Another Exceptional Critique of Lowry and Ponnuru
Daniel Larison offers another deconstruction of the infamous essay and the even weaker response:
[T]heir argument is not really with Obama’s belief in American exceptionalism, but something much more basic. They do not much care for his domestic policy, and they have a sneaking suspicion that there is something wrong with his foreign policy even though they cannot actually prove it. For whatever reason, instead of advancing policy arguments against the administration’s agenda, they have concocted a half-baked theory to make American progressivism and American exceptionalism appear antithetical to one another when any halfway honest accounting of modern domestic and foreign policy tells us that they have been complementary and closely linked. From my perspective, that is one reason to be very skeptical of American exceptionalism, but there is no real reason why anyone who believes in American exceptionalism should doubt Obama’s belief in the same.
It’s unfortunate to see Ponnuru putting his brain to work justifying irrational partisan animosity toward Obama. He seems to be a legitimately bright guy, though he has spent a bit too much of his adult life nestled within movement conservatism.
As for Lowry…well, he does appear to be smarter and marginally more self-aware than Jonah Goldberg.
Mike
— MBunge · Mar 11, 10:19 PM · #
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now. Keep it up!
And according to this article, I totally agree with your opinion, but only this time! :)
— true religion women jeans · Mar 12, 09:16 AM · #
This is the most pathetic tempest in a teapot that I can imagine. Let me summarize.
1) Conservatives think that a liberal president does not fully appreciate the things that awesome about the country as it is, and that his poorly planned changes may threaten those awesome things.
2) Liberals think that a liberal president’s changes will make the country even more awesome.
Aren’t both of those stories dog bites man? If conservatives didn’t think that the status quo contained valuable elements that shouldn’t be changed, they wouldn’t be conservative. If liberals didn’t think that the brave new future contained valuable elements that must be realized, they wouldn’t be liberal. Given that we are talking about conservative and liberal Americans, is it surprising that conservatives find conservatism to be consistent with core American values and liberals find liberalism similarly consistent?
The only interesting part of the story is Larison, who is always interesting, but for some reason, TAS is obsessed with the shocker that a group of conservative writers hold conservative opinions.
— J Mann · Mar 12, 08:14 PM · #
“Aren’t both of those stories dog bites man?”
Try “dog bites dog.”
— Matt Frost · Mar 12, 10:57 PM · #
So we have some Reaganites who believe in a loud, socio-political Manifest Destiny without the possessory interest: America miked up and moving. Larison wants us to be modest and introverted. Linker wants us to lead by example, to constrain ourselves to constrain others. Obama sees our exception not in being the bestest or the firstest, but in having the mostest: because of our real mass, we by definition get more say on mankind’s political/ethical/cultural center of gravity than anyone else.
It’s prescription versus proscription versus prediction versus description. Description wins by default.
— John Aristides · Mar 13, 01:44 AM · #