{"id":189518,"date":"2010-03-17T10:06:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T15:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/03\/17\/im-quoting-american-conservative-magazine\/"},"modified":"2010-03-17T10:06:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T15:06:00","slug":"im-quoting-american-conservative-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/03\/17\/im-quoting-american-conservative-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m quoting American Conservative Magazine?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why yes,  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amconmag.com\/larison\/2010\/03\/14\/we-wouldnt-want-to-be-simplistic-and-naive-now-would-we\/\">I <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">am<\/span> quoting <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">American Conservative Magazine<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You see, Daniel Larison, reads Ross Douthat&#8217;s most recent <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">New York Times<\/span> screed (no link to the Times, I don&#8217;t want to encourage them, but his wankitude is <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/search?q=douthat\">here<\/a> on my blog).<\/p>\n<p>Ross, it seems, felt offended because people were using insufficient nuance when describing Bush and His Evil Minions<sup>\u2122<\/sup>, particularly with regard to the architects of the invasion of Iraq, and Mr. Larison responds:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>Yes, the problem might be that we do not have artists capable of rendering contemporary architects of a war of aggression that was based on<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> shoddy intelligence, ideological fervor and deceit in a sufficiently subtle, even-handed manner<\/span>. If only Hollywood were better at portraying the depth and complexity of people who<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> unleashed hell on a nation of 24 million people<\/span> out of an <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">absurd fear of a non-existent threat<\/span>! Life is so unfair to warmongers, is it not? Then again, the reason our debates are so poisonous and our nation so divided might have something to do with the existence of <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">utterly unaccountable<\/span> members of the political class that can <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">launch such a war<\/span>, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">suffer no real consequences<\/span>, and then reliably <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">expect to be defended<\/span> as \u201cdecent\u201d and \u201cwell-intentioned\u201d people who made understandable mistakes. The unfortunate truth of our existence is that villains do not have to come out of central casting for comic book movies. They are ordinary, \u201cdecent\u201d people who commit grave errors and terrible crimes for any number of reasons. Many great evils have found their origins in a group\u2019s belief that they were doing the right thing and were therefore <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">entitled and permitted to use extraordinary means<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>That is a righteous rant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why yes, I am quoting American Conservative Magazine. You see, Daniel Larison, reads Ross Douthat&#8217;s most recent New York Times screed (no link to the Times, I don&#8217;t want to encourage them, but his wankitude is here on my blog). Ross, it seems, felt offended because people were using insufficient nuance when describing Bush and &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1002,1063,1215,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-good-writing","category-iraq","category-the-bush-crime-family","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}