Damon Linker writes at THE WEEK:
Is National Review doomed?
The conservative movement’s leading magazine faces a lawsuit that could bring it to its knees.
This part made me laugh:
The ideological descendants of the Birchers have since taken their revenge. Today they are the conservative movement’s most passionate supporters and foot soldiers. But they demand a steady diet of red meat, and National Review now exists in part to provide it.
Really? John Birchers?
Here’s a somewhat less volatile point of his argument, but still equally funny:
‘In July, Judge Natalia Combs Greene rejected a motion to dismiss the suit. The defendants appealed, and last week D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg rejected the motion again, opening the door for the discovery phase of the lawsuit to begin’
I guess he didn’t do much research into that fiasco and judge Natalia Combs Greene to see the whole story of how she reversed the plaintiff and the defendant in her ruling, which was later nullified by a competent judge.
Let’s say for the sake of entertainment purposes that Mann does win the lawsuit, how will he prove damages? Given Mann’s own propensity for self promotion, vitriol, and foot-in-mouth moments, IMHO Mann does more damage to his own reputation than anyone else. If Mann winning that lawsuit that were to happen, it would probably be a symbolic damages award, like $1. If the judge really wanted to send a message about frivolous lawsuits from climate scientists, he could make it 97 cents.
Read it all here: http://theweek.com//article/index/255756/is-national-review-doomed
But, the funniest part of it all, is the writer himself, Damon Linker, who could be a every-Mann climate scientist clone.
The real trouble is that the Birchers got a LOT right. “US out of the UN” – now from a protective stand point that is a bad idea. But other wise it encapsulates the real value of the UN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society
The organization identifies with Christian principles, seeks to limit governmental powers, and opposes wealth redistribution, and economic interventionism. It opposes collectivism, totalitarianism, and communism. It opposes socialism as well, which it asserts is infiltrating US governmental administration. In a 1983 edition of Crossfire, Congressman Larry McDonald (D-Georgia), then its newly appointed president, characterized the society as belonging to the Old Right rather than the New Right.[14]
The society opposed aspects of the 1960s civil rights movement and claimed the movement had communists in important positions. In the latter half of 1965, the JBS produced a flyer entitled “What’s Wrong With Civil Rights?”, which was used as a newspaper advertisement.[15][16] In the piece, one of the answers was: “For the civil rights movement in the United States, with all of its growing agitation and riots and bitterness, and insidious steps towards the appearance of a civil war, has not been infiltrated by the Communists, as you now frequently hear. It has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists patiently building up to this present stage for more than forty years.”[17] The society opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming it violated the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and overstepped individual states’ rights to enact laws regarding civil rights. The society opposes “one world government”, and it has an immigration reduction view on immigration reform. It opposes the United Nations, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and other free trade agreements. They argue the U.S. Constitution has been devalued in favor of political and economic globalization, and that this alleged trend is not accidental. It cited the existence of the former Security and Prosperity Partnership as evidence of a push towards a North American Union.[18]
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Other than being clumsy (anti- civil rights because of communist influence) they seem to have some good ideas.
daveburton,
“Where I live, and to a lesser extent nationally, the GOP is the conservative Party.”
That is what the GOP claims to be, but their actions show that the only differences between the Democrats and the Republicans are a matter of (a very small) degree.
For the record, I live in Wisconsin.
The UN is not a friend of the US. It’s unspoken agenda is to confiscate the wealth of America and the West, then send it to other countries, and to hobble America’s military.
Under the current President, they are making great strides in accomplishing those goals.
There is no legitimate need for the UN. Any good they do, we could do far better on our own. We do not need the UN as a middleman, taking their hefty cut.
The UN should be promptly evicted from our shores, for the good of our citizens.
Linker isn’t a particularly deep thinker and his “analysis” lacks rigor. Apparently he never read the Mark Steyn article that Mann claimed defamed him. Anyone who does would come away scratching their heads about where the defamation is. Was it the “molesting data” line? Steyn didn’t say that, he just quoted another writer (Rand Simberg) and said he wouldn’t go so far as to say that himself. Was it ‘Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph’? Fraud is a serious allegation. It means “to deceive.” It’s possible that Mann did knowingly deceive people. At the very least, he hid his data (until he couldn’t legally) and his computer code (which he has never released).
It was only by a fortuitous circumstance that Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick back in 2003 located what appeared to be a remnant of his computer code and realized why it produced a hockey stick. It inordinately gave hundreds of times more weight to the data from the few tree rings that showed an apparent warming trend (out of dozens that showed no trend whatsoever) so that the overall trend shows warming. McIntyre and McKitrick demonstrated that this code produces a warming trend even from random noise in most cases.
Surely Mann would have seen this himself, since he saw the actual tree ring data and could tell that only a few trees showed apparent warming compared to the dozens that didn’t. If he didn’t, he was either 1.) an idiot or, 2.) didn’t check his own methods for (pretty obvious) errors or, 3.) had a foreordained conclusion about what the data SHOULD show and ignored anything that didn’t support it. If it was the third option, then Mann did indeed commit fraud. Until he releases his computer code and explains how and why he inordinately weighted the extremely small number of tree ring proxies that showed warming, then it does look like he committed fraud, notwithstanding the uncritical “investigation” by Penn State, the same university that managed to overlook Jerry Sandusky’s behavior for a decade.
But that kind of detailed examination of the record of Mann and Steyn appears to be beyond the capability or desire of Linker.
Doug Huffman says:
January 30, 2014 at 3:44 pm
Please do not confuse conservatism with the republican party, that’s a Limbaugh-like error. The republicans are as progressive as are the democrats, just in a different direction.
We have two socialist parties. One espouses economic socialism. The other moral socialism. Those causes used to be united in the Progressive movement. The anti-progressives would be called libertarians today.
And the hall mark of the socialists is the need for big government and a surveillance state to implement their programs. The economic socialism is well known. The moral socialism is in fact Drug Prohibition which is keeping a cancer cure out of people’s hands because it is the “wrong” drug. (and the cancer cure is high THC high CBD cannabis – look up “marijuana inoperable brain tumor” for more.
http://classicalvalues.com/2014/01/another-move/
They are just fine, M Simon. Unfortunately, even those that consider themselves “moderate” have bought into the marginalization efforts of the hard-core left, purely statist media that we have had for probably the last 75 years. Make every one of their ideas “fringe” and their supporters “right-wing nut jobs,” and then you don’t have to answer the hard questions like “do you really think a one-world government as proposed by the UN, operating under the assumptions of Agenda 21, is a good thing?”
Nope, blissful ignorance until suddenly, one day, you have a bureaucracy worse than the EU in the US as well.
Mark
“I miss the days when nearly all the nutcases were on the Left, when Buckley kept the Bircher nuts tamped down. These days there are almost as many nutcases on the Right as on the Left. We seem to be overrun with Birchers, Ron Paul acolytes, Alex Jones zombies, and more.No wonder we’re losing so many elections.”
—- NO, same percentages. Just “other media” that exist now, but not then.Kind like the phrase,
“The rain falls on the good and the bad alike…” I.e., the sound comes from the good and the bad alike. Just that we have to use a “noise filter” (our intellects, hard to use at times…particularily if not used to it…) to filter out the noise and get the content.
Technically “socialism” encompasses both economic and moral statism/collectivism. It is a socio-economic philosophy. Capitalism a socio-economic philosophy is as well, except that its “socio” part is almost purely confined to individual rights and those end at your own doorstep, i.e., it does not advise on any social policy in particular except to leave your neighbor alone if he wishes you to.
Mark
The Republican Party is right wing in the same way that the National Socialists were right wing when compared to the Communists. All you need to do is narrow the terms of discourse. Which would of course make the liberty minded far right extremists
Wayne says @ur momisugly 3:13 pm:
… found that National Review’s founder William F. Buckley, Jr. basically threw John Birch out of the modern conservative movement way back in 1962
Would have been hard to do. The Chinese Communists executed John Birch in 1945.
Actually, the UN has no intention of sending our wealth to other countries. They intend to keep it for themselves, which ultimately consists primarily of unelected wealthy patrons. The rest of us, across the entire globe, will then merely serve at their whim. Obama wants to bitch about the income inequality now… wait till we all make the same wage (read: nothing) and the elite sit in their mansions. Oh yeah…
Mark
Tanya Aardman says:
January 30, 2014 at 3:54 pm
“never trust bald men with beargs or goatees”
Whew… glad I don’t have a goatee or a bearg.
They claimed that “The Conspiracy” had been secretly running the whole world for hundreds of years,
I can make that claim on very rational grounds. With cites. I wouldn’t say they got the organization chart right. But the essence of it? Quite correct. If you want to start somewhere here is a good link on how it is done. http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boddlesboys2.html
Also Check out Catherine Austin Fitts – former HUD undersecretary. Or Alfred McCoy – “The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia”.
National Review is the conservative movement’s leading magazine ? News to me.
M Simon wrote, “[The GOP] espouses… moral socialism… The moral socialism is in fact Drug Prohibition which is keeping a cancer cure out of people’s hands because it is the “wrong” drug. (and the cancer cure is high THC high CBD cannabis – look up “marijuana inoperable brain tumor” for more.”
Dear God only knows how I miss Wm F. Buckley, Jr! This is a great example of the kind of nuttiness that he kept tamped down at the conservative & libertarian ends of the political spectrum. He was actually sympathetic to pot decriminalization, but he had no patience for crackpot conspiracy theories, medical quackery, and strange Orwellian redefinitions of standard language.
John M says:
January 30, 2014 at 2:54 pm
Several years ago, there was a book written by a coastal elitist entitled “What’s Wrong with Kansas”.
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Sad part the dolt that wrote the book was from Kansas. A rich well to do suburb of KC none the less. He grew up a couple of miles from me same school district different High School.
I guess the premise of the book was since you dirt farmers out in western KS ( descendents of the Volga Germans, Czechs, Germans, Mennonites a few from back east) don’t listen to us liberals and since we know what is best for you, there must be something wrong with you because our policies are what is right for you since you don’t want them…
I apologize for the State of Kansas for the this ‘pundit’.
One more thingie he wrote for the WSJ but gave up the gig a few back since the readers made intellectual mincemeat of his weekly columns. It was sad. Worse than a one legged indian at a butt kicking contest., He has no intellectual firepower.
I have a goatee and am bald…..therefore I resemble that remark.
@Dave Burton,
Are you implying that Mark Steyn, an effete metro-sexual who loves show tunes, writes with the wit of Mencken, and has at other times reviewed films, books and contemporary music, is a Bircher?
Please, explain yourself.
Box of Rocks,
I meant “coastal elitist” as a state of mind. 🙂
daveburton said @ur momisugly January 30, 2014 at 3:32 pm
There ya go! And I thought it was aliens 🙂
More here:
http://rt.com/shows/sophieco/%D1%81anada-minister-defense-ufo-959/
Looks like Damon’s hair has slipped down around his mouth, too. Is he a runt, as well?
Despite a possibly unfavorable outcome, the NR, as per The Volokh Conspiracy blog, probably has Libel Insurance.
The demise of the NR is doubtful.
And yes to all above commenters : the UN is generally worthless except as a good paying job with many perks.
@Gail Combs says: January 30, 2014 at 3:07 pm
“There is still DISCOVERY http://wakeforestlawreview.com/when-staying-discovery-stays-justice-analyzing-motions-to-stay-discovery-when-a-motion-to-dismiss-is-pending”
The Mann vs NR & Steyn case is being heard in a superior court, which is not part of the federal court system that your link article refers to, so the rules of discovery will be specific to DC law and may be different as superior courts are subject to their local state laws…
I’ll second that. I’ve not listened to Steyn before. It was a great podcast. He’s introduced after about 3 mins 30 secs.