Kill For Him the Fatted Calf, OK, But Would You Give Him His Own Credit Card?
Speaking of Steve Sailer I see that his suspicions about the identity of Spengler have been confirmed. Check out David Goldman’s Confession in First Things where he is now an associate editor.
Apropos of which, the following aside. A great number of passionate advocates of one or another ideology either have been advocates of some other ideology in the past or will become such in the future. In general, the trend is from some kind of radical commitment (whether of the left or the right) towards some more cautious orientation (whether conservative or liberal), but nearly as frequently the movement is from one kind of radicalism to another. I’ve certainly changed my mind about a lot of things over the years, but all that’s done is made it harder for me to be a big ideological advocate of any kind and more interested in criticism, less confident in my own judgments and also less confident in other people’s judgments. But that doesn’t seem to be the general way this sort of thing works.
Over the last couple of centuries, a widespread trend pointed out by Paul Johnson in his 1985 bestseller “A History of the Jews” is that secular, assimilated Jewish intellectuals and artists tend to become more ethnocentric as they get older.
You can see that in the first generation of neocons, who tended to pay relatively little attention to Israel while it was endangered in its first two decades of existence, but then became obsessed with its security after its 1967 victory. (For example, Norman Podhoretz’s second autobiography doesn’t mention Israel until several hundreds pages in, when they win the 1967 war.)
On the other hand, the second generation of neocons, such as John Podhoretz, have tended to be highly ethnocentric from their early adulthood, so perhaps this trend is breaking down. Or maybe they’ll just become even more ethnocentric as they age.
— Steve Sailer · May 10, 02:50 AM · #