THE PLANK OCTOBER 7, 2009
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
Via Alex Massie, I notice that New Gingrich is saying really, really crazy things (again!). Basking in the warm embrace of the National Review staff that interviewed him, the former speaker sounds positively deranged. The interview itself, portentously titled 'Our Heritage,' contains lots of goodies:
--Gingrich says he has major concerns about American culture, and “the degree to which it is becoming an anti-religious culture.”
--“The modern Left is essentially proto-totalitarian,” says Gingrich.
--Obama, Gingrich adds, “is a radical in the sense that the victory of those values would mean the end of American civilization as we know it.”
--Looking to Afghanistan, Gingrich says, “the real underlying challenge is that this is a much bigger problem than people understand...The last few weeks have been worse than Chamberlain. This is Baldwin in 1935, just willfully blind because he didn’t want to tell the British people the truth because it would offend them.” If things are so dire, then where is America’s Churchill? “I don’t know, we’ll find out,” says Gingrich. “I hope that we can find one.”
Especially charming is the clear evidence that this sort of lunacy is warmly welcomed in the offices of National Review. Gingrich's rants are more bearable than the clubby back-and-forth that NR was kind enough to record for the reader:
In a meeting with NR staff, sipping a Diet Coke, Newt Gingrich reminded us that he’s a “historian by training.” Not that we needed the hint... Asked by one editor whether he’d be a Hamiltonian or a Jeffersonian should a time machine suddenly become available, Gingrich said, “I’d be a Hamiltonian on economics, and a Jeffersonian on politics.”
“You’d be a fusionist even then,” quipped Jay Nordlinger.
Gingrich laughed. Although he and his wife, Callista, had in theory come to NR to chat about the impressive new documentary they co-host...
The whole story is here.
3 comments
Isaac Chotiner quotes and responds: --Looking to Afghanistan, Gingrich says, “the real underlying challenge is that this is a much bigger problem than people understand...The last few weeks have been worse than Chamberlain. This is Baldwin in 1935, just willfully blind because he didn’t want to tell the British people the truth because it would offend them.” If things are so dire, then where is America’s Churchill? “I don’t know, we’ll find out,” says Gingrich. “I hope that we can find one.” Especially charming is the clear evidence that this sort of lunacy is warmly welcomed in the offices of National Review. Michael B. Oren writes in The New Republic today: -- The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves. If a country can be pummeled by thousands of rockets and still not be justified in protecting its inhabitants, then at issue is not the methods by which that country survives but whether it can survive at all. But more insidiously, the report does not only hamstring Israel; it portrays the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents--as Nazis. And a Nazi state not only lacks the need and right to defend itself; it must rather be destroyed. Especially charming is the clear evidence that this sort of lunacy is warmly welcomed in the offices of The New Republic. The big moral difference between some readers and all writers at The New Republic is that readers pay for the right to criticize crap like this while the writers are paid not to criticize it.
- ndmackenzie
October 7, 2009 at 4:58pm
ndmac, to a crazy person reason would seem like lunacy. You said absolutely nothing to rebut Oren, just assert that it is lunacy. Why do you even subscribe to TNR? Go huff at the Huffingtonpost. "Gingrich laughed. Although he and his wife, Callista"...um...which wife is this now, number 5? Doesn't Newt have grandkids older than her? The chutzpah of this guy. The only reason I think this marriage might last is because Newt is really looking for a nurse to care for him in his dotage. I love this line "In 2008, Americans, says Gingrich, “were voting for the end of Bush." Yeah, how about the why they were. And maybe that would make more sense if Bush were running. Americans were voting for the end of the Republican rule. And this line is a classic: “partially because, ultimately, if you believe in God, then it creates limitations on your own ego and it creates limitations on your own behavior.” But Newt, you believe you are God so where is the limitation on your ego? And my favorite, speaking of Reagan: He managed to defeat the Soviet Empire and managed to renew the energy of entrepreneurial America OK, sure. The 40 years of the Cold war, nuclear brinkmanship, untold trillions spent of defense of our allies, nope, it was all a waste. It just took Ronald Jesus Reagan to wave his hands for the collapse of the Soviet system. It is a shame Reagan decided to allow the Chinese to continue their system though, I imagine it would have only taken a shrug of his shoulders for the Chinese to bring back Chiang Kai Shek. And yes, without Reagan I am sure Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, etc. etc. would have said "what is the point?" I have to admit, Newt is good for quite a few laughs.
- blackton
October 7, 2009 at 7:22pm
"Never in the history of human conflict, has so much been owed by so many to so few -- or putting it in financial terms, never have so many taxpayers given so much money to so few institutions who are utterly uninterested in the common good. As a Republican, I can only salute that" Newt Winston Gingrich
- ironyroad
October 8, 2009 at 12:45am