To celebrate its fiftieth birthday, National Review just put out a humongous double issue.

It praised Lincoln, it praised integration and cautiously endorsed affirmative action.

They praised censoring Prussian Blue. They praised the guy who inherited WalMart and crushed Maurice Bessinger for flying the Confederate flag under the Federal and state flags in front of his own restaurants.

NR is wildly happy with its success and devotes an article to how much better 2005 is than
1955 when the magazine was founded. In fact, NR has stated that everything the magazine
was founded to oppose is good.

They didn’t say that. It’s just that I REMEMBER what NR was about and this giant issue
declared the magazine’ founders were wrong about everything.

NR agrees that all the liberals NR attacked in 1955 were right and its founders should have been backing THEM. But nobody notices this but me.

Certainly the Citadels of Senility who founded NR have forgotten it ALL. They are successes
in the only sense that any respectable conservative is a success.

By “success” NR means that it is now accepted by liberals and neoconservatives occasionally pause
to pat it on the head.

NR is delirious. They have reason to be. They reached the pinnacle of respectability.

The last page shows a joint picture of the leftist anti-Iraq War British MP Galloway and David Duke.

Those men show. they say, show the opposition to everything NR stands for has become so
massive it is incoherent.

This means incoherent in the world-view of conservative respectability. There is a giant fury growing
against the “both sides” in which respectable conservatism has always been a junior partner.

I wrote a book in 1976 called A Plague on Both Your Houses. It discussed how liberals and conservatives are NOT “both sides.” In fact, I said, liberals and conservatives form a two-headed coalition that is the worst of both worlds.

From NR’s point of view the fact that everybody is beginning to hate the America “both sides” has produced is good news.

It shows how silly all those opponents are.

What I see is that what I wrote in 1976 has gone global.

I did not realize in 1976 that by 1996 the United States would not be the only “superpower” in the world, but it is now the only POWER in the world. There is not one other country on this planet that projects its military might outside its own borders.

So now the whole world is dealing with the insanity I described in A Plague on Both Your Houses.

In 1976 A Plague on Both Your Houses was a blueprint for the coalition that won the 1980 election. I said the two-headed establishment was insane and there was a groundswell against it and I described exactly how to ride that rebellion politically.

My theme was that what the establishment calls “both sides,” respectable conservatism and liberalism, ended up being a two-headed establishment that produced insane policies.

I did not know in 1976 that in two short decades America would not only be the only SUPERPOWER on earth, but the only POWER on earth.

Today no other country but the United States projects its military force outside its own borders.

And when I say that, I am very used to the fact that nobody understands the historical implications of what I am saying.

And nobody who can’t understand US policy outside the United States will read my book . It took a lifetime’s experience even for me, an American inside and intellectually outside the system to write that book.

The one thing everybody agreed on was that what I wrote was absolutely unique and only I coud have written it. It was recommended for purchase by the Library Journal and praised by Publisher’s Weekly, and both reviewers said they hated every word of it.

But somebody needed to say it. We have the same situation today. A lot of people beg to have American policy explained to them. But they ask Harvard professors, international relations experts.

This intra-US politics. It is PROVINCIAL American politics gone global.

So they ask internationalists about it.

Everybody asks plaintively, “How did America GET this crazy?’ But nobody will read my first book to see where American policy comes from.

So now the two-headed establishment I said was irrational in 1976 is ruling the world. National Review is glorying in the fact that it is playing its part in that two-headed establishment. NR is delighted that it is now recognized as one of the heads.

So National Review is very happy everybody else is so crazy. Only they and the New York media and the neocons are inside the Circle of Sanity.

From NR’s point of view this is great news. They have always been worshippers of those who regard anything between Hollywood and New York ity as “flyover country.” Their own publisher, William Rusher wrote in Rise of the Right that no one on the NR staff believed anything unless it was in the New York Times.

But Bill Rusher also wrote the Foreword to A Plague on Both Your Houses. He is the grandson of a coal miner. He realized there was an America outside of New York and Hollywood.

Rusher excepted himself from my criticism of William Buckley. He insisted Buckely was not the provincial I said he was. I insisted that Buckely WRITES as if he were joined at the hip with the most provincial kind of respectable conservatism.

But he did understand that what I meant by “provincial” was exactly what New York calls “sophisticated.”

For fifty years conservatives have desperately, pathetically begged to be considered sophisticated.

Especially SOUTHERN conservatives.

If you think liberals are provincial you haven’t met enough respectable conservatives.

Conservatives honestly believe that they and liberals are “both sides.” When a liberal says anything good about the pro-life movement, they go all giggly and girlish.

So the fact that George Galloway and David Duke, both of whom are violently disapproved of by neoconservatives and most liberals, are saying the same things means that National Review has reached the Promised Land of respectability.

New York and Hollywood donot AGREE with them that all these Islamists and anti-Israel types have no right to speak out. Conservatives are at the Captain’s Table, talking face-to-face, right there in First Class, with their former masters.

Now that they have gotten into First Class on board the ship of our National Dialogue, respectable conservatives are more furious at any peasants who have gripes than are the Old Rich. New York and Hollywood have always been in first class. It is the conservatives who resent any interlopers most.

That is the most outstanding characteristic of the nouveau riche, you know.

Hence the triumphant last page article in NR’s Fiftieth Anniversary double issue.

The article starts with this sentence:

“My enemy’s enemy is my friend. But America’s has so many enemies that they must occassionally feel they’ve got too many friends.”

It took me three reads to get what they were trying to say.

What they are saying is that “both sides” in America have a long and growing list of enemies. This is good, they feel, because anybody liberals, neoconservatives and conservatives all disapprove are bad and illogical and don’t belong in First Class.

So the fact that a volcano, an explosion of resistance is growing against them is good.

All the Voices of Reason, liberal and neo, are united to them by the growing circle of rebellion outside.

Remember, conservatives never claimed to lead anybody. They have always existed as critics of liberals. In the respectable conservative only liberals and neos and they really belong in the political dialogue.

So they glory in the fact that the extreme right and the exreme left in the persons of Galloway and Duke have united against “both sides” in the Only True Discussion. Respectable conservatives are now what they have always dreamed of being. As liberals and neoconservatives unite in a policy which is meeting growing resistance from absolutely everybody, the conservatives are now RECOGNIZED by liberals as the only true Other Side.

Finally conservatives have been accepted, fully and unqualifiedly accepted, by liberals.

Some liberals have even joined them.

Conservatives have dreamed of this for fifty years. Moses took forty years to reach the Promised Land. Conservatives have reached it.

Unlike Moses, they have been allowed to set foot on it.

It would never occur to them that the Promised Land might be sinking.

For fifty years National Review has looked to the left as their leaders, and they have said that, though they share every goal the left does, the left is just doing it wrong.

So National Review sees it this way: The enormous and growing list of enemies they cite have nothing in common except a growing fury of what liberals, neoconservatives and their pet conservatives are doing. That shows they must be right.

“Both sides” is not that stable in America, much less worldwide. That’s why my books and advice were POLITICAL successes here.

I am retired on the proceeds of my political work. So I was definitely a professional at understanding where American policy comes from. But nobody else understands that and they wouldn’t pay me any more if they did.

So mostly I get laughs out of this. Conservatives glorying in the rebellion against themselves and their neos and their liberals is irony undreamed of.

Now if I saw my own “flyover” country came near to tanking the whole “both sides” thing with Ross Perot in 1992, it would worry me

A lot.

Now the whole world is in growing rebellion.

But NR is sitting there in New York City, gleefully that it is FINALLY basking in the approval of Jewish supporters of Israel in New York. EVERYBODY who is “respectable” has finally, at long last, accepted them.

As they sit there in Pompeii they see that beautiful fireworks display from Vesuvius as a tourist attraction.

Finally, at long last, liberals and even New York City Jewish opinion has let them leave their third-class compartments and come right into second class. Many of them are even allowed into first class.

They are hypnotized by this. They are glorying in this.

In fact, they had an entire article on the last page dedicated to the fact that the ship is going down. Every word in the article points that way. But nobody at National Review even noticed it.

NR glories inthe fact that the enemies of the two-headed establishment are so numerous and so varied that they do not constitute the nice, clean coalition that America’s left and right do.

They are a ragtag collection of growing rebellion. They just don’t BELONG in first class.

Vesuvius is exploding. The ship is in extreme danger. But that is not within the world view of respectable conservatives.

Their job is to keep New York Jewish opinion happy. Their job is to find an accommodation with liberals. Their job is to attract neoconservatives so they will have more power in the “both sides” game.

Conservatives only concern is where they sit on the ship. The ship itself is the captain’s problem.

They are in first class. And they are very, very happy.
__________________

In reply to my discussion of how fast things change when they change, Peter wrote:

“On something being “congenitally wrong:” as Bob has said, this is how every revolution has looked at the beginning. When we show signs of success, suddenly 95% of everyone jumps on the bandwagon declaring that they were always secretly behind us.”

“Old Westerns are full of this theme. Take a corrupt town controlled by a crook. One man has had enough and takes action. A friend or two appear. The whole town that he is trying to help seems to be against him, but a latchkey mysteriously appears at just the right moment and an anonymous note with critical intelligence is dropped off at the last minute.”

“As Bob noted, Adams was wrong when he offhandedly said that a third of the people were behind the revolution of 1776, a third were indifferent, and a third were Tories. He was wrong because in the beginning, there were really only a handful and in the end almost everyone was behind it.”

“At a local grocery store, they were selling DVDs with two movies on each for $1.00. I got several of the Roy Rogers. I love these movies. Partly it is because it was shot in all my favorite places that I have hiked and explored so I can say oh, that is Melody Ranch, or Golden Oak, Vasquez Rocks, or the back side of Big Bear (it’s easy to sneak quietly onto the movie ranches if you keep an eye out for the dust cloud of a truck coming your way). But as hokey as this sounds, these old movies give me hope. ”

“In these old movies, Roy goes through all kinds of crap, loses everything including his reputation, gets injured, people hate him, but he always keeps his spirits up and sings great music for the ladies. And of course he always wins and the people thank him for helping them.”

Comment by Peter — 12/21

Actually, Peter, there is nothing mythical about the Roy Rogers scenario.

One of the most famous quotes from Texas history occurred when the Texas Rangers were the only law in the Republic of Texas, which lasted for ten years. There was a total breakdown of law and order in one town, everybody armed and shooting.

So the head of the Rangers sent a man there to straighten things out.

A newsman from the United States pointed out that there was a state of total anarchy there, so shouldn’t he have sent more men.

The head of the Rangers gave the reply that has gone down in history:

“One problem, one Ranger.”

The Ranger straightened things out and came on back for another assignment.