Watch.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for something to read, may I suggest this excellent Glenn Greenwald post, in which he further destroys the right's absurd and embarassing reliance on the Churchill metaphor. Sample passage:

These are the same people -- the President, Lieberman, Bill Kristol, the Fox warriors -- who never tire of dressing up in Winston Churchill costumes and spouting the only historical analogy they know in the most reductionist form possible ("Churchill = strong, war; Chamberlian = weak, anti-war; we must Be Churchill").

But Churchill would have recoiled -- he did recoil -- at their argument that criticism of the Leader and the war are improper and hurts the war effort. Churchill repeatedly made the opposite argument -- that one of the strengths of democracies is that leaders are held to account for their decisions and that those decisions are subject to intense and vigorous debate, especially in war. In January, 1942, Britian had suffered a series of defeats and failures (which Churchill candidly acknowledged and for which he took responsibility), and he therefore addressed the House of Commons and insisted that a public debate be held in order to determine whether he still had the confidence of the House of Commons in his conduct of the war.

Read, as the saying goes, the whole thing.

Labels: Churchill, Glenn Greenwald

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:24 AM